Junkyard Gem: 1983 Toyota Camry Sedan

Junkyard Gem: 1983 Toyota Camry Sedan

In recent years, I've put a lot of work into finding junkyard examples of vehicles from final model years (either for the model or the manufacturer itself). We just saw one of the very last Pontiacs ever sold, for example, and I managed to locate one of the Final 500 Oldsmobiles as well. The first year of a car that went on to great fame and fortune seems like a happier story in these unhappy times, though, and so here's one of the first examples of the Toyota Camry ever sold on this side of the Pacific.

Junkyard Gem: 1983 Honda Accord Sedan With 411,794 Miles

Junkyard Gem: 1983 Honda Accord Sedan with 411,794 Miles

I've learned that finding discarded vehicles with astronomical figures showing on their odometers can be very difficult. Most manufacturers stuck with five-digit odometers well into the 1980s and even the 1990s, which rules out a majority of potential high-mile candidates right off the bat. With more recent vehicles, electronic digital odometers won't display unless you power up the main ECU— theoretically possible in a junkyard, but a real hassle. The most likely old cars to rack up interstellar mileage (Mercedes-Benz diesels) are also among the first to have their instrument clusters harvested by boneyard-prowling eBay sellers. Fortunately, Honda began installing six-digit odometers around 1981, and so today's Junkyard Gem (found last winter in a Denver car graveyard) can share its very impressive final odo reading with us.

Junkyard Gem: 1983 Toyota Tercel Sr5 4wd Wagon

Junkyard Gem: 1983 Toyota Tercel SR5 4WD Wagon

If you want a cheap, rock-and-stick-simple, gas-sipping car that can handle mud and snow without flinching, you'd have a tough time surpassing the 1983-1988 Toyota Tercel 4WD wagon. Known as the Sprinter Carib in Japan, these cartoonish-looking little wagons proved quite popular in North America, despite their tippy handling and patience-building double-digit horsepower, and I still find plenty of them in junkyards to this day. Here's a first-model-year example with the luxurious (by early-1980s Tercel standards) SR5 top trim level, found in a Denver yard last winter.

Junkyard Gem: 1983 Toyota Celica Gt Coupe

Junkyard Gem: 1983 Toyota Celica GT Coupe

Until the 1986 model year, when the North American-market Toyota Celica went to front-wheel drive and the same platform as the T150 Corona, we knew the Celica as an affordable, sporty-looking machine with the same basic R-engine/rear-wheel-drive layout as the sturdy Hilux pickup. In regions that don't suffer much from the teeth of the Rust Monster, some late RWD Celicas have stayed in service long enough to keep showing up at the big self-service car graveyards I explore. Here's an '83 notchback coupe that just barely reached six figures on its odometer, photographed in a San Francisco Bay Area self-serve yard last fall.