Dear readers, I’m forced to report to you that I bring you this car for completely selfish reasons. I have absolutely no idea why I like this pathetic attempt at a pseudo-luxury vehicle. I mean, you’d have to drop a considerable amount of LSD to see it as anything other than a stretched Reliant that’s been bestowed with every brougham trick in the book to try and fool people into thinking it’s something different. And yet I want one…
I get why some people would find the K-Based (E-Body) New Yorker nothing less than insulting. Compared to the imposing, angular 1965 model or the beautiful Fuselage models this doesn’t even hold a candle. This is especially noticeable when you see the powertrain. Instead of the smooth, effortless delivery of a lazy V8 or even a V6, you had a 146-horsepower 2.2-liter four pot. Keep in mind that this was the best engine available in ‘87, so the less we say about the hundred-horse 2.5-liter the better. The “Lee Iacocca’s My First Luxury Car™” package (wire wheels, standing hood ornament and some padding on the roof) finishes the look and completely clashes with the giant “TURBO” badges on the fenders.
But then you look at the interior! Our featured New Yorker is a 1987 model with silver exterior and Dark Cordovan (burgundy) “Soft Corinthian Leather” interior. Its digital odometer shows a believable 83,288 miles, meaning that lovely interior is still all there, offering the best of comfort from the brougham era and an LCD digital dash for the ultimate Eighties experience. And the price for this clipped-wing luxobarge? A tenner under $4,000. Despite the title, it seems the Crystal Key Protection Program wasn’t specced for this model. It seems that if you want your own you’ll have to go on eBay.
For once in my life, it’s a good thing that I’m not in America, because if I were I’d already be on my way to Georgia with a bundle of bills to sign for this utterly ridiculous attempt at resurrecting a model name that should’ve stayed in hibernation at least until the LH Cars came into existence. If you also find the New Yorker endearing in its hopelessness, the listing is here.
Related Reading.
Why didn’t the seller pop a few extra bucks for some whitewalls? It looks like hell with the blackwalls. Sheesh…
My favorite was seeing these with raised white letter tires. Those with the vinyl roof was a stew pot full of mixed messages.
Ha! That brings back memories. My father had a 1984 Plymouth Voyager with fake wood, wire wheel covers… and raised white letter tires. I remember them well, because it was my job to keep them clean (with whitewall cleaner, of course).
When he bought the car, he disliked the original equipment tires and replaced them with Goodyear Eagle GTs (if my memory is correct). Those tires weren’t available in whitewalls, but the blackwall tires looked too plain, so he got tires with raised white lettering.
White-letter tires on this kinda reminds me of Grandpa wearing Nike ‘Air Jordans’ with his flared, double-knit polyester slacks….
they’re not that easy to get. As far as I can find, Coker Tire is the only convenient source, and they’re 50% more expensive.
I also noticed the lack of w/w tires on this car right away. It needs them (though I’d still be embarrassed to drive this faux NYer).
In addition to Coker, there is also Diamond Back. Expensive, but I don’t know how they compare to Coker. Depending on what size you’re after, some conventional tire manufacturers still offer narrow w/w tires.
Back the late 80s when I sold car, there was a guy who would come around with a tire whitewalling machine. The center part bolted to the wheel center and it inscribed a line around the tire like the compass in a kid’s geometry set. The inscription was filled with some kind of white paint. Surely this kind of thing must still exist.
My joking aside about RWL tires, you are correct that whitewalls are tough to source. I was going to put some on the Galaxie, but went with blackwalls given the scarcity of appropriately sized ww’s.
Yeah, in this day and age, I’d considered that whitewall tires likely were more than a ‘few extra bucks’ and much more difficult to get (and not worth the effort on such a non-collectible car).
It’s quite a change from the brougham-era when absolutely everything had whitewalls. I doubt any of the major tire manufacturers even carry a line of whitewall tires, anymore. Is there any new vehicle, of any sort, that comes from the factory with whitewalls today?
