Yep, I’m going to beat you over the head with the AMC hammer again. Don’t worry though, I won’t wax poetic over how this machine is technically superior to a Maverick, Duster or Nova, if that were possible. I won’t tell you about any of the youthful shenanigans that certainly shortened its life. In order to avoid repeating myself, I’ll instead take this in a different direction; I’ll explore what it is about the owner-beater relationship that made it worthwhile. There has to be some rational explanation to driving these things. 
Half the fun of owning a beater is its origin story; this is the most crucial element of the owner-beater relationship. We’ve all heard a hundred different variations of the “little old lady car” and “barn find” stories. Buying a rotten hulk from a farmer’s field also makes for a good story although it’s fraught with its own set of problems. But since these are rather cliched, the more original the better.
In the case of this Hornet, the seller sought me out as I had a bit of a reputation as a AMC weirdo aficionado. It’s not every day that you’re hanging out at a car show next to your Gremlin X when a pretty young blonde girl offers you a ’70 Hornet for $200. Sure I’m interested, what’s your number? Win-win!
The next necessary element is a major obstacle that needs to be overcome. The vehicle must need some work that would otherwise render it un-driveable. This might take the form of needing to pass a safety inspection or just needing the vehicle to move under its own power. The key is to spend as little money as possible while defeating unseen forces. These forces can take the form of evil government inspections, lack of funds or just a figment of your imagination. The more elaborate the scheme to overcome the obstacle, the better.
The transmission for this Hornet came in its trunk, that’s why it was $200. It was also a Borg-Warner Crap-O-Matic, which had become quite rare at the time and therefore expensive to rebuild. Even with a cash discount, it cost me $700. Fortunately, I was well versed in the driveway transmission bench press and had her running in no time. The usual full tune-up and various odds and ends were fixed in order to be granted my passed safety inspection. I don’t recall any mysterious forces working against me, but I was likely cursing some higher power as I held the transmission in place with one hand while threading in the bolt with the other.
The third element of the owner-beater relationship is personalization. One must take a junk car and make it their junk car. Unfortunately this is where things start to go awry and the old guys start to cringe. It must be remembered that saving money is paramount; that’s why you own a beater. Also, youthful exuberance does not always equate to skill, and what looks good in one’s head tends to look terrible in reality. I recall many guys my age deciding they needed racing stripes on their Corollas; they always looked stupid. Other more common modifications include booming stereos and fancy rims which again run contrary to the purpose of the beater. One’s modifications must be confined to things that cost little to no money whilst making the car more unique.
By the time I had this Hornet, I had this part down pat. I threw out the hideously ugly full wheel covers for dog dishes on a black wheel, eventually using my AMC rally rims as well. I installed a modest CD player in the lockable glove box wired into half-price Sony speakers. All other modifications were purely practical, such as replacing the non-functional automatic choke with a manual choke cable. This car was unique enough already, I didn’t need to make it stick out even more.
The fourth and perhaps most important aspect of this special relationship is pride (or shame) of ownership. One needs to have a reason to love (or hate) their machine. This allows you to overlook (or magnify) its many obvious shortcomings. Imagine an old beat up ’73 Chev 3/4 ton 454 beating an ’82 Corvette in a drag race. Or maybe a ’86 Chevette boosting a 2010 BMW X3 on a cold winter morning. These are stories you could tell for the rest of your life. Another obvious source of pride is that the fact that this car is hopefully cheap to buy, own and operate. That’s the main reason for its existence. Alternately, your beater could embarrass you by refusing to start or breaking down constantly. This is the worst case scenario as it may lead to the slippery slope where you are constantly working on something that does not deserve your time or money.
In my case, the Hornet may have been ugly, slow, uncomfortable, inefficient and handled poorly but at least it was reliable. I never plugged in the block heater through the brutal winters and the 232 straight six always started. It got me through the end of my pizza delivery career without ever letting me down. It was also fun to drive just because it was that much different from everything else on the road. Combine that with the fact that I knew these cars so well that I could predict when something would break before it happened and I was in a state of beater Zen. I had about a total of $1000 into it, so it was cheap to own but not the cheapest to keep full of fuel.
