(first posted 2/13/2016) It’s funny to think that this time five eleven, (as of the tie of this repost) years ago, Paul Niedermeyer was hanging out the sign and turning on the lights here at Curbside Classic. With a loyal band of followers, Paul took the fascinating insights and entertaining and well-researched articles he had been sharing on The Truth About Cars and created this wonderful website. And it was a Dodge Diplomat SE very similar to this, the same color in fact, which was one of the first cars ever written up on Curbside Classic.com. Paul’s detailed piece on the Diplomat SE was dedicated to regular commenter EducatorDan. This piece is dedicated to our editor-in-chief Paul.
If only the Diplomat could be a metaphor for Curbside Classic, as that would make for a lovely tie-in for this fifth-anniversary post. Alas, this old Dodge and Curbside Classic couldn’t be less alike. The Diplomat SE was a relic from the 1970s: reliable, sure, and comfortably familiar, but a car that was rapidly being left behind. Available only with a 318 cubic-inch V8 and three-speed automatic transmission by 1984, the Diplomat was a rear-wheel-drive sedan in a showroom full of front-wheel-drive, four-cylinder sedans, coupes, hatchbacks, wagons and extraordinarily popular minivans. While Diplomats were popular with taxi companies and police departments, the SE was a slow-selling but long-lived retail-oriented model with a plush velour interior and somewhat of an identity crisis. After all, the SE received an almost identical front end to the related (and more popular and pricier) Chrysler Fifth Avenue.
Curbside Classic was a new idea. Other automotive blogs existed but Paul fostered an eclectic atmosphere, where one day you could be learning about Steyr-Puchs and the next day discussing your favorite Broughams. Shortly after founding the site, Paul allowed contributors like myself to share our writing with you, our loyal readers. This collaborative atmosphere resulted in the Curbside Classic community reading automotive historical pieces from writers in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Honduras and more. And it’s not just our talented writers that make this site such a delight to visit. It’s you, our readers, who visit us daily and contribute some of the most civil, intelligent and insightful comments ever seen on an automotive website. Curbside Classic proved to be something very new and very different: it was more 1986 Taurus than 1986 Diplomat. There’s an automotive metaphor that is a little bit more apt.
This Diplomat was less fuel-efficient than the larger and more spacious Chevrolet Caprice and Ford LTD Crown Victoria with which it battled for sales. It would be easy to just dismiss it as a 1976 intermediate in fancy dress, not fast or fuel-efficient or luxurious enough to be worth writing about. But that’s what Curbside Classic is about: every car has a story. Somewhere out there, for every car that failed in the marketplace or was blasted by critics, there are fans who have fond memories about it. There are fans who want to talk about why they loved the car. Maybe you clicked on Paul’s Diplomat article because your father or grandfather’s last car was a Diplomat. Perhaps you drove one for a taxi company before you changed careers, or your mother drove you to school in one. Maybe you had a peculiar fascination with these cars that you never could explain and you’ve been waiting to read about them again and share your thoughts.
It’s not just the story of how the car came to be developed and launched, but who purchased the car and how they used it. Who owns this Diplomat SE? I photographed it in beautiful Clinton Hill in Brooklyn. Although its wire wheel covers are long gone, it is in pretty solid condition. Is this a one-owner car, still driven by its elderly owner? Did it change hands and become the property of a younger car enthusiast who appreciates its charm?
Those of us who stop and look and photograph a car like this on the street may be chided by our friends or loved ones. They don’t understand. We are automotive enthusiasts and this is a community for us. I thank Paul for establishing it and for my fellow contributors for assisting him in providing wonderful content every day and helping this site grow. But I also thank you, our loyal readers, for helping keep this site alive. 5 years? Sooner or later, this site will be a classic!
Related Reading, from Curbside Classic’s first month:
Curbside Classic: 1969 Peugeot 404 – The CC Holy Grail Found!
Automotive History: Trying To Make (Business Coupe) Sense Of The Gremlin
Curbside Classic: 1965 Pontiac LeMans – The BMW 3-Series Of Its Day
Curbside Classic: 1980 Datsun 210 Sunny – The Curbside Classic Manifesto
Well put , thank you .
