(first posted 5/5/2013) OK, when’s the last time you saw one of these? Here in Rust Central, even ’80s Diplomats and Gran Furys are getting scarce, so I was happy to see this ’79 LeBaron coupe at–you guessed it–the Geneseo car show. In sleek black, no less, with no offending water-trapping full vinyl or landau top, either!
The LeBaron was cash-strapped Chrysler’s answer to the Seville. Despite having less money than FoMoCo, the resulting coupe, sedan and T&C wagon were MUCH more convincing as a luxury car than the “are they dumb enough to buy it?” Lincoln Versailles.
As you would expect of a 1970s near-luxury car, ample amounts of chrome, wire wheel covers, whitewalls, and velour upholstery were available. Most people who bought a Chrysler back then wanted to advertise their good fortune to everyone, and that meant adding all the gingerbread they could, resulting in over-dressed showboats like this one. Why would you get those wire wheel covers, when there were so much more attractive options. I guess those kids in the background borrowed their Aunt Gert’s new car…
Even a trim-bedecked one looked so much better with the available alloys, which were also optional on the Cordoba. But I imagine most of these went out the door with the rattly wire covers or “deluxe” wheel covers. Too bad. Interesting fact: the LeBaron came STANDARD with hubcaps! On a Chrysler!
Interiors were suitably plush, especially with the available leather seating. I don’t normally like gray interiors, but the dove-gray leather thrones shown here look very, very nice. One of these could have been a pretty comfy ride back then. As you’d expect, a variety of Slant Six, Super Six and 318 and 360 V8s could be installed in the LeBaron’s engine bay.
Yes, the LeBaron coupe could get every luxury car styling cliché: landau top, opera lamps, opera windows, pinstriping, and on and on.
But you didn’t HAVE to. Just a few pages past that wire-wheeled, dove gray parade float in the ’79 LeBaron brochure was this handsome coupe, with just the always-sharp Road Wheels and whitewalls to set it off. And you could make things even simpler–or stealthier, if you prefer…
…thus bringing us to our featured car, which looks all for the world like a two-door police car. Maybe that’s just what it is/was. It had the standard pleated vinyl interior as well, but the black-and-red color combination made it look very, very good indeed.
Could this be a factory police-package LeBaron? Or did the current owner just add the slotted wheels and ventilated hubcaps? I wouldn’t blame him; they look great.
The LeBaron lasted to ’81 in this form, albeit with a moderate facelift in ’80 (CC here). Starting in ’82, the car would become the Fifth Avenue, and the LeBaron would fall into a K-shaped hole it would never climb out of.
However it came into the world, I like it. And the coupe roofline looks so nice. I love how the C-pillar flows into the mini-boattail deck lid. Great to FINALLY see one without the dratted landau top! Do want.
Very unusual. Got any pictures of the owners sign?
I just added a close-up; see above.
Thanks!
This is a surprisingly good looking car. I have a soft spot for these (more so the Diplomats) but have never seen a coupe in person. I will see the occasional ratty 5th Ave but Diplomats are nearly extinct.
I have a 79 Medallion edition. 2-Tone All Original, one owner all paperwork, receipts, and even log books inbox me or leave your follow up info.. serious inquiries only
I have a All Original one owner all paperwork, receipts, and even log books inbox me or leave your follow up info
More unusual, there is a diecast toy car of a 1979 LeBaron Town & Country wagon.
http://jalopnik.com/398163/ultimate-diecast-toy-car-created-1979-chrysler-lebaron-town-and-country
I have one of those! Mine is medium metallic blue. I am thinking of customizing the tan interior, with white seats and door panels and blue carpeting and dash.
I’d love to find a T&C of this vintage for a proper CC, but the last one I saw in person was a friend’s aunt’s in about 1989. It was either red or brown (reddish brown?).
I have the brown one!
I have the red T&C. They have the year wrong though. As you can clearly tell from Tom’s photos, the 1979 LeBarons had a 6 panel grille. I believe the model is actually a ’78 as it doesn’t have the Eagle emblem in the taillights.
I also have a Ford Maverick from the same maker and they also got the year wrong on that one. The Maverick has the Stallion appearance package, which wasn’t available until 1976, but the license plate says “74 Ford.”
