At the recent Geneseo car show I ran across a rare bird indeed. How rare? How about a 1989 Dodge Omni with less than 30K on the clock? And get your wallets ready, L-body fanciers, because it’s for sale.
These things used to be everywhere. But until I saw this silver time capsule, the last time I’d seen one of these was at the local junkyard, about three months ago. One on the road? I honestly can’t remember. It has certainly been a while.
The interior was equally mint. You can click on the picture to read the For Sale sign better, but it says this car has only 29,600 miles on it. Wow.
I think the price is high enough to keep this car safe from someone buying it cheap and then destroying it. I really can’t blame the owner for pricing it as he or she did. I hope the new owner keeps it up, because these things have got to be rare in this kind of shape!
These were all over Northern IL and Chicagoland, since the plant was in Belvedere IL. Now home of the new Dart!
For years, an elderly couple down the street had two cars – a late 80s Civic wagon, and an early (1978 or 79) Omni sedan – with the woodgrain sides. The car supposedly had really low miles – certainly under 30K. It was the wife’s and she hardly ever drove. After the husband passed away, it was sold but the Honda stayed in the garage. I never got a good look at it, but it was really, really clean when viewed from the street.
The tin worm feasted on these back-in-the-day…otherwise they had a roach-like ability to soldier on, even with plumes of blue smoke depending on the engine.
I think I need to make a phone call…
I can’t believe that my dad went cross-shopping the Spanish version of this car (At the time, Talbot Horizon, grupo Peugeot-Citroën) in 1983 against an Opel Corsa TR. He got the Corsa (which would merit a long article itself) instead. Why such a different car? Price.
I remember that I blamed on my father the long family summer trips with a non A/C car without rear windows, and we drove nearly 1000km! “Papa, the Horizon had rear doors!”
Here it could be ordered with the awesome 1.9 liter Peugeot diesel engine codenamed XUD, good for 65hp (check period test from 1984 at http://www.pruebas.pieldetoro.net/web/pruebas/ver.php?ID=240)
But they looked awesome as Police cars back when I was a child!!!
The sad thing is, I’ve seen similar cars almost as nice as this sitting in my local pick-n-pull yard that were obviously well cared for and sporting a number of fresh replacement parts. Most likely due to the former owner having stopped driving or having passed away, and the family just donated it to charity. In my area, even the local used car lots won’t touch anything like this, no matter how nice, so the junkyards end up being the high bidders at the wholesale auctions.
And this one has a stick as well – that’s really rare!
If it weren’t for the stick, I’d be all over this.
I still want one but they are pretty damn rare where I am.
Why, in God’s name, would you want one of these with the automatic. It was a terrible 3-speed box. You’d have to rev the engine to 4,000rpm to do 70 with it.
Much more useful with a 5-speed.
Why don’t you wind your neck in a little and think before you post? Just because YOU think a stick is the be all and end all perhaps you might consider that some of us have a legitimate NEED for an automatic transmission.
Have you never seen a war veteran with missing limbs?
Even if the commenter is able-bodied, it is none of YOUR concern if he WANTS an automatic transmission.
Why is the internet so full of people trying to impose their way of thinking on everyone else?
And, yes, I do get the irony that I am doing something somewhat of the same nature. LOL
Its a cheapo, no air and a stick. I wish it was one of the early “broughamy” Omnis with the whitewalls and fender tip turn signal indicators like a little Aspen…..or a GLH.
It looks just like my mom’s ’85 Omni that she put into a ditch after only 2 years. The Sundance Turbo she got afterwards was much better. Still, a great find. My sister-in-law had one about 10 years ago when her daughter was starting to drive…that’s the last time I saw a functional Omni.
I think we got these with Talbot badging in the last gasp of Chryslers death rattle not sure as I havent seen an example in eons.
Ouch! “My” first car, meaning my parents’ ’87 Horizon was the car available for me. Same color inside and out, stick, mine had a/c. An easy car to diss, but I remember driving my friends’ (parents’) Escorts and Cavaliers, and my ride was roomier and more solid than those, with surprisingly good seats, and reasonably quick with the 2.2. Just the thing to inspire daydreams of REAL Mopars: Road Runners, Chargers, Furys, Imperials…
We laugh about the Cimarron, but can you imagine an Imperial based on an Omni? Talk about the “small Chrysler!”
Well, the New Yorker was based for a time on the K-car, so that’s really not such a stretch…. shades of the Chevette-based “Cadette” the other day.
By the way, I shared that link on Facebook with some car club folks and you’d be surprised how many fell for it!
