1964 Chrysler New Yorker - Double Standards

These 1964 and similar looking '63 Chrysler New Yorkers certainly have their fans, I'm on the fence about them. 

That said, with this being a Chrysler, I think nothing of looking past its quirks and foibles. For certain, if this was an American Motors design, I'd think it freakish and weird. My inner voice screaming, "why can't you be normal?". It being a Chrysler I'm like, "yeah, that's cool. Not my cup of tea but ok."

Double standards are funny like that. Not unlike that charming, oh-so-handsome guy who thinks he can say whatever he wants to women in the office and get away with it. The older, pudgy, balding bespectacled clod says things not half as offensive and he ends up in HR. 

Chrysler's New Yorker was all-new for 1960 New Yorker had huge brake shoes to fill after Chrysler's 1957-1959 models changed the game wholesale. Legend has it when GM executives got wind of Chrysler's 1957 line, they scrapped their plans for their '59's coming instead with some of the most outlandish designs of all time. The Chrysler class of 1957 on top of a literal bumper crop of lovely designs they introduced for 1955. Therefore, safe to say that Chrysler was on quite the roll back then but in a day and age of "planned obsolescence", to keep everything new and make last year's model seem old and outdated, something was bound to go wrong. Or less than right. 

From 1955 through 1964, though, Chrysler had a series of designs that were, for the most part, confident, balanced, cohesive and seemingly penned by one person or team with a singular vision; that makes sense because they generally were designed by famed auto designer Virgil Exner.  

Doesn't mean they all "worked", though. Naturally, I think this works somewhat better as a coupe but all 1963 and 1964 "New Yorkers" of the vintage were 4-door sedans; you wanted something with just 2-doors you had to get a "300 J" or "K".

There's a wonton flamboyance to this car that's not unlike the fashion conscious who are able to pull off wearing just about anything and make whatever it is they're wearing seem more special because they're wearing it. Others wear the same thing and something's just not right, or "off". 

It's like someone my age trying to wear "skinny jeans". I mean, candidly, I don't embarrass myself in them but the look certainly draws attention in ways that I didn't intend. It's like my wife wearing a bikini, she most certainly can but she doesn't. 

This Facebook Marketplace find is for sale in Angola, Indiana over in north central Indiana right on the Indiana-Michigan border. The asking price is $5,600 and that seems like a bargain considering it has a rebuilt 440-cubic inch V-8 with lots of go-fast stuff on it. I'd talk the poster of the ad down just to get the motor; wish I had a Cordoba to drop it into. 

No doubt a hardcore, old school Chrysler fan would cry afoul at that notion. Don't be calling H.R. on me. 

1978 Pontiac Phoenix LJ - Summer of '83

General Motors Pontiac Motor Division glued "Phoenix" to two Chevrolet based compact cars from 1977 through 1984. The front-wheel drive, 1980-1984 Chevrolet Citation X-body based Phoenix is arguably more famous, more like infamous, than the original Phoenix which was an unabashed badge-engineered Chevrolet Nova. Doesn't mean it was a bad car by any means. Actually, these "little" suckers like our Facebook Marketplace '78 Phoenix LJ find here were pretty good transportation conveyances. 

They could handle as well if not better than just about anything else General Motors offered at the time and that's a big ding on the leaf springs of Camaros and Firebirds and yeah, even the Flintstone-crude independent rear suspensions on Corvettes of the time; trust me on that one. Snappy if not "luxurious" interiors were remarkably space efficient despite the cars being rear-wheel drive. Buckets and a console on this one too. Wow, for $6,700, this is a lot of car for the money. 

At more than 203-inches long and riding on a 111-inch wheelbase, hard to believe these were considered compacts but compared to the leviathans of the day, they technically were. What's more, when GM downsized their intermediate line for 1978, for 1978 and 1979, these cars along with their Buick Skylark, Oldsmobile Omega and of course Chevrolet Nova kin were significantly larger. Better looking too if you ask me. 