-Nate
(who liked the L.A.P.D. Diplomats)
William, thank you for marking the milestone. I have not been contributing as much recently as I landed a good job as a news reporter and all my writing has been directed toward that goal.
Doesn’t mean I don’t check in daily and enjoy all the viewpoints. And occasionally, I comment.
Curbside Classics forever! Thank you Paul for keeping it going. I send my best regards to everyone.
Richard Wayman
Happy 5, CC!
And a Diplomat without a drooping headliner? What?
I loved my 85 diplomat, I owned it 10years until just little over yr ago and it didn’t have a drooping headliner.
Congratulations and Well Done Paul
A very fitting tribute.
Thank you Will! And thanks also for your many contributions here. You’re a high-output V8 CC machine, a bit more so than this Lean Burn Diplomat. 🙂
Very nice tribute, though I’ll admit being more fascinated by the 1970’s Fuji 10-speed than the Dodge.
Considering that the ‘M’ body Diplomat and the Chrysler 5th Avenue were based on the Volare and Aspen ‘F’ body which was introduced in 1976, the 13 year run this platform had was successful if not a little shaky in the beginning. These cars replaced the very successful ‘A’ body Valiant and Dart as well as the ‘B’ body Belvedere and Coronet lines whose platforms were new in 1962.
Having worked as a Chrysler product mechanic throughout all those model years, from a mechanical point of view, they were some of the best and most reliable American cars built. There are people who may love their small block Chevy or Ford engine, but there certainly was nothing wrong with any of the small block Chrysler engines from the 273, 318, 340 or 360. And I did leave out a few less known displacement engines including all the early HEMI engines. As for transmissions, there was nothing better than the Torqueflite at the time.
I didn’t have any experience with the Diplomat. What’s really caught my eye is the other curbside classic in the photos – what appears to be a ’77-’78 Schwinn Le Tour in Pearlescent Orange. A modestly priced but good bike.
Did someone else already point out that this Diplomat has what appear to be Chrysler Le Baron headlight/turn signals? When I’m looking at the pictures here, everything EXCEPT the turn signals on top of the headlights says Dodge.
That’s the correct fascia for this car. The Diplomat SE used the LeBaron/Fifth Avenue’s “inverted” turn signal assemblies, along with the Fifth Avenue grille shell, with a crosshair inset. It was intended to look classier than the standard Diplomat’s front clip, and I think it succeeded.
Congrats on the 5 years!
I have a strange soft spot for M body Diplomats/Gran Furies. Id love one of these as a slick top cop spec model, wearing the police steelies and stuffed with at least a warmed over 360. Itd make a helluva sleeper.
I’ve simply been fascinated by them as the “last of a breed” – when they were discontinued I honestly thought I’d never see a RWD V8 Chrysler sedan again. (The LX cars proved that wrong.)
Its the same reason the B-body and the Panther fascinate me.
FWIW (and given the amount traffic here at CC has increased the last few years) I’m EducatorDan – the name change reflects the promotion I got since that first post.
I owned my 85diplomat about 10 yrs till yr and half ago. It was the best car I ever owned. When I bought it, we talked the man down all of $50 bucks when I got it. I always wanted to find him and give him that$50 because he has no idea how much I loved that car and how good it was to me. It always got me to help a younger sis who texted me sometimes hiding asking for help and she was 80 miles away, but it always got me there even after hitting a deer which didn’t do any noticeable damage and car was still running so I left to help the sis and by that time baby nephew. I wish I had put a new engine in it but it went to junk hard when the engine started knocking. It was a lot of fun and I had the police version with rubber floors And spot lights althoughthey only worked couple yrs but nobody knew that and they looked cool, I would argue all day and night with anybody about how good that car was.
The body looks pretty solid – I’d have sprung for another engine if that was the only thing wrong with it. There’s no shortage of old Mopar engines kicking around. Maybe someone else spotted it and did just that – hopefully they get the same great service from it that you did.
