The Legend of Gossin’s Gold continues this time with Graveyard Garbage & Grievance Vol 2: Electric Boogaloo! Let’s fly this thing somewhere that I recently visited: the back lot of my buddy’s transmission shop here in beautiful Wilmington, NC on The Cape Fear, shall we?
I recently needed a transmission manifold pressure switch for an Impala I rescued (nasty repair; article to come shortly) and noticed some “sittin’ gold” behind the shop when I went to pick up my beautiful full-size GM sedan. Cars that were all there as a result of a transmission issue that for one reason or another spelled doom for them. Some were actually repaired, but then the owner just abandoned it and never paid the bill. Others received an estimate and then disappeared into the ether.
Any way you look at it, it is sad. I asked my buddy about going to the DMV and applying for a Mechanic’s Title/mechanic’s lien, but he said that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. With the used car market coming quickly back down to pre-pandemic levels, none of the cars sitting in that lot would bring more than $3-$4K and my buddy has bigger fish to fry. The guy has a full five-bay garage and a waiting list of customers trying to get an appointment along with local government and local business fleet maintenance.
So for now, these beauties are in the same limbo that they have been in for the past few years: just a-sittin’. Why don’t we mourn collectively mourn their unfortunate purgatorial placement together, shall we?
Jeep Comanche
As I said before, I’m not really a Jeep guy, they’re totally fine, but I just don’t really covet or desire one. Although, if I had to choose a Jeep from this era, this guy, in this color would probably be it. I’m not sure about the year, although I’m sure Rob “The Voice of The Youth” Spiteri or David “I Love Jeeps And Cats” Tracy could tell me. The standard cab configuration is handsome and strikes a killer profile, yet seems like the seat can only recline so far.
The paint is gorgeous, and that is not just a subjective claim from a guy that favors the same hues as James Taylor (“...deep greens and blues are the colors I choose”). The blacked-out grill and wheel arch flares provide a perfect contrast for this design and application.
These are pretty rare in the overall scheme of things (say, compared to a ‘15 Camry or Rav4) and seeing one like this is not the semi-ending this truck deserved. Dios mio.
Geo Tracker
My badass uncle, John Toukatly, had one of these years ago to fight the snow in Cedar Lake, NY, although his was a late-’90s “Chevy Tracker”. If I recall correctly (and anecdotally), it was one of the better cars he’s owned. To put that in context, my uncle grew up in the Elvis era, and started out with ’40s and ’50s cars. There’s a family legend about the late-’40s/early ’50s Cadillac he bought for $20, but that’s another story for another time.
My point is that the man has driven cars since the advent of Rock n’ Roll and he appreciates the Tracker. That’s some serious praise.
The point is that, beyond David Tracy and what I think is a pretty fervent following for those in the know, these are not nearly as celebrated as they should be from a hardiness and mechanical standpoint. Yes, this one here has sadly been afflicted with a transmission issue that caused its owner to abandon it, but that’s on the shithead owner, not the car. Cars break; what really matters is the inner perseverance you display as you get them back up and standing tall.
The design of these really look like a toy car if you look at it just right; all the proportions match, but they just seem so scaled-down in the best possible way. The guy that formerly owned this one decided to go with a big wheel look, which is fine, I guess, but I’m a more small wheel guy. The all-black paint and trim is also fine, but some bright’ 90s colors would be tops if this were ever to make its way out its homeostasis in this lot.
Sidebar: if you look in the background in the below Jag photo, you’d see a hardtop Suzuki Samurai. Per our good buddy The Bishop, those are rare bears, as most buyers opted for the convertible.
Jaguar XK8
This is the car that caught my gaze and brought me into this back lot since I’m a Jaguar XK8 owner. For those in the know, parts on these cars ain’t cheap and those headlights are “gold, Jerry, gold!” I was told that this owner was presented with an estimate for the replacement/rebuild of the ZF transmission in this car and then promptly vanished, never to be heard from again.
They followed up with phone calls, voicemails, and texts to the guy over the past three years, but to no avail. What a frickin’ shame as this is a beautiful car, in a gorgeous color, that is chock-full of expensive parts (perfect top, interior, body and headlights).
The ZF transmissions on these were not known to be the greatest pieces of work that firm put out and transmission cooler failure was the reason I ended up rescuing my XK8 out of a backyard for the paltry sum of $290. It’s a particularly nasty failure that involves coolant circulating through your transmission.
These cars aren’t worth as much as you’d think they would be these days, and I can see why someone would be hesitant to invest in a transmission replacement for a 20-year old British car. Hell, I just bought a newer ‘07 XK (the next generation of this car) for $5K, so I can empathize with not performing the repair (empathy is good, the world needs more of it). But come on man, don’t just ghost on it! This car deserves better.