Good looking enough for a kid like me desperate for a car in the summer of 1983? Gosh, I don't know. I came fairly close I guess to purchasing a 1978 Buick V-6 powered Phoenix but after I had a mechanic check it out top-to-bottom, I decided not to. If I recall correctly, there were a series of jig-jagged welds on the rear chassis and body shell that were evident the trunk had been severely plowed into. 

Just as well as I wasn't thrilled it had a V-6 and not a Chevrolet 305-, or 350-cubic inch V-8. Somewhat curiously, these cars, the Nova-based Ventura it replaced as well, never got Pontiac's own 301-cubic inch V-8 engine. However, Pontiac offered their "Iron Duke", 151-cubic inch, inline-four-cylinder engine, essentially a 301 split in two, on these. Pontiac sales brochures touted gas mileage estimates with the Duke and 3-speed manual as high as 34-miles per gallon highway. Your mileage may vary, see dealer for details. 

Most certainly had that "little" Phoenix been equipped like this with a V-8 engine, buckets and a console, 19-year-old me might have overlooked the carnage it had apparently been through. As it was, though, I think I was looking for any excuse not to buy it. Sounds kind of kooky, but in the days before the internet, car shopping was akin to torture and I may have been tempted just to end the process by settling for that thing. Not that car shopping isn't torturous these days, but it is significantly simpler what with the resources like Facebook Marketplace, Cars.com, Autotrader, etc. 

What I did end up purchasing that long ago summer of '83 was a 1975 Chrysler Cordoba from the family of a friend. Not nearly as good a car, but it checked more boxes on my list prerogatives I had back then. Whoever said youth is wasted on the young surely knew what they were talking about. 

Crawling From The Wreckage: My Chrysler Cordoba - My Favorite Car (charleyconnolly.blogspot.com)

Crawling From The Wreckage: 1977 Chrysler Cordoba - I Guess There Are Worse Ways To Spend Your Money (charleyconnolly.blogspot.com)

Crawling From The Wreckage: 1975 Chrysler Cordoba - Dahlink You Look Fabulous (charleyconnolly.blogspot.com)

Crawling From The Wreckage: 1976 Chrysler Cordoba - More Proof The World has Gone Crazy (charleyconnolly.blogspot.com)

Crawling From The Wreckage: 1977 Chrysler Cordoba - Two Birds With One Stone (charleyconnolly.blogspot.com)

Crawling From The Wreckage: 1977 Chrysler Cordoba - Another Cordoba? (charleyconnolly.blogspot.com)

Crawling From The Wreckage: The Old Man, The Long Haired Kid and The Green Cordoba (charleyconnolly.blogspot.com)

 

1971 Plymouth Scamp - I Could Have Been a Contender

What with Chrysler muscle-car values through the sun- or moon-roof these days, we tend to forget about Plymouth's (and Dodge's) like this 1971 Plymouth Valiant Scamp. 

This poor thing probably has more issues than the obvious considering the Facebook Marketplace ad has it listed for a scant (scamp?) $1,500. And, ah geez, it's on a trailer to boot. If they threw the trailer in as well this might be a sweet deal for $1,500, though. 

$1,500 is still a chunk of change for a car that's going to need thousands of dollars of body work even before you get to the interior and the real fun stuff, the powertrain. And then what would have? A Plymouth Scamp you dropped like twenty-grand on? That makes no sense to me. 

Still, I would have loved to have had this when I was in high school, sans all the rust and dents of course. Even in "Exorcist Green", vinyl top and the smaller of the two "Slant Sixes" available on it at the time. This would have made for an altogether better "first-car" than the junker, 1974 Mercury Comet four-door sedan I did end up with. I'll stop short of saying this would have been "cooler", but in reality, it sort of would have been. 

Especially, with Chrysler's 318-cubic inch V-8 under hood. Man, I could have been a contender, but in the deepest throws of the second gas crisis, V-8's were verboten; not that many of these left the factory with one. 

