Things were really starting to pop again in 1983, in terms of domestic performance cars. The Mustang found its mojo again, and the Camaro was starting to wake up too. Over at Chrysler, Lee Iacocca had saved the firm with his K-Cars. But there was no serious excitement to be found at the pentastar, not like Lee Iacocca remembered from the sixties. What could be done with a 2.2 L four, since the turbo hadn’t yet arrived at Chrysler? In lieu of the real thing, how about a hot name from the sixties? And what better name than Carroll Shelby? Lee and Carroll were made for each other; there were no egos bigger than theirs in the industry.
And thus was born the Shelby Charger, a worked-over FWD Charger, cleaned-up and hotted-up and ready to rumble. Sort of. Although it had some meaningful improvements, this is no Shelby GT350. The K-car four cylinder was tweaked to up power from 94 to a mighty 107. The result was a scorching 0-60 in 10 seconds. Just barely good enough to nip the VW GTI by a hair, but it was a long ways off from the real sixties. But you have to start somewhere…
This many years removed, I find myself surprised that a standard 1983 Dodge Charger was quicker to 60 and in the quarter than the vaunted VW GTI…and that there was do little difference in the Shelby-tweaked car.
I remember the ad, where Shelby is posing next to a 2.2 with dual sidedraft Webers, and the caption read “2.2=8” I laughed and thought Shelby has sunk to a new low. Or just getting senile.
Shelby was always a bit of a huckster. He just had better stuff to, uh, huck, in the ’60s. The Shelby Charger itself was “not too bad” and gave off a bit of flash and hustle, back in a day when there wasn’t much else going on at Chrysler. Ford and GM were starting to get some good cars together and there were a bunch of nice imports, but the SC was an acceptable car in a moment of limited expectations.
One year later, the Shelby Charger Turbo and Omni GLH appeared. That engine in the light L-body was very quick. (And handled well enough to clean up in Showroom Stock.)
It is tempting to pooh-pooh 127 horsepower now, but the 318 in a Diplomat was only putting out 130 and the slant six was down to 90. The 1.8 L in my GTI was good for an even 100.
I am sure that Shelby would rather have worked on a 318 in something but Chrysler didn’t have any cars to put it in, other than the J body that was in its last year, which would have been far too big to compete with a Mustang or Camaro. I think they did a pretty good job given what was available.
Thank you, and agreed!
Considering that Chrysler was essentially bankrupt three years before this, and only survived because of federal loan guarantees, they did the best with what they had.
Although Iacocca should have sent a big “thank you” to Chrysler’s previous management, which had greenlighted the Omni/Horizon and O24/TC3.
Except it was actually 107 hp. I mixed up the torque and hp numbers. So that was less per cubic inch than the 100 in the 1.8 L VW engine.
Point taken. But I just looked it up and the 1983 GTI was only 90 bhp, so it was only marginally better output/liter.
Make no mistake – when I went to spend my own money I bought a GTI instead of something like this, but Chrysler was about the only US company putting real effort into a naturally aspirated four at the time. And in a world where 70-80 horsepower in a small fwd car was the norm, these were a breath of fresh air (if imperfectly executed).
I’m not dissing on Chrysler in general on this point. But this was pretty weak sauce to carry the Shelby name. The first Chrysler Shelby should have been the first turbocharged 2.2. They should have pulled up the turbo a year or two, or just waited.
I’m sorry, but a 107 hp “Shelby” is really stretching it. Meanwhile Ford had their turbos out.
Just a note: The text of the road test says horsepower was raised from 94 to 107. It was torque that went from 117 to 127.
My uncle’s 1983 fwd New Yorker had a turbo, and 146 horses if I recall correctly. So it could have been used, but would have been more expensive, I guess?
The 2.2 Turbo I wasn’t available until 1984.
Two of my friends each bought one of these, leading me to buy the Plymouth counterpart a year later. I should have waited because as soon as the 1 year warranty ran out things started happening to their cars. First, a weld in the exhaust system broke on their cars (within weeks apart) resulting in the the replacement of the entire exhaust from the cat back. The same thing happened to my car. Electrical problems, broken shift linkages, broken clutch cables, etc. Whatever happened to their cars happened to mine a year later, without fail.
This cars was without a doubt the worst car purchase I ever made.