Continuing on the CPA theme, at the firm I worked for a tax season in 1985, one of the partner’s son drove an Omni. A bare bones model, the Omni made my base Camaro look like a Cadillac. The boss’s son was the type of guy who wore a heavy Harris tweed jacket in July. His Dad drove a Chrysler sedan.
The other partner drove a beat up 79 Eldorado. He told me he bought old Eldos and drove them into the ground. He chained smoked cigarettes and must be dead by now. I rode to lunch one day with him; he had a dozen cartons in the back seat.
Fast forward to a couple years ago. The financially strapped golf club I belong to needed to consult with a current (I’m retired) accountant. The guy did in fact drive a big BMW sedan. I helped to answer his inquiries, looked up documents, and assisted him. For his four hour professional services, he received $ 750, lunch, coffee and soft drinks.
I received a hamburger and a coffee, period.
One of these lives in my town and I see it occasionally. Rusty, beat-up, interior full of trash (when I’ve seen it at the local convenience store), but it’s still chugging around town.
I had a couple in college–Dad worked for Chrysler and could get the base model cheap on an employee lease (I know, I didn’t know how good I had it). They had a decent amount of room, had a comfortable ride, and got good gas milage. Just the thing for the 15 hour drive from Michigan to college in Rhode Island!
Who brings this to a car show?
At a car show full of the typical faire this summer, somebody had an immaculate brown ’77 Olds Cutlass Supreme Brougham…sedan. Every option but the vinyl top (go figure). Who saves a car like that? Somebody awesome, that’s who. Conversely, what chucklehead bought that over an identically sized/priced Delta 88 in 1977?
Honestly, I love it when mint oddballs like these appear at shows. The guy who always puts his dirty, ragged out six cylinder Granada sedan on display at my local July 4th car show? Not so much.
^This. You can only tolerate so many resto-mod Mustangs, Camaros, Chevelles, and shoebox Chevys so it’s quite refreshing to see what was once commonplace, everyday rides in well-preserved condition.
Give me a nice, sixties’, strippo, six-cylinder Valiant sedan anyday.
I wonder how many guys have been talked out of keeping or doing up a car they like because it is not a coupe/hardtop/Mustang/whatever.
This car looks to be in immaculate condition and while the price is undoubtedly high, when you consider there is not only the usual work that doesn’t need doing, but the car doesn’t have the normal level of deterioration that will rear its head over the next few years. You pay more in advance but save down the line.
The tri-Chevys, the Camaros, ‘Stangs, ‘Vettes, resto-mods? Boring to me. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.
At the cruise-ins and car shows I spend all my time looking for what would now be “oddballs.” The owners of them usually have interesting stories as to why they have that car.
Of course, this is coming from someone that has a Chevy Citation X-11.
For a couple of years before the AMC buyout, Omnirizons (and M bodies) were assembled in Kenosha under contract. They were everywhere. I still see them around town occasionally, including a dark red Horizon that took a pretty hard shunt to the rear end but is still on the road.
The Omni in my avatar began life as a strippo model like this one. One GLHS drivetrain swap later and it was an amazing machine.
$3500 is quite a bit high even for this sweet example. I’m going to hold out for a real GLHS.
Wow, nice find!
Back in 1983 my dad brought home for my mom a 1980 Omni to replace our well worn 1972 Impala. It was a four-speed stick, no AC and AM radio. Mom had to learn how to drive it.
I remember that winter when my uncle was killed in a train-car accident in Bowling Green, OH we had to travel down there to be with my aunt, so I spent most of my Christmas break there. When it was time to head back to Michigan, my aunt decided to come back for a while too. She had my other aunt to drive her while she sat in the back and held her dog, who wasn’t used to traveling in a car. My aunt had a 1977 LTD sedan. Well, once we got on the highway, my aunt was in the lead car and my mom and I were following behind in the Omni. Every time we would get to around 60 mph, the transmission would pop out of gear! My mom started flashing her lights hoping that my aunt would pull over but instead she would just go faster!
At one point we came upon a convoy of school buses. What did my aunt do? She floored that LTD and took off! Poor mom did all she could to try and keep that little Omni moving, including trying to hold the shift lever so that it wouldn’t pop out-it didn’t help. My aunt finally pulled over, when we got to our exit in Michigan! She told my mom, “Oh, I thought that maybe Richard just needed to go the bathroom and figured he could just wait!” Thanks Aunt Jackie….(I was eight at the time)
Dad took the car to the dealer and they said it had some kind of a bent shaft in the transmission and that it would cost a lot to fix it. Dad decided instead to get rid of it. By February it was replaced with a 1982 Dodge Aries, another story for another day…
But I still think these cars have their charms.