I tagged along with my father for a test drive of one of these when they first came out. I would have been about 12 y.o. I remember finding the turn-signal eyebrows above the headlamps to be very odd looking. I stand by that judgment today.
The boat tail treatment of the coupe has held up great though. Very nice way to give a downsized 3-box coupe a little flair. I’d love to see a modern interpretation boat tail coupe based on the LX-platform Chrysler 300.
I don’t remember why, but Dad was unimpressed by his test drive of the LeBaron. We ended up getting a fastback Cutlass Salon.
The nose is a little bizarre, with the “upside-down” parking lights. The good news is you could have gotten a boattail Diplomat coupe too.
+1.
Upside down headlight clusters
I could never get past the upside-down lights (never cared for them on the ’90s Explorers either), always preferred the front end of the Diplomat (and you could still get most of the LeBaron’s luxury features on the Dip, like the leather interior).
The front on the early version of these is like a 76-79-Seville front end upside down. It throws off a Family Truckster vibe.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/upside-down-headlights-a-brief-and-incomplete-history/
Only ever seen one in the metal,in Blackpool Lancashire!It was a pale blue coupe with a white vinyl roof.Jake and Elwood would love the black beauty!Thanks for another forgotten car
An M-body LeBaron in the UK had to be about as rare as a Citroen DS over here 🙂
You could even get a T-top on one:
*This* exact car, Tom, would be my jam. I think I remember seeing this exact ad in my parents’ old National Geographic. These cars would have been a rational but still beautiful alternative to the newly-uglified-for-’78 Cordoba’s. I like this LeBaron very, very much.
That sculpted deck-lid would have helped the Diplomat/Fifth Ave/Gran Fury be much more attractive. And you are right the overall package is much more handsome than the Versailles.
In 1977, I was convinced that this car would boost Chrysler into the big time. Problem was it was built like everything they made in the late 70s – maybe it would work out, maybe not.
I drove a rental Diplo sedan in 1978. Black, base trim with v8. Fast car.
I worked summers for Hertz around this time (’77-’78) while I was on break from college, and though Hertz specialized in Fords, our location seemed to have a fair share of Dodges (not so much Chrysler). I was a transporter (the guy who moves one-way rental cars from where they were left to the home location), it was a minimum wage (actually ended up less than minimum wage as we were paid by the trip milage not by the hour, and unless you risked speeding tickets which would negate any pay for quite a long time, you got less than $1.65/hour for most trips) and I often picked up Dodge Diplomat versions of this car. I didn’t think if it as a luxury model (like the Seville?) since our location tended to have more meat and potatoes types of cars (Ford LTD II, Thunderbirds, etc). I liked the full instrumentation (Fords usually had minimal instruments) and they drove quite well. These were probably the most popular Dodge cars that they rented from my location (Burlington, Vermont).
Though, my favorite Dodge I got to drive was the Magnum of that era…I didn’t appreciate it as much how rare that experience would be, since we drove Thunderbirds pretty often…but I remember liking the Magnum (but as a poor college student knew I couldn’t buy one)…didn’t realize at the time I was driving a car at the end of an era…my Father owned only one Dodge, but it was a 10 year later K car Dodge 600…otherwise I’d call it my Father’s Dodge). I think I only got to drive the Magnum once or twice….one of them had the then ubiquitous green interior (I think it was a green tweed).
What always seemed puzzling to me was that cash-strapped Chrysler invested in entire new sheet metal from the doors back for it’s M-body coupes for 1980, only to discontinue them after the next year. Seems a bit of a waste.
The tooling lived on in Mexico for a couple more years. This is a 1982.
It’s in some kind of trippy enchanted forest. Did one of the seven dwarves drive a Volare?
Or the Smurfs…
I think his name was “Malaisey”.
Dear God… that’s hideous! I LOVE it!
The new rear body for the M coupes wasn’t just a restyling. The wb was dropped to 108″ (same as Volare and Aspen). The new Cordoba and Mirada became the only coupes on the 112″ wb.
