Good morning Autopians: This is your wake-up call. It’s Monday morning; time to mainline some coffee and get back to pretending to work. But to make the morning go a little easier, I’ve got some weird cheap old cars for you to check out, as always.
On Friday, we looked at a couple of ’50s sedans that were outside our normal price range. Let’s see what you thought of them:
Well, that’s pretty decisive. Price was probably a factor: I’m not sure that Edsel was more than twice as nice as the DeSoto. And the DeSoto is just way cooler.
Today, we’ve got another one of those odd-couple matchups, because there just aren’t comparable vehicles out there for either of these, at least for our hypothetical budget. But in a way, they do go together: if you’re not careful about how you drive one, you’ll end up as a passenger in the other. Let’s take a look.
1993 Ford Mustang LX – $1,300
Engine/drivetrain: 2.3 liter inline 4, 5 speed manual, RWD
Location: Sandy, OR
Odometer reading: unknown
Runs/drives? Like a top, if the seller is to be believed
Off-roading cars that were never meant to be off-roaded is officially a Thing these days. But few can afford to safari-ize a vintage Porsche 911. For those of us of more normal means, including our own Mercedes Streeter, the Gambler 500 series is the answer. Take a cheap old car, do whatever you need to do to hang some big off-road tires off the axles, and go beat the snot out of it on logging roads. Sounds like fun, huh?
This late Fox-body Mustang would seem to be a logical choice, and from the sounds of it, has been very successful on a couple of outings. It’s a basic four-cylinder LX, but you don’t need a ton of horsepower to slide a rear-wheel-drive car around on dirt. It’s also a manual, which improves not only control, but also durability – important when you’re in the middle of nowhere in a cheap old car.
The trouble I have with the whole Gambler 500 phenomenon in general is that it does use up the cars; once you Gambler-ize a car, it’s very difficult to un-Gambler-ize it. In the case of this Mustang, the rear hatch is MIA, the rear fenders and front bumper have been hacked up, and the interior is either trashed or absent. It may run and drive as well as they say, but it’s not really good for anything other than a Gambler event anymore. You could put it back into regular-car service, I suppose, but would you want to?
A good-running four-cylinder stickshift Mustang for $1300 sounds like a decent deal, but this one? Well, that’s for you to decide.
1979 Cadillac Superior Hearse – $1,800
Engine/drivetrain: 425 cubic inch V8, 3 speed automatic, RWD
Location: Centralia, WA
Odometer reading: 62,000 miles
Runs/drives? Great, according to the ad
And now for something completely different. Everybody loves a hearse, right? I mean, folks are just dying to get a ride in one of these bad boys.
Superior Coaches of Lima, Ohio has been turning Cadillacs into hearses for a long time. In 1981, they bought out the S&S Coach Company, who had been building hearses even longer. They’re not the only game in town, but they’re the only one I’ve ever heard of.
This 1979 model is based on a Cadillac Fleetwood Limousine, which shrank along with the rest of GM’s full-size cars in 1977. Even with the malaise-era downsizing, it’s still an impressively-sized machine, and in hearse form, it’s even bigger. Good luck parallel parking this monster. 1979 was the last year for the massive 425 cubic inch V8 as well, so expect to spend a lot of time at the gas pump.
According to the seller, this old Caddy runs and drives well and has had a lot of recent mechanical work done. Outside, there’s a lot of rust, and not all of it looks benign. It’s probably fixable, but it’s going to take the right kind of buyer to want to try. Although I suppose you could ignore the rust and drive it as-is: Use it in place of a truck or van, maybe? There is an awful lot of room in the back.
No word on whether this one has an Aiwa stereo in it or not. But it should.
So there they are, our Monday choices. You can Gamble on a badly-abused Mustang, or roll the bones on an old rusty hearse. The choice is yours.
I’ve always wanted a hearse. This one’s a bit far gone, but I kind of like the idea of driving the vehicular equivalent of a haunted house.