Random Subaru with a turbo
I’m 43, so I totally missed the boat with cars of this ilk. When “The Fast & The Furious” came out in ‘01, I had my nose stuck in a book as a broke college Junior and was not a part of this scene. By the time I was out of college debt and ready to get into cars to a larger degree, most of the guys driving these cars looked like this.
I just missed that scene when it was new and cool and found it right as everybody was leaving and onto something else. It’s hard to be attracted to something when everyone is heading for the exits and generally over it.
I ain’t got nothing bad to say about them, but maaayyyyne, this just really isn’t my thing. I’m not really sure about anything regarding this car, but Weekend Youngster Rob “The Voice of The Youth” Spiteri tells me it’s an ‘02-’06 Impreza.
I can’t believe this dude put this kind of money into this car and then abandoned it at a transmission shop. Even more so, I can’t believe nobody has stolen the inter-cooler off of it yet. It’s right up front there, just a-beggin’ to be stolen!
Look, I really don’t want to be that guy that puts anyone or anything down on the internet–that’s about as cool as Phoenix was this summer. So to try any find the bright side here, I’d say that if this car had a working transmission, it would probably be faster than most of my fleet, save for my Trans Am, XK, XK8 and Crossfire (maybe). So good for it and its estranged owner! At least it has that potential still present even after being kneecapped on the sidelines for a hot minute.
Let’s head back to the local Pick n’ Pull!
All these busted transmissions started getting me all teary-eyed, so I headed back to a place that always makes me smile, even if it has a macabre overtone: the junkyard.
2010 Mercedes GL 450
Just like last week, I’d like to take another opportunity to tell y’all about how I’m still completely shell-shocked that Mercedes wanted to charge me $8K for fix a car that I bought for $1900. And that was over a year ago and I’m still upset and bitchin’ about it.
This car cost $59,950 in 2010, or $369/month or $84,043.44 in today’s dollars. It was junked for $925 with a perfect body and interior only 13 years later.
Our own Thomas Hundal and I had a conversation about the GL of the 1st Obama Term Era, which centered around these cars mostly getting scrapped due to the astronomical cost of repairing the prone-to-fail air suspension.
We discussed last week how these cars have ownership-ending suspension or electrical faults that require a reverse mortgage on your home to finance. I still fail to understand the logic behind owning a vehicle that has such enormous financial liabilities, unless maybe you work at a Mercedes dealership parts dept or are a Master Tech in their Service Dept.
If you believe in your heart that a 13-year old Mercedes (that is way out of warranty) is the best vehicle choice, I’d love to hear from you below in the comments. I’m truly hoping that one of you will help me come around and see the light, since these are very pretty cars with many of the qualities that we, as car enthusiasts, love and appreciate. It’s just those other non-quality qualities that has me sideways on them.
1984 BMW 318i
You’ve probably noticed by now that The Legend of Gossin’s Gold includes quite a few expensive German cars. This is because they fit the Gold/Garbage/Grievance Venn Diagram perfectly; they are usually very pretty, pack some awesome specs, are expensive to buy, expensive and hard to fix, broken, and therefore are over-represented in the salvage yard. Such a wide-ranging mix of emotions is stirred when your gaze falls upon one in such a derelict, hulking state.
Well, this isn’t one of those cars. All of my friends that are into older German cars love them for various reasons and their analog properties are usually at the top of that list. None of those friends wish for the electro-digital Rube Goldberg complexity of the modern versions of them.
I’ve long wished to experience the magic of those older, storied cars; I mean, Jason really seems to love his Beetle. Sadly though, you just don’t really see them much in my price range (under $3K) these days. I’ll keep looking though.
This 318i has a surprising amount of chrome on the body (window surround and wheel arches), which you don’t really associate with BMW in the modern parlance. The seats have covers on them that look equal parts comfy and smelly and the manual transmission and rear spoiler tell me that this car was the life of the party back in its day. Or at least the person that spikes the punch bowl.
The fog lights are cool in the way that they hang under the front bumper and the rear side glass gets bigger the longer you stare at it; I’m guessing it’s due to making this 2-door off of a 4-door platform. Sadly, this car will start on its journey of becoming something else made of steel this week.
The Legend of Gossin’s Gold continues!
Well there we have it, friends, another fun day of me wandering around backlots and junkyards with a phone camera, trying not to look like too much of a weirdo. Hope you enjoyed this weeks’ choices and let’s get pumped for the next installment! Until then, my homies!