It's not like Chrysler's venerable "Slant Six" was that much better on gas but back then it was all about the pre-tense of "fuel economy" versus being actually "good on gas". My 250-cubic inch, six-cylinder Comet got 10- maybe 11-miles per gallon. Highway. 

Although classified as "compacts", there was nothing really compact about them, these "A-bodies" were proof that Chrysler could do something right back in the 1960's; say what you will about their muscle cars, but they never sold well. 

Meanwhile, they popped these out like popcorn and America gobbled them up thanks to being "sized-right", their spacious interiors and relatively frugal powertrains. Oh, all that and they could be had for a song. 

"Scamps" were nothing more than two-door Valiant's, which were also nothing more than "badge engineered" Dodge Dart "Swingers". However, they offered a dollop or two of styling mojo that the bolt-upright, grocery-getter-ganny mobile Valiant two-door sedans sold from 1967-1970 severely lacked. 

Plymouth built these through model-year 1976 replacing them, the Valiant and the Duster with their woe-be-gone Volare series. 

1969 AMC Rebel - Green Machine. (Or Is it Blue?)

This mossed over 1969 AMC Rebel SST is part of a bumper crop of interesting enough to blog out Facebook Marketplace finds I stumbled upon recently. Are my recent pot-of-gold-discoveries a sign that FB Marketplace is returning to its glory days where relics like this, good or bad, popped up with regularity? I doubt it. More than likely it's a sign that spring is coming, and folks are fixin' to push their junkers off one someone. 

In the classic car universe, coupes and convertibles are most desirable meanwhile most (car) people could care less about four-door sedans. Even station wagons get more love than "three-box" cars with four-doors do. That fact underscores the absurdity of the $7,500 the poster of the ad is asking for this. The only upside is with it being down in bucolic, rural Harriman, Tennessee (near Knoxville), it'll be fairly rust free. Seeing the shape this is in, it's not running, that asking price is over the moon even if this was a blessed coupe.

American Motors Corporation, or "AMC", the result of a merger between Hudson and Nash in 1954, had carved out a nice niche in the mid-to-late-Fifties as purveyors of compact and quasi-intermediate sized, fairly quirkily styled automobiles. Once GM, Ford and Chrysler started selling smaller makes and models, AMC's goose was all but cooked. They countered cratering sales by offering larger and more mainstreamed styled wares. 

Although most of AMC's mid-to-late-Sixties designs were derivatively styled, AMC never quite shook off all of the "off-beatness" that harkened back to the Nash "bathtub" days. Even this literal garden variety Rebel has enough "out there" in its flanks to be somewhat off-putting; ha, as if being a sedan wasn't bad enough. Fear not, AMC got back on the truly wonky styling-train come the mid-Seventies. 

In retrospect, at least AMC tried to bolster itself and if they were successful would have been a great story. They hung in there only because they bought Jeep (on the cheap) from Kaiser in 1970. And when Chrysler swallowed AMC up in 1987, they ditched all of their cars (for the most part) and simply kept Jeep going. 

AMC's "Rebel" replaced the Rambler Classic nameplate starting in 1967, known as the Rambler Rebel in 1967 and simply "Rebel" from 1968-1970, Rebels could be had in coupe, wagon and of course, like our green machine here, sorry, I think it's actually blue, four-door sedan. AMC replaced the "Rebel" nameplate in 1971 gluing "Matador" to a car very similar to the 1970 Rebel. 

Update: this is still available, and the price has been reduced to $5,700. Still too much if you ask me. 

 

1968 Pontiac Grand Prix - The Dustbin of Irrelevancy

Although through most of the Pontiac Grand Prix' production run they were mid-sized models, from the model's introduction in 1962 through 1968, Pontiac built them on two-generations of General Motors "full-size" chassis known as the "B-body". My 1968 Grand Prix Facebook Marketplace find here hails from my old stomping grounds of Queens, New York and has an asking price a not-out-of-this-world, $4,500. 

