William Rubano found an increasingly rare car on the streets, the R-Body 1979-1981 Chrysler New Yorker. It’s a car that was never a common sight, even when new, which of course was its downfall: it was a sales dud. Arriving right at the beginning of the second energy crisis and the subsequent brutal recession was the kiss of death. About 74,000 of these were built in its three years, which is a pittance for such a big market.
I was not a fan when they were new; the clumsy rear opera window within a window instantly turned me off. But as I look at it now, and try to get past that detail, it’s a pretty handsome—if highly derivative—interpretation of the big American car. And for a downsized-era car, it is pretty big: 221.5″ long, or the same as the Buick Electra.
The GM C-Bodies had rather different proportions. Their front doors were a bit short, given that they were shared with the B-Bodies. And their rear doors were of course longer. The R-Body’s doors are more evenly proportioned. And it looks a bit more…substantial, and a bit less “downsized” than the GM cars.
The New Yorker’s basic shape reminds me more of the Ford and Mercury, but it’s decidedly better, as it’s considerably longer and its proportions are more attractive. And the Chrysler’s wheels and tires are nice and chunky.
The lower-trim Newport is obviously more to my liking, with its unadulterated rear door. But then that makes it look a bit generic too.
It reminds me a bit too much of this. I have a touch of PTSD about them, even if they were all-too easy to outrun. For 1980, the 360 V8 was replaced by a 155 hp 318 V8 4-bbl with California emissions to comply with state emissions regulations. CHP officers found out the hard way that the top speed of the Dodge was now reduced to below 100 mph (some say little or no more than 85) when fitted with a lightbar, or some 65 mph on a grade. No wonder the CHP bought Mustang HO coupes the next year.
But I’m veering off the highway and onto the shoulder…
With its hidden headlights open, the front end of the New Yorker is not showing its best face. Makes it look a bit mean. In a sort of good way, actually.
Reminds more than a bit of this, the 2006 Chrysler Imperial concept.
Its rear end is not its best end. A bit plain yet still a bit fussy. As if they were trying too hard to add some visual interest.
This is where I get off. No can do.
I’m not a big fan of these brougham interiors, but that’s just me. I was obviously too deprived of them as a child, thus it’s not been imprinted on me.
More of these two.
Speaking of more recent Chryslers, this is a fine pairing. The last of the old school RWD Chryslers, and the first of the new school RWD Chryslers. And how much longer will the 300 be with us?
Related reading:
CC 1981 Chrysler New Yorker: Failure Can Be Beautiful B. Saur
CC 1979 Chrysler New Yorker: Chrysler’s Deadly Sin #3 PN
CC 1979 Chrysler Newport T. Klockau
CC 1981 Chrysler Newport J. Shafer
Nice original condition. I like the wheel option as well. There is a beige 5th Avenue running around here that is far more weathered, but these are really a rare sight.
Agree that the proportions are the best of the others compared (GM and Ford). It would be perfect if the front wheels would have been a bit more forward, reducing the too large front overhang.
Ahh the 300. Every year we are pleasantly surprised it is still available. It can be chopped every minute now it seems. If that happens, what is the purpose of having Chrysler as a make? Just for a people carrier? It does surprise me that Stellantis (not a name to remember easily, I had to look it up) let this happen. How come there are no future plans? Chrysler as a make still have some meaning for most people, makes me sad to see it disappearing.
My aunt bought a brand new ’79 New Yorker. It was the nicest brand new car she ever owned, but she had a lot of mechanical problems with it. It left her stranded more than once. It was white with red leather. I thought it was an attractive car but I never bought a Chrysler product due to her situation.
I think the overall look of the New Yorker is more graceful than its GM and Ford counterparts of this era. Although my mother bought a brand new Electra 225 sedan in 1977 and it was a nice car.
I found the Fifth Avenue the best of the lot, but by default because the basic model was so plain. I tried and tried to like the basic R but as you note there is just no visual interest on the plain version. I think the proportions work best on the Fifth Avenue because the car just screams out for a thicker C pillar than what it got, and the FA gives at least that illusion.
