Almost twelve years ago, I wrote up a black New Yorker Turbo just like this, back at the old site. I brought it over here in 2012, but for some reason it’s never been rerun. I was all set to do so, when I ran into this fine blue one in Port Orford recently. It would be a lot easier to just rerun the old one, but then I decided to test myself, as to how differently I feel about it a dozen years later.
My take then was largely about what a come-down the K-based New Yorker was compared to its predecessor: Let’s hold our nose and consider the decline and fall of the Chrysler New Yorker. Twenty years earlier, that name typified the grace, comfort, style and performance that New Yorkers had been know for since the first one ran off the lines in 1939.
That’s a pretty easy and cheap shot. A lot happened in 20 years, and those barges from the 60s were dinosaurs, one step from the grave. For someone who was always extolling smaller and lighter cars, these FWD ones should be seen as a positive step forward, no?
It’s the way that transpired that is the problem. Add three inches to that infinitely malleable K-car platform, slap on a healthy dollop of all the usual faux-luxury car trappings of the time, and presto: a mini-me New Yorker. But don’t think just because you were getting a four-cylinder Reliant K-car with a couple of hundred dollars worth of plasticky body add-ons bought in bulk from J C Whitney and a turbo conversion with all the subtlety and refinement of a home-brew job, that the new New Yorker was going to be a bargain. Inflation adjusted, both of these cars cost about the same: about $35k in 2020 dollars. Is that deflation, inflation, or stagflation?
It’s hard to argue that there was a ticky-tacky quality to the broughamification process, but then that was pretty common at the time. As to its pricing; well, Iaccoca was just playing by the same playbook that had been around for a while. Not exactly anything new. And who cares, now? It’s a survivor of a very different time, a rolling time capsule.
To each their own, but let’s just say that I wouldn’t have been caught dead in one of these at the time. I was caught alive in a 300E back then, and the difference in their approach to design and styling details couldn’t have been more different. But it was precisely that difference that allowed me to feel vastly superior. And doesn’t every guy in his thirties want to feel vastly superior?
Now? I couldn’t care less. And I’d gladly drive this around Port Orford. Although the VW pickup in the back might be a tad more practical. A whole lot more, actually.
Who cares what the outside looks like when you’re sitting in this. The more I think about it…
Once the turbo is spooled up, the 146 hp 2.2 L four would get me up the steep hill on Coast Guard Hill Road.
Fake side and hood vents on a mini-me brougham luxury sedan is a contradiction that slayed me back in 2010. Bow I can only chuckle. What were they thinking?
Sealed beam headlights; now that’s something to celebrate.
I loathed these in 1986. I mocked them in 2010/2012. Now I’m genuinely happy to still see one on the road. Time is the great healer.
I thought the hood vents were functional . I recall reading about them being added to help cool the turbo and it’s oil.
IIRC, some of those hood vents were made of a plastic material and it was not uncommon to see them distorted and warped from the heat of the turbo.
They are…I recall all turbo cars with air conditioning got them. It was for either cooling in traffic, or A/C performance. (Maybe both, actually.)
I don’t think the side vents are functional.
What always bothered me about these was the gigantic C-pillar, like it’s wearing a little backpack. Pictured alone this New Yorker looks reasonably substantial but it would be positively dwarved by any modern sedans.
Chrysler intentionally made the C-pillar look as wide as possible. The metal “landau band” actually invaded the rear door frame. Iacocca must have been channeling the 1968 4-door “Glamor Bird”
Fasten your seatbelt and have a barf bucket handy before you look at this.
Ha ha ha ha. Padded vinyl covers up a lot of sins.
I can just imagine Iaccoca walking around this in the styling studio, looking closely at every angle, then saying to all the execs gathered around him; “Let’s add a little more jewelry on the outside”….:-)
My uncle who lived in a Montreal suburb was a diehard Mopar guy. It was always a New Yorker for him and a smaller Plymouth for his wife (my mom’s sister) like a Scamp, Volaré, or Reliant, both from Avenue Chrysler-Plymouth in Dollard. In return for driving the cheaper car, she got use of the one-car garage. He kept the New Yorker in front of the house, on one of those nice U-shaped cobblestone driveways like you always saw in luxury-car ads of the time.
The New Yorker was replaced with a new one every few years. He had a ’65 or ’66 when I was a baby but the first I vaguely remember was an early ’70s fuselage, followed by a gorgeous dark-blue ’76 Brougham, followed by a green ’79 R-body. But when it came time to replace that with a new one circa 1984 he drove the mini-me version with the wheesy 2.2T four and obvious K car roots and just said NO and bought a grey M-body Fifth Avenue instead. One time when he heard my mom refer to his new car as a New Yorker he snapped back “I would never buy one of those cheap rattlecans they’re calling a New Yorker now… this isn’t a New Yorker, it’s a Fifth Avenue!”. I really wanted to correct him and say “this isn’t a New Yorker, it’s a Volaré!” but knew better.
