I bought this car to use as a daily commuter car - my wife needed the Magnum to haul the kid around a few days a week, and I was driving my Suburban or my Electra to work on those days. Both have older carb'ed V8 engines that use tons of gas and are in various states of "needs work". When the brakes went out on the Electra one day, I figured I could spend a few hundred bucks to make one of them decent, or just get a smaller commuter car that I cared nothing about and that was better on gas - so I had more money for fun stuff. The result of that hunting was this car - Craigslist scores again.

The car is a pretty basic setup that is very similar to the Lumina I parted out - it has a 3.1L V6 with multiport EFI, front wheel drive, a basic set of options, and the typical peeling/worn out paint on all the horizontal surfaces that the GM's of this era are (in)famous for. (Thank you EPA and CARB for forcing a switch to water-based paints before the quality was there. But, I digress...) The exterior is black and the interior is a tolerable red that's in pretty good shape for it's age. The bonus here is that it's the sportier 2 door "Euro" model with full instrumentation (tach, oil pressure, water temp), factory alloy wheels (with decent tires on them), bucket seats, and a console shifter for the automatic trans. All in all, it's a nice improvement over the typical boring 4-door family hauler Lumina models. The power windows, AC, and cruise control all work, as does the factory radio. The engine is nearly spotless and the spare has never been down. The trunk is in good shape and is very clean with all the factory trim present. All together not bad for the $1000 I paid for it - including the required tax, title, and license fees. The Euro package means better handling, so it's not quite the mushy slip-'n-slide handling of most of these cars. It's not stellar by any means, but it's not bad either. It's got low mileage for it's age (~84,000), the engine runs nearly perfectly, the trans shifts fine, and overall it's pretty tolerable to drive. Not quite as much fun as the Magnum, but tolerable. These are well known to be long-lasting cars, so I should be able to get good use out of it over the next few years. And, if at some point in the future the car keels over, I can grab all of the EFI parts to use on one of my EFI conversions, and I can part out the rest to recoup costs. With the monthly gas savings compared to the Suburban meaning it will have paid for itself in just a few months of use - knowing that I will actually get something out of it when it's all said and done, well, that makes it an even better deal. Oh, and did I mention the the AC didn't work in either the Suburban or in the Electra (at least not when I bought this car)? Yeah, AC is a nice feature in your daily driver - sweating it out in traffic after a long day at work is no fun...

Pictures

Comments? Kudos? Got some parts you'd like to buy/sell/barter/swap? Nasty comments about my web page so far? You can email Mike or Debbie.

Page last updated 04/26/2008 11:41:08 PM