Chrysler would have sold a lot of these if they had just hung on and gotten through 1981-82. By 1984 this was a profitable segment. But then so were minivans. 🙂
These were extremely gaudy looking cars. The base Newport, Dodge St. Regis, and even the Plymouth Gran Fury looked better due to the lack of gingerbread.
Back in the day, Chrysler offered many seat designs and sew patterns in the cars. It’s interesting to note that the base New York had a plainer seat design (non tufted /non pillows), but when it was ordered with leather, the seats were tufted pillows (as the picture above). But, the top of the line Fifth Avenue Edition had leather seats in the same design as the base New Yorker’s non tufted / non pillow cloth seats. I wonder why the base New Yorker, when ordered with leather, had the fancier seats?
While kind of a nice looking car (but with way too much gingerbread), these things always bothered me:
1.) The landau roof treatment, trying to make a 4 door car look like a 2 door car.
2.) When the windows were down and you opened the rear doors, the opera window was sticking up on the door and the rest of the door had no window frame
3.) Those really weird plastic end caps on the bumpers, which protruded from the sides of the car.
4.) The base New Yorker had an opera lamp, while the Fifth Avenue Edition was supposed to have a special lighted quarter window. I never saw any of those quarter windows light up.
Just last week, a friend of mine forwarded me the picture below of an R-Body Virginia State Police Cruiser. These really looked natural as police vehicles, much more so than as civilian cars.
And it seems to me that about three-quarters of the R-Body New Yorkers I’ve ever seen have been in a cream color; it’s quite a treat to see this two-tone example here.
Me again. Since reading this entry this morning, I’ve been obsessing over these cars. After looking at the brochures from 1979-81, I’ve found some more interesting things about these Chryslers.
First of all, the interior trims changed for 1981.Now the New Yorker’s seats were the same non tufted / non pillow style in either cloth or leather. The Fifth Avenue Edition’s cloth seats kind of look like the Newports, but the leather ones were now the tufted pillow style of the 79-80 New Yorkers. Therefore, today’s subject car is actually a 1981 model.
The 1981 brochure also mentions an optional “carriage roof”, complete with stainless steel front roof cap, special frenched in backlight, special moldings, etc. If you look carefully at the car on the cover of the brochure, it has this option.
I’ve never seen this in person… I did a quick google search and BINGO ! Found some pics .I didn’t think Chrysler could make a gaudy car even gaudier. For some reason, the stainless steel roof cap looked much better on the Eldorado Biaritz’s of the day.
The grille and steering wheel are 1981-only as well. In both cases the 1979-80 treatment looked better.
This was one of the first modern American made automobiles I saw in China when I was a kid. Another one was the mid-70 Ford Granada sedan operated by probably US special envoy in Beijing then. Before the late 40s American cars and trucks were those left over after the civil war. Occasionally we also saw few early 50 US models captured in Korean war. The Chrysler New Yorker I recall was black four-door model, often parked in a government organization dealing with rare earth metal trading in Canton in early 80s. How it gotten in China was mystery because back then China had a very restrictive regulation on importing stuff especially automobiles, and then China both governments and private people were very poor although the country was opening up. First impression of that car was BIG, but nice looking depending on your taste, but everyone would agree that it was not match for the Crown and Cerdic sedans we saw more often running around. Those two looked nice and fashionable in comparison with this big American sedan. One of my family friends pointed out it was from a car company in brink of bankruptcy — I didn’t know the trouble of Chrysler was in then.
An R-body Chrysler in China? That’s unimaginable. I know there are still few M-Body models running in China, also K-car derivatives, but R-Body is just beyond my imagination.
However I do came across an AMC Ambassador pictured in China and the locals had no clue what it is, beyond it is a large car made in the US. I tried to explain it is American Motors, well, American. But it is American Motors and yes it is American, AMC.
The attached review shows just how many problems you could encounter when buying one.
I did not realize that this New Yorker was almost a half ton lighter than the previous generation.
Oof…… the next week’s test car was the Olds 98 Diesel, about the only car that would make this test-car New Yorker look good.
I think the key difference is that the problems with the Olds only turned up later. At first brush, the Oldsmobiles acquitted themselves pretty well. In contrast, the problems that surfaced during this New Yorker test were horrendous. Hard to believe anybody would have been willing to buy one after seeing this. I too remember the peeling chrome bumpers that surfaced after just a few years. A shame since I thought these pretty attractive when they were introduced. Especially the less glitzy Newports.