I wouldn't pay that much for it but then again, I've always chafed at most of Pontiac's mid-to-late-Sixties full-size fleet. It runs but the poster of the ad claims it can't be driven. Just as well since if I was really interested, again, I'm not, it's not like I'd drive this the 500-miles back home. Probably cost me half the cost of the car in gas if I did. 

This '68 is part of the "second generation" of Grand Prix' that Pontiac introduced in 1965. All General Motors full-size cars where new for '65 and while the 1965 GP was a vastly better conveyance than the '62-'64 models, in my opinion, they lacked the panache and sporting elan of the originals. 

Here's a 1962 Grand Prix in all its glory. Pontiac Grand Prix', along with Buick's Wildcat, which was a sub-series of the Buick Invicta for 1962 before becoming its own model, and the Oldsmobile Starfire and Chevrolet Impala SS that both debuted in 1961, where GM's indirect salvo at Ford's four-passenger Thunderbird that had the personal-luxury-car lane to itself from 1958-1960. Debate all you want that GM didn't come with a Thunderbird fighter until 1963 when they introduced the Buick Riviera, but GM's PLC-quadrumvirate that came before the Riviera tipped their bumpers in those unchartered personal luxury car waters first.  

Any sporting pretense a "Pontiac Grand Prix" had seemingly went out the vent window come 1965 with the rebooted Grand Prix that technically followed the original's formula of a Catalina coupe with the trimmings of a top-drawer Bonneville but, and perhaps it's just me, something got lost in translation. Just like that, Grand Prix became bloated, over-styled, gaudy and dowdy - looking not unlike something your well-intentioned Granny would drive to impress upon you that she was hip, relevant and all about current trends. At least the '67 and '68 Grand Prix didn't have fender-skirts like the '65 and '66's did (he screams). 

Seeing that car designs take upwards of three-years to develop, it's presumptuous to assume that Pontiac moved the GP out the GTO's way come '65 by coming with a new model that was more "Ford Thunderbird" than '62 Grand Prix. Most likely they moved the Grand Prix out of the fast lane to make way for the (scratch-my-head) "Catalina 2+2" for '65. The 2+2 came standard with all the sporting pretense the previous GP had albeit with a less luxuriously appointed interior. Grand Prix, then, becoming just another "luxury car". 

Much like today's do-everything-great including looking good crossovers, it took a number of years for GM to figure out the personal-luxury-car recipe before they got it right.  And oh, did they get it right starting in 1969 with a new Grand Prix that was built on a special version of GM's intermediate sized chassis. 

Chevrolet followed suit come 1970 with their "suitcase fender" Monte Carlo built on the same chassis the new GP was and one of the defining automotive niches of the 1970's was born.  The new "smaller" Grand Prix, actually, they were less big by overall by less than two inches although they did ride on a three-inch shorter wheelbase, pushing these old GP's, especially the 1967 and 1968 models, to the dust bin of irrelevancy. 

1977 Chrysler Cordoba - I Guess There Are Worse Ways To Spend Your Money

If you won the lottery, I mean really won the lottery, how would you spend the money? If I really won the lottery, I'd take twenty-grand of it and blow it on this gorgeous 1977, "triple-black", Chrysler Cordoba. 

Really? Of course not. I mean, there might be worse ways to spend money, found, won or heaven forbid actually earned, but twenty-grand on a mint condition Cordoba? Yikes. Average "high retail" pegs this at $6,400 and I might go $7,500 and the wife, bless her heart, might greenlight $8000 given the condition it's in and what these cars mean to me, but $20,000? Sorry, Mr. Rork. No way that's going to happen. 

We've heard the stories how young athlete's blow their unfathomably large bonus checks on cars, boats, houses, trips, blow, women and who knows what else. I'm not saying they or lottery winners shouldn't celebrate their newly found wealth with an extravagant purchase or two, but they have to keep their wits about themselves. And my spending twenty-large on this is not me keeping my wits about myself. 