The worst car purchase is the used up version of this car a friend bought from a buy here/pay here lot. He was really excited for me to see it. First I rode in it and noticed things weren’t right. On top of it it was rusty and the interior was trashed. Once I walked around it, the car kept getting worse.
It had been hit on the driver’s front corner or rear corner and something in the chassis was bent seriously b/c the driver’s door overlapped the body at the rear of the door jamb.
Friend was so happy that I couldn’t say a bad thing about the ragged old car. It lasted about 3 months before serious reliability problems set in. Admittedly he was driving it 50+ miles a day. Overheating, consuming vast quantities of oil, electrical gremlins. etc.
Finally he took it back to the car lot and abandoned it. Naturally his problems didn’t stop there as the payments were still due. Young and dumb as many of us are at that age, plus he was starting from a very poor family. No good money guidance to maximize what little he had. Lost track of him soon after so no idea if he was able to claw his way out of the “country holler” or not.
This one is near and dear to my heart. I owned the 1982 non-Shelbyized Charger 2.2. It’s still my favorite of all the cars I’ve owned. 4-speed, no power steering or brakes, no options whatsoever other than the tacky tape stripes and plastic spoilers it came with, it was a great car for an 18-20 year old in the mid 80’s. Built like a tin can, it felt a bit like a motorized skateboard. The exhaust note made it sound much meaner than it was, but it was a lot of fun to toss around on the back roads of Northwestern NJ. And it stood up to a great deal of abuse in my young hands. I can’t say it lived up to the hype of the advertising of the time, but I can’t say it necessarily deserves the mocking and contempt heaped on it, then or now. The Charger name made it a target for the scorn of anyone who still remembered the “Real Chargers”, but it was a product of its time, and no more deserving of contempt than a 2.3-powered Fox Mustang deserved it from anyone who remembered “Real Mustangs”.
Of course I’m viewing the car through a rose-colored rear view, but for that moment in time these were viable sporty cars. The 2.2 ran out of breath over 65MPH, but the speed limit was 55 everywhere anyway. The 4-speed had one gear too few on the highway, but the package was perfectly suited for the kind of local banging around that I was doing back then, and the hatchback could swallow a lot of stuff that a college student typically schlepped around.
My wife had an ’84 Turismo 2.2. automatic. It was a good car. The interior wasn’t too cheap, and the seats were comfortable. The only time it wouldn’t start was the night I had to take my wife to the hospital, for the birth of our daughter. Figures. We took my truck.
Having driven both the GTI and the Shelby Charger back in the day, I can say that the Charger felt faster in a straight line, but I rather preferred to drive the GTI. It just felt more “put together” on the road, and the Chryco interiors of the day felt like they were going to fall apart at any minute.
The GTI was definitely a fast highway car. I had a straight six Mustang (3.3L) that also ran out of breath above the posted speed limit like the Charger and saw maybe 20 mpg with maybe a ten gallon tank. Long trips had lots of stops. The a/c chopped off some MPG for even more frequent stops.
After relocating to Europe on military assignment, I bought a 1.8L 8V Rabbit (not Golf) convertible that was US spec. Took many trips on the Autostrada at low triple digit speeds for 100+ miles. The car topped out at an indicated 123 mph but I’d guess reality was a little slower. I’m certain it was north of 100 mph anyhow. Pretty good for a little engine with 175K+ miles on it.
Incidentally both the big six in the Mustang and the 1.8L VW made the same horsepower. It was an automotive education.
I’m thinking the Rabbit may have had incorrectly sized tires, as I think I remember that the top speed on the second gen GTI was 108 mph (in european trim). I don’t have time to look it up, but it was in a Road & Track article about a VW Vanagon that Porsche engineers souped up with a 911 engine and suspension that could do 118 mph on the autobahn, and that the most surprised motorists were the GTI drivers doing 108 and being passed by a Vanagon doing 118…
The European GTIs were considerably hotter, with a bit over 110 hp compared to 90 hp for the US version. The US version would definitely have a lower top end than the Euro version.
While most of the brougham and practical K-car platform variants Iacocca created while at Chrysler (Lebaron, T-115 minivan) were generally okay, the so-called ‘performance’ cars are more accurately reflected in a line credited to Iacocca: “sell the sizzle, not the steak”.
