This is the photo of my beautiful 1986 Mazda 5-door, which I owned from new in '86 until its charity donation in 2004. The car had passed the emissions test, had NO (external) rust, still got 30 mpg in suburban driving, "the air blew cool", and had only 96K miles. But - when it was up on the rack for the safety inspection the tech found that the attachment sheet metal all around both rear shocks and the IRS mounts was Swiss cheese. I got an estimate to weld in new metal of "approaching $3K", which was foolish to do. So - off it went, and I started the hunt for an SR5 Tercel.
Of course, I spent nowhere near $3K buying the Terc, the subsequent tools and parts and etc. and etc. Yeah, right....
Tom M.
P.S. Incidentally, this car regularly got 41 MPG at 65 with cruise control on long flat Interstate driving.