I believe that the emergency flasher that wouldn’t stay pushed in was meant to be pulled out, or at least the ones on my some of my family’s Mopars functioned that way. I don’t remember the one on the 1979 for some reason.
The problems encountered sound absurd today, but it took mainstream acceptance of the best Japanese brands for return trips to the dealer to sort out a new car’s flaws to stop being the norm.
Considering when this was filmed, I wouldn’t expect much criticism of the Oldsmobile Diesel due to be tested next. Depending on the climate where a buyer lived, it often took more than a year for an Oldsmobile Diesel to reveal the shortcuts taken by gm.
“Our standard suite of test luggage.” This is oddly mesmerizing.
This was the final and unrecognizable iteration of what began as the 1962 Plymouth/Dodge, hastily shrunken as a result of an overheard and misunderstood cocktail party conversation. Chrysler got a lot of years out of that platform, though it got renamed along the way, as they also did later from the 1976 F-body!
Regular readers know that the “cocktail party” myth is just that. Paul pretty much explained why the 1962 look like they do and there was nothing hasty or cocktail party about it.
How many names do you need for a car? Chrysler New Yorker Fifth Avenue Edition. So is it a New Yorker, or a Fifth Avenue? No wait, it’s both! I am surprised they didn’t fit LeBaron in there too somewhere.
I can’t figure out why that 300 has its hood unlatched. Mysteries of the world.
I never noticed the door length differential on the Buick. I’ll have to watch to see if I can find one to see it live.
I thought these were a decent effort from ChryCo, but you just knew that it would never compete with the General.
Chatting with a CHP officer in the early 80’s while he was parked at an autocross site, he confirmed his 318 Dodge would not go over 85 on a flat highway, but asked me not to tell anyone. I think it’s been long enough, I can share it now.
My 1980 Dodge St. Regis squad with light bar did do 100 but it took the closed-down runway at Hamilton Air Force Base to prove it…and some tweaking by one of our administrators, a Car Guy.
But I preferred the 1979 Plymouth Volaré with a 360 though the St. Regis was quieter and rode better but still cornered like something that big shouldn’t.
Wow if the 155 HP 4 BBL 318 was so bad it couldn’t even get to a 100 MPH I would hate to think what the civilian 2 BBL 120 HP in 1980 and 130 HP thereafter versions were like. My Consumer Guide Auto test series has them well over 15 second 0-60 cars which was a few seconds slower than my 1981 Cutlass LS with the hardly sparkling 231 V6! They also called these cars out for being noisy and clumsy handling with sub par MPG and rated them below the GM and Ford competition which I fully agree with. I remember looking at these cars new in the dealer lots with dad in 1981 and noting with my 11 year old eyes that the plastic trim surrounding the bumpers was already starting to ripple on many examples. The 1979’s were really bad with chrome peeling off the bumpers and I remember being able to put my finger through a gap in the frame-less door glass on a few cars sitting in the used lot.
The other memory I have was when working at a corner gas station repair shop during high school working on a 1981 Plymouth version of these cars the Grand Fury. It had the 85 HP hydraulic lifter Slant six and optioned with A/C, cruise control and a pretty nice interior with divided seats. It was in for brake work which necessitated a test drive to set the rear drum brakes and make sure everything was okay. It was the slowest car I have every driven to date and so lazy and unresponsive. I remember asking the elderly owner if she wanted us to make sure it was tuned up and she proceeded to pull out a full bill from the Chrysler dealer detailing a recent plug, wire, rotor and timing check on the car. I can’t have imagined how that car was before the alleged tune up!
“It was in for brake work ”
With the slant six in that car, it’s hard to imagine that the brakes were much needed. 🙂
These New Yorkers hit all the styling good points that I love in classic American cars. Full width tail lights…. or at least the look of full width. Hidden headlights. Tufted leather. Substantial appearance but without the Mitchell sheer look that Ford and GM loved. The size is right. All spot on, nicely proportioned and good looking package. Love it.