He reverted to a burgundy New Yorker Landau when the larger 6-cylinder FWD model arrived in ’88, then his last car, a white/blue interior New Yorker 5th Ave with the excellent 3.8 V6 in 1993. (he test-drove a Concorde but didn’t like it, and found the Imperial gauche). Although these last two were still K-based, the fruit had fallen far from the tree by then and they looked and felt far more substantial than the mid-’80s version that was the only New Yorker he refused to buy.
So was burgundy involved in any of the buying decisions?
The ’88 was burgundy inside and out but I don’t know how the colors were chosen. All of these had velour cloth interiors rather than leather.
aaah just got the joke…. not (usually) much of a drinker obv.
But they were all good picks IMO except the M body, inebriated or otherwise when made. I would have turned to GM for 1984, last year for RWD/BOF/V8 Park Avenue.
Here’s a 1987 on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/2035770223242060/?ref=search&referral_code=marketplace_search&referral_story_type=post&tracking=browse_serp%3A81b5ccd1-58a8-4b4a-bab1-3d6a2fb6a6c2
In 1984 when I lived U of T section of Toronto, I often saw this model of New Yorker parked next to a Mercedes 190 Crosworth 16 v in a a medical building. Back then I didn’t know how bad that New Yorker was, but I would take that Mercedes without 2nd thought.
BTW, that mid-60s New Yorker is really nice.
I admire the use Chrysler got out of the K car and find it a better approach than GM’s with the X/A, J/N/L, C/H, E/K, and W. Maybe GM wouldn’t have come near bankruptcy had it developed 2 primary FWD platforms instead of 5, although I wonder if E/K really was a derivative of C/H. If I had been about 5 years older, I probably would have bought a K car in my mid-20’s or early 30’s back in the 80’s.
I have no idea what these are like to drive, but those seats might be comfy for commuting between Eugene and Port Orford. Good to see a revised perspective over the years; I’m not sure I can see much positive about these cars. But your post leads me to think if there may soon be a new episode in your Auto-Biography, Paul … a Port Orford beater. Or a Eugene trash hauler, if the F100 moves permanently to the coast.
Comparing one of the best Mercedes’ with the worst of K-cars seems a bit unfair to me.
Apart from both having four wheels they have nothing in common (and even the wheels can be doubted).
It’s still tacky to me. I could appreciate the Turbo engine but not the gingerbread such as the half-roof topper and fake louvers. The nose and waterfall grill do display a touch of class over the standard RelAries. But weren’t they simply lifted off the earlier, unstretched Chrysler LeBaron?
The New Yorker name did get some redemption later, first in a subsequent K-chassis stretch and finally in the LH cars.
The grille insert was changed ever so slightly from the LeBaron to make the NYer grille more upright (and to add even more chrome on the surround), but the two appear to be identical otherwise.
IIRC, the upright grille was added as a midlife refresh in the 1985 model year. The 83-84 New Yorkers and LeBarons were basically identical from the windshield forward!
I recalled that too (it was 1986 actually), but when I looked at online photos, while it looks like the New Yorker grille it may have a subtle new curves to match the slight update of the headlight area surrounding it.
There was also a car called the E Class offered in ’83-84, which was the New Yorker without the landau roof and various other brougham gingerbread. That one did use the exact LeBaron grille.
I don’t know where the LeBaron group fit into the body jumble of the era, but around 1995 I had an ’87 LeBaron GTS Turbo (same engine) that was sporty, & was still on the road two years after I sold it at 235K, with no mechanical problems ever.
That LeBaron GTS (and its sibling Dodge Lancer) was, to me, quite attractive. Chrysler advertising made a big deal about how the Turbo could run with European sport sedans, and it looked better than the BMWs, too. They were the most “Un-K” of K-cars.
But there were so many different LeBarons: GTS, GTC, convertible, Just Plain LeBaron…
The GTS was not really a Le Baron…it was essentially a Dodge Lancer. The Le Baron badges were all over the place at that point.
I always viewed these for what they were – Lynn Townsend and what he wrought handed Chrysler (and Iacocca) lemons and these were the not-terribly satisfying lemonade. As I recall, these were introduced in the fall of 82 or maybe 83, and Iacocca was reading the same tea leaves everyone else was reading then, and saw that 1) the R body was never going to be competitive and 2) with gas headed into the stratosphere, there was no reason to keep beating his head against the wall in that market.