The 108″ M body coupe tooling for Fall 79 intro was probably complete and invoiced to Chrysler many months before it became clear that the company was for practical purposes bankrupt.
these were all over Capital hill in Boston. Every other car was this or a Fairmont,Nova Too. But all Those cheap versions really caught up with the cars reputation. I think that’s why they gussied’ it up even more. The City also bought many AMC Concords at this time. Blue mostly.They could get by with mid sized cars priced like a compact. i cant remember if this was before rebates?
As for it falling into a K car sized hole … LOL. What did he say? I had to look at this point to see who had written this. Again thanks For doing This, I appreciate it.
It is more to my tastes than anything in the Sunday paper. Great article.
Hard To believe that in three years LE Baron would be so thorally re-invented, from this to my beloved Marc cross Convertible.
I’ve lived in Boston and its surrounding areas since 1981, and I have to ask: where is Capital Hill? Do you mean Beacon Hill?
In retrospect, the Lebaron/Diplomat (1977/79) out Granada-ed the Granada/Monarch. Aimed at the same market, the M-body twins offered less baroque styling, actual interior room (with actual space for adults in the back seat), and engines with an actual semblance of horsepower compared to the Ford/Mercury competition. It sure seemed they were screwed together better than their Aspen/Volare siblings. I like the sleeper 1979 pictured-looks like it was possible to order all of the (relatively) hi-po bits & pieces on the basic Lebaron 2-door.
Dad’s company car changed from a 318 ’76 “Small Fury” coupe to one of these, a double-dark red sedan, in ’79. I was six and thought it was awesome. The engine was a six and was not awesome. Dad remembers it as having been strangled by its Lean Burn setup.
One of the most underrated cars of the 70’s. We had several Dips as taxis and they were tough cars. Aside from their Queen Mary turning circle, I loved driving them as the seating position was great and the low cowl made for excellent visibility. I had cop version with 318/4bbl on LPG and it was a really great daily driver; lots of grunt and cheap to run.
In my sleazy used car days, lots of these things came my way. Typically for Mopar they were either excellent or complete crap. By the time I got them, the bad ones were gone. I put several single-mom friends of mine into Super Six Dips, the later ones with the nice interior. Good, solid, comfortable cars that weren’t too expensive to run by the standards of the day.
Oh, gawd. From Volare to the last AMC-built Diplomat…those things were destined to be taxis.
It’s where they really shined. Parked easy; swallowed up groceries well; an adult could get in and out of the back…and best of all, when one was wrecked or driven to collapse, there were no tears shed.
The Waring Blender of the auto world – an absolute appliance. Taxi company owner’s dream.
You gotta give credit where it’s due. I can be, ahem, rather critical of cars I don’t like but the Dip was a good car. It was the last of the overbuilt Chryslers. They were built like tanks but since they were unit body there were just a lot stiffer. The also had real metal stuff that didn’t break, like real seat springs and a real metal dashboard.
On all the cop car Dips we had, and I think that was about six or seven, we never once replaced a transmission or rear end. Not a single time and that is in taxi use. You could rack up astronomical mileage on these things as the important stuff was all very stout. Rebuilding the 318 was cheap and easy and we never did reman engines on them since the cranks never needed to be ground. Just over sized pistons and overhauled heads, new cam and off you went. Two days with the engine in the car. Really an excellent design.
I saw two Volare sedans wind up almost 20 years each as taxicabs. One was rear-ended by a FedEx truck(!) with 450,000 miles, the other was scrapped due to rust with almost 600,000 miles. Yes, it was a slant six. They were a little ratty-looking by the last couple years in service, but they started right up every day!
I thought these were nice looking back then. I like the black sedan pic. How many LeBarons rolled off the assembly line with leather seats AND a moonroof??
My sister bought one just like the black one pictured in the brochure, but with a scarlet red leather interior. When she opened the doors at night, all those courtesy lights (9?) would blaze that interior in to the glory that it was.
I have 79 lebaron medalion dove gray with leather interior and t bar roof has 18000 original miles bought new in 79
As usual, great find!
These, much like the Olds Cutlass, really push all the right buttons for me. Lots of comfort and style without a lot of bulk.