The fourth and final aspect is decline, ultimately culminating with its demise. If it’s lucky, it will find a loving new owner and experience a full restoration, but that’s usually reserved for the lucky, potentially valuable few. Most will eventually reach a point where their owner decides no further investment will take place and it’s all downhill from there. This is where the owner may decide to inflict some punishment on its beater. I could never do that but I’ve heard it’s been known to happen.
My Hornet got rusty fast. It’s funny, the left front fender tops, rocker panel and quarter panel rotted through while the right side stayed solid. It chewed up three strut rod bushings and they doubled in price every time I checked. The front end needed a rebuild and since I was at the point of no further investment. I rode out the clock until my next beater appeared and the cycle began again.
I post this merely as a guide; your experience may vary. While not every element of the owner-beater relationship may always be there, I present the preceding as a guide on how to maximize your experience. I eventually drove this car right to the junkyard, pulled the battery, popped off my dog dishes, collected my $130 and hopped into my friend’s car. Oh, and I pried off all the emblems and still have them. It’s all about the memories and the story.
Further Reading:
Done just that more times than I care to think about buy something cheap barely running revive it and drive it untill the inevitable WOF failure and subsequent ticketing buy another similar make one good one rinse and repeat, some old bombs Ive put back into service only lasted a matter of weeks others just kept going no matter what kind of treatment they got they were just over built new.
A real good insightful write up on the beater/owner relationship. I can relate to everything you touched on.For me the back story of the vehicle is also key. What was it’s history, how many owners. I always try and chase the ownership lineage back to day 1. It’s more than half the fun.
I also hail from Manitoba, and since 1996 or 97 when the mandatory provincial vehicle inspections came into being, it has been a regular game of ‘cat and mouse’, to see how one could circumvent the inspection issue.
As you can probably infer, I am not a big fan of government run anything, so the mandatory vehicle inspection tends to rub me the wrong way. I’ve been a licensed driver since the early 70’s, and up until 1996 or so, one could go and buy any old $150 beater and with a bill of sale put it on the road. I miss those days. How dare the guvmint throw a proverbial wrench into a gear heads modus operandi.
I love beaters for all the same reasons you do and I still buy and run them today. So finding the cheapest way to put em back on the road has brought many new challenges. Always helps to find a mechanic whose moral compass hasn’t been welded to true north..lol.
And driving them around town never fails to put a smile on my face, and maybe not too surprising, a lot of thumbs up from fellow motorists who can also relate to the beater ownership. Volkswagen used to have a term they used..”Fahrvergnügen”…..driving enjoyment. This may also be applied to driving/owning beaters.
Kudos to your COAL write ups. Luv em. Cheers.
Busman
Forgot to add, here is a short video, about winter beaters in Manitoba.
Long Live the Winter Beater!
Love the video. At 4:47 Jon’s car poops a slush turd. Perfectly timed. Awesome.
Awesome video!
Thanks for posting that Busman, sums it up pretty well. My old hockey rink and school made it into the video.
I still have registration papers, receipts and owner’s manuals from many of my old cars. Love the back stories. It’s funny looking through old manuals and seeing notes and receipts from original owners 30 years ago. It’s been really helpful for writing these COALs too.
I remember there being a grey market for safety inspections from crooked mechanics. My brother bought one for something around $150 for a Mazda truck that looked like the one in the video. He had it on the road for a week before the frame cracked, shearing a brake line. He was fine, but that was the end of that truck.
I live in BC now and the only inspections we have are for out of province cars, so you can buy any old vehicle here and register it right away. Very liberating as old cars last much longer out here. No evil Winnipeg road salt.
It’s a beautiful thing, having a beater.
My best and cheapest revival was a $200.00 1989 Ford Crown Vic, Loaded and in really nice shape but the tranny was bad……. It turned out to be a $4.00 bushing that retained the Throttle Valve Cable(TV Cable) that told it when to shift. That car, even after i added another 100k to the 90k already on it REFUSED TO DIE.
