The K-car chassis was nothing if not flexible, and to prove it, consider the 1990 Chrysler LeBaron Landau.
As you can see, the K-car got squished into the shape of a midsized pseudo-luxury car, plopping onto Chrysler lots for the 1990 model year. Please enjoy this rare Chrysler promo film of K-to-LeBaron transformational production techniques:
The LeBaron Landau would (at first) appear all too similar to the homely Dodge Spirit or Plymouth Acclaim, but the LeBaron was far and away more luxurious. Just how luxurious was the 1990 Chrysler LeBaron Landau, you ask? Feast your eyes:
Would you just look at that fine polywood dash finish? (It may even be Corinthian polywood, but I’d need the VIN to check.)
We also see the decadent digital gauges complete with the ability to show US or metric units. The shift indicator is helpfully indicating which selection you must make for the tow to ACME Transmissions to have the Utradrive 4-speed rebuilt for the 2nd time. Two rebuilds does seem like the wrong number, but remember, this car only has 115k on it. Give it time.
Ah, that’s the stuff. Button-tufted velour. Chrysler did this type of interior as well or better than Ford or GM, in my humble opinion.
Cadillac? Mercedes? Hugh Hefner’s basement divan, you ask? No, this is still our LeBaron Landau, believe it or not. Please enjoy rolling up your windows by hand, because Chrysler owners never forget their roots no matter how fancy things may look on the outside.
Though tidy in dimensions, Chrysler didn’t let that keep them from encrusting the LeBaron in almost every conceivable luxury appearance item to let the world know you’d arrived. We have the waterfall grille, chrome body side molding, the crystal Pentastar hood ornament, the V6 plaque behind the front wheels, chrome mirrors, 4 hubcaps, lights…uh…
There is no luxury without engineering. Chrysler’s known that for over 60 years. Mitsubishi must’ve also known it, because that’s who engineered this 3.0 liter, 141-horsepower V6. Truth be told, it was a pretty good mill as long as you didn’t mind having to dirty your hands on the pictured 710 cap fairly often only to have people assume you’d taken a second job as a crop duster.
Not much to see back here, except the Chrysler exclusive padded vinyl quarter top spilling over onto the doors turning a quarter window into an Opera Window, and the appearance of full-width rear lighting. Seems to me it could use some fender skirts, but they’re too old-fashioned. Gotta stay current in the 1990s!
Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief attempt at having the LeBaron Landau class this joint up, but we’ll have to leave it here. I’m headed to Waffle House for dinner.
(Thanks to CCer Mike Butts for the photos!)
This thing needs whitewalls so it can really go for the full Cleveland.
I’ve never seen one without a chrome trunk lugage rack.
HOMELY Acclaim and Spirit?
I beg to differ. Perhaps the Spirit was homely, but our 1990 Acclaim was one of the greatest cars we have ever owned.
Of course, our current rides are far better, but they are different classes of vehicles.
The LeBarons of this ilk – they weren’t fooling me, but Lido sure did a good job doing what he did.
Overall, as long as you stayed with the 2.5L you were okay. Getting into 3.0L and Ultradrive territory, well, you were on your own!
EDIT: I’m going true to what I’m (in)famous for: on these, if you got power windows, the rear glass lowered all the way. Crank windows like we had? Not quite…go figure.
Zackman! You weren’t the first to post on this? Whaaaaaa? 🙂
One may not like the looks of these things, but in rust country, these things are still plying the roads. I would call them a Cockroach of the Road ©, but the sheer numbers of other cockroaches keeps them from that distinction. Maybe Buffalo of the Road ©?
Me personally? I’d love to have the Dodge Spirit ES Turbo version of this one. It was quicker than you’d think and you could hunt down Taurus SHO’s with it.
Yeah baby… Boosted Mopars were fun!
You want the Dodge Spirit R/T version of those cars…you can skip the hunting of SHO’s and go right for the BMW’s and 5.0 Fox body Mustangs!
My Dad had one when I first got my driver’s license…lots of stories about that car.
It was later traded in on an SHO…go figure.
Thanks Philhawk, I’d forgotten they called it the R/T back then. That was the one I wanted to go hunting SHOs with…
/brain fart
Now you did it, Geo! You just had to go mention the Spirit R/T, didn’t you?
Wifey always knew I wanted one of these in bright red. Only Dodge offered the Spirit in bright red and I was a Plymouth man. Now, her boss also liked Chryslers, too, and was looking for a car. Wifey came home from work one day with a goofy grin on her face. I bit…”what?” She told me her boss bought a car and they were stopping by the house to show me.