Gotta love those rich Corinthian leather seats on the Lebaron
makes me want to build a pro touring le baron. Imagine it lowered just a bit on a 17 inch steel wheel of the same design with the same style hubcap. Clean black paint with some supportive buckets in the same pleated maroon vinyl material. Maybe a warmed over 5.7 liter hemi and a six cog box. who would ever think it as you blew their doors off in a stock appearing Le Baron. To bad they are all rot boxes here.
Sadly, making the weird transverse-T-bar handle well is really tough. Mostly, because there isn’t much out there for it. I don’t think anyone ever offered heavier torsion bars.
Nicely proportioned but that front end has a face that only a mother could love.
Well, my parents leased one in 1978 and it was junk with a capital J. In Canada, we only got the Medallion version, the top trim. The Diplomats, conversely, were only available in base trim. It was a silver 2 door with red leather guts and stayed nice for about 2 weeks.
It was delivered with missing emblems, loose bolts, etc and it got worse from there. It was a 318 with a 2.45 gear and it was beyond sluggish, it struggled to move because the Lean Burn wasn’t functioning properly. Said Lean Burn also failed repeatedly, leaving you stalled out without warning at random times. Sometimes it would fire up again again sitting, sometimes not. It went back to the dealer numerous times for things I can’t even remember. After 2 tears, a 50 cent piece sized flake of paint departed the quarter panel, leaving scabbly rust. The wiring in the tilt wheel shorted out, leaving us with no cruise or horn. The pin that held the shift lever departed, causing it come off in my dads hand. In the fall of ’80, a wheel bearing failed, causing the front wheel to part company with the rest of the heap. The skimpy 7 1/4″ rear end wore out prematurely.
After the lease went up, he ended up buying it and driving it for 2 more years before buying an ’82 Audi 5000, itself a whole ‘nother story. But you know, a funny thing happened. Between the warranty work, the money we put into it after (including paint touch-up and a great deal on an 8 3/4″ Sure Grip off a wrecked ’80 Volare Road Runner with 3000 miles on it, it actually became a decently running reliable car. My brother took it over, and when he sold it in the fall of ’83 it was in better shape at 5 years old than when it was brand new!.
So you managed to make lemonade out of that lemon. Great story!
That’s kind of how it goes when you put a used car on as a taxi: you kind replace everything in the first three months. Since the aftermarket parts are actually better than OEM, they last longer.
Not anymore, with most of the aftermarket parts coming from the lowest offshore bidder, there are lots of parts that won’t last anywhere near as long as the OE parts.
Yes, so I have heard but in my last service advisor job we could still find good aftermarket stuff. Besides, for stuff like Durango ball joints, it’s hard to imagine that anything could be worse than OEM!
Hi Eric,
I agree with you for the most part, but I remember a couple of cheap items from O’Reilly’s that were better than the OEM.
Brake drums for the ’05 Taurus – it had crap-alloy stock ones that broke during removal. Steel replacements were far better. Front rotors from Mexico were better, too, and didn’t warp ever again. Wheel cylinders for same car, too. In ’05 Ford really cheapened out on this stuff. Oh yeah, transmission, too. The rebuild at 45,000 miles (warranteed, thank goodness) has gone over 120,000 now and functions like new.
Sway bar links for the ’03 Town & Country. Stock ones had nylon ball joints and the replacements were steel and with a larger diameter rod. Nothing else ever broke on that van.
I don’t know about the Avalon yet. It is so overbuilt like a tank I’m not sure better quality parts are possible. It wore out an alternator at 260,000 miles so far.
“In Canada, we only got the Medallion version, the top trim. The Diplomats, conversely, were only available in base trim.”
At the time, IINM, Chrysler had separate networks of Chrysler-Plymouth and Chrysler-Dodge dealers in Canada. This was different from the U.S., where Chrysler and Plymouth were tied together, and Dodge dealers generally did not sell Chryslers.
