Rusty But Trusty

Our next feature is a rather unusual car. Do you desire more style and practicality than a sedan? More style and less practicality than a station wagon? The Subaru equivalent of a Saab 900 turbo? Well, here’s your choice (the only one, really). In the eighties, Subaru’s Leone range included a 4-door sedan, 5-door station wagon, and 3-door coupe. You can find this 1987 Subaru GL Turbo Coupe for sale for $1500 in Martinez, CA.

She’s not much of a looker, but very clearly styled in the boxy 1980s idiom. The rear spoiler hints that this might be one of the rare RX models (a GL turbo coupe with cosmetic, mechanical, and feature upgrades), but as with most manufacturers in the 1980s, Subaru was not afraid to brag about the TURBO INSIDE!!! by giving the car a monochrome paint job, hood scoop, and stickers proclaiming TURBO, 4X4, and so on. So that leaves us with a 2wd turbo coupe with a manual transmission, not a bad thing in itself, and likely faster in all but snowy conditions due to reduced weight.

This car is said to only have 120,000 miles, and the interior lends credence to that claim. Hopefully you like this shade of blue-gray, because your choices are limited when it comes to this body style, and hey, why not put stain-sensitive colors like gray in a car that was popular for winter drivers? The seller says the car has lots of get up and go, so hopefully that means the engine is healthy.

Wow, is that a spare tire under your hood or are you just happy to see me? There’s really not much to see here, other than things looking fairly complete, a turbo intake, and lots of tubes and hoses. However, it doesn’t look neglected or unused, so with any luck there won’t be any unknowns waiting to surface when you start driving it frequently.

For only $1500, I am not moving the car away from these trees to take a picture, thought the seller to himself. Well, at least that’s all one can assume. At least we can see there are no major impacts on this side, and that those K-mart hubcaps do come off. Some factory alloy wheels, or perhaps some Panasports or retro Japanese aftermarket wheels in a contrasting color would look great on the car and make it shine.

Tags: coupe, Feature, gl, japanese, subaru, turbo, under $2000

This entry was posted on February 25, 2014 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.