Happy Friday, Autopians! Another week in the books, and what a week it has been. I’ve been stuck at home all week due to the weather, but it looks like we’re turning a corner now. For the last day of this weird week, I want to show you two examples of the same car, courtesy of the folks in the Underappreciated Survivors Facebook group.
Yesterday, we went down to Cow Town and looked at a horned Lincoln and a spotted Neon. I assumed the hot-rod Lincoln would run away with it, but lo and behold, the little Neon won. I realize that many of those votes were qualified with “despite the automatic,” but still, it’s nice to see a car I really like win one.
And yes, that’s basically the same three-speed automatic Chrysler had been using ever since the K-car days, and it’s similar in design to the rear-wheel-drive Torqueflite automatics that date all the way back to the 1950s. Who cares? Maybe I just don’t have very refined taste (actually, I know I don’t), but I’m perfectly happy with a simpler version of something, if I can rely on it. I don’t need fancy stuff like a fourth gear.
Now then: It’s hard to remember, when you see a beat-up Altima weaving in and out of traffic, or when the rental company tells you all they have left are three Versas, but Nissan used to be a respectable automaker. Perpetually lagging behind other Japanese makes in sales, Nissan made and sold some really good cars thirty or forty years ago. But they weren’t memorable cars, except for the fast ones. Today we’re going to sing the praises of the neglected middle child of Nissan’s lineup, the Stanza, and remember that at least one version had a really great trick up its sleeve.
1989 Nissan Stanza GXE – $3,000
Engine/drivetrain: 2.0 liter overhead cam inline 4, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Rochelle Park, NJ
Odometer reading: 32,000 miles
Operational status: Ad doesn’t really say, actually, but I assume it runs and drives
1982 was a big year for Nissan in the US. The brand name change from Datsun to Nissan began, and along with it, the model numbers were replaced with actual names. Two of those, the Sentra and the Stanza, were all-new cars. The front-wheel-drive Stanza replaced the rear-wheel-drive Datsun 510 which replaced the 710, though all three were called the Nissan Violet and/or Auster in Japan. I can’t help but wonder if its sales might have been better if Nissan had not kept changing the names of things.
The Stanza is powered by Nissan’s fuel-injected CA20E four-cylinder, putting out 105 horsepower. Its performance was on par with similar cars of the day, which is to say slow. This one has an overdrive automatic, but even a manual Stanza is pretty pokey. This car sounds like the quintessential “little old lady who only drove to church” car; it has had only one owner, and covered only 32,000 miles. It’s practically a time capsule.
This car makes me miss the days when car interiors came in more colors than just black or gray. Common practice was to make the inside match the outside, like this one. It does make junkyard-diving for parts a bit more difficult, of course; you can always find the missing or broken piece of trim you need, but never in the right color. This one doesn’t appear to need anything, but there is an odd wear pattern on the driver’s seat, like the owner had something in their pocket all the time or something. At least it’s not worn through.
Outside, it’s straight and shiny, as you’d expect from a garaged car with so few miles. It may not be the most exciting thing on four wheels, but it’s also a practically new thirty-five-year-old car, cheap.
1986 Nissan Stanza Wagon – $2,250
Engine/drivetrain: 2.0 liter overhead cam inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD
Location: El Cajon, CA
Odometer reading: 104,000 miles
Operational status: Only says “great on gas,” so I guess it runs and drives?
The four-door sedan wasn’t the only Stanza model available, though. This is the Stanza Wagon, which was known as the Nissan Prairie in Japan. Though they called it a wagon, this is in some ways closer to a van; it has sliding doors on both sides (more than a decade before Chrysler’s minivans), but there’s more: There is no B-pillar. Open the front door and the sliding door, and you’re faced with a massive hole in the side. This makes it incredibly easy to get people – or stuff – in or out, but I imagine you couldn’t get away with it these days, with modern side-impact standards.
The doors latch at the top and bottom, so they can be opened independently; you don’t have to open the front door before the rear door, like on a Honda Element or a Saturn coupe. It’s a really neat bit of engineering. The basic platform on which this clever, upright body rides is not the same as the Stanza sedan; it’s related to the smaller Nissan Sunny (Sentra in the US). It does, however, have the same CA20E engine. This one is a five-speed manual, and also pretty low mileage. It has had a “bunch of maintenance” done to it, which I presume means it runs well, but once again, the ad is light on details.
This is a California car, and I almost didn’t need the ad to tell me that. It has no rust, but the paint is baked to a chalky, matte finish. The only shiny paint is inside the door sills and under the hood. But personally, I’d take faded and chalky over rusty any day. Inside, it’s at least as clean as the red one, and once again, matches the outside.
