With all the searching for automotive history in the junkyard that I do, I find a lot of fascinating field-expedient repairs done by final owners for free or close to it. Windows made of tape and/or trash bags or cut from acrylic (perhaps with drilled vent holes), crudely hacked-in moonroofs, trailer hitches attached to who-knows-what, inside door handles made from chain, unpainted plywood rooftop cargo carriers, sedans turned into pickup trucks with Sawzalls, you name it, I've seen it all!
Now I've managed to find a discarded 2004 Mitsubishi Galant made entirely of such fixes, so let's admire what a motivated car owner can do when the wallet is thin yet the creativity is fat.
This car started out its life clad in black paint, and we all know how hard it is to hide dents on a shiny black car. The solution: a thick coat of flat white house paint, applied quickly (and probably in a rainstorm).
In fact, with a coat of Colorado snow this car looked like the mid-2000s sedan version of the generic consumer-goods packaging you used to see in supermarkets, 40 years ago. I had to brush off some snow just to figure out what manufacturer made the thing, and even then it took some doing (OK, fine, I just looked at the build tag on the driver's door jamb).
A world class vehicle, built at the former Diamond-Star Motors plant in Normal, Illinois (where Rivians are built now).
When the outside door handles break off on your ride, you will suffer (especially if it's the driver's door and the driver's-side rear door, which is the case here). The final owner of this car got tired of climbing in through the passenger side and used the old loop-of-wire trick to solve the problem.
I've seen many variations of this theme on junkyard vehicles, with shoelaces, single strands of finger-slicing picture-hanger wire, and (my all-time favorite) a rope snaking inside to the interior driver's door latch.
This one uses double-twisted coat-hanger wire, which should be easier on the fingers than thinner single-strand stuff. The brass plumbing compression fitting appears to be an attempt to keep sharp wire ends from causing discomfort, or maybe it was just on hand and was added as a bit of whimsical decor.
Does it work? You bet it does!
The left-hand rear door would have benefited from the same fix, but who's got time for that? The rear-seat passengers can just get in on the other side.
There are many personalizing touches inside, including these decals obscuring the driver's view of the gauges.
Is this a reference to the Australian winery? Or a character in a TV show? A Southern California math teacher? An inflatable fat cat displayed by Philadelphia supporters of a wealth tax? We may never know.
Perhaps it's an homage to the great song on the Heavy Metal soundtrack, from the pride of Knoxville (no, not this pride of Knoxville).
When it came time to send this car on its final ride behind a tow truck (which is always sad), the Looney Tunes floormat wasn't deemed worth rescuing by the Galant's final owner.
We're not done yet. You don't want to drive a car with busted-out side glass (or a power window stuck in the down position), of course, so this Mitsubishi got one of the better tape-and-plastic-sheeting repairs I've seen. This looks like Huber wall-sheathing flashing tape with touch-up using many layers of clear shipping tape. It was still keeping out most of the weather in the junkyard, months after the tape went on, so I give it a high Field-Expedient Repair rating.
I couldn't quite figure out what was going on with the taillights. The lenses had been removed, either via customizing intent or by a crash, and the reflectors spray-painted red. My guess is that one or two bulbs still worked and this setup was a nod to legality. The assemblies are held in with wire. Not quite up to the quality of the door latches, but we must respect the intent.
A right side mirror isn't required by law in most states (as long as you have a rear window and an inside center mirror), but a big Mitsubishi sedan is a lot easier to drive with one. I've seen some good mirror fixes in junkyards, but this one wins bonus points for cleverness: a bicycle mirror screwed directly into the stump of the long-departed factory mirror.
Made in Boulder, because it's best to shop local when you're fixing your car.
