Nope, not a Jaguar.
I totaled my 1997 Chrysler Cirrus in early 2000 and needed to find a new car before the insurance rental coverage ran out. The Cirrus was paid off so I had a nice check in my hand from the insurance company for a down payment. I had some cash from bonuses and overtime (thank you, Y2K crisis) but I was holding on to that to pay for our September wedding.
Now, my fiancée and I had truly liked the Cirrus and went back to the dealer to check out the 2000 model. What we found is that Chrysler had barely changed anything since the car’s introduction in 1995 and it now seemed rather outdated.
The things that had changed didn’t impress me. On cars with the tan interior the dark brown dashboard was a practical choice that reduced glare on the windshield. Now it was as light as the rest of the interior, and it made it look cheap. The sporty, perforated leather seats had been replaced with bunched leather that almost pushed the interior into LeBaron territory. I wasn’t feeling it.
Sensing my disappointment, the dealer pointed me at a Chrysler Concorde LXi, which (despite being a somewhat larger car) could be had for only a bit more money. Now in its third year on the second generation LH platform, it was certainly a lot more car for the money. I’d certainly been reading a lot about the 300M but it was a bit out of my price range.
Gulp.
When the 1998 Concorde was introduced, I thought it was the ugly duckling of the LH trio. I looked like they were shooting for Jaguar but ended up landing on Catfish. By the year 2000 I had gotten used to seeing them around, and if I didn’t find them attractive they didn’t offend me, either. The license place bracket toned down the fish-mouth effect a bit.
Would you like to go for a drive?
For the test drive we tried a maroon car with a tan interior. It was certainly comfortable. The 225-horsepower 3.2 liter V6 moved the car very nicely, indeed. The route around town and on the highway proved to be very pleasant. Most of my driving these days was on the Interstate, and this would make for a very comfortable highway cruiser.
It’s funny the little details you focus on. I distinctly remember thinking that on the tan interior the brown plastic on the HVAC vents looked weirdly cheap. I asked to see a car with a black interior and he brought me to one painted in a very sharp Deep Slate pearl coat. This was Darth Vader’s car. The black interior looked a lot better, even if the fake wood looked very, very fake. My fiancée gave me the thumbs up and I was off to make the deal.
A nice place to be on a long drive.
In hindsight I probably should have left and done a bit more research and shopping. However, I still wanted to buy American and GM and Ford were off my list, so I was probably staying in the Chrysler family, anyway. I think mostly I just wanted the whole car situation to be done so we could move on with wedding plans.
Initially, I didn’t have any issues with the Concorde at all. Certainly, it was reliable and got us where we needed to go comfortably and without fuss. The Infinity sound system and in-dash CD changer kept me entertained on long commutes to client sites.
If I had a problem at all it was with visibility. The small rear window and high trunk led me to back into light pole at least once, leading to some minor cosmetic damage that I had repaired without involving the insurance company. The low front end meant I had to be careful pulling into parking spaces since I couldn’t see where the front of the car ended. If I wasn’t careful there would be a loud scrape as the air dam hit the parking block.
A small rear window and high trunk translated into a few bumps.
I had one real accident in the Concorde, but this time it wasn’t my fault. It was a snowy night as I was driving in the right lane of a four-lane state road. Running down the middle of the four lanes was a median and a metal barrier. A bit ahead of me in the left lane a car hit an icy spot and began to fishtail. I slowed to avoid them but they slowed even more. One of their fishtail swings caught my passenger-side fender as I swerved, pushing me into the median barrier as I got to experience my second ever airbag deployment.
The Concorde still ran, but with the headlights busted and the airbag hanging out of the steering wheel I couldn’t drive it home. The other driver’s insurance company took care of everything once mine put the screws to them. The car was repaired and all was well.
The next year I had left the IT consulting company for a steadier corporate job. A regular job meant a regular schedule, which was a nice perk for a newly married guy. Also, with Y2K behind us I could see the writing on the wall. Business was down, offices were closing, and if I was going to leave it was going to be my choice. (Sure enough, a year after I left they instituted across-the-board pay cuts, and shortly after that the Connecticut office where I had worked had closed).
This was where I fell out of love with the Concorde. Half of my new commute was smooth highway sailing. Well, not exactly smooth because that stretch of highway was notorious for bad drivers, and many days were stop-and-go as we navigated around the latest crash. I got very good at finding alternative routes.
The other half of my commute (the route I took to get to the highway) was a hilly and twisty state road. It was a drive that would have been a lot of fun in a 300M or anything else remotely sporty. The Concorde, however, which had been so nice on the highways fairly wallowed into the turns, forcing me to slow down significantly to feel safe. It grated on my nerves and became a daily ordeal.
After a few years of this I decided that I’d had enough. The Concorde was paid for and I wanted to drive something that wouldn’t annoy me. Maybe something with a hatch for more utility. Or all-wheel-drive to handle those snowy days. Maybe even something that wasn’t built in North America. But what?
I still love the catfish mouth of these. I despise front license plates, so I disliked that part, but I felt like the mouth of these was done right and looked good. The non-mouth front ends they had for the car were much less harmonious looking. I felt like they had put the best looking front end on the cheapest variant of the car.
Relative to today’s giant maw all-grille front ends the sloping front end and low grille are kind of refreshing. We see that a lot less due to European pedestrian impact regulations that make for higher, blunter front ends.
Good call on the how, sometimes, the best looking cars in a model range are the cheapest. It depends on how well the basic car is styled. When it’s done well, the upper tiers with more chrome just look like an otherwise attractive woman whose looks are spoiled by wearing obviously fake jewelry.