As the Chrysler brand moved towards selling cars that were smaller and more downmarket, the concern was presumably to avoid having Dodge and Chrysler models that were too close to one another in size and price sitting on the same showroom floor. So Dodge sold only the low-end M-body models from its U.S. lineup, and Chrysler sold only the high-end M-body models from its U.S. model lineup. In the U.S., where only Plymouth shared a dealer network with Chrysler, this problem was solved by simply not having a Plymouth version of the M-body, and letting Chrysler and Dodge each cover the full range.
In Canada, ironically, Plymouth did have an M-body. Since the only Chrysler-badged M-bodies sold in Canada were the high-end version, not having a Plymouth M-body would have left Canadian Chrysler-Plymouth dealers without a full range of M-bodies. This was fixed by selling a Plymouth counterpart to the Canadian Diplomat lineup, called the Caravelle.
Yeah, that’s another thing that went, the ball joints were shot at 50,000 kms.
Those factory alloys in pics 2 and 4 are annoyingly difficult to find in good condition.
How hard is it to find the rims in pic 9?
A set of those came up in my local online classifieds about a month ago.
My parents bought a 1978 sedan, white over cranberry velour, with a cranberry vinyl top. They took it straight from the dealer to Ziebart;sand their slant 6-powered example was still in fine shape when they traded for a LeBaron GTS IN 1986.
I never liked the upside-down lights (agree w/CARMINE’s “Family Truckster” assessment), but otherwise the M-body coupes never really set of my Brougham Barf-o-meter in the same way most of their competitors did. This particular one in black with those hubcaps looks downright badass. Bonus that it has the HD suspension and 360!
There was a beige LeBaron coupe on eBay many years ago that was loaded up with T-Tops, power everything, the poofy seats… and a Slant Six with the 3-speed/OD manual transmission. I thought it was weird/cool that this even existed, and was shocked that these cars ever came with anything but an automatic. The coupes have been a very rare sight for most of my life and it’s been an extremely long time since I’ve seen one outside of a car show.
How is this? It looks to be a lower level caprice (although it does have Comfortron ACC, rear defrost, & FoMoCo hubcaps).
Conceivable that this could’ve been factory ordered in Chrysler’s mortally wounded days since this would’ve been a sure-fired “sold” vehicle ordered, built and paid for that a large, favored dealer could’ve gotten away with. The “hit of miss” Mopars of the late 70’s usually were the “car bank” cars – the ones factory programmers just ‘built’ for busy-work’s sake and to appease the unions. No communication between executives, managers and factory programmers, hence the huge amounts of unsold cars stored (outside) to sit and rot and THEN get delivered to dealers with dealers getting stung with the bill for fixing all of the discrepancies (if they were fixed at all). It was highly likely the ’78 Plymouth Fury station wagon he bought new in the day was one of these. 360 4-bbl, lean-burn and all. It was a rattly POS with ill-fitting panels and trim from day one. So bad, three days later he had second thoughts and wanted to take back the ’74 Country Squire Ford that he traded in for the Plymouth. Too late – his old car was sold within 24 hours.
The infamous Sales Bank. Chrysler had huge lots leased all around the Detroit area with literally acres of new cars parked there – for inventory. The idea had been to smooth out minor ebbs and flows of orders and keep production more constant. But when sales would start to really tank (like in 1974 or 1979) the Sales Bank would balloon. I have read that Sales Bank cars would suffer all kinds of weathering, vandalism, etc. However, I would hesitate to say that all of the non-Sales Bank cars were good ones. They turned lots of shitty cars fresh off the assembly lines too. It turned out that absolutely nobody had the ability to enforce quality, which was always (during the Lynn Townsend era) secondary to production and sales volume. At the end of every month, there would be fire sale tactics to shove as many units out the door and onto the trucks as possible, and anything that had been pulled aside for needing some more attention just got shipped instead. This is probably why my old car-mentor Howard always insisted on buying cars in dealer stock, and never, ever ordered one – because he bought Chryslers! He refused to order because he wanted to see what he was getting, and knew that there was too much chance of a really bad one if he ordered it, and would be stuck with it.
My dad bought mom a new stripper ’79 4 door LeBaron with the Slant Six and TorqueFlight. Boring but reliable and comfortable. Wish we still had it. It was white with a red interior and had an AM radio. No frills for dad.
