On some grey, overcast days you never see anything that really turns your head. Well, as a car guy, you care a little about everything. Just a little.
And then there are sunny days that really bring out the red on some small, boxy econo-hatches such as this 1984 Mazda 323. Look at it! Over 30 years old and still doing daily driver duty. And parking by feeling, by the looks of things.


The 323, great little car as it is, is probably still a really useable car. The funny thing about this example is that it doesn’t really look that unloved or rusty, but it’s just dented to all hell. There’s barely a straight surface on the car, which is amazing in the way that there originally wasn’t anything else than straight surfaces on it.
The fenders have been pushed in, the front lip is all kinds of mangled, and still the detailing is shiny. You could slap some car polish on the red, though – but then the dents would stand out even better.

This car rolled out of the factory with a 1500cc carbed four-banger, which is nice and big for a hatch this size. It gave you 75 horses, and you could wrestle them with a nice set of plastic tan controls that are somewhat visible in this shot. The brown interior is a nice contrast to the red outside.

The ’80-’84 BD 323 was somehow well-proportioned, and I find it neater than the almost-identical-but-not-quite successor. The BD was pretty much Mazda’s FWD debut, and a sign of things to come, as everything Japanese was front-wheel-drive and boxy for a good while. There’s a lot of cosmetical things to fix on this one, but it’s almost worth it. Decently tidy BD 323:s are popping out of the woodwork right now over here, and it kind of feels like the last possible time to grab one that isn’t structurally rotten. With a little effort, a reasonably priced example could make it into historic plates in good time.
[Images: Copyright 2015 Hooniverse/Antti Kautonen]