Even in this market I believe buying an old or "classic car", I'll stop short of saying that one of my beloved 1975-1977 Cordoba's are "classic", as an investment isn't the best way to burn a wad of cash. And if this was priced accordingly, I might, just might be tempted to seriously consider it, but I can't do the mental gymnastics work to make this work for me at 20G. 

Chrysler introduced these cars for model-year 1975 as a salvo at the burgeoning personal luxury car market that General Motors had a strangle hold on. Using GM's formula of using an intermediate-size platform rather than a full-size one, Chrysler used their star-crossed "B-body" on these, designers whipped up a car that, in my opinion, actually worked quite well aesthetically in spite of not having a single original line on it. Derivative styling be damned, or whether people just loved emulating Ricardo Montalban, through the end of the 1977 model year, Cordoba sales accounted for some sixty percent of all Chrysler sales. 

Ah, but of course, Chrysler couldn't leave well enough alone as for 1978, they botched the mid-production-cycle refresh. Any distinctiveness Cordoba had went out the opera window and an already large automobile looked even bigger than it actually was. Sales cratered, the second gas crisis struck in 1979, Cordoba was switched to Chrysler's J-body (think elongated F-body or Plymouth Volare chassis) and the moniker got life-flited to hospice by the end of 1983. Just as well. 

I'd love to at least take this grand old dame for a spin if nothing else for the nostalgia trip. Or just to take a selfie with it. I have never seen a Cordoba at a car show. Seriously. Even MOPAR specific shows. I know. Odd. These were like everywhere in the 1970's so you'd think that wouldn't be the case. 

I had a 1975 that I've blogged if not waxed about incessantly. It was not a great car, and I had an inordinate amount of trouble with it but it's hard for me to convey just how important that car was to me and what it represented in my life. That being a transition from my woe-be-gone youth into adulthood where anything it seemed was possible. And all that would come to imply. 

 

2000 Chrysler Sebring - Yes. He said "Funner"

My latest cheap car search unearthed this underrated gem this morning. It's a 2000 Chrysler Sebring with just 55,000 miles on its 23-year-old ticker and has an asking price of $4999. If the driver's seat wasn't shredded, I might be inclined to kick its tires. They knock a grand or so off the asking price to cover the cost reupholstering it and if I find time this week I still might. You just never know with these things. Don't laugh, smirk or roll your eyes, this is a lot more than what you might think it is. 

Chrysler introduced these cars for model-year 1996 as a replacement for their very long-in-the-tooth, K-car derived LeBaron's. Why the name change? Who knows. Chrysler Corp had used "Sebring" previously as a trim level on their intermediate Plymouth Satellite's from 1971-1974. Like the LeBaron, these also came in convertible. 

I had briefly shopped the Dodge version of this car, what they called "Avenger", in the late 1990's and didn't give it a second look. My loss as the Sebring and Avenger were both based on the then-current Mitsubishi Eclipse; the hell was I thinking being all about a 1997 Chevrolet Monte Carlo at the time. Well, frankly, I still think the Monte Carlo the better-looking car although these Sebring's are hardly ugly. I don't recall giving these cars a moment's notice either back in the day. 

Oh, what were they thinking with this front end? Chrysler substantially updated these cars for 2001. Sharper, smarter sheet metal reminiscent of a then current 300M coupe (if there was such a thing) on top of Mitsubishi's new and wonderful Eclipse platform (or chassis); I have a 2004 Eclipse Spyder GTS and it's a ridiculously fun to drive. This car might not be quite the fun, but something tells me it would be funner than the Monte Carlo LS I did buy. Yes, he said funner. And would most likely stay bolted and glued together longer as contemporary reviews noted these where the best built "Chryslers" at the time. 