+1 on a repower. That minor rust wouldn’t scare me off either. Mopar bits aren’t hard to come by…hell, with a little effort even a later fuel injected Magnum 360 should work.
That is identical to an ’86 Gran Fury I purchased in 1998 and kept until 2002. It was a wonderful car.
Just because it was so pretty with the spot lights on it. I always had them backwards because was told less likely to get a rock up at the glass. After few yrs just got use to them that way since never actually used the light.
Facing backwards like that I would have wired them up as reverse lights. I’m different like that.
Great find and great post. I enjoyed seeing the well worn old Fuji road bicycle in some of the shots, double CC for sure 🙂
I liked the Diplomats – they got the bugs worked out of the original Aspen/Volare platform and came up with a pretty good car, though I liked the couples better. If the original motor is tired drop in a Magnum 5.2 or 5.9 from a ’90’s Dodge pickup.
Ah, the M-body, the car that would eventually vindicate the old Chrysler Corporation and Aspen/Volaré as a decent car. I always wondered if Iacocca disliked the M-body and wanted to kill it ASAP and completely convert the entire Chrysler car lineup to FWD K-car underpinnings, but couldn’t, because they continued to sell all the way to 1989.
In fact, the M-body does seem like a latter day Valiant in that, if the tin worm doesn’t get them, they continue to motor along forever, just like an old A-body. One of the favorite cars on ‘Breaking Bad’ was Mike Ermantrout’s M-body Fifth Avenue.
I had a bunch of fifth avenues which were my favourite but had a 78 diplomat in the mid 80’s. it was a basic sedan, bought off a friends dad who bought a k-car after he sideswiped the diplo and didn’t want to fix it.( he admitted that was a dumb idea in later years. k-car was last mopar he ever owned)
didn’t have it for long, but it felt like a tough old tank and with the passenger side creased from front to back it looked like it wouldn’t back down from a fight.
I am a recent newbie to the site but have gone back and read some of the earlier stuff and to paul, the writers, and the rest of the CC crowd, thanks for becoming a big part of my daily life!
Great cars. So easy to work on and dependable. And so comfortable for the size. They had nice dashboards and seats. They were the best taxi cabs of the day. I was sad when they quit making it. A good honest sturdy American car. My favorite version is the fifth ave.
It seemed to be a good solid car, but we went for the 86 T-bird.
As someone who’s only been popping in here for about a year now, congrats on 5 informative and yes, good natured years.
It’s become a frequent occurance for me to see a car on the road, in a parking lot or in an old movie or TV series then pull up CC and lo and behold there’s quite often a write up of it or one of its platform mates here, accompanied by informed and personal remembrances or experiences by kindred ‘car geeks’.
Admittedly I use the site as a distraction more than as a resource most of the time, but its a rare comfort to be able to turn to any form of media these days that’s just interesting, informative and entertaining without being confrontational, argumentative or competitive. It’s just good clean fun. Good job.
Congrats on five years!!!!
I enjoy reading here just about every day
Congratulations! Thanks for letting me be a part of this special community.
Jake S.
I almost bought this car’s twin as my first personally owned car. It was before I really fell in love with Brougham type cars, but even then I liked the hood ornament, vinyl top, wire wheel covers and bordello red velour interior. I got an Eddie Bauer Explorer instead, plush in a more modern way and more in line with living out in the country. That Explorer was rock solid and lasted until 240k + miles, so I’m definitely not complaining.
There is also a guy up the street from me who owns one, the triplet of these cars. His has plainer rims, but otherwise looks about the same. I must have pointed it out half a dozen times to my wife while driving by.
Definitely have a soft spot for these Mopars, but if I was ever going to buy one it would have to be the Chrysler version as I prefer the luxed out example if given a choice between platform mates.
Allpar (from Automotive News) is reporting that John Riccardo died yesterday. Since he and Eugene Cafiaro were the last ‘co-chairmen’ of Chrysler before Iacocca and responsible for the Aspen/Volaré (from which the M-body Diplomat sprang), seems like a good place to mention his passing.
