Call to arms, 2Gb AWD Talon brethren!

[JS4G63]

I've been watching that one. Problem: strut tower rust on the driver side, pretty big hole already
The owner filled out the form to the best of their ability. Poor car, looks pretty good other than the terminal cancer. It could be fixed, but I don't know of a local shop (personally) that would want to do the repair and warranty it for an affordable amount of money.

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[boostdawd]

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[JS4G63]

Sold my Evo 9 last weekend, so now I have a proper avatar again!

 

[ErikTande]

1997 2gb getting parted out
https://southbend.craigslist.org/cto/d/niles-1997-eagle-talon-tsi-awd-2gb/6786979061.html

 

[ErikTande]

1998 listed on craigslist - totally stock

I'd buy it in a heartbeat if I had the cash.


https://sacramento.craigslist.org/cto/d/american-canyon-1998-eagle-talon-tsi-awd/6916093875.html

 

[ErikTande]

https://columbus.craigslist.org/cto/d/columbus-1997-eagle-talon-tsi-awd-turbo/6917110998.html

Has some serious rust, no vin listed

 

[JS4G63]

I'm still around. There are some pending updates to the registry that I've been too busy to address. Will get around to them soon.

 

[TJCTalon]

Just like to bump this thread! Thank you JS4g63 for all your work.

I never knew how rare these were. Im glad I kept my 97 after all these years, and super glad I was able to pick up a 98 that was in amazing shape as well.

 

[Adam]

Didn't know this thread existed so here's mine. Early 98 ...

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[TedBrosby]

Hey all,
Been a while but I’ve got
4E3AL54FXVE116719
In my garage.
5-speed, leather gray interior, black exterior, previous owner claims it was resprayed over original blue exterior but the paint code on the plate says otherwise.
It has sunroof, ABS and I believe it had Infinity audio? It also has cruise control.
The only thing it’s missing is LSD rear differential.
I’m assuming no LSD plus ABS was a rare combo?
It’s clean title 161705 miles and I’m registering it on Monday. Owner was in Idaho and bought it from the previous owner in Washington state.
It’s modified with I believe an EBay 16g, 3” exhaust, eBay manifold, eBay intake, down pipe. Going to pull it apart and verify if it’s actually a built motor as the owner claims. I’ll check for DSMLink as well. Car hasn’t been driven much since 2014.

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[Bigredtsi]

I bought this car as the second owner back in 2005. I owned it for 9 years and then sold it because I didn't drive it much and i needed the money. I really regretted selling it. Four years ago i tracked it down and bought it back. Its a 1997, 5 speed, awd, sunroof, abs, homelink, it was grey interior and unfortunately someone who owned it after i sold it swapped in black interior, it looks nice but feels less original. I am wondering how many were made.

VIN# 4E3AL54F9VE093823

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[pauleyman]

This many.

The 2Gb AWD Talon Registry

Greetings from south of the border! My name is Jesse (Denver, Colorado USA), and I recently built a database of all the RARE 97/98 AWD Talons. I extracted all the VIN numbers, paint colors, Option Codes, etc. from CAPS and populated a Google Docs spreadsheet! If you are familiar with th...

www.ca.dsm.org

 

[Bigredtsi]

This is basically a link to the beginning of this thread. Which says a straight number for Canada but I don’t see one for the US. And I see there are 2700 on the registry but does that allow for duplicates?

 

[pauleyman]

This is basically a link to the beginning of this thread. Which says a straight number for Canada but I don’t see one for the US. And I see there are 2700 on the registry but does that allow for duplicates?

there is a raw data spreadsheet. My car is on it.

 

[JS4G63]

Sorry for the long absence! I had to do a hostile takeover of a small political subdivision of the State of CO and rescue its water infrastructure from collapse. It took me 5 years to discover, reverse engineer, debug, and expose to the public, but it was worth it... I managed to line up about $35 million in State and Federal funding to overhaul an illegally-constructed un-permitted EPA-regulated drinking water system.

Without further ado, I have merged all 70 pending VIN submissions (plus a 2024 post I noticed in this thread) to the main database and the changes are live.
2025 submissions: 6 to date (including one from Ontario Canada, and one in Michigan with 77k miles)
2024 submissions: 15 (including that notorious Paprika with 30k)
2023 submissions: 11
2022 submissions: 11 (one marked as Junked with 95k)
2021 submissions: 10 (including a Pewter 5-speed with 17,820 miles)
2020 submissions: 16
2019 submissions: 18

The Live Result Charts:
http://goo.gl/ZkH0z
The raw spreadsheet:
http://goo.gl/vK63J

This is basically a link to the beginning of this thread. Which says a straight number for Canada but I don’t see one for the US. And I see there are 2700 on the registry but does that allow for duplicates?