I looked for a good used one in Ontario a while back, with the full knowledge they weren’t especially well made , with engineering about a generation behind the competition. That didn’t matter, their terrific style and rarity appealed. I only found one for sale, a nice example, but asking a bit too much money for me. It was listed for about three years and didn’t sell, which didn’t surprise me. I suspected I was the only person looking for one.
By 1981, the smell of desperation was on each Chrysler product vehicles, and for the previous eight years, they have been shuffling model names all over their lines. This caused confusion and erased any brand identity they had during the previous twenty years. The car market was up in the air and constantly recalled small cars and captive imports was all Chrysler was offering. With this year’s New Yorker, Chrysler was just trying to stem the flood of their buyer losses to other brands. GM had scored a massive hit with their full sizers and it sucked away Ford and Chrysler full size sales. By 1981, Chrysler had been on the ropes for a few years and needed Federal bail out money in order to save it.
So the market wasn’t interested in a full-size anything from this car company. Only the loyalists bought. Then the fleet deals came through. Then the folks looking for cheap wheels. Finally, came the government sales. That wasn’t enough.
The New Yorker is a “me-too” car at a time when the market didn’t trust anything put out by the Pentastar. The Onmirizons kept them afloat until the K-car arrived, but until then, Chrysler didn’t have a quality image or a stable one.
Things were actually picking up at Chrysler in 1981. 1980 was the horrible year, with Iacocca having just arrived but not having had time to do anything with product. That was the year of the loan guarantees where they were telling everyone who would listen about how the K cars were coming.
Iacocca was interviewed around that time and concluded that Chrysler did not have the resources to compete across a full line with Ford and GM, so they would only stay in niches where they could do well. In 1980-81 it was a no-brainer to get out of this segment, which everyone was sure was soon to be extinct because of sky-high fuel prices. The only thing that kept GM and Ford in the segment was UAW rules that saved companies very little money in layoffs, so slow production was better than no production. It was only in 1983-84 that things started to pick up – to the surprise of everyone.
Iaccoca discussed this in his autobiography. He had very little respect for the old school RWD Chrysler products at that time and felt Chrysler was completely uncompetitive as a business. Imho his decision to jettison most old designs and focus on sensible, economical cars was correct. Fifteen years earlier AMC was a successful firm following that strategy. Them AMC management made the disastrous decision to offer a full line of cars to compete in all markets. Limited resources were stretched thin and the cars quickly became mediocre and uncompetitive.
Had AMC simply stayed the course, maybe they’d have survived.
The smell of desperation was still in the market in 1981. While we might see via hindsight that things would turn around by then, I don’t know anyone who thought Chrysler would turn it around enough to buy a car from them until the K-car proved itself.
I remember that time pretty vividly, as my mother was trying to buy an Omni late in the spring of 1980 and I was pretty heavily involved as her “advisor”. Iacocca was on board by that time and the loan guarantees were nailed down, so there was at least a little cause for optimism that the company would survive.
The problem was the products in the showroom. The OmniRizon was the *only* thing selling and they were supply limited due to the engine contract and thus hard to get. Remember that the domestic competition was the Pinto and the Monza. The economy sucked, interest rates were sky high and so was the cost of gasoline. Chrysler had nothing else that was competitive, at least not in that market. The showrooms were full of Volares, Fifth Avenues, Cordobas, LeBarons, but nobody wanted those.
One of my neighbors ran J&L Steel. He told me in the depth of the crisis, Chrysler’s procurement chief told them they couldn’t pay in cash, so they were going to pay in cars – so much for a Volare, so much for a Gran Fury and so on. They didn’t care what the company did with them – sold them as used cars, used them as company cars, or crushed them for scrap. I think the loan guarantees came through before they actually did so.
He had a ’79 New Yorker in triple dark blue – not the Fifth Avenue – which was about as well built as the one in the test. It replaced a ’77 Electra Park Avenue, dark green with vinyl delete. That was an elegant car.
The one thing I never liked about these R-Bodies was the clumsy plastic wrapping of the bumper ends, held together at the bottom by a bungee cord arrangement. Chrysler had the best integrated 5 mph bumpers in the industry until then, particularly the 74 C-Bodies these cars replaced in the lineup. Why they couldn’t build on that is beyond me.
