Rusty But Trusty

Imagine for a moment that you live in a rural Midwestern state/province. You like the idea of a Saab turbo hatch, but you’re not near an indie Saab shop the way you would be had you chosen to live in a coastal city. What to do? Perhaps holding out for one of Dodge’s turbo cars of the 1980s is the way to go – plenty came with hatchback practicality, 2.2-liter turbocharged engines with comparable (if not more) power, manual transmissions, and handling numbers that compared favorably to many European cars (though for some reason, Dodge decided to compare its 4-door mid-size hatchback to sedans from then-stodgy-but-solid Mercedes and not-stodgy BMW). With red paint on grey interiors and a spoiler over the rear window and on the trunk lip, they definitely weren’t subtle, and probably would have squared off better against the Merkur XR4Ti and Scorpio or, uh, the rebadged Opels GM wasn’t giving North America in the 1980s. Anyhow, let’s take a look at this 1989 Dodge Lancer Shelby for sale for $3500 in Boston, MA.

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