All photos by Stephen Walter Gossin
- Is The $1,200 Beat-To-Death Pontiac Grand Am For Sale In Every Town Worth It? I Found Out.
- How I Got Six Years Of Service Out Of A $220 Car
- What I Learned Trying To Flip Two Dirt-Cheap GM “J-Body” Coupes That Nobody Wants
- How I Saved A Once-$90,000 Mercedes SL I Bought For $1,900
- Why The Dirt-Cheap Broken Jaguar X-Type For Sale In Every Town Might Actually Be Worth Buying And Fixing
- I Took On A Bad GM Design In A Hail-Mary Attempt To Fix My Friends Broken Suburban But It Was Too Little Too Late
- I Asked The Internet Which of My Cars I Should Sell. Here’s What The People Said
- I Have More Cars Than Parking Spaces. Help Me Decide What Stays And What Goes
- What It Was Like Owning And Fixing My First Jeep After Owning Over 100 Non-Jeeps
- How I Saved My Buddys’ SUV After It Died At The Most Embarrassing Possible Time
- Gossin’s Gold: Graveyard Garbage & Grievance Vol. 1
The Sadbaru is a 2002 or 2003 WRX with a wing delete. Honestly in it’s prime, factory condition, it was faster than the XK8 and the Crossfire.
I figured as much, but was waiting for someone to call it out in the comments. Thanks for reading and for the knowledge-share, Pete!
That Comanche sitting is a shame especially since good used aw4’s can still be aquired for a Benjamin and installed in a day!
What are the laws around shops being able to sell abandoned vehicles? Someone would snap up that Comanche very quickly if only they could post it for sale.
The owner of the business would have to trek down to the DMV and fill out some paperwork to prove that the vehicle has been derelict on their property (without any malice) for longer than 30 days. This precludes receiving a new title for it.
Not many shops are interested in doing that for cars around the $3-$4K mark. I’m going to follow up with my buddy and show him these comments. Though, knowing him, I wouldn’t be too hopeful that any of these cars will do anything other than sit for a while longer.
I’m a complete dunce and was so excited at the Comanche that I blew through the actual start of the article. So, that’s my bad.
As this very site has referenced, there are ways to get a title. Another legit, no snark question: has he considered simply selling these off with a bill of sale. Related: if he threw a lien on them (any of them) there’s a process there, too.
Yeah, that sounds like a major pain in the ass for someone who’s running a very busy shop. Time spent away taking care of the paperwork is time not spent completing jobs. I definitely get why he wouldn’t bother with it then.
But man, a Comanche that doesn’t have rust holes (that I can see at least) is not something you see every day. I hope it winds up with someone who can put it back on the road.
I sense a business opportinuty for you. You do the legwork/sales for a part of the sale price. You get mulla for another car and the shop owner gets them out of his yard, Win-Win.
this is the way
I’m hoping for an article about he ’07 XK! Those cars are cool and seem largely forgotten these days
I’d love to make that happen on this end, but I need to get DT to approve it and he’s not the biggest fan of those cars. Challenge accepted though.
Hey thanks for reading and for the comment!
Converting an XK to GM LS V8 power also involves replacing the transmission. I hope to find a $3k failed transmission junker in this nice a condition to work this swap because what you get when you’re done checks pretty much all the cool car boxes for me.
So, is this lot in NC, like I think I read? Because I can’t find a Comanche up here like that, and it seems like it might be worth a drive to do some fun things with.
Legit, no snark question.
Say the word and I’ll start mocking up “Gossin Junks America: Tour 2024” shirts.
And I’ll be first in line for tickets to the Victory Auto Wreckers tour in the Chicago suburbs (iykyk … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6TTOx9I6y0).
As someone who daily drives a 38 year old Mercedes, I wouldn’t want to rely on a car that required expensive air suspension to function. That GL was just not built to last the way older Mercedes were. The luxury is in the bling, not the build quality.
And that GL 450 looks like it has had every piece of bling yanked off it already. Why it originally went to the salvage yard no longer matters. I can’t see any way that someone could get that thing back together at a price that makes it worth the effort.
The sad part is that about 10% of that expensive gingerbread goes into some kid’s bedroom or dorm room as a trophy to show his friends.
I love when one of your articles appear. And I forget that you are the same age as me; so your descriptions of your relationship with time and car culture is spot on for me too.
Really enjoyable reads.
Stephen’s back again!
That 318i is sad. I wonder what happened to it.
Enjoying some Gossin this evening, thank you. The Gossins always come with sneaky emotional undertow, I find. Grievance yes but sadness too. Your piece is a little like a walk through the graveyard is what I think. Memento mori.