The Shelby Charger (as well as other stuff like the Omni GLH, Daytona/Laser, and Sundance Duster) fall into this category. The first Shelby Chargers, in particular, are not unlike the earlier, mid-seventies ‘mylar GT’ cars like the Cobra II and Volare Road Runner.
The bottom line is that it’s simply tough to make a true, old-school, straight-line musclecar when you’re limited to a FWD platform, no matter whose name and how many stripes and decals are slathered on. As others have mentioned, the VW GTI pulls it off a whole lot better.
I wouldn’t be that harsh, when Chrysler finally put a turbocharger on these in GLH form they became much more legitimate performers. Many faults remained but it’s not like they didn’t try at all.
What separates cars from this early-mid 80s era and cars from the mid-late 70s is these were on the upswing, starting nearly from scratch with all new technology, while those sticker package Volare RoadRunners were on a downswing, with old technology that was being strangled by primitive emissions/economy measures and the once leading edge torsion bar suspensions numbed in an effort to attain maximum isolation.
This early Shelby Charger and an Aspen R/T are about as equally unimpressive compared to a 71 Demon 340, but the Charger at least has many practical improvements in packaging and fuel economy that make the faux performance Aspen/volare’s seem completely irrelevant.
It was obvious that Chrysler wanted to be back in the sporty car segment that the Fox Mustang and the re-awakened Camaro had. It’s just that this wasn’t the way to do that. The “Charger” was a K-Car with FWD. Nope. Not having it.
It’s not a K-car, but rather a 2-door Omni/Horizon with the K car engine.
That sounds even worse.
From what I can gather, the L-body (Omnirizon) was, indeed, the basis for the 024/TC3/Charger/Turismo vehicles and they seem to have been one of the first vehicles Iacocca championed upon his arrival from Ford.
The K-car was a further derivative of the L-body platform. The Omnirizon arrived for 1978, the coupes a year later, and the K-car for 1981.
Technically, the Omnirizon (itself based on the old Simca 1100) was the root basis for all of Chrysler’s FWD vehicles throughout Iacocca’s tenure, up until the PL (Neon) and LH (Intrepid).
Those early L-body coupes were hardly competitors for the reinvigorated Fox Mustang or the Camaro (despite shenanigans like slapping Shelby’s name on some of them), but for what Iacocca had to work with, they were as good as it was going to get for a sporty coupe from Chrysler at the time.
Yes, they were. More than one Mustang driver was wondering what the heck happened after running across an Omni GLH.
https://www.onelapofamerica.com/event/ResultsIndex.do?eventId=8
Note who finished second overall…and note some of the stuff they BEAT!
The K may have L-Body inspiration/powertrains, but the K Cars were a clean sheet design. They are NOT derived from the L-bodies.
It’s a recent myth that the K cars are just stretched L-Bodies.
My dad had the 1987 Plymouth Turismo Duster version of this car and I may not be remembering it correctly, but I want to say it had a 5 speed manual but it could have been a four. He bought it used and straightened out everything that was wrong with it including the progressive Holley 2 barrel it was running as unlike other FWD Mopars it wasn’t fuel injected. Once fixed, he had no complaints about power and he no trouble getting mid to upper 30’s on the highway with it. While it wasn’t as powerful as a 60’s car, he had a lot of fun with it. Towards the end, it started developing a mystery vibration bad enough that he stopped driving it. My dad was one of those guys that if couldn’t fix it, it was time to let it go as he was really good at fixing what other people considered unfixable.
That sounds even worse.
I test drove one of these in the 90’s out of curiosity because I had an ’85 turbo. It felt extremely slow, probably due to being used to the turbo. Any other time it would have seemed peppy.
But seeing that blue with silver stripes brings back so many good memories of my first car (which was the ’85 Shelby). I drove it for 2 years and raced everything I could. It was nearly dead when I traded it in but I’d love to find another one day. I used to see them every once and a while but they’re pretty rare now.
I’m more directly familiar with the K derived Laser/Daytona successors but a lot of the criticisms described in the article sounds very familiar. The feeling of the squishy unsupportive seats, fit and finish and vague shifter gives the impression was that this was a car whose supporting structure was made of foam rubber with steel panels screwed to it to form the body. I can only presume these are about the same or worse. They can be a great laugh to drive though and there’s a certain runt underdog charm to them compared to the more serious Mustangs, Camaros and imports.