Went with the hearse as a hauler/halloween car. Sure it needs work, but better than the abused mustang.
I’ll take the Mustang and rallycross it.
If the prices were swapped and the hearse didn’t have extensive rust, I’d seriously look at the Caddy. Under the rules of the game, I’d have to go with the Mustang for more offroad rally. It may be a 4 cylinder, but the manual would be fun.
Hearse for me. Too bad the casket rollers are gone, just think how easy it would be to load/unload heavy toolboxes and other stuff in the back of that if they were still there. It’s body on frame so theoretically it can be made to tow too. It’s the perfect tow vehicle waiting to happen
“Too bad the casket rollers are gone, just think how easy it would be to load/unload heavy toolboxes and other stuff in the back of that if they were still there. ”
Yeah, that’s the first thing I noticed, as well. Those rollers are iconic in their association with hearses, in my mind. Now you just have a large wood panel with holes in it.
Landau bars FTW! Here in the midwest that rust would be described as “a couple of minor spots”. It could make a great parts chaser for awhile, and a great parts source after that.
Voted hearse, seriously want to buy Hearse if wife will let me (she almost certainly will not)
The Mustang has a single purpose. Plus, it’s probably been abused pretty good by this point. It may not have much life left in it. The hearse could at least be a cheap hauler for a little while . It’s enclosed, so you don’t have to worry about things getting wet or blowing out. It’s also separated from the main cab, so you can haul some smelly stuff in there. Essentially, you’ve got a cheap van without the headroom in the back.
C. None of the above
Buy the hearse, convert it to a ute. Done.
Open bed lets the ghosts out.
Look at the wing on that Mustang. So much downforce!
Other than having to go to Centralia, the hearse seems like the winner. At least from a utility perspective–it’s a great hauler. That said, I think I would go for either one. They are both really good deals.
(Really good deals if you want a hearse or a car for the Gambler 500.)
Those hearses are seriously overbuilt. The GM Commercial Chassis is basically a Chevy 1/2-ton truck. With the Caddy V8 and an extra few hundred pounds of bodywork, you can expect single-digit fuel economy. At least that’s what I got from my ’70 Cad-Superior. 7 city, 9 highway.
Yep, some of them even had a semi-float 14bolt and used the same brakes as the 1/2 ton trucks.
This may be the first time I want both of these (for the price)
Watched one of those PowerNation shows where they turned the hearse into a drag car, albeit a slow drag car
By chance, is it possible that the seller of the Mustang is Mr. Bean?
Ugh. Neither? Is neither a choice?
At least its manual, so gimme the Mustang, I guess. Maybe I can death-kart it and add a turbo.
I’ve never been interested in other peoples’ sloppy seconds, so hard pass on the Gamblerstang…Mustambler?
The Caddy looks ready for burial. At least the “Gambler 500” ‘Stang could be used for another run or two before reaching the end of the trail.
I’m givin’ both of these a miss. But I won’t miss ’em much.
Buy the Hearse.
Take it to Gambler 500
????
Profit
The hearse might make a good gambler support vehicle.
The Corpse Caddy would have run away with this one if not for the rust. There are chunks of metal missing around the back door, which makes me wonder how many opens and shuts it has left before the structure collapses. A hearse that can’t haul anything is useless to me.
That much rust in WA? No way! No wonder that hearse is so deadly!
So I voted for the Mustang
So it’s a Mustang that has no practical use anymore or really any chance of being brought back to daily use, or a car that literally had numerous dead bodies in it over its life and now has terminal rust in addition to being haunted.
I think it’s spend my $1,800 on a multi-year supply of gum.
That Gambler Mustang is itching for more Gambler runs OR being stripped and made into something better. It’s half way there…
The hearse wins, I can put a tiki bar and a killer sound system in the back. And sit a 400lb mob guy.
I think that hearse would snap in half if you tried to put 400lbs in it. You’d better look for a mob boss who went easier on the cannoli.