It didn’t become a true beater until some unknown T I R D smacked it in a parking lot in 2006.
My current beater is a 2002 Ford F250 that i bought new and planned to keep forever, and did keep pristine until it was stolen and recovered…….. TWICE in a 4 year period.
The second time literally every single body panel including the roof was scratched up and dented, there was a police chase that at some point went through the woods and ended in a creek in Crystal City Texas.
Now, i can park that thing anywhere and not care,
It’s really liberating.
Ahhh, the lowly beater. That was my 1971 Scamp that I drove for the first half of the 80s. I got more money into mine because the stupid thing was just so good. And at the end, it was still good enough to sell to someone for $500.
My downfall with beaters is that when I get a really good one, it makes me love it and woos me into treating it (and spending money on it) like a real car. That was my 99 Town & Country.
A body mopars have probably the ultimate beater potential. The slant six was indestructible–as were all of the essential mechanical bits, they made millions upon millions of them, so in their day they were super cheap to keep going with junkyard parts, and they were pretty much totally undesirable in their day to anyone with an ego about their car, so you could pick up a half beat example for next to nothing.
Mine was a 1963 Valiant 100 2 door sedan; 170ci slant six and three on the tree. quintessential little old lady car that literally had no options—and on a Valiant 100 the heater was optional as were back up lights windshield washers, etc. This was the most stripped car I have every seen. I bought it for $700 when I was 16 years old and drove it for 5 years (this was in Florida, where a beater will not rust away very quickly). There are many stories about that car, but one that comes to mind: the gas tank had a lot of sediment in it and the entire time I had the car I had to change fuel filters regularly. Junk would get past them, though, and every now and then it would start to run flaky. I was so in tune with it’s habits that I could feel the carb getting funky before anyone else would have known. I could take of the carb, take it apart, spray it out with cleaner and put it back on in 45 minutes. I did it at a camp site it Cape Hatteras once using a bucket and some coleman fuel.
That car had all sorts of personalized touches. I always like those fabric slide back roofs on vw bugs, so my friend and I designed a low budget solution, which was cutting the entire center portion of the roof out, putting oak 3/4″ trim around the hole and had a boat canvas place sew a cover with the corners done so that pulled taught over the sunroof trim and snapped on. Another was the ‘full moon’ spun aluminum hubcaps that I put on it. With the front lowered by adjusting the torsion bars and some used wide tires on the back it looked pretty tough. Of course it still had the 170 leaning tower of ‘power’, so it didn’t deliver on its looks in any way.
I drove that car all over the southeast and up the eastern seaboard and it was stone cold reliable and easily fixed when it broke. When I was done with it I sold it for $650. Even with my teenage ‘upgrades’ still probably the cheapest car I will ever own.
Being an inveterate cheapskate I’ve played the beater game for decades. There have been a couple of Hornets along the way, they’re really not much better or worse than their domestic competition of the day. Even the Borg-Warner slushbox of the pre-1972 models isn’t all that bad, just can be tough to get serviced at this late date. (It can help to go to a shop that employs some greybeards and point out that it’s a very close cousin of the Ford FMX.)
What boxes the original owner ticked on on the options list can make a big difference, the car will be more livable with luxuries like electric windshield wipers and better seats.
My current daily beater cost the princely sum of $1500 (hey, inflation!) and has provided reliable transportation for about 5 years now. Who needs car payments?
Yeah, I never had any problems with the BW tranny once rebuilt, it was just obscure and therefore pricey.
Agree also regarding the options picked by the original owner. This Hornet was the most livable of the bunch I had had up to that point. Power steering, decent seats, electric wipers, and sway bar made a world of difference compared to my previous ’73 Hornet. I do have a strange attraction to those uncomfortable total strippers though.