For a set of cooper tires, the difference between each is $12, not really bad. http://simpletire.com/cooper-trendsetter-se-p195-75r14-01322-tires?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cse&utm_term=8856519931994199592118ImperialBaseFifthAvenP19575R14&gclid=COSD5d_ErsYCFRCEaQod_W8Gjg
I noticed that immediately as well. It just looks wrong. Shame they’re so hard to get a hold of anymore.
I have a set I could donate, I have them on my car and would rather not, but don’t want to spend the money to replace tires with decent tread life left. :-/ Don’t know where Dad managed to find them, they’re only about 3 years old …
Is it really any worse than today’s Lincolns?
For that matter, are today’s Lincolns really any worse than today’s Audis? All of the above are tarted-up mass market cars.
I can’t comment on a new Audi, but I have a 2001 A6. They’re great cars that are easy to service, but the FWD ones are pretty much a VW with leather.
quattro is what makes an Audi an Audi.
The phony wire wheel-covers completes the barrage of Middle American tackiness. Only classic British cars can wear wire wheels (the matte-finish racing type) with any class.
Nah- Early Fords and wire wheels go together like PB & J.
Regarding the Chrysler, I find it far less revolting than the SUVs that clog the roads today. I’d roll it.
The Cadillac Brougham can wear REAL wire wheels with world class authority.
Good call–absolutely it can. They would, however, look ridiculous on this NYer.
Were alloys offered? If so, that’s the ticket. If not, go steal some metal wheel covers off a Caravelle. Or something.
I am not sure about the New Yorker having them but I know the 1986 Lebaron convertible and the T&C convertible had them as an offering.
I disagree…real wires would at least be…..real. wire hubcaps are cheap costume jewelry…walmart grade crap. Realistically, this pimped K should be wearing crosslace alloys.
Man, I wouldn’t mind driving a mint one of those around today. Just for a weekend or so.
Me too. I generally like my EEKs more rounded, think Lancer or LeBaron GTS, but this would be a hoot!
It’s best to appreciate these cars for what they were and nothing more. Where they the best Chrysler could do? Probably not, but keep in mind that when these cars were being developed, Chrysler had almost died off and was just beginning to recover. They couldn’t spend ridiculous amounts of money they didn’t have on developing a new platform. Gas prices were predicted to rise to exorbitant levels by mid-decade, and smaller, more efficient cars were what all automakers were releasing at this period. As for all the Brougham touches, wire wheels, vinyl roof, opera lamps, it was just what was in vogue then, even if many people didn’t like them. Similar to every car having a “sport trim level” today with ground effects, bigger rims, and more aggressive trim.
You’re right about the sports trim, that’s another species of “peacockery” along with off-road packages. But shareholders demand tribute; bankruptcy is worse than bad taste.
I don’t understand why this “baroque” æsthetic was so uniquely American. Armchair psychologizing, anyone?
Europe, Australia and Japan had plenty of vinyl tops and velour interiors. The real baroque treatment just did not work on the smaller cars they made. As this car shows.
Good points. Don’t forget the rear spoiler epoch where manufacturers were putting spoilers on anything and everything.
I eyeroll when I see “Sport” emblems plastered on eminently un-sporty vehicles such as mini-vans.
I shake my head when I see a Dodge Journey “R/T”.
That reminds me: At one time, station wagons had spoiler-looking things on the back to direct airflow down over to back glass to try to keep it clean. Did those actually work?
Oh, is that what those were for? Never could figure that out.
They seemed to be a particularly GM thing, at least in my memory. Lots of A/G body and early FWD A-body wagons had ’em.
Those were common on SUVs and vans too. My 2000 4Runner had one. They did help some with dust and snow in certain situations. Not a lot, but some.
The ’69-’70 Country Squire had it at least, don’t recall later models. ’67-’68 had a C-pillar vent which probably did the same thing.
But these things fight a losing battle against hatch dirt, nothing will do except frequent washing?.
Brendan, your comment is largely true, but only up to a point. Yes, these came out in 1983, when Chrysler was just getting rolling again. But the real issue is that Iaccoca wanted to keep the same basic concept going…forever. The Dodge Dynasty and related New Yorker Fifth Avenue were a mistake, and one that sent Chrysler almost back into bankruptcy.
