RustyButTrusty On The Street – Buick (yes, Buick), Honda, Chevrolet

Chronicling the cars you see on the street sure does a lot to make you appreciate them, both in terms of quantity and variety, if not always quality! Today’s edition of RustyButTrusty on the Street covers three cars that, in spite of not being orphans, are rare sights indeed. Our first car is perhaps the rarest version of GM’s X-body platform, the Buick Apollo 2-door coupe, only built from 1973-74. In 1975, this was renamed the Skylark, and lost a lot of appeal for it, because what’s cooler than a car named after a Roman god, and sharing its name with a sports car (awesome) and a rocket (double awesome!!)? Unfortunately, it’s beige and not the rare spoilers-and-stripes GSX version. Either way, the slight styling variations on this badge-engineered special are enough to make you do a double-take.

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This second-generation Corvair is the rare (maybe not-so-rare, depending on where you’re from) Crispy Edition. Mysterious rust in the a-pillars means you better not flip it. Pale yellow looks great on 1960s sports cars, and the convertible top means that if Corvairs ever achieve significant collector value, this 110 will stand a better chance of being restored than any hardtop.

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Last is this Honda Accord 3-door hatch. “What?!!”, you steam, “is a Honda Accord doing here?!!” Well, when’s the last time you saw one of these here? This first-generation car is a pre-Marysville car, much closer to Honda’s original design philosophy (light, compact, efficient and clean) than any of Honda’s current cars. Put this next to a current Fit (or a Pilot, God forbid), and you’ll probably find it to have similar length and width, and to be shorter in height. Has anyone tried dropping a later Honda powertrain into one of these early cars?

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