mmarshall

To be honest, I liked a number of things about the car myself. It killed a number of birds with one stone. It just wasn't worth the constant quality-problems. I'll go into more of them in detail when I do my Lebaron write-up.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

Past tense "liked" is relevant... but compared to today's cars, it's utter garbage.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Aside from the electronics in modern cars, its not all that different honestly. Its still got a bunch of creature comforts, AC, automatic windows and locks, starter, AM/FM radio, reasonable fuel economy, easy maintenance, radial tires. You can drive one of these today in relative comfort, and your experience wont be drastically different from the modern cars. Yeah, the 0-60 acceleration of the 4 cylinder model is very sluggish, but I'm sure the V6 version was just fine. Mechanically this car can be easily modified to handle and accelerate comparably to modern cars. That is to say that this car came a long way from early cars with manual engine cranks, suspension components that had to be manually lubricated periodically, zero creature comforts, etc.

That being said, the 80ies were very interesting times for the automotive industry. Back then the Japanese were only a blimp on the horizon, the Germans were not yet fully recovered from WW2 aftermath and not quite on the same level they are on today, but the American manufacturers were already in the decline. It can be argued that most cars built in the 80ies were pretty much garbage.

mmarshall

Respectfully, I have to disagree. Toyota had turned into a powerhouse in the U.S. as far back as the 1970s, Honda was an emerging powerhouse, Nissan (Datsun) was also growing rapidly, and Mitsubishi was selling many thousands of vehicles of their own design in the American market under Plymouth, Dodge, and Chrysler brand-names.

Yes, there were many problems, but, particularly in the first half of the decade, the biggest single one was probably the emission-choked crap-carburators. IMO (and I've mentioned this before), the auto industry waited about 15 years too long to convert to EFI....should have been done in the early 70s, not late 80s.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Still, the Japanese were just emerging, but they have not yet dominated almost the entire market like they did in the 90ies and 2000s, but obviously they were already a threat that the big American three sensed. The Chrysler K-car was one of many attempts to compete with Japanese compacts, and obviously not a very successful one. While I passed my driving test in a K-car, my first car was a 5th gen Civic.

Easier said than done. Remember that EFI requires a computer to read data from numerous sensors and control the injectors accordingly. The first microprocessor was only created in 1971 by Intel, and it was too primitive to even run an EFI control system. More sophisticated systems consisted of complex transistor chip circuits that would be way too cost prohibitive to be used to control car EFI systems. Not only that, but the computer had to be adopted to survive wide range of temperatures that a car may experience.

And since we are talking about computers, as terrible as American cars might have been in the 80ies, the world owes much of what we take for granted today to the research and work of the American automotive and Aerospace industries. GM, Lockheed, Boeing were already developing CAD systems and CNC machines as early as late 50ies. This is when computers costed millions, occupied entire rooms, and a monochrome graphics terminal (essentially a monitor) costed close to $2 mil adjusted for inflation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2250

mmarshall

The K-cars, like the competing X-bodies at GM and the later Tempo/Topaz from Ford, were a direct result of the CAFE and emission rules of the 1970s, downsizing the compact sedans/coupes, giving them FWD, and making them more fuel-efficient. Unfortunately, they lost a lot of mechanical solidness in the process....no more anvil-durable Slant-Six engines or iron-case Torqueflite transmissions. They did, however, come off the assembly line with somewhat fewer defects than the X-bodies at GM, which were almost hopeless.

The basic technology for fuel-injection was available in the 1970s, though of course, not as electronically-complex as in later decades. But almost anything was better than those carburators of that period. And some vehicles did start to convert in the late 70s/early 80s....but most did not, until later in the decade.

LexBob2

Chevy had fuel injection available as an option on some models in 1957. It might have just been on 283 V8's. It was almost like science fiction back then lol.

Och

iTrader: (3)

These early fuel injection systems were nothing like the modern EFI systems controlled by a digital computer. They were analog devices, far too complex and not very efficient or reliable.

According to Wikipedia, the first digital EFI system is Motronic made by Bosch in 1979, using Intel 8051 processor. Shortly after GM was using Motorola microprocessors. Toyota I believe started using NEC microprocessors, and so on. That's to say that before microprocessors were invented and somewhat matured, there was no feasible way for mainstream implementation of EFI.

jimbosr1

I bought a 1990 spirit ES turbo when i was stationed in Korea for state side pick up. That car was a total piece of crap. Traded it in on a 91 Stealth turbo

mmarshall

The Dodge Stealth was actually a Japanese-designed Mitsubishi product...essentially a rebadged 3000 GT with some minor styling changes (IMO, the Stealth was better-looking) . The top-of-the-line Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4, however, offered a few options/engineering features that the Stealth version lacked.

DaveGS4

iTrader: (2)

Whenever I see a K car I think of this awesome ad a young kid put together, this was in the very early days of video editing, youtube etc. This went viral back when that meant you had an infection.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Back in my days, blowing a tranny meant car trouble.

mmarshall

That K-Car ad by the kid that you posted was probably more honest than the ones that King Lido himself made:

LexBob2

Lol! You ever work up in the Catskills?