That cause a minor sort of palace coup, because Lutz had been saying that all along, and fighting Lee of the issue of his perpetual boxy and pimped-out K cars, in compassion to Ford’s Taurus, which Lee predicted would fail. When he turned out obviously to be wrong, and the Dynasty and 5th Ave turned out to be the wrong cars for the times, Lee knew he’d lost the battle as well as his confidence in terms of styling, and basically bunkered himself and let Lutz and the others take de-facto control, which led to the LH cars and the others after it.
Which explains why Lee had to almost literally be dragged out of Chrysler; got credit for “saving” it, with a car (K car) that had been developed before he got there, kept building variations of it, and then when that didn’t work, he almost ran Chrysler back into bankruptcy.
The two things that saved Chrysler from a second bout with bankruptcy were Jeep and the minivans. Lee does get credit for those. But in terms of his own taste in cars, these perpetual K-car variations would have killed Chrysler, and almost did.
Without a doubt the prolonged production of K-cars would’ve killed Chrysler for good without Jeeps, minivans, and Iaccoca’s departure. Given Chrysler’s improving fortunes, later K-cars such as the Dynasty were totally uncalled for and unnecessary. Even by 1987, this New Yorker had probably been produced for longer than it should have been, as a more modern successor theoretically should’ve been deep into development.
What I meant is that when it was released in 1983, there wasn’t really much that could have been done to make it better, save for styling changes and lack of ornamentation, which are largely subjective.
Iaccoca’s time certainly passed long before he was forced into retirement. By around 1986 or so, any benefit he was to to company was a distant memory, save for the AMC purchase that brought with it Jeep, talented engineers, and the mechanical roots for the LH sedans.
And then of course he tried to get back in, when he and the very recently departed Kirk Kerkorian tried to stage a hostile takeover of Chrysler around 1995, creating a PR nightmare that nearly derailed the whole launch of the NS minivans.
Iacocca had his flaws (and they were big ones, too) but, c’mon, were John Riccardo and Gene Cafiero really going to save the company? Chrysler needed a showman and Iacocca was exactly the right guy at the right time. America loved his braggadocio and bluster and it worked (for a while) as consumers lapped up the K-car and its many variants (not the least of which would be the minivan, which will almost certainly go down in history as one of the top ten game-changers in domestic auto history).
Unfortunately, Iacocca’s showmanship only went so far, the chinks in his armor started becoming huge fissures, and it’s all too accurate to say that his time quickly passed. His swelled head from ‘doing no wrong’ did very nearly run Chrysler right back to the brink.
Iacocca was light years better than Riccardo. But Lido also was trying to keep square (shaped) cars on the road forever.
According to a TTAC article Lido was quoted as saying this to Lutz on his departure from Ford.
“You picked a good time to leave Ford, lemme tell ya! Those potato cars (Taurus and Sable) they’re coming out with are gonna bomb.”
You read that here: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/when-bob-lutz-and-lee-iaccoca-first-met-those-ford-potato-cars-taurus-and-sable-are-going-to-bomb/
I recently read “A Century of American Style” and it has a whole section about how Lee was so stubborn about sticking with boxy cars, and when the Taurus was a huge success, his power at Chrysler was suddenly over, because he knew he had lost to Lutz.
FWIW, each of these two guys had their strengths and weaknesses, but Lutz clearly had more taste, and the pulse of the market. Lee was very stuck with one basic idea of a car his whole life: the Continental Mark III/IV. And he kept trying to remake that car forever.
To be fair, Lee gets some credit for the Mustang, too. (And I suppose, the Mustang II.) But his basic formula was long hood, short trunk. Not sophisticated, but you gotta admit it sold a lot of cars back the day. He just stayed in the industry a few years too long.
Ironic that Iacocca was responsible for two automotive extremes: the ultimate cool single’s car, the long-hooded Mustang, & the ultimate dorky family-car, the short-hooded Caravan/Voyager. These were sort of career bookends.