Great story. Reminds me of my beater cars, including a 78 Horizon TC3 (free and actually ran), an 82 Escort ($100 marked down from $500 and free delivery), another 78 Horizon (not free, but with rusty trunk), 84 Grand LeMans (don’t need no stinkin’ computer for $200, so I just unplugged it and the car ran fine). Normally, I’m a “womb to tomb” owner, but each of these cars filled a specific purpose when I bought them. Also, each sold for a profit, however measly, when it was time for them to go. It also helped that Michigan has NO annual inspection requirements.
Mothra, my 63 Valiant Signet was a beater that had been repainted and had had the seats recovered. 18 years old at the time and $600. Who knew how many times the odo may have turned as it would get 50 miles per quart of oil on trips back to Yuma. Purchased with as simple mechanicals as possible and for the long term [not quite the beater attitude]: 3 speed manual, non power brakes, slant six.
The other choice was a 65 Ambassador 6 wagon with cracked windshield and a rattling throw out bearing.
Mothra started out as a tarted up beater and has morphed into a nice old car with a lot of new parts over 35 years, new paint and bodywork.
I guess it was one of the lucky ones, Nelson. Some cars, like cats, find YOU.
That ad mid-column: First year psych professor, his “lady” and The Little Rich Car Hornet. Peak 70s kitsch !~
I’m curious as to the ‘top selling compact’ they were comparing since this was back in those quaint days when advertising never specifically named a competitor’s vehicle. I’m guessing they’re referring to the Falcon since the ad says the engine is 29 cubic inches less than the Hornet’s 199 six (did the Falcon still come standard with the old 170 six by that late date?). The days of the sub-$2000 strippo new car seem so far away now.
Looks like they mean the Maverick which, when introduced, also had a low-priced strippo model for $1995 that had the 170ci six, meaning the Hornet undercut the Falcon by exactly one dollar.
Quite an amazing difference back then when a strippo car had no power anything, 3-on-the-tree, dog-dish hubcaps, tiny tires on steel wheels (color-coordinated, at least), thin fabric bench seats, no radio, no tinted glass, no air bags, and no A/C. I don’t think they even had so much as a day/night inside rearview mirror, let alone a passenger side outside rearview mirror. You didn’t even get a glove compartment on the Maverick, but a thin package shelf under the dash.
When I lived in rural upstate New York, I enjoyed my winter beaters almost as much as I did my “good cars”. The best one I had – by far – was a 1970 Ford Country Squire wagon that my brother sold me for $50. Retrofitted with a manual choke and equipped with four retread LR78-15 snow tires, it would go anywhere, any time. All I needed to do on the inevitable -20 degree mornings was pull the choke, hold the gas pedal down halfway, and it would always fire up on the first try.
A friend of a friend performed the annual NY state safety inspection, and happily slapped on a new sticker every year for four years – ignoring the Squire’s many faults – with an extra $20 passing hands. Unfortunately, at year four he informed me that the frame had become so rotten that he wouldn’t pass it again the following year.
The day I drove it to the junkyard was a sad day that I’ll never forget.
I’d played this game many times. ’79 Horizon, ’70 Monte Carlo, ’85 C-10, ’89 S-10, etc…
Currently deciding whether to buy a 1990 Chevy G30 van in my neighborhood, sitting since 1999 but low miles and excellent body…my current 1990 G20 starts every time but the body is so rotten that when I went to replace my cracked windshield, Safelite said they couldn’t, as the metal beneath the weatherstripping was gone. Maybe put my G20 drivetrain in the G30?
Of course I have a house reno to finish…then again we had the G20 to transport supplies for the reno…
I’m not sure how you’re doing this, but you have an amazing ability to predict the subject of my next weeks COAL. Shhhh! By my count we’ve owned 4 of the same sometimes obscure vehicles. Great minds think alike!
In my early driving days beaters were just called cars. The key thing was to replace one with similar and thus keep the cost down. For example there was a string of 70’s Honda Civics. The classifieds, remember them?, were full of them. Sometimes even in the $50 and under free ads. Engine shot? No problem, here’s a well rotted one that purrs. Back on the road again Monday morning. Same was true for chevettes. Parts were cheap because the boneyards were full of them and it seems everybody had one. I never had one myself but the guys in college had a Vette Club. You know, the other vette.
