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Junkyard Gem: 1988 Pontiac 6000 LE Safari Wagon

The Detroit station wagon was fast losing sales to minivans and trucks as the decade of the 1980s progressed, but Pontiac shoppers still had plenty of choices as late as the 1988 model year. A visit to a Pontiac dealership in 1988 would have presented you with three sizes of wagon, from the little Sunbird through the midsize 6000 and up to the mighty Parisienne-based Safari. Today's Junkyard Gem is a luxed-up 6000 LE, complete with "wood" paneling, found in a car graveyard in Fargo, North Dakota. Confusingly, the "Safari" name in 1988 was used by Pontiac to designate both a specific model — the wagon version of the Parisienne/Bonneville— and as the traditional Pontiac designation for a station wagon. That meant that the wagon we're looking at now was a Safari but not the Safari in the 1988 Pontiac universe. The 6000 lived on the GM A-Body platform, as the Pontiac-badged version of the Chevrolet Celebrity. Production ran from the 1982 through 1991 model years, with the A-Body Buick Century surviving all the way through 1996. The LE trim level came between the base 6000 and the gloriously complex 6000 STE (which wasn't available in wagon form, sadly). I visited this yard in Fargo after judging at the Minneapolis 500 24 Hours of Lemons in Brainerd, Minnesota, last fall. Up to that point, I had visited 47 of the Lower 48 United States, with just North Dakota remaining, so I made a point of doing a Fargo detour in order to check that state off my list. I'm pleased that I found such a good example of the 1982-1996 GM A-Body in this yard, because the most famous of all the A-Bodies is the 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera driven to Brainerd by the inept Fargo-based kidnappers in the film "Fargo." This Minnesota-plated 6000 had some rust, but just negligible levels by Upper Midwestern standards on a 31-year-old car. The interior looked very good, with the original owner's manual still inside. The 6000 LE boasted "redesigned contoured seats and London/Empress fabric," which sounds pretty swanky. Something less swanky lives under the hood: an Iron Duke 2.5-liter pushrod four-cylinder engine, known as the Tech 4 by 1988. The Iron Duke was, at heart, one cylinder bank of the not-quite-renowned Pontiac 301-cubic-inch V8; while fairly rugged, the Duke ran rough (typical of large-displacement straight-four engines) and made just 98 horsepower in this application. Pontiac offered a couple of optional V6s in the 6000 in 1988, but no Quad 4.

Pontiac Aztek enjoys rebirth thanks to Millennials

Apparently, Millennials – those between 18 and 34 – aren't afraid to look different on the road, and they like performance, too. A new study by Edmunds is discovering some surprising vehicle choices by this group. Among them, the long-derided Pontiac Aztek is getting a new day in the sun with 25.5 percent its buyers coming from this generation in the first half of 2015. For comparison, Millennials represent an average of 16.8 percent of used car purchases. The Aztek is slowly shaking its reputation as a styling abomination, which seems tied to its appearance on Breaking Bad. The show premiered in 2008, and the Pontiac has been on this list for four of the past five years, according to Edmunds. It even led the pack in 2010. A recent Retro Review from MotorWeek also showed that the crossover wasn't always so hated. While it's still a shock to see the Aztek on any popularity list, the awkward-looking crossover only ranks sixth among Millennials. The vehicle with the biggest portion of buyers from the generation is the Dodge Magnum with 27.6 percent. According to Edmunds, the bluntly styled wagon is especially popular in Detroit and Chicago. The Chrysler Pacifica comes in a close second at 27.3 percent. When it comes to used cars, value and utility appear to trump just about anything else for many Millennial buyers," Edmunds analyst Jeremy Acevedo said in the report. Young buyers aren't afraid of sporty rides, either. The Subaru WRX has 26.4 percent Millennial buyers to rank third place on the list, and the Volkswagen R32 takes fifth at 25.7 percent. Just a few points lower in seventh place is the Nissan GT-R at 25.4 percent, and the final performance machine in 10th place is the Lexus IS-F with 24.7 percent. Related Video:

Junkyard Gem: 1997 Pontiac Sunfire SE Convertible

For the entire 24-year production run of the GM J platform (best known for the Chevrolet Cavalier), the Pontiac Division offered new J-Body cars for sale in the United States. First there was the J2000, followed in quick succession by the 2000, 2000 Sunbird and Sunbird. The Sunbird stuck around until the Cavalier got a major redesign for the 1995 model year, at which point Pontiac changed the car's name to Sunfire. Today's Junkyard Gem is one of those early Sunfires, a top-of-the-line SE convertible with the optional big engine and manual transmission. The Sunfire was an extremely close sibling to the same-year Cavalier (by the late 1980s, all the other US-market GM divisions had dropped their J-cars, which meant no more Skyhawks, Cimarrons or Firenzas), quite difficult to distinguish from its near-twin at a glance. The base engine for the 1997 Sunfire convertible was the pushrod 2.2-liter straight-four that powered so many J-bodies of the 1990s. That engine produced just 120 gnashing, valve-floating horsepower, not much by late-1990s standards. For a mere 450 additional dollars, however, the 2.4-liter Twin Cam engine and its high-revving 150 horses could be had by '97 Sunfire buyers. That's what's in this car. This is one of the members of the Oldsmobile Quad 4 family, though some fanatics will yell at you if you apply that name to the versions that don't have big QUAD 4 lettering cast into the valve cover. This is the most powerful engine ever used in production Sunfires. For 1997, Pontiac offered a four-speed automatic transmission for no extra cost in the Sunfire convertible. Buyers of all other Sunfire models that year had to shell out either $550 or $810 ($1,026 or $1,511 in 2023 dollars) for a two-pedal rig. That means that the buyer of this car really wanted the five-speed manual transmission (or just hungered for the $810 credit offered in the fine print for takers of the manual). Plenty of free-breathing engine power, five-on-the-floor driving enjoyment and the open skies above. What a fun car! This one made it to nearly 180,000 miles. For this car with the Quad 4 under the hood and a clutch pedal on the floor, the MSRP was $18,539 (about $34,584 today). Its Cavalier LS convertible twin with the same engine/transmission setup cost $17,365 ($32,394 now). This car has a bunch of options, including the 15" Rally aluminum wheels, so the out-the-door price would have been higher. The last year for the Sunfire was 2005, same as the Cavalier.