1993 Chrysler New Yorker Fifth Avenue - Choir Practice

Before I do my best to eviscerate this perfectly awful 1993 Chrysler New Yorker Fifth Avenue, I think I should at least pay some homage to the K car platform or chassis it's based on. I think that's only fair.

 

Chrysler's much lauded "K-car" started out in 1978 known as the "L-body" and was the underpinning for the Plymouth Horizon and Dodge Omni. Engineered by Simca, a Chrysler subsidiary in Europe, they were adored by automobile pundits for their packaging and efficiency. They were also embraced by a buying public wanting smaller vehicles that were easier to handle, better on gas and were affordable. Much like the K cars they would spawn, however, save for perhaps the Dodge Omni O24, they were certainly nothing to look at. Run circles around most anything for sale at the time made domestically? Oh, you bet. But as for being lookers they were anything but.



Knowing they were onto something, Chrysler quickly started making plans for a fleet of midsized, six passenger vehicles on a modified version of the L platform they called "K". At the time, though, after 15 years or so of bad luck, bad timing and questionable product planning, Chrysler was in serious jeopardy of going bankrupt. The government realizing that a competitive, balanced, non monopolistic automobile industry being paramount to at least a functioning U.S. economy, loaned Chrysler 1.5 billion dollars so they could remain somewhat buoyant. Keep in mind, though, the government would never have loaned Chrysler the money if they did not believe in their plan to launch of new line of vehicles based on the Simca L-body. Enter telegenic Lee Iacocca as Chrysler president who became the literal face of the company and the K's were smash hit. So much so that Chrysler paid the government back early and the rest as we say is history.

 



So, why don't "K-cars" get the respect that other game changing, seminal vehicles like the Model T and Volkswagen Beetle get? Well, save for maybe the 1987-1995 K-car LeBaron, they were all butt ugly. Especially, in my opinion, these 1990-1993 vintage New Yorker "Fifth Avenues". This, this is a luxury car? Good lord, did anyone with a shred of styling acumen take pencil to paper to draw up this thing? I think not.

 

In fairness, the K-car New Yorker had, literally, enormous luxury car brake shoes to fill. For instance, Chrysler's 1976-1978 New Yorkers were, yes this is highly subjective, perhaps the best-looking luxury cars of the 1970's; certainly the best looking Chrysler New Yorker of all time. I've said it before that these cars were better-looking Cadillacs than anything Cadillac made back then. That said, they sold terribly in what's always been a niche market dominated by anything "Cadillac" that was made even smaller by the first gas crisis in 1974. End of the day, though, there's no mistaking this New Yorker as a luxury car.
 

 

This thing? Please. And how we got from there to here in just ten short model years is a story about horrendously bad design, more poor product planning and a complete disconnect from their customer base. Somehow, Chrysler thought people would buy this and other stretched K car based "luxury cars" and some actually did. Why? Damned if I know. Chrysler did have some cache back then and never underestimate middle America's love of what they perceive to be value. However, sorry - you just can't make a narrow, boxy economy car longer, stuff it with fluffy leather seats, fake wire wheels, plop a silly plastic/crystal hood ornament on it and call it a luxury car.
 

 

Well, you can but who are you really fooling? Luxury is about the unnecessary and Chrysler did cram every last bit of unnecessary, cliched, ersatz 1970's luxury car bauble and bit into these things. Problem is they left out the most important thing about a luxury car - style.  I find it hard to believe Chrysler's design department did a collective high five and celebrated this design at choir practice when it was completed. More like drowned their sorrows at the Regal Beagle. Oh, and for the record - yeah, I know - this is a "Fifth Avenue" meaning that between 1990 and 1993 you got a bump in wheelbase over lesser New Yorkers that helped create near limousine sized rear seating capacity. 

 

 

Seriously, is it any wonder that Lexus took off like it did in the early 1990's when The Big Three were shilling horrible cars like this? Mind you, Cadillac was doing no better with their stretched to the max DeVille either and forget the rear wheel drive "Brougham" they had at the time. Lincoln was doing slightly better with their Taurus based Continental but, again, compared to the juggernaut that was Lexus, Infiniti too, they didn't stand a chance. Would a better looking K-car based "New Yorker" make me feel differently about these cars? Perhaps but only to a certain degree since compared to just about anything coming out of Japan back then, the Chrysler K-car was woefully and hopelessly inadequate.