The most epic beater was the Hyundai Pony. It was such a terrible car that even mom complained it was slow. The penalty box of all poverty mobiles. Everyone got a chance to drive it and I’m sure it inspired a few of us into car payment purgatory just to get out of the little hell on wheels. It hung around and got driven occasionally though not if you could help it. What a trooper it was though. It always started, never let us down and refused to die. It was the only car that started one cold -22C morning. I used it to boost all the other cars in the fleet and one of the neighbour’s cars too. Then left it home.
Great article but one thing not mentioned is the willingness of some owners to endure the harshest conditions to get their beater back on the road. I give you the February clutch replacement as an example. No garage, bitter north-east wind and I need it running again for Monday morning. Build a campfire in the driveway upwind of the car and place extra boots and gloves near the fire. Wrenches and tools are kept under the snowsuit and you try not to get frostbite on the fingers while handling the cold steel.
Good point regarding owners dealing with awful weather to get the car going again. I bought one of those propane torch heaters to warm the car and tools up, wasn’t very effective in -30C though. As a teenager my vehicles were eventually banned from my parent’s driveway so I only went through the trouble of stringing the extension cord out to the street on the coldest nights. Forced me to have cars that could start in the coldest weather, AMCs seemed good for that.
Those Hyundai Ponys were absolutely everywhere when they first came out. They then became the cheapest beater out there, then they all disappeared at once. I haven’t seen one in years.
I love beaters (if you look hard enough, you can find some hidden gems). I bought a 93 Corolla from under a tree sight unseen with supposedly a bad fuel pump but for $500. I figured I could use the parts alone. Got it home, tossed in a $20 fuel pump (which is SUPER easy on a corolla) and she fired right up! Even had cold AC! I put around $800 into it and at the end had a super reliable car worth twice what I put into it. Great car!
Had a geo metro too but that story didn’t end as happily…
Those winter beaters are true beaters, cars that are being used up and sparing the owner’s other car of the ravages of winter driving. Most beaters around here are just low cost old cars that are serving as daily (when they run!) transportation. The biggest fear is that they will no longer pass the bi-annual smog inspection. This has taken more cars off the road than anything else except maybe a blown head gasket. Getting my Jag on the road has been held up by getting it ready to pass smog, I’m having a problem with the transmission and a couple of other little things, though the engine seems to run real strong. Unless finances force you to drive a beater,You have to buck a consumer system that insists that you “deserve the best” along with all those years of high payments. I guess that it has been like that for a long time, keeping up with the Jones. My Dad started driving older cars and fixing them himself when he realized how much money he was losing on the trade in game. He told me that the only thing you can save money on is your car. “You got to eat, and you got to have a place to live, You don’t need a new car to impress anyone. They just make you think you do.” Good advice.
Once I had a 1981 Honda Civic as a winter beater. It was in 1995 or 1996. I kind of shared it with my grandpa who had obtained it from my aunt. It was very good on snow on winter tires but that was the only thing going for it. The radio had very bad reception so you only got one station, in awful quality at that. Listening to a tape was no remedy, as the tape-deck was broken, too. It played the tapes too slow. A friend of mine showed mercy and created the “Honda-Tape”: he set his record-player on fast (was that 45 rpm?) and recorded single-records on tape at a much too high speed, but with the slow-playing tape-deck in the Honda that kind of levelled out! I even treated the Honda to a car wash, but only once, as I found out the hard way that the door seals didn’t do their job anymore. I was soaken wet when the ordeal was over.
I gave it back to grandpa for good when it developed all kinds of electrical gremlins.
You could remove the key and the engine would keep running, if I recall correctly you had to turn on several switches and at the same time hit the brakes to turn the motor off.
I proceeded to buy winter rims and tires for my Porsche 944 and never looked back.