In general, I detested the Chrysler platforms of the late 1970s, especially the Diplomat. I see this, though, and I am positively smitten. Everything about this works, for me. Beautiful car.
I also grew up around a ’79 LeBaron, much like the one runningonfumes described. Exactly the same colors,but it was the mid-level Salon trim, slightly better equipped and also had a red vinyl roof. I’m not 100% sure since I was only 7 when my parents bought it, but I believe it had the 318. I do remember for certain that it had a/c and it’s the first car I can remember my parents buying with a factory am/fm radio.
The M-bodies definitely are as roomy as everyone else has attested. When I was 9, six of us (my immediate family and grandparents) piled into the LeBaron and drove from New Jersey down to Maryland to visit some relatives, and I don’t remember anyone complaining about a lack of space.
On the rare occasions one of these pops up on ebay or craigslist, I’m somewhat tempted to pursue it, but I’m always scared off by the Lean Burn and it’s attendant headaches.
I hated it when the U.S. went to downsizing on the auto lines here. That is until I saw what they came out with. Chrysler Le Baron was my favorite of the new “Internayional” size sedans, specifically because of the unusual grille configuration, then moving right into the formal lines and dress of the Medallion series.
But I liked the other nameplates as well, such as Lincoln Versailles, Cadillac Seville, Dodge Diplomat, Mercury Monarch, Ford Granada etc. I was always amazed at how Detroit was able to design so much comfort and luxury in packages almost half the size of their ancestors! But again, Le Baron.. my favorite. I will most likely source one out doe my purchase by spring 2014.
My first car was a 1979 Chrysler lebaron and I loved it! I would love to find and buy another one, unfortunately they are pretty hard to find and when you do find them they are junk. It takes a special kind of person to love a 79 lebaron enough to take care of it the way it deserves…. Unfortunately I realized that I was that kind of person about 18 months after I sold mine. Sigh.
hello my name is caroline and is my lebaron
I co-own a ’79 LeBaron with my brother in law. It’s a tan two door with the 318 and an automatic. I’ve been fighting the lean burn system for close to a year now. I live out in Tucson, so things last a bit better. I know of three Diplomats, (one a two door), and a couple Gran Furys. But I’ve only seen my LeBaron on the road..
Tom Klockau, there is a salvage yard out here by the name of A.C.S. run by a chap named Myron. He has aT&C wagon that is close to complete. Though it’s been sitting for a number of years, and I know its relieved of the carburetor, everything else looks to be there. The same guy also has a four door LeBaron, but it’s quite a bit worse off.
What a trip down memory lane! In 1981 I bought my first car, 1979 Chrysler LeBaron Medallion, red metallic with red landau vinyl roof, opera windows and coach lamps!, red leather interior, power everything, 8-track, deep dish alloy wheels AND the smoked glass T-tops. It was the dealers personal car and was untitled until I bought it. I used to get so many compliments on that car. Unfortunately the car did not age well. I was in Miami Florida and the sun dried out the T-top rubber quickly and wound up sealing them shut with silicone caulk! The sun also did a great job on “burning” the dashboard. After moving to the Chicago area in 1982 the plastic buttons on the A/C unit would freeze in winter and then pressing a button would break the mechanism in the unit and you couldn’t get the unit to do what you wanted, especially the defrosters!
While I was still in Miami a friend and I took off the T-tops and traveled to the Miami “Metro Zoo?” Being in the Sunshine state I was wearing shorts. But when we arrived there I had to PEEL myself off of the leather and left a layer of skin from my upper thighs on the seats!
In a perfect world I would have a 1981 Chrysler LeBaron Fifth Avenue Limited Edition, in perfect condition!!!
I own a 79 Lebaron w/ red interior and a white top,I just think that the Lebaron are a great looking car.
Nice car. Never saw one of these with hubcaps. Wonder if they’re real Chrysler equipped? I imagine with a 4bbl, hd suspension and posi, this certainly could have been a police package car.
Mopar owners like those police hubcaps with all the holes drilled into them. I never saw one of the coupes equipped that way
What a good looking car, and so refreshing from the usual crowd of Camaros, Chevelles, GTOs and Novas, and ’32 Ford Highboys that seem almost ubiquitous at every car show. I’ve never seen a two-door sans vinyl top, standard interior, and certainly not with the Police-spec steel wheels. These are quite rare and to spot any LeBaron or Diplomat from this era is quite a treat indeed.