 

1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera - You've Been Warned

Despite remarkably robust sales at first, General Motors first attempt at a six-passenger, front-wheel-drive sedan was, being kind, less than spectacular. With myriad engineering and assembly maladies, the "X-body" Chevrolet Citation, Pontiac Phoenix, Oldsmobile Omega and Buick Skylark had scores of embarrassing and expensive recalls. By 1986, they were all gone. Well, sort of. They lived on thanks to another series of car's GM launched in 1982 using a lion's share of their DNA. Those cars where the front-wheel-drive "A-body" Chevrolet Celebrity, Pontiac 6000, Buick Century and Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. My blue-on-blue Facebook Marketplace find here is a 1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cierra from model year 1994. A scant 81,000-miles on its 29-year-old analog ticker and an asking price of just $2,500. Gosh, what could go wrong? 

Now, being honest, I didn't find all that much to find fault with the Citation and company. I took my, he looks down at the floor to avoid eye-contact, second-driving test in a brand new '81 Pontiac Phoenix that the driving school I enrolled in to help me pass had just bought. While I thought its styling odd if not ugly and its interior appointments bizarre, compared to the oafish, shuddering mess that was my old man's '72 Cadillac, the car I failed my first road test in, I thought the Phoenix nimble, zippy, and fleet-on-its-radial-feet. Well, what the heck did I know? I had a favorable impression of the rolling little shoe box despite the darn thing's propensity to stall-out if I turned the wheel too far right or left; I figured that's just what "new cars" did. Frankly, that could have been "fail-this-kid-again" worthy had I stalled out when maneuvering the mandatory parallel parking portion of the quiz. Thankfully I didn't stall it and I passed with flying colors. 

My first experience with what GM called an "A-body" was in the winter of 1989 when a college buddy and I rented a 2.5-liter, inline four-cylinder Cutlass Ciera for a road trip up to New Bedford, Massachusetts. A friend of ours lived up there and was working overnights at a radio station. After a weekend of hard drinking in that oh-so-depressed old whaling town an hour, without traffic, south of Boston, I didn't know what was worse - how god-forsaken New Beford was, my hangover or the numb handling, bog slow exhausting to drive Ciera. The only good thing was it didn't break down and it was pretty good on gas. 

Subsequent experiences in these were in versions with one of a number of GM's stalwart 60- and 90-degree V-6's that were much better to drive - I wouldn't say they were "enjoyable", though. My Marketplace find here is powered by GM's "L82", 3.1-liter or what they referred to as the "3100" V-6. GM put the L82, not to be confused with the 5.7-liter, V-8's of course, in a gaggle of front- and rear-wheel-drive cars between 1994 and 1999. My 1997 Chevrolet Monte Carlo LS had one and it went through its thermo-plastic intake manifold gasket twice in eight-and-half-years and not even 110,000-miles. TWICE!  

Despite the 3100's propensity to melt plastic, that didn't stop me from buying a 99,000-mile, 2003 Chevrolet Malibu for my younger son back in 2019 with an updated version of the L82 GM code-named, "LG8". Allegedly, the LG8 had an improved intake manifold gasket design and through about three years of ownership, my son and I never had an issue with the engine. However, it seemed we had a problem with just about everything else on the car. 

From cooling system issues to electrical gremlins, brakes, suspension, power window regulators, catalytic converter foibles to who knows what I'm forgetting, from a reliability standpoint, that car was one of the worst cars I've ever owned. To make matters worse, my son had it down at Ohio University, more than three hours away. Nothing quite like attempting to diagnose issues on Facebook Live and or dealing with unscrupulous mechanics in a college town trying to take advantage of mommy and daddy when kid's car breaks down. As if that wasn't enough, I thought the car homely, and the air conditioning never worked. 

As if I need another excuse not to inquire about this '94 Ciera that appears to be in about the same shape my son's Malibu was when I bought it. Buyer beware - older cars with low-mileage, especially domestic ones, that are reasonably priced like this Ciera and my son's Malibu are a Pandora's Box of sorts and they're usually too good to be true. There are exceptions like the 1995 Lexus SC400 my wife and I stumbled upon in 2019, but they're few and far between. You've been warned.