My Mom bought an 80 Horizon at the other end of the scale. Two tone (navy over silver blue), velour, auto, air and stereo. It was a very nice little car. In fact, the sound from the stereo was MUCH nicer than from the stereo from the 74 Luxury LeMans that she traded on the Horizon.
Ours was not bad on the highway, and I recall that the seats were pretty decent (though certainly not of the quality I had become used to in a 77 New Yorker). She did have some issues with it, the door handles would freeze and break if you pulled too hard, and she traded it when she kept getting a gasoline oder in the car that the dealer could not find. Once she had moved on to a Crown Victoria, she never looked back at that Horizon again.
Door handles and locks seem to have been a weak point with the L-bodies, especially in cold weather. I had repeated problems with them on the ’85 Plymouth Turismo that I owned from 1989-95, and I knew a few other people who had similar experiences with Omnis or Horizons. It was a good thing most of the L-bodies were hatchbacks (all except the Rampage/Scamp), so there was still one “door” you could get into the car through….
My mother did at least one “hatch entry” into her Horizon due to frozen door locks/handles. I was in college and was quite impressed that my mom in her nurse’s uniform was spry enough to crawl from the hatch to the drivers seat.
I owned an L-Body variant, an ’85 Plymouth Turismo, from April 1989 (age 18) to February 1995 (age 24). Every once in a while, my wife used to catch me looking in the direction of a used Turismo or Charger with a “For Sale” sign, and she’d give me a stern “No!”. That hasn’t happened for a long time; they are a rare sight here today in Massachusetts. I do see a few regular Omnis and Horizons running around, but not many.
One of my babysitters in about 1986-88 had a gray Turismo or Charger (pretty sure it was the Plymouth version) with the gray cloth interior. I rode in it a couple times and thought it was a neat car. I haven’t seen one on the road in years.
I still see Omnis & Horizons in service as faithful beaters somewhat regularly… the Charger/Turismo variants are now extremely uncommon, though.
Always liked these a lot and think they’ve been unfortunately overlooked by history. Good performance, great functionality, solid mechanically… one of the first truly competent modern American small cars.
Here’s one I pass by at work all the time. It has a less ridiculous looking (but equally clapped out) twin a few blocks north. This car’s grille is a red milk crate…
History didn’t really forget these. Look at the comments involving these on any other site that they happen to be mentioned in. You’ll see the same pattern in the comments.
“This car was so bad…”
“It spat out a headlight and killed my Hamster”
“Last American car my _______ ever owned”
And on and on..
The few that I’ve been fortunate enough to own all had 100k+ on the clock by time I got my paws on them and outside of some maintenance items that were neglected by previous owners they were great little cars.
Had a ’79 that I bought around 1989, with the 1.7 VW engine and a stick. Paid $850 for it, so a bargain compared to the featured car. Clutch was pretty worn and there was a touch of blue smoke, but otherwise solid and rust-free (a rarity in western PA). Drove that puppy for a couple years. I was spending most of my time in France during that period, and wanted something that I wouldn’t fret about leaving sitting somewhere for a couple months at a time.
Link to a photo I posted to the Cohort a while back:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42561499@N00/7376948252/in/photostream
Love it, and if I had $3500 to take a flyer on something I’d seriously think about it. Omnirizons were the driver training cars of choice for the Keystone AAA Driving School when I went for my license during Ronald Reagan’s second term. Driving up the innermost express lane of Roosevelt Boulevard (the 12 lane section of US1 cutting through Philadelphia) at the 35 MPH limit while angry commuters whizzed past at 60 and the instructor in the shotgun seat told me to “keep her steady and do the limit” gave me an appreciation for these little boxes.
I’ve always liked L-bodies. Between driving school, my unrequited love whose parents gave her a new ’87 Horizon America as a Christmas gift, and the sheer number of them that plied the streets and belonged to my friends’ parents back in the day, just seeing pictures of a nice one brings back a lot of memories. I’d love to find a good one to put in my garage just for the hell of it, maybe an end-of-the-line 1990 sedan with a driver’s airbag just for novelty’s sake.
A ’90 L-body with the airbag would be a real find. When I was in 8th grade or so, one of the other kids’ dads worked for the local AM radio station. Several times, he drove one of the station cars, which was a ’89 Diplomat or Gran Fury with WOC 1420 logos on the sides and the one-year-only air bag. It’s the only one I’ve ever seen, with the exception of a couple of M-body Fifth Avenues.
A Talbot Horizon (Europe) the car I learned to drive in.
An older gentleman in my neighborhood has one of these in white – good shape. Just don’t get behind him – he drives about 25 mph – EVERYWHERE.