Junkyard Find: 2001 Hyundai Tiburon

One thing I've noticed after decades of prowling high-turnover self-service wrecking yards is the increasing average age of junked Hyundais. The first-gen Excel started showing up in junkyards in large quantities when the cars were about five years old (i.e., the worst car available in North America during the second half of the 20th century), and by the mid-1990s they were all gone. These days, most of the Crusher-bound Hyundais I see are more like 15 years old, about halfway between the average age of junked Chryslers and junked Hondas. The Tiburon has been around since 1997, and this is perhaps the third one I've seen in this setting. Because I've never seen a Tiburon in a 24 Hours of LeMons race, I can infer that even beat examples are worth something (or LeMons racers are so terrified by the Excel's reputation that they want nothing to do with any Hyundai product). Not quite 150,000 miles on the clock, then a cosmetically disfiguring crash and probably some mechanical problems made this car not worth fixing up. The first of many Tiburons to show up in the self-serve yards? After the 60-year-old Kaiser we saw yesterday, I felt it was time for a somewhat less elderly Junkyard Find. Speaking of which, I haven't gotten around to making computer wallpaper images from the Brain Melting Junkyard photo sessions, but you can find plenty of free junkyard wallpapers at my site. Korean-market car ads are always so macho. The Tiburon was a bullet! from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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