Perhaps it is just the pictures, but the greenhouse on the pictured electra looks larger in comparison to the lower body than the Chrysler or ford. It’s better proportioned and the greenhouse appears taller, too, in relation to the lower body. The lower bodies of the ford and Chrysler look taller than the electra, but that could just be the pictures.
No big surprise to me why this car didn’t sell. Extremely generic front and rear end styling, weird middle styling and the extremely strange opera window in the rear door next to the frameless glass, Chrysler’s 70s quality reputation, the elderly chassis, the legitimate superiority on all levels of the gm cars. . .
Several people have posited that if these had hung around until 83/84 they would have been m body style successes. I disagree.
The full size car market did rebound from its depths but by 1984, there wasn’t really any future in it. The future was the a car and the forthcoming taurus. The fifth avenue did comparatively well but it was a better car for what it was, it was cheap to produce, and could be lavishly and profitably equipped. This was so far behind the gm b and c bodies it would be difficult to see it recovering. I don’t know what fifth Avenue sales looked like but I know it came NOWHERE near the g body or even the fox marquis/ltd.
The CHP got an exemption from the California Air Resources Board to delete the mufflers and run straight pipes back from the catalytic converters. Sounded great, but it still wasn’t enough. I think that the car looks pretty good in Broughammy trim, especially in that two tone paint. The button tuft interior is not a favorite though I remember seeing it it Chryslers from the 1970s. Up ahead of this Chrysler is the last of the Jaguar XJ series, which has been out of production for a year or two. It had some styling issues and was never a great seller, especially at a price around 90 grand. You can buy a used one from 25-30 grand now, but that’s more money than I would care to take a chance on. I’ll stick to the cheap older models. I’ve read too many posts on the forum of guys with 30 thousand dollar cars with failed engines and transmissions. I can’t afford to lose that kind of money.
I like the look of these better than their Panther or B-body competitors, though I’m always a sucker for the C-body Cadillacs. Agree with everyone about the amputated-looking opera window… otherwise they’re quite elegant.
I did test-drive one about 5 years ago. I didn’t know that a car could be that bad. I actually thought something was wrong with the engine, but now I know that the drugged-snail performance was normal. At the time, I also had a 1967 Dodge Monaco as my classic fun car, and I think the New Yorker was a worse car in literally every way. (Many would argue that 1967-68 was peak Mopar, but still…)
Anyway, the bones of the R-body were perfectly acceptable, and it would have been a pretty nice car with a pre-smog 360. You can’t say that about the Panthers, whose engines were just one of several underbaked components. The B-bodies would still have been superior, but hey… it’s Chrysler!
The resemblance between the Imperial concept and the New Yorker is remarkable, and I would have never thought this had round lights behind the doors – in fact I now know I’ve never seen one of these in person – a early 80s full sizer with round headlights leaves an impression.
I think these are substantially better looking than Panthers, but I think everyone jumping on that sheer look B body lookalike bandwagon made them inherently unmemorable, I can’t disagree that some details are fussy but if they were tidier they’d just blend in even more. I like the St. Regis in LAPD livery the best, just looks natural even if a school bus could outrun one. The Newport is too bland, and I just can’t get past that landau top on the New Yorker, it’s a top of the line car on a brand new body design and the best Chrysler could do was put on a cheap puffy cap to differentiate it?
The front immediately reminded me of “Chick Hicks.”
I see the R body as a car that never got any respect. I had the chance to drive a new 1981 model as a newly licenced teenager as a family friend had rented it. He and everybody else was drunk so I drove.
It drove well from my memory. It went down the road smoothly, the 318 had enough torque to move it along sort of okay-ish and the seating position was better, as it was in all Mopar cars, than either the Caprice or Ford LTD. This is because the body is not riding on a frame. I thought it was a pretty good car and never got all the hate.
The Ford 302 felt the same but the Chevrolet 305 definitely had better pep than the 318. I never drove a 360 but my experience from M bodies is it is not much hotter than a 4 bbl 318.
The one I drove was a Newport but it had a nice interior all the same.
One of the local taxi companies had several Plymouth models as cabs, all with Slant Six. The took a lot of abuse and kept running.