The next one to drive it was my cousin, so one could say that it kind of was a family winter beater. He junked it when the radiator started leaking.
That was the one and only Japanese car I have ever had and I plan to keep it that way.
I did that once with a 1975 Audi Fox, 2 door sedan. Paid $100 for the car. Paid $150 for a good, used 1.8L engine from a ’83 Rabbit GTI. Spent prob another $100 on timing belt, and various gasket kits to convert it from east-west configuration to north-south. Car ran like a raped ape, and served me reliable for over 2 years. This was in the mid ’90s Beaters Rule!
100% on-point – great read, Nelson, thank you! I’d be curious to see what kind of mathematical equation could be drawn up in terms of coming out ahead with the cost(s) of a beater. And the looks of these early Hornets just keep improving with age.
Yeah, there’s not much to distinguish a Hornet from say a Nova or Maverick of the same time period; all six-cylinder, rear drive compacts sporting cart springs in the back. (A Valiant or Dart on the other hand had the torsion-bar front suspension.) But the Hornet does have a nice clean look that has aged well. My favorite was the Sportabout wagon.
The Sportabout really was an exceptional design. My favorite of the lot, too!
I would also give special mention to the Hornet Hatchback.
I had a ’73 Hornet hatchback that I bought used in ’76. I loved that car, and still feel it had a very distinct design in an era of distinct designs.
Great read, I enjoyed it.
I was in Louisville KY the other day, behind an AMC Concord wagon…different taillamps but otherwise similar to the original Hornet. Beautiful design.
When dealing with beaters, I try to really keep them clean, inside and out. It makes me feel better about it, and at least makes some observers think it’s a well loved classic car, not just a nasty old hooptie. That and a matched set of new tires, makes all the difference in the world. New tires make a car drive so nice…no weird vibrations on the highway, good traction, etc.
O yeah, been there. 245 KC Centura GLX. Mechanically immortal. Same could not be said for the body. Bought cheap to save the good car when I needed to drive for work. For all its faults that car was better than the job, and having experienced the joy of beater-dom kept it long after. Thanks for the story!
I feel so lucky to have neither inspections or rust to deal with. That said I make sure everything is in safe order always anyway. The PNW soothing rain even does a great job for a free wash, just towel dry when rain is done. 25 years is the smog check age limit, though my Jetta passed every time. Add the fact this car was built in China until 2013 so parts are cheap and easy to get. May not be the same German quality replacements, but will do when U pull replacements can’t be found, or would be senseless to replace used. The inspection and rust factor that Nelson was required to deal with to keep his Hornets on the road is impressive. And all the CC people that have to deal with 6 month MOT, WOF, or WTF? and keep old cars running really deserve a salute. Great read.
I love beaters too ~ .
Good thing I moved far away from the rust belt so I mostly have to deal with mechanical issues as most of the time I buy some old steaming pile I really like and after a few years have dumped more $ into it than it’ll ever be worth .
-Nate
I really enjoyed the Video. Having driven on salt laden Minnesota winter roads for years I am sympathetic to the plight of my northern neighbors. My winter beaters of choice from long ago ? A 67 Fury fastback with totally rusted away rear quarters. Then a 72 Vega notchback with door skins so rusted ,they would almost flap as the car went down the road .
There’s definitely something about a cheap car, in both the good and the bad sense. Kind of makes me feel I was living perhaps too high on the hog–the least I’ve ever paid for a car was $800 (’82 Malibu in 2002). That one was definitely beater-class; less than 100k miles on a 20 year old car, but the A/C didn’t work, the radio didn’t work, the paint was heavily oxidized and surface rusted, and the carb needed rebuilt about a month after purchase. The interior was pristine though, and after a $200 respray, it was a respectable 10′ car.
Drove that for two years at minimal expense, but then made the mistake of thinking I “deserved” something better as a 24 year old with a good job, and went down the road of car payments. Been stuck there ever since, though currently that goes toward the wife’s car and I’m again in something beater-ish (’97 Crown Vic). At least the A/C works!