Yahoo Autos Here's $18,000. What would you buy in 1985?
After receiving checks for 50,000 fake dollars last week and letting you know how we would spend it on brand-new cars, we decided to switch things up a bit and jump into our DeLorean for a trip back to 1985.
Why 1985? Well, we're also taking a trip back to the grim early days of the pandemic when we were stuck in our houses with scarce automotive news to cover and nowhere to drive our test cars. In that original post, What we'd drive in 1985, we didn't really put a price limit on anything. This time around, we do. Specifically, I wanted to see what you could buy for the 1985 equivalent of today's $50,000. According to the CPI Inflation Calculator, that would be $17,708, so let's round up to $18,000.
As it turns out, 18 large wasn't that much in 1985. A base BMW 318i sedan went for $17,220 and the only Cadillac you could buy was a Cimarron. So yeah, we won't exactly be featured on "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" unless Robin Leach was impressed by a Merkur xR4ti (see above). On the other hand, basically every non-luxury vehicle is nowhere close to $18,000 and you'd struggle to option them up to that level. Ultimately this shows that luxury car prices have actually gone down in the last four decades, while volume-sellers have skyrocketed.
Like last week, there are two rules:
The price when new has to be within $700 of the $17,000 (or the 1985 equivalent of last week's $2,000). We can't say "I'd spend $12,000 on the Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS up there and blow the rest on blow ... I mean whatever else they blew their money on in 1985."
It has to be a new 1985 model year car.
OK, cue the Huey Lewis, onto our choices.
Volvo 240 GL Wagon
Senior Editor James Riswick: I recently purchased a car for my family, so I decided to apply the same search criteria for this 1985 car. It would mostly be my wife's car since I mostly drive press cars (oh how I wish I could go back in time and sample press fleets of the past). We have a toddler, so a Nissan 300ZX is no good, and we want some utility but my wife prefers driving smaller cars. That last one nixed a BMW 318i and while the Saab 900 could probably do the trick, I opted for something else Swedish: the Volvo 240 GL Wagon. Sadly, the turbocharged GLT wagon was too expensive by $1,250 (and the sedan by $20), so I went with the mid-grade GL. It actually had a new engine for '85, but with only 111 horsepower, it'd definitely be as slow as a meatball on a shallow incline. I'm sure I could talk my wife into getting the manual. I mean, I'm not even sure if she'd be down for driving a brick, but the choices are limited and hey, it's actually really nice by '85 standards. The GL had heated seats (yay Sweden!), power windows, a sunroof, power trunk release, plus the four-wheel disc brakes and other Volvo safetyness that was standard. Oh, and there's an absurd 41.1 cubic-feet of space. Finally, she'd be able to tell all her 1985 friends that "In 30 years, these things are going to be cool, just wait and see."
(P.S. You're right Sven, the above 240 is not an '85 240 GL, but an '88 240 GL. You can tell because '85 was the last year the American government insisted on sealed-beam headlamps. I couldn't find an official picture of one of those. Close enough.)
Alfa Romeo GTV6
Senior Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski: Anyone with $16,500 burning a hole in their acid-washed pocket in 1985 could waltz into their nearest Alfa Romeo dealer (depending on where you lived, that may have been a sizable jaunt) and leave carrying the keys to a lovely GTV6. It looks older than it actually is — the Alfa Romeo Alfetta Coupe was originally released in 1975 with a swoopy-wedge shape penned by Giugiaro — but looking at many of the options in '85 tells me that's no bad thing. Why this Alfa Romeo?
We'll start with the engine. Famed engineer Giuseppe Busso designed the 60-degree Alfa Romeo V6, and it went through many permutations throughout the years. In the GTV6 it displaced 2.5 liters and used a complex overhead-cam design and spun out 154 horsepower at 5,500 RPM and 152 lb-ft. It sent those ponies to the rear wheels through a five-speed manual transaxle, which leads us to the next heaping of praise: handling.
The Alfa Romeo GTV6 boasts ideal 50:50 weight distribution, courtesy in part to that rear-mounted transaxle. The front suspension is a double-wishbones setup with longitudinal torsion bars; at the rear is a de Dion tube, a Watts parallelogram link and inboard disc brakes. It's a fantastic car to drive. And woo boy does it look lovely and Classically Italian in bright red with a tan leather interior.