A Chrysler LeBaron police car? Yes…in certain years when Plymouth had no suitable car (there was no Plymouth R-body full-size car in 1979, for example), the Chrysler marque was the Chrysler-Plymouth police car. The Plymouth Volare and Dodge Aspen were discontinued after the 1980 model year; they had been the basis for Mopar’s midsize patrol cars since 1977, and Dodge picked right up with the 1981 M-body Diplomat. But there was no Plymouth successor (at least in the USA; didn’t Canada have the Caravelle?) so the C-P midsize police car was the LeBaron. In 1982, Plymouth got the M-body as its Gran Fury, and that was C-P’s squad until discontinuance after the 1989 model year. Both Chrysler-Plymouth and Dodge offered the A38 police package with virtually any trim and interior (the brass need nicer cars than the patrol officers, you know); so a two-door LeBaron police package car was indeed possible, straight from the St. Louis MO assembly plant. Even with a Slant Six.
So this car actually could have come off the line that way. If the build plate under the hood includes the code “A38,” it was built as a police car.
I bought a burgundy Medallion Coupe as a used car in 1983. Worst
POS I ever owned. Time and space do not permit me to list all the things that went wrong. Fortunately, I was able to sell it and get most of my money back. Pretty car, but terrible reliability.
Chrysler F-bodies (and early M-bodies), were notorious for front suspension rattles. I still remember a late 70s LeBaron coupe, and a Volare wagon that passed my parent’s home every weekday morning. There was a brief section of gravel roadway than routinely became washboard-like when not regularly graded. And both those almost new cars made fierce metallic rattles from the front end passing over the rough stretch, at any speed above 20 mph or so. So much so, each driver would let up the gas, when passing over the rough surface. Granted, the surface was pavement hard and rough. Proving grounds rough. But coil sprung cars seemed to take the repeated bumps much better that those torsion bar sprung cars. The Chrysler’s sounding embarrassingly cheap. Even if the ride was tolerable.
I do think owner maintenance neglect (or abuse), may have been a factor. As the LeBaron always appeared driven hard. Nevertheless, these cars were less than 3-4 years old from new. The new transverse torsion bar design perhaps contributed to the tendency to make the rattling noise, compared to the traditional longitudinal torsion bar design.
Replying to my own post: I just checked online, and loose lower shock absorber mount bolt(s) may have been the issue. It must have been common on the Aspen/Volare. As I heard many with that similar rattle.
The sheet metal creases on the sides are very reminiscent of the Monte Carlo.
I’m sure that is a coincidence, though.
Wow, that is a sharp car! The baby moons work on it because it is devoid of most of the brougham-y stuff. White-letter Radial T/As would look great for the sporty look.
The silver car is gorgeous, except for the wide-whitewalls. But the alloys are beautiful. Put Radial T/As on it, too.
In fact just put them on everything, including the remastered Hall And Oates Fiero.
Ooh, yeah!
Thanks for retrieving my lost comment.
You’re welcome!
Comment vanished.
Me sad now.😞
I will reread Daniel Stern’s french comment to cheer up.
And look at Lt. Dan’s badass cars, including the ’83 GP that I still want and will ask him about buying come next tax-time in March, if he still has it.
Seriously.
These Lebarons are great looking cars. I especially like that black coupe. These cars were given ingrediants from some of the most popular cars of the times. The rear quarter panel….Monte Carlo……The rear end………Grand Prix…………the front end Seville. If not that black coupe……….I’ll take the Fifth……avenue!!
I always liked the way these looked and the engines/transmissions were stout. It was the driving dynamics, steering, Lean Burn and hit and miss quality control that kept me away from ever getting one. That and they all rotted out rather prematurely in Upstate, NY snow belt area. My late uncle had a 1980 LeBaron woody wagon with the powerhouse 120 HP 318 and swore to never buy a Chrysler ever again. It never seemed to run right, the exterior trim around the woodgrain was misaligned and coming apart, the A/C quit during one very hot Summer and it suffered various electrical and interior issues and had very poor MPG and sluggish performance. He switched to Ford thereafter and fared better.
