Posts from ‘Chrysler’
Classic Car Ads: Coupes of 1971
1971 Ford LTD
If you’ve been following auto stuff long enough, you’ve likely come across the descriptor 2-door sedan. Some will argue that all 2-door vehicles with a trunk are coupes, while other folks argue otherwise. According to the editors at website Curbside Classics, this is the real story:
2023 Chrysler 300C
With its aggressive and blocky styling and available V8 power, the 300 was a bold affront to the sleek Concord it replaced in Chrysler showrooms back in 2005. Gone was the Concord’s “cab forward” design, replaced by the 300’s long hood and huge, aggressive grille.
Functional as they were, station wagons were generally marketed as upscale. Not that low-end models weren’t available, but ads and commercials for wagons generally put a luxury spin on the situation. And, at least for a while, inextricably linked to the premium wagon experience was the woodie look.
Classic Car Ads: Luxury Cars of 1985
1985 Chrysler Town & Country
For the most part, we identify luxury vehicles not by price, but by make and model. For example, an Oldsmobile 88, to most people, was not a luxury car. But an Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight… we can pretty much agree that the senior Olds was a luxury ride.
Classic Car Ads: Sedans of 1980
1980 Chrysler LeBaron
According to website Statista, light-truck sales—which include crossovers and SUVs—have risen from about 2 million in 1980 to almost 12 million last year. One needs only to look around to see that coupe and convertible sales have fallen to all-time lows, but it’s the humble sedan that I am most worried about.
Forgotten Concept: Plymouth Pronto
Plymouth Pronto
This is an installment in a series of posts looking back on show cars that we feel deserved a little more attention than they got. If you have a suggestion for a Forgotten Concept topic, please shoot us a line or leave a comment below.
Dealer markup sticker on a 2022 Jeep Grand Wagoneer Series III
It’s no secret: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the related supply-chain issues, new-vehicle transaction prices have shot upward over the last couple years. Stories of jaw-dropping dealer markups—especially for popular vehicles—are now commonplace… so much so that some sort of markup on a new vehicle is more or less the rule, rather than the exception. On a recent Sunday road trip through Western Illinois, I came across a small-town Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-Ram dealership with a few brand-new vehicles on its lot, so I decided to do a little boots-on-the-ground research. What I found was this: This particular dealer is asking full sticker, full sticker plus $5000, or full sticker plus $10,000 for the new vehicles it has in inventory. And, there isn’t very much in inventory.
1941 Ford, and a clown
I don’t know when it was that stand-up comics began telling clown jokes. I want to say I was fully an adult before it was brought to my attention—by those stand-up comics—that the whole clown thing is pretty weird. I recall a local shock jock dedicating considerable attention to the whole clown-as-a-career thing.
1979 Chrysler Cordoba 300
The American auto industry’s “Malaise Era” is generally defined as the 1973 through 1984 model years, and it was by and large a bummer for car enthusiasts. A confluence of several sobering factors—more-stringent emission standards, the introduction of low-lead gasoline, and rising auto-insurance rates—rather suddenly put the kibosh on horsepower, and as a result, on fun.
The Last Old-Man Cars
Chrysler 300
My father has owned a total of one non-American-brand vehicles in his life. That vehicle was a 1999 Subaru Forester, which he purchased used from me. Now in his eighties, my dad has never strayed too far from a core vehicle type—that being a largish sedan featuring inoffensive styling and something more than 4-cylinder power under the hood. In reverse order, his most recent cars include a Chrysler 300, Buick Lucerne, Oldsmobile Aurora, and an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.
