At $2,500, Is This 1993 Chevy Corsica A Boring Bargain?

In This Story

If life as a whole is getting too overwhelming, then today’s Nice Price or No Dice Corsica might be the panacea for that agitation and festering angina. That is, as long as its price tag doesn’t piss us off.

“The Grand Tour: One For The Road” Is An Emotional And Satisfying Finale

The three Rs we’ve been told we’re supposed to live by are no longer “reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic.” Instead, it’s now “reduce, reuse, and recycle.” Southern California-based Powell Motor Corporation was way ahead of the game in this trifecta by building the 1957 Powell Sport Wagon we looked at on Friday from parts sourced at local junkyards. That recycling involved completely restoring the parts, something our Powell needed once again. Such a daunting task, coupled with the Powell’s relative obscurity, made its $8,000 asking price equally challenging to support. Ultimately, that fell in a sizable 88 percent No Dice loss.

Have you ever partaken in an extreme sports activity? Perhaps you bungee-jumped off a bridge or zip-lined a chasm. Maybe you’ve attempted to traverse Los Angeles’ metro system while avoiding getting stabbed or second-hand smoking some fentanyl-laced meth. If you’ve done any of those things, then kudos to you for surviving and not ending up a vegetative burden on society as a result of your adrenaline-addicted lifestyle choices.

Should you instead more commonly choose to shy away from danger, controversy, and high heart rates, today’s 1993 Chevy Corsica should be right up your old folks home.

Anyone looking for a cheap way to get around and absolutely nothing more should find this one-owner, clean title appliance of a sedan exceedingly appealing. It’s also, dare I say it, quite kitschy in today’s market as few of these remain, having long been viewed as sort of a disposable camera kind of car.

The Corsica’s model run began with ignominy, with Chevy deeming the model only fit for fleet sales upon its debut in 1987. After precisely zero clamor from consumers, Chevy made the Corsica available to the broader market the following year.

Based on the J car (Cavalier), the Corsica was designed to slot between that car and the larger Celebrity/Lumina in size and price. Modeling this middle-of-the-pack pretension, the Corsica’s drivetrain options included the Cavalier’s fours and the Celebrity’s V6s.

As a later model, this one has the largest engine offered in a Corsica, Chevy’s 3.1-liter V6 with multiport fuel injection. A four-speed automatic ensures that the engine’s 140 horsepower doesn’t ever get too out of hand.

According to the humorous description in the ad, the car was initially sold in Colorado, and hence, it’s solid and free from rust because that Mountain Time State shuns salt for road de-icing. It’s now offered by the second-hand dealer in Lincoln, Nebraska, where, apparently, they do salt the roads.

Painted in appliance white over what the seller says is a “whorehouse red” velour interior, the Corsica is in surprisingly decent shape for its age and purpose in life. Sure, each bumper corner shows some parking lot scrapes in the paint, but that seems to be the only aesthetic issue the car suffers.

These late-in-the-game models have an airbag in the steering wheel and regular seatbelts rather than the door-mounted belts of earlier editions. Those never seem to fit quite right. Of course, passengers don’t get an airbag, so choose your companions wisely.

Mechanically, the car seems to be OK, too. The ad only tells us that the engine “never gets too hot and isn’t actively leaking anything on the ground.” It’s a Chevy OHV V6, so there’s not much to go wrong with it or to worry about if something does.

If your kink is rental car chic, this Corsica has much to offer. It also has appeal should you be of limited means or are a Scrooge McDuck-style skinflint, as the price is a mere $2,500. Is an old Corsica—clean as it may be—the best use of even that paltry sum of money?