At their 1998 introduction, one of the fan magazines quoted observers as saying these were the world’s best looking sedans and commented on response, “They’re not wrong.”
They certainly have the impression of being LARGE cars. I preferred their Dodge Intrepid siblings, though.
Fuzzyman, by choosing the Concorde LXi, dodged the Chrysler 2.7 engine issues.
Its nice to read, you had some love for 90s mopars. They certainly looks modern when came on the market and was fairly popular in Europe, too. My cousin had green LHS before he moved on never ending line of MB.
Most of these mopars died on knock of the engine due the lack of short term oil change maintenance or incorrect oil specification once they got into hands of 2nd or 3rd owners. Now you just do not see them anymore, even at the car shows with 90s iron present.
My guess for your next vehicle choice is Volvo XC90, with your family soon to grow.
My brother had one of these back then. The car was an LXi (IIRC), seemingly with all of the options. He bought the car in the summertime, but living in Cleveland, OH it gets pretty chilly all winter. Much to his dismay, he found out that particular car’s leather interior did not have heated seats.
I guess that’s price you pay for not paying attention to the details… LOL!
I had forgotten all about that 3.2 V6.
It is easy now to forget just how well these came across in a showroom. The GM of 2000 was, well, the GM of 2000. And as nice as Fords had looked in showrooms five years earlier, by 2000 the massive cost cutting had worked its way through every single model in a way that took so much of the joy out. Of course, Eaton and then D-B would soon do the same thing to Chrysler (and then there were the problems that would bloom after the years and miles started to pile on).
I had one of these, one of the first newly 98s in my area. It was a beautiful shade of green. I absolutely love the styling, even to this day. Just a gorgeous clean design. Never once did I think it looked like a catfish. How odd. For it’s time it was fresh and original and unexpected. I traded it in three years later for an LHS. While the LHS was far superior in features, performance and luxury I always missed my 98 Concorde. Fantastic car.
I agree with Ted, my dad bought a 99 which I now own. Beautiful car, green with a tan interior, and actually draws compliments these days. Despite the age, the car doesn’t look old, and not at all like a fish to me, instead it’s smooth and elegant, somewhat reminiscent of today’s Maserati.
It’s a nice driving and comfortable car.
Whenever I saw one, I thought of a Komodo dragon.
Not sure I see the fish in the front end; to me that aspect and the profile all the way to the rear 3/4 are just great. It’s the bustle-y but that fails for me. Not as nice as the first generation in the back. A car that was very distinctive for a few years due to its styling, and is still noticeable due to its rarity in the road.
Comparison with the catfish was hilarious.
I was just reaching driving age when these came out, so I was not the target demographic. To me, they looked like “old man” cars, but in a more updated sense than the broughamy gingerbread-laden Chryslers of the 70s and 80s. These seemed kind of stodgy and whale-like. The author saw a comparison with the concurrent Jaguar, but I saw one with the Camaro. To me, these looked like bloated Camaros, particularly from the front end.
Yeah the Camaro resemblance is uncanny to me, the 98 refresh came out when this generation Concorde, you’d think this was a new Impala
The real catfish is the 1958 Packardbaker.
“The small rear window and high trunk” describes almost every car/SUV/CUV now, doesn’t it?
(Disclaimer: Previous Volvo 945T owner now with a mid-aughts V70, so visibility is a big thing to me.)
Still have one. Still in great shape. Use it every day.
When this 2nd generation LH cars came out, the Concorde was the most eye-catching of the bunch with its 1960s Ferrari lower grill. Yes, that was the look that the stylist were aping.
For the 1st generation LH New Yorker and the LHS, they copying the early 1960s Jaguar sedans c-pillar rear window curvature. The second generation 1991-1996 Buick Park Avenue was a copy of the large Jaguar XJ sedans. I know because I was looking at both the New Yorker or LHS and Park Avenue in 1994 and the LHS and the Park Ave Ultra in 1996. Both were extremely beautiful large cars in direct competition from Chrysler and GM.
Fortunately, I purchased the Buicks in both years as they turned out to be more reliable and have greater longevity than the two generations of LH cars. How many LH cars do you see on the road compared to GM Bs and Cs of the same period. I still have my 1996 Park Ave Ultra with 95,000 mile as a second car to my 2008 Audi A6 Avant.
Trust me, the Buick is more comfortable with greater features than the Audi.
The earlier version of Eagle Vision stole the front end off my Honda Prelude. The front ends of theses cars were too low. I had one as a rental and I would scrape the front end while entering and exiting some parking lots. It never happened on several Preludes that I owned.
I had a red 1999 Concorde Lxi which I just loved. Great long trip car, fantastic gas mileage with 3.2 V6 and twice the horsepower of the 1989 LeBaron Coupe it replaced. Unfortunately, it got t-boned on my way to work one morning otherwise I’d still be driving it. My replacement car was an LHS style 2002 Concorde Lxi with a 3.5. The gas mileage is almost as good, but unlike my 1999 car it was surprisingly decontented as it had only one power seat, no anti lock brakes and no traction control. As I soon found out, I didn’t actually need the traction control or the anti lock brakes in the snow. Even before I got better tires on it, it was a really good snow car.
To the mention of bad handling, I would say based on my experience with these cars that your front sway bar end links were either loose, not connected or just flat out broken. In the case of my car, the end links were trash. After replacing them and the sway bar bushings got a great deal of improvement out of the handling. I just had the subframe bushings replaced which was a job way beyond my skills and I expect from there to get the rest of the handling back.
Between 1999 and 2002, there seemed to be a horrifying cheapening of everything made of rubber which included things like subframe bushings. Now that everything in the front end between me and the shop that did the super hard stuff it should start driving like the 1999 car again.