These were a curious combination. I think a case can be made that the K car was the most advanced thing on the US market when it came out (among the domestics, anyway), and this car showed that it could be trimmed to appeal to Chrysler’s traditional demographic of older, conservative lovers of American luxury. But as someone steeped in that tradition at the time, I wasn’t crazy about it because I thought it was a poor substitute for the real thing.
I think we disliked them for different reasons. But like you, I like them better now than I did then.
In reading posts here about R bodies, they had issues with the frameless door glass, and needed to be redesigned to framed, to cut warranty costs. So, I think they thought is was cheaper to use the M body for ‘traditional car’ and they sold OK.
Had one just like it in the mid ’90’s, was looking for its cousin, a mid ’80’s H body LeBaron or Lancer with the turbo & 5 speed, for whatever reason, found this & ran it for about 18 months. Fancy LCD dash was slow when it was cold, same with the trans. Leather seats squeaked all the time. Sold it off when the Neons came out (another story), idiot who bought it called me an hr after he left, antifreeze everywhere. Went to change out the head gasket (common on the tubos), found a cracked head. Lost on it big time…
The difference between the 300E and the K-New Yorker?
The 300E looks vastly better than today’s anodyne E-class, inside and out, while today’s 300C looks much better than the K-New Yorker. Given that some of the 300E’s old hardware ended up in the LX 300C, the two sort of swapped places (not saying that today’s E-class is in any way comparable to the K-NYC)
The W124 will be remembered as the seminal car that it was, long after the current E-class is forgotten.
I didn’t like them then, and I wouldn’t have bought one had i had the money at the time. Just a tarted up car with lots of glop stuck on for apparent looks and attractiveness, nothing to do with performance.
That ’65 New Yorker was a car that deserved respect. The ’86 does not, it’s just a grocery getter with a nice jacket. If I had to have gotten a car back then, I would have put the money into a minivan. Which is exactly what I did.
The gold lettering was nice though.
I figured I’d try to write a positive comment about this New Yorker — or maybe write about how relieving it is when something that used to aggravate us just doesn’t any more.
But words and thoughts aren’t coming easy on these topics right now… so I’ll just entertain folks with this New Yorker Turbo ad. It’s for an ’85 model, and from Canada, but it’s close enough to our featured Turbo to make it worthwhile.
Boost your image!
Never understood why anyone would buy mopar, then and now. Their history for reliability is terrible. This is a company that had to be bailed out not once but twice.
“One of the most prestigious cars of the decade”.
To be fair, they didn’t specify which decade.
I remember a friend had one and, gave us a ride out to dinner one night. He couldn’t have been more than about 5-7 and I’m only 5-9, but it was incredibly cramped in back. Not to mention noisy, bouncy etc. Let alone ugly. Of course I also found out why he had so many drunk driving tickets. He was stone cold sober and couldn’t drive straight, I can’t imagine what he was like with even a couple of beers in him.
I had 1 and actually loved 😍 that car. It actually was easy to fix and it actually “talked”.eg Your fuel is low. Your head lights are on. I felt like I was Driving the Night rider or Bat mobile
My paternal grandparents had an ’87. By then, there were no hood vents or fake fender vents. Theirs had the 2.2 Turbo I, leather, premium audio, the EVA, and automatic load-levelling rear suspension, and electroluminescent coach lamps in the doors. I always remember it as a supremely confident, comfortable car and certainly not any kind of “buzzy” penalty box. Silver exterior, charcoal interior.
They had it until 1997 when they traded it in with over 187K miles on it. I think they may have replaced the head gasket and such around 1995 or 1996 because I remember it overheating one day, but it was always a VERY reliable car. No parts falling off.
As a child, sure, I could tell that Great Granny’s ’88 Aries LE was related to it, but that New Yorker was so fancy and loaded by comparison. In my youth, I perceived the Dodge as a shrunken, “cheaper” version of the New Yorker (and I guess I wasn’t wrong), but I adored that New Yorker far more than the Aries even though it’s the Aries I own today (needs fuel pump and tin worm fix).
If I found a good one today I could afford with cash, I’d jump on it.
The K’s and their descendants are very good, utilitarian cars that get a level of disrespect I cannot comprehend.
Can complain about the K based New Yorker*, but at least there was a nice LH version. It’s just they didn’t last long on market. 300M, LHS and Concorde took its place later on, leading to the RWD LX 300 series.
* Agree with above, “get a level of disrespect I cannot comprehend.” K cars didn’t have the bugs like GM X cars.