In the early 90's a friend of mine owned a first gen Excel. It had about 130k miles at the time and would have been pictured in the dictionary next to 'bucket of bolts'. It was so bad that every time he hit a pothole the door chimes dinged. But it was surprisingly reliable, doing a 60 mile daily commute every day without fail. There was definitely nothing collectible about it. He just couldn't afford anything better. ... View more

I can understand where the author is coming from. My daily driver (actually I don't actually drive everyday. I've worked from home for years now) is a 2002 Honda Accord with cloth seats. They are in great shape and super comfortable and other than vacuuming them every so often I don't have to take care of them. Partly because they are cloth and made by honda and partly because I inherited the car from my father 7 years ago and it still only has 58k miles on it and has always been garaged. All that said, I also own a 72 Dodge Tradesman van. Seats aside (cheap vinyl that's falling apart) everything about that van requires maintenance on a regular basis. That's just part of owning a 50 year old vehicle. If it was a "nice" vehicle that had leather seats I'd just add them to the list of stuff that has to be attended to on a regular basis. ... View more

Yes. When I was in high school I drove a '77 Rabbit 1.6L that also didn't have a catalytic converter. At about 110k miles it failed smog because it was burning a quart of oil every 200 miles or so. For some reason the state of Colorado didn't think that having a James Bond level smoke screen following me everywhere was acceptable. A catalytic converter probably wouldn't have helped... ... View more