Having said that, my 16-yr-old Volvo is running good with nothing more than periodic applications of cash. Not sending it to no junkyard.
LS the Jaguar. So trite the line, but no less true. Though, due to my advanced age would prefer an gen 1 sbc and a 700r4.
I wouldn’t mess with a 700R4 both of my dailies have one and the Vette isn’t shifting out of first and the wagon is starting to slip
“It’s hard to be attracted to something when everyone is heading for the exits and generally over it.”
*glances out window at MX6 in the driveway*
No it’s not.
I had a ’95 Geo Tracker, and I can attest to their incredible durability. It was a manual 2WD and went over 175k on its original clutch.
And that included teaching a teen age boy to drive in it!
Same. My knee didn’t care for the mechanical clutch cable and linkage though.
I had a ’92, black, 2WD, also a manual. I loved it. It felt indestructible and I could get it sideways at 20 mph on a rainy day.
Eventually, it was pancaked between a Suburban and a Tahoe piloted by an impaired driver. Amazingly, it was still running long enough to pull off the street, despite puking coolant everywhere.
To be honest, it was being quickly reclaimed by the Earth anyway due to the incredible amounts of rust present on it.
While these don’t deserve to die, they are destined to.
I still have a four door version from 1996 as my daily. Bought it last year from my father in law who had it from new. Just coming up on 290,000 km. It’s like driving a filing cabinet…and it makes me giggle.
“filing cabinet” is absolutely accurate. I’ve never owned another car that was this much fun.
About that I’d say second only to the ’05 MINI Cooper S Convertible.
Same here, but mine was the 4wd. Gawd, I loved that car. The only power accessory was the engine, super simple to work on if something happened to break (nothing ever did) but it was rust that made me turn it in. Nothing else ever broke on it. I wouldn’t even have traded it but kept it as a weekend car if I could have justified the extra insurance costs at the time.
My kids loved riding in their carseats in the back with that top down. Plowed over huge piles of snow, went mudding through construction sites, pegged the speedo and throttle on the interstate bouncing around like a ping pong ball barely able to hold a lane….Ah, I still love that car.
SW,
If your buddy doesn’t want to spend the time on these, maybe you should work a deal to flip them for him. His shop gets the transmissions back to transmittin’ power to the wheels, you clean up the rest and handle the title and sale. Y’all take any out-of-pocket costs out of the sales price and split any profit. He gets the dead weight out of his yard and you get to flip cars without having to buy them first.
My thoughts exactly!
And he gets to write about them. PROFIT!!
While I would love to see this happen, I suspect if it were financially viable for the shop to do this they already would have. If they’re not even willing to run down to the DMV to do the paperwork so they can sell them as-is for 100% profit I don’t see them wanting to spend shop time on them when they have paying customers lined up.
Even though summer’s over, to paraphrase Chief Brody…that’s some bad hat SWG!
Not a Jeep guy either, but the Comanche makes me wonder if that’s what the Jeep Gladiator should have been, a small-ish actual pickup with a reasonable bed. I may be wrong, but the actual version doesn’t seem that popular, a mashup of the worst parts of a Wrangler and a pickup.
I think the Gladiator looks pretty good. My step-dad bought one new and quickly got over it. I think a vehicle like that has to have a certain amount of non-identifiable magic baked into it; apparently it just doesn’t for some folks.
I hear they’re pretty expensive also when compared to their immediate competition. Hey, thanks for reading and for the comment, Jack!
The wheel arch chrome on the E30 is a popular aftermarket add-on from the 1990s, not stock. Someone was trying hard not to look like they purchased the cheapest 3-series available but the 318i badge doesn’t lie.
Back when I started racing in the 24 Hours of Lemons back in 2008 we picked an E30 to race because at the time they were cheap to buy and plentiful in junkyards. My ’87 325 was $400 and ran and drove fine – I threw a new timing belt and hoses in it and immediately drove it from San Jose to San Diego without issue before converting it into a race car. Fast forward 15 years and you can’t touch an E30 for less than $2K and I haven’t seen one in a self service junkyard in years, which is very notable for California where cars don’t rust out.
E30s are/were a very popular privateer rally car for years in the US. Now that they’ve moved into the “collector’s item” zone, the cost to repair them has skyrocketed and many are being retired. It’s sad because those I6 engines can be heard for miles on course and the cars handle so damn well.
I like that the framing of the pictures made them look like circa 1976 Padres baseball cards. Then the arts department said ” enough already ” and then stopped.