Happy 5th, CC! And thanks for the many memories and entertaining reading.
As for these, I always liked them. While far from the best of the old guard cars in the 80s, I enjoy how these stood out like a baroque thumb among the K Cars and minivans at the Pentastar.
I don’t know how I found CC but I’m glad I did. Everyone can have an opinion without it degrading into youtube/Jalopnik flame wars. That’s the “Class” part of Curbside Classics. “You’ve all done very well.”
My Uncle Max was a German Jew who came to America in 1946 as a teenage boy. He came alone; he was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. He loved this country fiercely because it took him in when no other country would.
Uncle Max was smart and he worked hard and he made a lot of money. He bought American cars – only American cars. He wouldn’t piss on anything made by the Axis powers, of course, and the English hadn’t wanted him so he had no use for them. He’d spent the last year or two of the war underground in France, so my father’s Peugeot 504 didn’t offend him, but Max bought American.
I remember his loaded Dodge Diplomat – kind of a coppery brown, with soft leather seats and thick carpet. To me, it was the epitome of a luxury car for a self-made, hard-working, successful man. I prefer the post-79 GM B-bodies myself, but those Dodges have a place in my heart.
The SE may have been less commonly seen than the standard, fleet/cop oriented Diplomat, but I always preferred this dressed-up version. I remember having an auto show brochure for the SE from ’86 or ’87–it may still be somewhere in my parents’ attic.
CC really has achieved great success in five years! The community aspect is unparalleled for a site of this nature.
sometime in the last few months a commenter manged to get the Citroen SM and Nile Rodgers into the same reply, if memory serves. Truly this is what the internet is for; and I just love the encyclopedic knowledge, particularly of American cars, which to this Wandsworth boy will always seem exotic
Congratulations on the first 5 years!
Great article. Neat cars all of them whether they be M or B body or Panthers and they are always interesting to see and discuss today.
We had a few Diplomats and I always enjoyed driving them. In fact, I drove one as a taxi in the summer of my third year of university, in1988.
The Diplomat and its Canadian Caravelle clone were just the perfect size. They fit in smaller places than a Caprice could. The unit body meant the seating position was much higher off the floor than the Caprice or Crown Vic. The 318 2bbl was bulletproof and ran great on LPG.
The ones I drove were all police models and for a couple of months I had a ex-RCMP Diplomat, with 318 4bbl, as my personal car.. It had a short rear and and it really went well around town. I got free LPG for it, too.
The only negative was the Queen Mary turning circle!
I was working in LA in the early 1980’s. The LA School District got their own dedicated and sworn police force. They won a contract for the Chrysler Le Baron, instead of the Dodge Diplomat that the other agencies drove. They started receiving complaints from the public because they were driving “expensive,” deep blue, Chryslers. They pulled off the Chrysler nameplates and the complaints stopped. The public just figured that they were Diplomats!
Congratulations on five years Paul. And thank you to all of you who have contributed articles that I have enjoyed over the years.
I have learned so much. I’m also grateful to have contributed a few pieces too knowing that someone out there would probably enjoy them. I have another feature in the wings, just waiting to find some time.
Garry, it’s been eleven years; it just feels like five. 🙂
This is a rerun from 2016.
Good shape given its age. We had the “sister ride” (Chrysler Lebaron). My mom and aunts long time friend had the Diplomat.
The Diplomat was from the year before our Chrysler. Had less “engine enhancements” and ran smoother (inho).Ours had that “lean burn engine” Ricardo Montalban” touted in the commercials.
One of these days, my 2002 Concorde is going to give up the ghost and a mid to late 80’s Diplomat or a Gran Fury has a lot of appeal to me as a replacement. I would happily daily drive such an obsolete car. Two of my four vehicles have the 318 2bbl/Torqueflite combo and I just love driving them. The relative simplicity of the old 318 cars continues to be something I appreciate. All of my Mopar V8s have been 318s with a Torqueflite, so I’ve been driving cars with this drivetrain my entire adult life even while having something more modern in my fleet.