The 80 would have been engineered under the old regime and launched right about the time Lee Iacocca took over in late summer of 1979. The R body launch a year earlier had been a complete disaster, so it is amazing that these didn’t have a rougher start in general. At least much of the mechanical stuff was carryover. I think the 81 models (even more rare) got a better rep. OTOH my mother’s 80 Horizon (by then in its 3rd year of production) was a pretty good car for the five years she kept it. But it was a persistent fuel odor that pushed her to trade. But yeah, there was a reason Chrysler almost went under that year.
I think the LeBaron was a smart addition for Chrysler’s 1977 lineup. It was more upscale than the Aspen/Volare on a longer 112.7” wheelbase, yet not ridiculously overpriced like the Seville and Versailles. I thought the parking lights on top looked a bit weird, but it did provide a unique identifier. The Coupe was handsome – still remember an elderly lady’s white LeBaron Coupe parked in a carport facing Lake Monona in Madison WI across the street from me back in the early ‘80’s.
While the waterfall grill was nice, I thought the 1980 Coupe lost its charm when it was plopped on a shorter 108.7” wheelbase (sedan & wagon retained the 112.7” wheelbase). I pretty much lost interest in these post 1980 cars except for looking out for Dodge Diplomat Police Cruisers.
In solid maroon, a late 1970’s LeBaron coupe was the last new car my Social Studies-8th Grade homeroom teacher Mr. Ricketts bought and drove to the end. As a life-long Plymouth two door hardtop coupe buyer, the dealer had to upgrade him to a Chrysler since there were no more two door Plymouths to fit the bill. In this old age, I’m sure he found the LeBaron a good deal easier to manage after a life of full-sized Plymouths. One year in the 1980’s, Mr. Ricketts passed on and his LeBaron disappeared, it was the end of an era.
I purchased this car, and had it for 6 years, unfortunately it caught fire. It was total loss. It was fun while I had it. It got more attention at the local drive in car show then all the Mustangs and Camaros.
Enjoyed reading all the comments… In Sept 1978, I was 29 and took the plunge and ORDERED my first brand new car.. a 79 LeBaron Medallion coupe. .. power windows, 318. wire hubcaps. Very similar to photo 3 at the beach. Mine was white with beautiful green/aqua leather and landau. The entire interior was green/aqua including the carpet dash, and headliner…It had the optional ”sport 3 spoke steering wheel” ..in matching aqua. …even the floor mats. it was like being in beautiful water. The interior was deluxe with plenty of chrome and nice fake wood that looked really great at night when you opened the door and all the interior lights came on. The long white hood was visible as we drove in comfort and relative silence. Drove it for 9 years and 120k miles. Got divorced in 81 so it was still rather new and gals liked it. I wanted a Riviera but didn’t have budget for it, so I simply kept the LeBaron. Loved that car. Took good care of it but Ohio rust caught up with it. Even had the driver’s seat recovered in OEM matching vinyl. On the last day the interior was almost perfect. Sold it to people who chain smoked…. saw them driving it and nearly cried….
2 years ago I found The same car in red / red leather with white landau… crank windows and plain ”deluxe” wheel covers. 55K mile beautiful survivor… Then, bought from ebay a nice set of OEM wire hubcaps which changed it COMPLETELY. … chrome pedal trim, (that makes a huge difference in how car’s interiors look) and correct power window switches. Still need to change it over.
I have sort of lost interest in it… it’s a lot of red….. it drives fine. but not by today’s standards. A/C loses charge…
Buying cars used to be fun because there were so many choices of colors and options without being forced to buy a ”package” to get one thing.
It is enjoyable, but it doesn’t make me 30 again…..
I may take it to Mopar weekend at Gilmore Museum in Michigan this Summer.
I have a 79 LeBaron coupe with the slant 6. About to restore it. Set in a garage for 29 years! In great shape!
Have to find a back window though.
I have a 79 medallion t top. Love cruising around in it. Only 79 thousand miles on it too.