Pete The Social Media Guy came up with that idea – i thought it was a fun idea.
Thanks for reading and for being here in the comments with us, David.
+1 love the baseball card look!
Showing my age, they reminded me of Star Wars cards (back when there were only 3 movies), the ones that displayed the various spaceships and other hardware!
There are still only 3 Star Wars movies. 😉
That is a rough-looking E30. It wasn’t “built off of a 4-door platform”, though. All E21 3 series were 2-doors, and so were all E30s until the second year of production. The E30’s wheelbase was actually a touch shorter than the E21’s.
The more you know! Thanks for the knowledge-share, and for reading, my man.
That Comanche needs to be saved… Unless it’s got rust up underneath it’s certainly worth the work. They are riding the XJ value increase, and are more rare than the 2DR XJs. I still regret not buying a used Eliminator when I had the chance back in ’96 or ’97. Was a red, manual 4L, 2wd for like $4500. Probably already had rust in the frame, but damn it was sweet.
I’m actually leaning towards the XK8. That thing is gorgeous!
Those headlights bring big bucks used. I think they’re like $900 (last I checked) if you find a dealer that still has them.
Do save the jag if you can. It deserves to live and be loved.
That XK is a beaut! If only I had the skills and tools. 🙁
I’m going to tell myself there is a fatal flaw there that warrants it being left to die. Otherwise it looks too perfect for a weekend warrior “stuff” hauler.
Man, I’m so tempted to hook up a trailer and come get that Jeep one night. Maybe the Tracker, too. The Comanche frequently has rust issues up under the cab that don’t always show, but still … drop in a crate Cummins R2.8 and you’ve got the perfect small truck.
It seems to me like a perfect candidate for Chrysler’s new Hurricane inline six crate engine…
That’d work, too. I’m just more of a diesel fan
I hear those Hurricanes don’t have a dipstick! Call me old fashioned, but that’s a bummer.
I tend to agree with you. Sadly, however, I know far more people who have no idea what dipstick is, never mind where it is.
Sad but true. It’s like throttle by wire – for most drivers, having the computer tell them if there’s an issue (and an owners manual that then says go directly to dealer) makes sense, but I prefer having an actual cable.
If they don’t know what a dipstick is, they are the dipstick.
What!? I’d heard that’s a thing in some newer cars but idk why I didn’t imagine Chrysler would do it… I wonder if anyone will make aftermarket oil pans with dipsticks. Since they’re selling it as a crate engine presumably for restomodding, there’s going to have to be some way to manually check the oil level.
In non-movie thoughts, if there weren’t transmission issues before the big wheels went on the Suzuki, it was only a matter of time afterward.
These are words of wisdom^.
More gold there, SWG!
My bet with the bug-eye Impreza is that the previous owner tried a hard launch at a traffic light and scattered the gearbox all over the bitumen.
WRXs from that era are tons of fun to drive (just ask DT, who used my ’06 as transport while we were working on Project Cactus), but the non-Sti gearboxes really aren’t up for tons of abuse.
Being AWD, there’s no real amount of wheel spin on a hard launch and so all the force goes through the box which is constructed in two pieces which split down the middle.
Rolling starts are much kinder, not just for AWD but any vehicle.
Mate, I totally forgot you had one of those cars -my bad. Thanks for the knowledge share, my dude!
I did not know I would encounter a meme from a movie I haven’t thought of in 20+ years today, but danged if “Can’t Hardly Wait” didn’t make a welcome appearance.
In this case it’s perfectly acceptable if David hasn’t heard of that one. Anachronistic in the best “I bet that’s a painful rewatch now” way.
The band a the big party scene (“Love Burger”) breaking up because one of the band member was wearing a Love Burger t-shirt onstage was hilarious.
The soundtrack to that film was great! I believe it had a remix of Third Eye Blind’s “Graduate”.
That was a great scene! IIRC, that is the setup for the great scene later where someone starts singing Paradise City and gets the party going. (My memory is foggy – haven’t seen it in 20+ years.)
Your columns all come with a soundtrack. Today we got JT and 3EB.
Much better than Adrian’s London Punk bands.
I think the hardtop Suzuki Samurai needs its own card.
Hindsight is 20/20. At first I figured the convertible example was the better car for this piece, but I may have chosen poorly.
Thanks for reading, my dude!
I feel like you picking up one of the Suzuki’s would be good for your life.
I’m wicked tempted to pick up that Jag and throw a junkyard trans in it.
doit
That hardtop samurai is worth $10k all day running and driving, double that if you clean it up and get it nice.. I think you’re underestimating the profit margin on that thing.