I never put it together that the Shelby originated the roofline change, the original design was a bit busy but I feel filling in the glass after the pillar threw off the proportions in a bad way
Chrysler’s stylists tried to freshen the original 024/TC3 to keep it ‘new’ in a kind of Studebaker, on-the-cheap way by shmucking on the usual fake scoops and using various block-off panels of the rear-most quarter panel class aft of the C-pillar. And, like Studebaker’s efforts, none of them really worked, either, with the original being the cleanest design.
But, then, I was never much of a fan of the 024/TC3/Charger/Turismo, anyway. It was neither good nor bad, but simply inoffensive, and I guess that was good enough for a lot of people.
My brother always referred to GLH as God damn Little Hatch back.
It’s a shame that a lot of these cars were built like toilet paper.They quickly fell apart and lost there value while hitting the junkyards by the dozens.They’re cool to look at today, even a little bit on the classic side.The only reason they are looked at is because they are old.Even new they only had a marginal following, laughed at by many and constantly compared to the older muscle cars that nobody wanted because they were gas hogs.
Thank God we moved on. The 80’s cars deserve to be where they’re at, in a museum or in the junkyard.
These were like a school cafeteria hamburger.
Too much cheese and too little meat.
But like that burger, they were cheap and filled you up. Briefly.
My wife’s first car was a Shelby Charger, she still considers it one of her favorites we have owned. Had it about 5 years, just spent money on maintenance.
I see I’m late to the party on this topic, but I was doing some reminiscing about vehicles I’ve had over the years and ran across this article and thread. It brought back some memories. Back when my wife and I were very young, just starting out, and didn’t have a lot of money to sling around, we traded a very clean and reliable but dog slow ’79 Chevette for a brand new ’83 2.2 in the Plymouth flavor (Turismo). It was a sharp red with the upgraded alloy wheels and RWL tires. It got even better looking when I pulled those silly ’80s tape stripes and emblems off it as soon as we got it home from the dealer.
Coming out of a Chevette, the 2.2 felt downright peppy and much more fun to drive. There are a lot of mountains and grades around where we live, and whereas the ‘Vette was so underpowered as to be dangerously slow climbing the grades with traffic bearing down on us, the 2.2 had no trouble with the grades at all.
We didn’t have any serious issues with it the two years we owned it, but there were several laughably poor quality control problems we had to get corrected. For example, the hood had been put on crooked so one corner stuck up about 1/2″ above the fender. The little fins in one of the dash vents just fell out on the floor the first time we tried to move it. The carpet shed its nap in handfuls like it had the mange.
Then not long after we bought it, we took it on a trip back east and it died coming over Vail Pass on I-70 in Colorado. Luckily it quit just as we crested the pass, and without even slowing down or pulling over I was able to shift into neutral and coast a couple of miles at freeway speed to the next exit and right into a service station. The mechanic on duty just shrugged and said “It’s a Chrysler. A lot of them vapor lock coming over the pass. Let it sit for a minute and it’ll start.” He was right, it did. From then on, at high altitude, any time it felt the subtle signs of it starting to stumble, I quickly shifted into neutral, revved it a little, and it cleared out. This was a new car, mind you, but meh, it was the ’80s. All cars were pretty much crap.
The worst issue was just a couple thousand miles after its stupid short but standard for the time 12 month, 12k mile warranty expired. I noticed a slight shimmy in the steering wheel at freeway speed, and since it was out of warranty, I took it to trusted independent shop instead of the dealer. The shop said the shimmy was because the front tires were cupped and ruined due to the front end being out of alignment from the factory. He said it was not unusual for them to see misaligned new cars. I say again, cars in the ’80s were pretty much crap, and such issues were not a huge shock. So, I had it aligned and bought a new set of tires for a car with only about 14k miles on it, which cured the shimmy.
Otherwise, once the initial QC problems were worked out, it did everything it was supposed to do for two years. By then I was making more money and we traded it for a loaded five speed Mustang GT. Yeah, on paper the GT might not have been much (if any) quicker, but that V-8 sure felt like it had more grunt. Maybe we just didn’t keep the 2.2 around long enough for it to wear out its welcome, but as opposed to the people who assembled it, I have no hard feelings against the car itself. Those 2.2’s were a welcome sign the auto industry was finally awakening from its slumber.