Needing to scratch an unyielding automotive itch, in my experience, can be fun, or a nightmare. Having tired of my ’93 Caravan, I was on the hunt for another car. The Caravan had been reliable and nicely equipped, so at the top of my list was another Chrysler product. Stopping to look at this Spirit for sale on the side of the road ended up offering an interesting option.
I looked at the car, and it looked to be in good shape. No rust visible on the body, and the interior was in fine shape. The owner came to the door and explained that the car had an oil burning problem, and was priced accordingly. I negotiated him down to $600, and the car was mine.
A few interesting items here. I wonder who owns the old Binder?
The car started and ran well, and pulled along OK. The engine, a 2.5, had the normal amount of wrist pin noise for one of these. It had an automatic transmission, and the full gauge package. No air conditioning or other frills, though. The first trip to Halifax showed how bad the oil consumption issue was – about 300 KM into the 400 KM trip the oil lamp started flickering on a cloverleaf exit. The oil was topped up with 3 litres of oil, and continued on. At the time, early 2003, there was a company in Western Canada that offered cheap engine rebuild kits. I bought one, and on my next scheduled week off, I tore into the engine. I found that the oil control rings were varnished into their gaps. A hone and a bore, and one balance shaft delete later, and it was all set to go. It worked the same, honestly, but would now use a litre of oil between every 5K oil change.
One of my favourite clusters, right here.
In my own humble opinion, these were some of the best cars Chrysler made in that time. They drove solidly and quietly, were nicely laid out, and comfortable to boot. All the instruments you’d ever need in a logical layout, even in a basic car. They seemed to go for a long time before they’d wear out. They weren’t as modern-looking and swoopy like a Corsica or Tempo, but they were built like a tank. It was a whole lot nicer than my Beretta. The 2.5 would deliver about 30 MPG, and never failed to start, either.
On vacation and on tour to the Atlantic Nationals.
The car served me well commuting back and forth from Halifax to home on breaks in my work schedule. On one break, I met my parents and their friends from Newfoundland in Moncton for the Atlantic National Car Show. The car didn’t fit in with the other cars there, but it did run with its usual aplomb.
All in all, it gave me about a year and a half of trouble-free motoring. A co-worker offered me a great deal on a car that I couldn’t turn up, so I sold it to a young guy looking for cheap reliable wheels – and it was certainly that. It wasn’t flashy, fast, or fun…but it was perfect as an honest car. I suppose in spirit it wasn’t anything less than a modern Valiant.
“I suppose in Spirit….” I see what you did there
The AA’s were great cars. Even here in the rust belt, you’ll still see them plying the roads occasionally. The newest of them would be 24 years old now, which I find outstanding. But the pity is, they were never particularly popular with the now decades old “Seville” styling, no matter how space efficient they really were. Truly a replacement for the Valiant.
Of all of the AA’s, I’d love to have a Spirit R/T, seconded by the export only Saratoga.
Back when there were lots around, most of the ones for sale seemed to have a quarter-million kilometers on them. Even a V6/3 speed was probably a quick car.
I still remember my 92 Plymouth Acclaim fondly. One of the most reliable cars I ever owned. The only reason I got rid of it was it was too boring. Almost 20 years later, with much different priorities, I don’t think I would have made the same decision.
I rented one of the ‘92s on a biz trip and I was impressed. Nothing fancy but a good car.
…and one balance shaft delete later… Whats that about? Never heard of removing a balance shaft. What does that help?
The Misubishi drag racers pull them because they sap some power on the top end. Oil capacity also increases a little bit after removal. There may be other reasons but it has been awhile since I’ve talked to any Eclipse drag folks.
It was supposed to give it a little more power. It really didn’t do much but make the oil capacity a bit more.
Having driven dozens of K-car derivatives in government fleets, I’ll say that the Acclaim/Spirits seemed more solid and less tin-can than the early Reliant/Aries. Better sound deadening? Seemed like they had most of the bugs worked out by then. I always enjoyed driving them, relatively speaking. Demerit for no station wagon, though.
One more data point that proves the rule – Chrysler could build good cars and it could build beautiful and appealing cars, but almost never at the same time.
I was so excited when these were coming out. And so let down when I saw one in person at a dealer. The outside was dull but at least in a modern rounded corners kind of way. The inside really killed the car for me. I should have known from its looks that this would become one of Chrysler’s best cars in decades. But for my future Mrs contemplating trading her hail-dented 88 Accord sedan – it did not even merit a test drive.
