so i'm looking for a car online....

Factual Questions
1

so i’m looking for a car online, preferably an older one, as many of the new “saftey features” (ie autolocking doors) annoy the fire out of me.
no used car websites seem to deal in anything more than 5 yrs old… and i’d prefer a good sized mid 80s sedan or station wagon… any ideas where to look?

2

I assume you have exhausted ebay and online classifieds of your local newspapers…?

3

Where have you been looking?

4

Perhaps another valid question would be whether you’re looking for car reviews or cars to purchase.
I have gotten some mileage from edmunds.com in regards to reviews and pricing.

5

If you don’t want auto door lock, go look at a different brand of car. Seriously, there are lots of cars out there in current production that do not have auto door locks.
If you buy something from the 80’s you are buying a 20 year old car that by most estimates is nearing the end of its life cycle.
Cars built in the early 80s had pretty crappy emission / engine management systems. Cars built near the end of the decade are better about this, as they had time to sort this out, but still suffered from crappy fuel mileage.
Add to that IIRC GM cars had auto locking in the 1980’s I would suggest a newer car that does not come with auto door locks.

6

Three suggestions:

But of course be very careful and be sure you know what you’re doing.

If you’re just looking for a good reliable car look for a early 2000’s Honda Civic or Accord. They can be had with few bells and whistles, and manual transmission if you wish.

7

AutoTrader.com has more inventory than anyone. In 30 seconds, I found 2,432 listings for sedans and wagons between 1983 and 1988.

cars.com is good, always worth trying one of the aggregators like oodle.com or vast.com (but they have many many duplicates).

8

thanks for the help. as for my reasons… i’ve found older cars easier to work on w/o all the useless electronic fiddlybits and emissions crap. i live in a rural area so emissions/air quality arent an issue. as far as engine mgmt systems, i can’t get codes read on my 93 lumina… so its not like thats an issue either.