I believe the total manufactured count of cars in scope of the registry project is 2522. I originally thought it was 2519, but then found a few oddball matching VINs in CAPS.

Just like to bump this thread! Thank you JS4g63 for all your work.

I never knew how rare these were. Im glad I kept my 97 after all these years, and super glad I was able to pick up a 98 that was in amazing shape as well.

Glad to be of service! I still have my 97 also (4E3AL54F7VE005285) and its still in the exact same condition and state it was in 2009. SOME DAY!

 

[JS4G63]

Over the last couple evenings, I went through a handful of 2010-2020 timestamped cars and refreshed them when possible. Now that the spreadsheet and web form have been running for more than a decade, I changed the default sorting of the spreadsheet to the Timestamp column, so now all the most recent cars are shown first. I'll add a filter for the original sorting, and a few new filters too.

Back in 2015-2016 I wrote some code to scrape public State websites (emissions, inspection, title, registration). I'm dusting off some of those old ideas to re-scrape fresh data. Unfortunately, lots of websites have changed in the last 9 years and all of my code plus the language itself are obsolete. But the concepts are still valid, so I'm re-writing the scrapers in PowerShell, and going back over all the States to see which ones are scrape-able. I know that Washington completely eliminated emissions testing, so all of their historical data is gone forever. Connecticut doesn't require emissions testing on pre-2001 vehicles. Other States have revised their websites, outsourced them, etc so many are now behind login pages or captchas that make scraping impossible or difficult.

A few states that haven't changed their VIN lookup systems in a decade: CO, IL, ND, VA, WI, DE, GA.
As of 9/14, I've run all the 1700+ USDM VINs through CO, DE, GA, IL, ND, OH, TX, UT, VA, and WI, and also re-checked all existing/known FL cars manually. Some states still make the data open to the public, but their websites limit queries in various ways, like Captcha, limit to 5 queries per day per IP address, etc. These states include FL, ID, MS, MO, NY, and a few others.
Sadly, many states that used to make this data readily available have since offloaded their DMV/Emissions "public records" burden to private for-profit companies, using a federal privacy law as an excuse not to provide ANY of the public data that is otherwise intended to be public record. Rather than sanitizing the data to remove sensitive information, many states just lock down the entire database while their websites redirect taxpayers to a for-profit NVMTIS-authorized records provider. The taxpayer ends up paying $30-50 for a single VIN report containing data that was already generated & paid for and by the taxpayers.
A few states have found a happy-medium... make the data public, but only to citizens of that state, by hiding the data behind a StateID/password protected login portal. Most states that do this use a 3rd-party provider that gives the State a branded "myDMV Portal". A few thrifty states have their own systems that require both the VIN plus another validator, such as license plate or title number.
Some states lock down title/registration data, but still make Emissions data public. But in the last 10 years, quite a few states have or are attempting to phase out their air-quality/emissions-test programs now that the majority of cars on the road are high-tech enough to not be able to pollute without going into limp-mode and screaming for dealer service.

A few interesting figures:
In total, the Illinois system shows 193 VINs that have ever been titled/registered since 1996. Roughly 11% of the USDM Talons in question... Not surprising given that's where they were built!
Ohio database returned 141 in total over all time.
Texas, only 73 were found.
Georgia only returned 16 VIN hits for all time, and only one has been inspected/tested in the last 5 years.

Colorado scan just finished... it was also a hotbed for DSMs, home to a decent percentage of the cars: 110 of the 1770 VINs have been seen on an emissions test dyno in Colorado over the years. The CO Emissions test result database does contain every VIN that has ever been tested at a State IM240 facility, and it will return a postive result if the VIN exists, but it will only return a result/date for the last 2 "test cycles" (i.e. 4 years), and it no longer returns odometer mileage

One interesting Colorado VIN of note: 4E3AL54F7VE151136. Failed emissions last month, first test in the state of CO. This VIN was previously never seen anywhere in my web-scraping efforts. One dataset I was able to grab many years ago (once, before it went behind a paywall) was a nationwide system, and it revealed State-level location information for all USDM VINs except for about 130-135 cars. A few other of those "never before seen" vehicles have been reported by owners since then, but one of them just cropped up in CO!

It would appear that there are only 7-8 of these things left in CO that have a non-expired emissions test.

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[2GbTalonGuy]

I just rejoined the 2Gb army in July. I submitted that my VIN had moved to North Dakota and updated it with the options it has. Looks like it got updated on the database. It was cool to learn that the Silver Mist Pearl is a pretty rare color, with only 3% built in this color. Also appears to be a ‘98 only color.