I’m kind of surprised the interior let you down. It seemed to me to be much nicer inside than a lot of American-made contemporaries. To be fair though, the Hondas of that time period struck me as a step above.
To be clear, the interior seemed of good quality, but also seemed kind of old fashioned.
You do an amazing job picking up cars for nothing and breathing new life into them. I think the cheapest car I ever bought was 850, and 600 in Canadian dollars is pocket change.
These came out when I was in high school and seemed dowdy and unappealing. I’d definitely buy one now BECAUSE it’s somewhat dowdy and “proven.” I think if people had bothered to get past the dated styling (I love boxy styling, it’s so roomy and practical) these were very comfortable and drove very well and had very plush, high quality interiors without being too loose pillow. Too bad they didn’t appear in 1986; they would have been great k updates then. Chrysler was too busy making money with the minivan to care about cars.
If someone were looking at a Corsica, Tempo/Topaz, or a Spirit/Acclaim and only those cars it would seem to be a no-brainer….the Dodge, or even better, the Plymouth were the logical choice. Unfortunately, logic rarely enters into the car buying equation.
Maybe those cars are more appealing used, but I don’t think they looked worse as a new purchase. As a rule, they went to junkyards because they eventually became worth less than an oil change, brake job and new tires, not because they had catastrophic mechanical problems. For Chrysler, the problem was Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Subaru, and Mazda, not Ford or Chevy.
My Dad’s last car was a 1992 Spirit R/T which he bought in the mid 2000’s for $1200. It only had 112,000kms on it and was an automatic and loaded with every power option. The AC never worked. He drove that car for 3-4 yrs until the repair bills started to mount up and he couldn’t afford to keep it on the road, being retired on a fixed income. He really liked that car a lot.
In the US and Canada, the Spirit R/T came only with a 5-speed manual transaxle. There were only 393 of the ’92s sold (1,208 of the ’91s). They all had a Lotus-involved, intercooled “Turbo III” 16-valve DOHC version of the 2.2-litre engine and lots of unique and costly parts.
That is unless your dad bought his car in Mexico where the “Spirit R/T” name was applied both to a ’91-’93 car like the US/Canada model, and also to a Mexico-only ’91-’95 version with an intercooled “Turbo II” 8-valve 2.5-litre engine. Many (most? all?) of those were automatics, but they were not available North of the Mexican border, and the oldest of them became eligible for import to the US in 2016 (Canada in 2006).
There was an ES Turbo that could get confused with the R/T in the US/Canada. It was a 2.5 Turbo I (non intercooled) and available with an auto trans.
That might be what Frank has in mind. The ES had no trunklid spoiler, no (real) bucket seats, no red-instead-of-chrome trim stripe, and other details a non-nerd probably wouldn’t much notice. 🙂
True!
Though I remember seeing at least one white ES with the red pinstripe buckets in a junkyard. It even had the white snowflake wheels. I thought it was an R/T at first glance. By time I got a crew together to grab the engine a week later the whole car was gone.
Spirit foolies! The snowflake wheels were factory equipment on the Spirit ES from ’89 to ’91. And the ES seats had red-stripes-on-grey upholstery similar to that in the R/T, but the seats themselves were very far from being equivalent; the R/T items were well and truly buckets, while the ES seats mostly just looked bucketish.
Seeing the photo at the top made me immediately think of the excellent movie Frozen River starring the equally excellent Melissa Leo, featuring many scenes of a Spirit in snowy conditions. Here’s a poster from its Japanese release.
In this movie, the Spirit is regarded as a tough, reliable, older car.
aka, a prized possession.
I’ve long thought the AA-bodies were the K-car promise, nicely fulfilled. They were unusually well designed and built, and unusually durable; latter-day Dart/Valiant is a good descriptor. I had a long string of them myself, including everything from a base model to the upper-topmost Spirit R/T.
Gudgeon pin knock on the 2.2/2.5: yep, most of them eventually did that unless treated much more fastidiously than most owners tended to do with regard to oil and filters. Sounded like hell, but didn’t cause any actual problems.
Removed the balance shafts: how come? They weren’t problematic or noisy like the ones in the Mitsu 2.6. I can see removing ’em for racing use, to squeeze every last horse out of the engine at high RPMs, but at the RPM range experienced in an automatic Spirit, all it would do is increase NVH. Unless you wanted to make room for as much oil in the sump as you possibly could…? (That said, it wouldn’t’ve been intolerably loud or vibey, just more so. Chrysler de Mexico put 2.5s without balance shafts in a fairly large number of Shadows, Spirits, Phantoms, and Voyagers.)