What I saw blew me away and killed me with envy – a fire-engine red Dodge Spirit R/T complete with power windows that rolled ALL THE WAY DOWN, that neat gray-and-red-striped interior and hauled tail seemingly like the Chevy Malibus of old!
That weekend we went to dinner with them and I got to enjoy riding in that car and several times after.
Yes…why I missed this and wasn’t first kinda disappointed me, but it wasn’t an Acclaim, so I’m okay to fight another day! Waaaaaaaaaaaa!
Our Acclaim? Only available in a darker red which to us, didn’t look quite right, but looked great in gray – excuse me – dark ivory! Yeah, ours was a more basic ride, but I – we loved it just the same – for ten-and-a-half years until my daughter wrecked it too many times and we traded it in on a “Cockroach of the Road”(C), a 1997 Cavalier! Obviously, she didn’t love it as much as we did…sniff…
I have no complaints about the 3.0 Mitsu. My ’87 caravan gave up the ghost at 217k. I drove the hell out of it, 40k/year for a year or 2. My parents also had a ’93 New Yorker…the paint may have peeled off, but they never rusted…..I’ll never understand those vinyl roofs, though.
The Mitsubishi 3.0 was notorious for valve lifter failures and numerous oil leaks. The Chrysler 3.3 was a better power plant in every way one can imagine.
Ah, that explains the 710 cap reference.
The 3.3 OHV Mopar V-6 WAS the better power plant. I have numerous friends and acquaintances who routinely went well over 200K with nary a problem. Ultra drives were paper; once Mopar got those straightened out (hundreds of thousands of warranty replacements will do that to you), they were OK. I haven’t seen a Mitsu 3L V-6 that didn’t have a slight plume if blue (unless it had under 75K).
Chrysler still keeping it real on the front power, rear crank windows. The Neon SRT-4 had them, too.
My sister had a black ’90 Acclaim, the more pedestrian sister to this tarted up one.
Hers had the Ultradrive, and yes, it DID slip and such too. Not sure what motor they had, perhaps the 3.6, been ages since they had it, they eventually replaced it with 1991-95 Grand Voyager, I forget what year though as it seemed they kept the Acclaim 2 years or so due to the piss poor tranny.
That van had the Mitsu V6 and by the end, it was smoking like a chimney around the late 90’s, early 2000’s before they finally replaced it with a second hand 2002 Toyota 4Runner in, what, 2004 (and they’re still driving it too even though it’s got over 200K miles on it if I recall right).
My oldest sister and her husband for about a year or so had a 1988 Caravan with that same motor in it that they bought in the late 90’s and it, too, began to smoke like a chimney and you had to keep up with oil or it’d run dry in a hurry, like my Ranger had gotten to, though in my case, it was not from burning as it was leaking it.
I had a 1990 Acclaim LX for 8 years and 128K miles, 3.0 Mitsu V6 and Ultradrive. The key was to use Mopar trans fluid and change it every 30K miles. One of the best cars I ever had. The trans was just starting to slip when I sold it and it didn’t smoke.
The 3.0 did not tolerate American oil change habits one bit. If the oil was indeed changed fairly regularly, the motor would last a good while. Miss one, and you were into replacing lifters in very short order. Miss a couple and you were into smoking in no time.
On the plus side, the 3.0 was very smooth.
The A604 had a 100% failure rate in the early versions. The later ones were better if you did not drive the car too hard and like Fred states, change out the ATF at regular intervals with the correct Mopar fluid. Anything else would cause it to grenade. Finally, the 604 did not work at all with the AWD Caravans. Could not take the extra load.
I started the Craigslist ad, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile, it’s my father’s Chrysler.” Dad quit driving last year, so this one-owner, low-mileage, all service records, only driven on Wednesdays by a retired engineer, timewarp to another era hit the market. Within an hour a young couple picked it up.
It drove quite well, no slipping tranny, strong engine, cold AC, all good. Dad kept it well maintained, either at the dealer or the Goodyear place, so I’m sure it got the ATF service Fred specifies above. No big failures either, just a water pump and such now and then.
Actually a remarkably solid, trim and competent ride after twenty years. If your taste runs to overstuffed velour. My parents, what can you say. Thanks for making it a good CC Mr. Tactful!
I’m glad you didn’t mind the direction I went with it, because I was a bit nervous! We are trying to do more informal, bloggy kind of stuff with my posts, which allows Paul to focus a bit more on the more in-depth items. I therefore have been having fun with my pieces, and hopefully no one takes my jokey criticism of any particular car too seriously!