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[JS4G63]

I just rejoined the 2Gb army in July. I submitted that my VIN had moved to North Dakota and updated it with the options it has. Looks like it got updated on the database. It was cool to learn that the Silver Mist Pearl is a pretty rare color, with only 3% built in this color. Also appears to be a ‘98 only color.

Nice specimen. It even still has the factory fog lights. I still kick myself for selling my set after installing a FMIC back in the day. I think that vehicle was originally titled in Colorado.
Silver Mist Pearl was a '98-only color, and only 74 AWDs got it. 29 Canadian and 45 USDM. 20 of them are Automatic. Only 7 had fabric seats, so those are the most unique subset of the group, and within that group there are 3 that also have one-off Option Codes.
Only 15 have been spotted+updated in the spreadsheet over the last 10 years, one gained Junked status, and only 3 have been updated in the last 5 years including yours.

 

[2GbTalonGuy]

Nice specimen. It even still has the factory fog lights. I still kick myself for selling my set after installing a FMIC back in the day. I think that vehicle was originally titled in Colorado.
Silver Mist Pearl was a '98-only color, and only 74 AWDs got it. 29 Canadian and 45 USDM. 20 of them are Automatic. Only 7 had fabric seats, so those are the most unique subset of the group, and within that group there are 3 that also have one-off Option Codes.
Only 15 have been spotted+updated in the spreadsheet over the last 10 years, one gained Junked status, and only 3 have been updated in the last 5 years including yours.

That’s really cool to know. From looking at the database, it looks like all Silver Mist cars got a gray or gray/black interior . Another cool thing about this one is that it’s remained almost completely stock all these years. Only mods are wheels, exhaust (I got the original exhaust from the previous owner, but it’s pretty rusted) and 14b. I am seriously considering putting it back to completely stock.
The original window sticker was still in the glove box also. The car was delivered from the factory to Great Western Autoplex in Rock Springs, WY. If I’m remembering correctly, carfax said it was first titled for a short time in WY before being bought by someone in CO, where it stayed for a majority of its life.
She is in very good hands now. I’m an 20 year experienced DSMer and take very good care of them. I’m an auto body tech by trade and will be fixing what little rust it has and respraying it in the factory color in the not so distant future. It will also never be driven in the winter again. She’s been tucked away in slumber for a month now.

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[dsettles]

4E3AL54F9WE010828 is my car. Here it is at this year's shootout. 142,000 miles and now it's auto swapped

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[2GbTalonGuy]

4E3AL54F9WE010828 is my car. Here it is at this year's shootout. 142,000 miles and now it's auto swapped

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Cool! Another silver mist pearl.

 

[kyler021]

4E3AL54F9WE010828 is my car. Here it is at this year's shootout. 142,000 miles and now it's auto swapped

Haha look who it is! Didn't expect to see my pic in here

Also, I'll try and add to this thread. 4E3AL54F9VE171209 is a white 1997 Talon, manual trans, sunroof, ABS options code G73 I think? It was sold in Maryland in February 2025. I was going to look at it for a potential project but someone snagged it before I got to it. I believe someone in Virginia bought it.

Edit: Just found it in the spreadsheet. Not sure if this info helps any, but it had 159,477 miles at the time it was sold in February

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[mike7218]

Just picked this one up. Will be filling out the form tonight.

VIN = 4E3AL54F9WE011803

She needs a lot of TLC, but I'm confident I can bring her back to life. It's been sitting for a LONG time from what I gathered. The 2nd owner (not sure of this) passed away and his wife sold it to the guy I bought it from. Supposedly it's from Tennessee. Build sheet says sold and shipped to Hawaii though

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[JS4G63]

Updated these recently mentioned ones in the database. The polo green pearl in WI has never had a single hit before now. Nice Z-car by the way. My first car I ever bought with my own money was a 1977 280z in the powder metallic blue color.

 

[mike7218]

Updated these recently mentioned ones in the database. The polo green pearl in WI has never had a single hit before now. Nice Z-car by the way. My first car I ever bought with my own money was a 1977 280z in the powder metallic blue color.

The z-car was actually owned by the guy I bought the talon from but I do have a Z32 ironically.

Kinda doesnt surprise me the car doesn't have a hit. I didnt find registration info from anything past 05/06. I think its been sitting for at least that long. The Hawaii ship to state code was cool to me. I wonder how many 2gb awd talons were sent to Hawaii.....and how did it get back here?

I was surprised to see it only had 62k miles. The guy I bought it from picked it up 3 years ago and never touched it. He said he didnt even look at the odometer