It seems to me that at the time it was suggested on Allpar or its forums for a little more power. Since I was rebuilding the engine I thought it was a no-brainer. It didn’t really make much difference at all.
…hold on a sec. The de luxe instrument cluster “yes” but aircon “no” is an interesting configuration. I was aware there was a non-A/C version of the heat/defog control, but I’ve only ever seen it on el-strippo European-market Saratoga models. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a US-market AA-body without A/C; I think the large majority of them had it.
On the one hand it makes sense a Canada-spec car was less likely to have A/C, for Canadians have a long history of spending money more conservatively than Americans on cars, and there’s long been an excise tax in Canada on the purchase of an auto A/C system. On the other hand, A/C vastly speeds and improves the performance of the defogger—important in Canadian conditions—though even this many decades after that started being the case, it’s still not well or widely known amongst the car-buying public.
I’d had this car, and a Shadow a little later – Neither of them had AC, but they all had the same HVAC panel – three metal sliders, one for temperature, one for air direction, and one for fan speed. On certain fan speeds the little metal slider would get really hot.
My father had a Plymouth Acclaim which was a step down from the Olds Cutlass Salon he traded in. Both cars served ten years. The Acclaim went to my son for a dollar after Dad bought a Taurus. Then it served briefly with his older sister before ending up at an auction.
I recall it as being comfortable inside and definitely dated in exterior styling. The Acclaim never let my parents down and it did plenty of highway driving including a trip to New Jersey and back from Edmonton.
I logged many a mile behind the wheel of various Spirit/Acclaim loaners when my (now long ago ex-)wife would have her 1993 Town & Country in for various transmission and ABS-related maladies. I liked the AA’s-they drove far better than the GM & Ford competition (Corsica, Tempo), the interior was a far more hospitable place to be in, and they would quietly go about their duty as transportation. The post a few posts summed it up well: They definitely were a latter day Dart/Valiant. I still see them running around….I can’t remember the last time I saw a Corsica or Tempo chugging along.
We still have our 1990 Chrysler Spirit, it´s a mexican version, base, but its not that terribly finished, with a 2.5 carbureted engine, which was only a two year thing I think, after 1992 they all had MPFI with the SOHC or DOHC Turbo II in the RT trim.
Here rust is not a problem, and they have proved to be bulletproof. You hardly see their competition anymore ( Cavalier, Tempo)
What a great car. Easy to fix, and stands out nowadays.
I absolutely loved my 1991 Dodge Spirit ES. I brought it brand new for about $12k. It was a leftover but I didn’t care as it had all the stuff I wanted including the very cool looking white snowflake wheels. Additionally, my ES was totally loaded. Everything power! Fun little trip computer! Smooth running Mitsubishi V6 ! Very comfy grey interior with stripes on the seats.
I actually brought this car when I was 28 years old, and I thought I was really cool driving around the garden state with my loaded “Old Man Car” hahaha.
I really did have a bit of a crush on this car, but she broke my heart when she started stalling out as i was driving. Three or four trips back to the dealer, a month with the Mopar monitor sitting on the console, and finally it stalled with the monitor still hooked up. The dealer determined it was the “throttle body”, which was replaced at no cost as it was still under warranty. After a week at the dealer, my ES was fixed and ran like new once again.
Was the V6 very peppy?
I don’t know that I’d call it very peppy, but the V6 was at least passably adequate in most circumstances (unlike the base 2.5 TBI motor, which was okeh around town but struggled with things like short ramps onto fast highways).
Naaaahhhh, This is the ultimate k-CAR
Memories come flooding back of our 1993 Plymouth Acclaim (aka the Plymouth From Hell).
It too was found for sale at the side of the road, asking price $1600. It also had the Mitsubishi V-6, which burned its fair share of oil (though not in such vast quantities). The engine ran well.
The owner told me he’d put a junkyard trans in int. It shifted okay.
Other than that, the thing was a piece of crap. I should have had it inspected before i bought it.
The final straw was when the mechanic told me it needed a new steering rack, and that it was a very complicated procedure on that car.
Preferred renting AA’s over Tempo/Corsica since seemed more solid, quiet and handled better. Wished I’d bought one, as a daily driver, but had to have “the latest tech…” at the time.