As for the LeBaron, anyone paying attention knows I like cars like this with lots of fake lux, especially if it’s a Mopar. A ’93 Imperial with everything but the air suspension is one of my dream cars, if it weren’t for the spooky transmissions anyway. I can’t say I’d ever buy one, but I’d sure think about it and daydream. I’m weird like that.
It’s fun, thanks. If we had Waffle Houses around here that’s where they would have gone. Instead they went to Applebee’s.
Enjoyed the car and the story – us fake luxe lovers need to have a sense of humor. That velour makes me miss my ’91 Dynasty, blue on blue, 3.3L. It had been my grandmother’s. Had no trans problems somehow, and it was quick, yet invisible to the law…
All I can say is: Lido should have been retired long before he was. By attendants with that canvas blazer with the lo-o-ong sleeves.
And, it goes without saying, Maximum Bob should have been put in his place. He had his faults; and Chrysler would have had its problems; but such abortions as this; such factory-installed J.C. Whitney-ized pukemobile K cars, would never have soiled our streets.
And, ten-to-one, Chrysler would still be with us, as an independent company – and probably a healthy one.
JPT, as we all know Bob Eaton sold Chrysler down the river.
However, I don’t know if Lutz wouldn’t have done the same thing if they dropped a front-end loader’s worth of money on his front steps…
As the saying goes, money changes everything.
I’m not so sure about that.
Juergen Schrempp wanted Lutz to stay on, almost as badly as he wanted Eaton canned. But Lutz was having none of it, going instead to scandal-ridden, bankrupt Exide.
I don’t think money was the driving force at that point in his life. I think he was looking for a place to build a monument to himself…he later tried at GM, and changed much for the better, but the place was just too big.
Lutz, like Iacocca, was an empire builder. But Lutz was also a genuine lover of automobiles. Daimler might have gotten its way; but not so easily and readily by a Lutz management team.
JPT; You may be right about Lutz looking to build a monument, it would have been something if he’d been able to pull it off at GM. Maybe Lutz saw the future of Chrysler and thought to get out while he could?
I guess it still irritates me that Daimler did what it did to Chrysler. They were relatively healthy at the time of the merger, and later in the relationship, providing profits to keep the foreign mothership going. (Like they’re doing right now with Fiat.) What did they get in return? A bunch of bastardized product that no one would/could stomach.
Here’s hoping the Dart will be the first of a lot of good product to come. Too bad it won’t be built in Twinsburg anymore…
“The K-car chassis was nothing if not flexible…”
Would’ve made a great intro for the Chrysler LeBaron Convertible!
It’s not a 1990 LeBaron or a Spirt R/T but you could recapture a little K-car magic… http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/2-2-Turbocharged-original-paint-garaged-car-1-owner-clean-inside-and-out-/270912332243?pt=US_Cars_Trucks&hash=item3f13a221d3
That console is sweet….did they swap that in from a Daytona or something? Or was it an option on that vintage LeBaron?
I don’t know enough about Chryslers to know Amigo. When that car was built I was still being brought to worship at the one true church of GM. (Even after my leaving the faith my father continues save is Mustang schism.)
It’s stock. Looks like a fun K car eh?
It’s only an intercooler and a G valve away from 13 second quarter mile times.
@sean: Bwahahahahahaha!
I loved that movie.
The console appears to be bone stock. I haven’t seen one of these for a while, but that looks right.
I can remember before the boxy LeBarons came along, you could get a regular Aries K optioned up to like $11K (in 1981 dollars, not cheap) and one of the options was a console similar to the one shown.
I see a Magna engine bay yuk and a lot of faux do dads guarenteed to go wrong
To me, cars like this were emblematic of how the American auto industry had lost its way in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
Sure, you had flashes of modernity like the 1st generation Taurus – especially in SHO form – but shrunken rolling tributes to the late 1970s like this LeBaron were still all too common from GM and Chrysler.
I have to admit that I sold the Acclaim when the tranny started to slip in part because I knew what was coming…. Still, 128K on the original Ultradive wasn’t bad. The nice thing about the Acclaim LX was that it addressed some of the visual issues about the LeBaron that have been criticized–no padded landau roof, no buttons on the velour seats (which were very comfortable), and full analog gauges instead of the digital dash. It had an Infinity stereo system that really rocked for an OEM stereo of the time, lots of interior room in a compact package, power everything, and it was about $15K MSRP, which meant about a $12K purchase price with Dad’s Chrysler discount, a very good value. Wish somebody made a modern equivalent.