It also has some wonderful ’80s touches like the grid pattern on the instrument panel, and speakers mounted in the ceiling in the rear. According to the seller, it sounds pretty good, too. So once again I have to ask: What would you play in it? Me, I’m thinking Level 42, specifically the World Machine album. No reason; it just seems to fit.
So there you have them: two different cars, about the same age, with the same engine, but very different overall. You can’t go wrong either way, I think, so it comes down to personal preference. Shiny old-lady sedan, or cool but faded wagon?
(Image credits: Craigslist sellers)
Manual wagon of course, but if I really wanted poetry in motion I would be looking for a Saab sonett which is more interesting than a mere Stanza but more practical as a DD than a Rondeau M-378. (
(And yes, sonnet is not Sonett but what poet could resist such a homonym?)
Wow, a tough matchup. I might take both. But I voted wagon/minivan. More space and I like the lack of the B pillar even with reduced safety. Growing up, we had a 74 Datsun 510 wagon with the 4 spd. Not fast but a lot of fun and could haul a lot of stuff or people. I think we had 10 kids in there at one time.
These were actually decent cars that would run forever at least if not rust was involved. Even when something did go wrong, it was super easy to wrench on. I can recall adjusting the timing without the timing light, just advancing and retarding the distributer until the idle felt right. Pretty sad to see what has happened to Nissan now. It used to be in the top 3 of Japanese cars. Now they seem to be made poorly solely to be sold cheaply like their whole target demographic are the poor and credit challenged. Ok, rant over.
As for the soundtrack, probably some 80’s new wave like Simple Minds, Souxie, and Depeche Mode as well as some Devo, Ramones and the Cramps. Might as well relive my childhood!
I had a Stanza wagon and it was great until it started running rough. A California car before fuel injection, it had so many vacuum leaks as it aged that the Datsun/Nissan garage didn’t want to work on it anymore. Great design, very useful, kinda like a Ford Transit from Japan.
Nay to both. I had a Stanza sedan like the one pictured. I found it to be like a mini-Maxima, had a nice interior for the time and handled long road trips pretty well. However, it is slow as molasses, and I definitely wouldn’t want to drive one alongside modern traffic.
I hated the interiors of this era of Nissan, and I found that today I can say that I still do. Neither for me.
My mother drove a Nissan access, which was essentially an updated Stanza wagon. One of the worst cars I’ve ever driven. Cheap as hell, and always so prone to break down. Safe to say I’ve had a generally poor opinion of Nissans ever since.
Had an 88 Stanza 4dr 5spd. I am NOPING this all day long due to the distributor. Good luck replacing it when it fails, cause the one I bought that was 11 years old had a failed distributor. There was 1 in Western New York, and I bought it. Still can’t remember why that car died.
How hard is it to replace a distributor though?
Not hard. Just hard to locate the parts.
Is that twin plug??
Yeah, in my response above I was gonna say this but saved it for you. I wonder how many of those motors they ever made? Can’t be a lot, historically. I also made a custom flex pipe for it, as the stock one was $350 in 1999, but about $75 if I made it myself.
Wagon + manual? I’ll gladly fulfill a car enthusiast stereotype. Yeah you’ll be ground beef in any side impact accident but that’s a lot of the cars on here.
Flogging an underpowered wagon with a stick is what I live for. The soundtrack? A mix tape a friend made long ago that starts off with Quincy Jones “The Streetbeater” (aka Sanford & Son theme.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O20Sljxmy9M
TIL the actual name of that song.
I play that song on dump runs in the truck.
“Ya big dummy!”
Waaaay back I had a Stanza GXE Sedan nearly identical to the one listed (except it was blue w/blue interior). It was a nice enough car for 21 year old me, but I didn’t hesitate to trade it in for a barely used ’97 Mitsubishi Eclipse GS-T when the opportunity arose.
That said, I’d go for the dull wagon in a heartbeat. Way more versatile when it comes to hauling skis, bikes, and dogs, and the manual trans will help to mitigate the lack of horsepower & torque produced by that little 2 liter.
My dad had the wagon. It was AWESOME! I want that one just out of nostalgia, if not out of side-impact safety.
I was leaning toward the sedan, but in the end I went for the wagon. The newer, lower-mileage car is nice, but it’s approaching being a “period specimen” that you’d want to restore (I guess). The wagon is something I’d keep and drive regularly. Beats a full-size crossover.
An instance where lower miles aren’t necessarily a good thing. The wagon is tried and true, getting frequent exercise and care whereas the sedan may have stupid-low miles, but will need a lot of soft parts replaced. I just think back to Seinfeld when Jerry tells George “you must exercise the gaskets!”
The wagon has big brackets on the front, which may mean a tow bar. I wonder if the odometer recorded all the miles as it was towed behind an RV?
Going for the manual wagon here because I’ll be hauling a whole lotta memories.