To me, many base models of modern cars are the equivalent. Power windows/locks/mirrors, good stereo, gauges, nice interior, plenty of seat adjustments, 150 or more out of the base 4 cylinder and 30+ highway mph in many cases…a base car today is (to me) a damn nice car.
“Wish somebody made a modern equivalent”
They do: Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla.
The Corolla is about as exciting as your fridge, but it is comfortable, cheap to run and is about as reliable as a hammer.
For a few bucks more, you can get some fun to drive in a Civic.
Both cars sell in droves for the above mention reasons. Gearheads castigate them regularly, the buff books flay them. People buy them.
Hahaha, a mini brougham! These ought to be just the perfect cars for older people with strong preference for the traditional, Detroit-style luxury. A landau roof, an easy to read digital instruments, tufted velour upholstery, bench seat, all in a roomy yet compact, easy to drive package. Pretty much the car designed for them! Which is probably what Lido had in mind with these cars anyway, he was around the same age with the same kind of values when these debuted.
Actually if you don’t have much expectation from your ride, these are actually nice, basic runabout, just the thing from going from point A to point B, comfortably and not much else. If only they were reliable, they could have merit as cars for people who don’t care much about cars. Unfortunately its ultradrive transmission isn’t reliable, and who wants to deal with problems on an automotive appliance like this?
Is the Ultradrive trans also from Mitsubishi, because they had terrible autos in the late 80’s?
This is a 1990 version of the Austin 1300 Van Den Plas
Nope, it’s pure Chrysler.
It matches mitsubishi in every detail including the endless faults Chrysler never spent money developing anything they had none so veneering the awful Magna seens all Lido was capable of. Exactly like the VDP 1300 great gloss on a turd
Without looking at the sales numbers, it seemed like these remained popular until the very end. They were everywhere, and back then the Japanese competition-bar Camry after 1992-wasn’t much bigger, and many didn’t offer a V6.
The successor for this car-the Stratus and Cirrus-were engineered with excellent ride and handling, a stiff and space efficient body and all the features buyers wanted. Unfortunately, they were underbuilt out of less than robust components. Ironically, Mexican buyers got the option of the Spirit R/T’s turbo while American buyers were handed a crappy 2.5 V6-apparently also of Mitsubishi origin if I’m not mistaken. Buyers seemed to respond well at first but the shoddy quality put an end to that soon. A shame as they really were a cut above the competition in many respects.
You can tell they were thinking of the LeBaron’s big brother when they were designing it. I really like the 1992-93 New Yorkers, with the slightly more ‘aero’ styling. I actually prefer them over the equivalent ’92-’93 Imperial.
After I sold the Acclaim, I bought a two year old (1997) Plymouth Breeze because it was, I thought, a good deal. $8,000 for a two year old car with about 12,000 miles. Well, you get what you pay for. It was a horrible, nasty car, noisy, rough, and underpowered (despite having almost as much horsepower as the Acclaim–there’s no subsitute for torque). It quickly developed squeaks and rattles (the Acclaim had none when I sold it), I bumped my head every time I got into it due to the “cab forward” styling, and I felt like I was sitting on the floor. I sold it after two years for $6,000 and bought a used Taurus wagon from my father-in-law for $6,000. I drove the Taurus for the next five years with no major problems. Although I still missed the Acclaim.
I have that exact model and year. I had an alarm and stereo installed at fry’s and they screwed up the wiring harness and ignition switch. I can’t get them to fix it because the car is so old. It has 82,000 miles on it. I’m so upset the car just sits in my driveway. I didn’t pay for the work to get done, my uncle did. He refuses to help fix the car since I refused to go to Burningman with him. Now I’m stuck with no vehicle, lost my job, and have to borrow my mothers car to get my kid to school…. I’m just sad all over.
Traded my ’89 Omni with 123,000 miles for a ’91 Spirit with 89,000 miles in 1996. Talk about an upgrade . . . for the time being. What a comfortable car, with an automatic transmission and a/c! Had the base 2.5 4 cylinder, so it was slow, but it rode nice. Until the tranny blew at 102,000 miles and I still owed $3000 on it!
I always wanted one of those Acclaims. I thought they were an instant classic.
But what I really wanted was an 1981 or ’82 Plymouth Reliant. That was an honest car for the times. Too bad for Chrysler that gas got so cheap by ’85.