What’s playing on the tape deck:
1. Walk This Way, Run-DMC
2. Broken Wings, Mr. Mister
3. Your Wildest Dreams, Moody Blues
4. Addicted to Love, Robert Palmer
5. Sleeping Bag, ZZ Top
6. Glory of Love, Pete Cetera
7. Bad Boy, Miami Sound Machine
8. Tonight She Comes, The Cars
9. Life in a Northern Town, Dream Academy
10. Small Town, John Mellencamp
11. Why Can’t This Be Love, Van Halen
12. Living in America, James Brown
13. West End Girls, Pet Shop Boys
14. Never, Heart
15. Holding Back the Years, Simply Red
16. Sledgehammer, Peter Gabriel
17. Human, The Human League
18. R.O.C.K. In the USA, John Mellencamp
19. Papa Don’t Preach, Madonna
20. You Give Love a Bad Name, Bon Jovi
21. Take My Breath Away, Berlin
22. Manic Monday, The Bangles
23. Walk of Life, Dire Straits
24. These Dreams, Heart
25. Venus, Bananarama
26. Danger Zone, Kenny Loggins
27. Conga, Miami Sound Machine
28. Silent Running, Mike + The Mechanics
29. Who’s Johnny, El DeBarge
30. What You Need, INXS
31. The Greatest Love of All, Whitney Houston
Did we just become best road trip friends?
We wouldn’t fight over car tunes, apparently.
That’s a nice set list. The teenage 80’s kid in me approves!
If you buy one and a friend buys the other, does that make you co-Stanzas?
Yes, by George.
Blue on Blue for the win with the wagon and I would have a tape of Pyromania in the deck to jam to.
We had a family friend who owned one of those Stanza Wagons. I remember it had a pretty cool sounding ” Tinkle” bell noise when you started it. It had really weird proportions. You would sit really high up. It was like being in a truck. I dig it. Because its weird looking and practical.
Think of the things that you could load into that wagon!
The whole front end of an F150 could fit in there.
My grandfather had a Stanza Wagon like that one when I was younger. It was one of the 4wd models, and he used it as his hunting car for a long time.
I cant seem locate the Stanza wagon on craigslist, sold and removed that fast?!? Perhaps I’m incompetent. LMK if anyone has the link please
The links for every car shown in Shitbox Showdown are hidden in the large, bold text that says what the car is.
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/7032487460122145/
“Perhaps I’m incompetent?” Confirmed…. Thanks Marc, I appreciate it!
Not a bad pick in the bunch, and “¿Porque no los dos?” is an acceptable answer … but for me, I’ll take the SLIGHTLY less dodgy crash protection of the sedan.
I don’t know how to explain to younger generations that Nissan used to make cars that rivaled Honda and Toyota in longevity. That’s right kids, the official car company of 96 month loans on a car that will need a new transmission in 72 months didn’t always suck. I think Nissan today could still make great cars if they really wanted to, but they are perfectly happy being a D+ student who knows they will get the same diploma as the valedictorian.
Oh yeah, Stanza versus Stanza is why we’re here. I can’t say no to that oddball min-wagon-van. Get to work polishing the paint and you can bask in its quirkiness for years to come. The transmission in this Nissan isn’t made of rubber bands and wishful thinking after all.
Wait, the official car company of 96m loans isn’t Stellantis?
And new transmissions would be sadly closer to 48 months (often still within warranty, which should be an early red flag if you weren’t tied to a loan that continues for years beyond that point).
Yeah, when I try and tell my kids about the Datsun/Nissans I owned, they look at me like a runaway Altima drive and ask why.
“That’s not a Nissan! The bumpers are attached and I don’t see a donut on any of the wheels.”
I bet the sedan was driven by an old man, who kept his wallet in his right rear pocket.
Anyways, I’ll take the wagon, and fire up some Alan Parson’s Project.
Nice! Not Eye In The Sky, though. It’s a good album, but as a Chicago resident, I’m sure you have the same issue with it that I do: I can’t hear the opening notes of “Sirius” without hearing an announcer shout “AND NOW, THE STARTING LINEUP FOR YOUR CHICAGO BULLS…”
Haha… I grew up near Chicago in the 90’s and I can’t NOT associate Sirius with the Bulls. Still a great album though.
I like it enough, that I forgive the gross misuse of it.
Very few things speak to me like automobiles that straddle the line between wagon and van. Yeah sure, it’s “FLAWLESS VICTORY/FATALITY/BRODOZER… WINS” in even the most tame side impact, so I probably wouldn’t put my kids in this thing unless I absolutely had to.
As for music, for goofy fun I’m sliding in the Duran Duran GREATEST compilation cassette that got played to death in our cars when I was a kid.
You can’t really go wrong here. Stick n’ sliding door – it’s got to be the wagon!