Iacocca must’ve known that in the fickle car biz, you get run over if you stand still.
Oof! Sorry Paul. I thought I saw that quote at TTAC. It made an impression at least!
It must have been heartbreaking for a guy who had such an uncanny ability to read the auto market (even when it wasn’t aimed at his beloved, boxy, brougham-tastic barges) when the ‘melted jellybean in the rain’ Taurus took the world by storm. Even though the minivan was still going gangbusters, undoubtedly, he had to know it was all over at what would turn out to be a gross misreading of the mid-sized sedan market. Then the TC by Maserati debacle pretty much sealed his fate.
Even then, Iacocca could still make solid calls on his way out the door, like insisting that the Neon get round headlights. Too bad it was also saddled with stuff like an archaic 3-speed automatic and manual roll down rear windows when power windows were specified.
I wonder what the guy’s doing now. Last venture I recall was an electric bike that was going to be sold by car dealers. I even took one for a spin once. It was okay, but way too expensive.
When Iacocca created the Maserati TC, it was a painful example of someone who should have left on a high note, but didn’t. P.J. O’Rourke who called the TC “a bad copy of a worse original”, and I believe he was referring to the Mercedes SL as the original.
To be fair, de Tomaso botched the TC by not getting them done in the specified time. If they had been built according to schedule (and not 24 months late), they would have gotten to the US ahead of the similar (but a whole lot cheaper) new model Lebaron convertible. The TC likely still would have bombed, anyway, but not to the extent that happened when they finally showed up after the Lebaron convertible debuted. It’s tough to sell a luxury car right next to a one that looks almost identical yet is half the price.
OTOH, Iacocca was the one who inked the deal, so he definitely shares a big part of the blame, too. I mean, it was kind of a goofy plan in the first place, with Daytona chassis’ being shipped to Italy for final assembly, then the completed cars being shipped back to the US.
Iacocca really put himself between a rock in a hard place once the Daytona chassis’ were shipped. If he nixed the deal due to the delay, what was he going to do with those aged chassis sitting in Italy? Pay the shipping cost to get a bunch of now useless drivetrains back to the US, or just write them all off? All he could do was wait it out and hope that he could, somehow, unload the cars when they were finally built and got back to the US.
I wonder what you’d see if you took the vinyl roof off of one of these. Would you see the aperture for rear quarter glass and the seam for a roofline extension tacked on to the faster E Class/Caravelle/600 bodyshell? Or did Chrysler actually cough up for unique tooling?
I’m not certain, but I believe Chrysler used a fiberglass cap similar to what they did on the Fifth Avenue, and what Ford did with the Lincoln Versailles to create a more “formal” elongated and vertical roofline.
Not uncommon at the time. The “box” Crown Vic and Grand Marquis both had an option for a more thickly padded vinyl roof with a nearly vertical C-pillar, full instead of half (Brougham roof, that was its actual name); pretty sure that’s how that one was accomplished as well. Caprice had one too on the ’87 to ’90 LS Brougham.
I wound up finding a picture that confirmed my suspicions…on both counts.
It looks so bizarre with the vinyl off!
You need to really show that! here it is:
Looks like someone ‘fixed’ a busted rear window with a 70’s era Coleco-vision!
Wow. That looks positively dreadful! Hard to believe it’s factory…I guess vinyl hides a lot of sins.
That is painful. An old Hollywood beauty with her make-up off.
I love the hidden Caravelle/E-class/Dodge 600 window cutout – talk about fabricating something to achieve a new look!!
Oh dear…that roof is..just no.
I still want one, but I’d be extra careful with that padding.
A very interesting behind-the-scenes shot. You have to wonder if it was, indeed, cheaper to cobble-up a different rear window treatment in this manner (there had to be lots of manual labor involved) than to do it the right way with unique tooling.
This is just a guess, but I also wonder if the first example of this sort of thing was the rear window plug used on the ’69 Daytona/’70 Superbird NASCAR aero ‘wingcars’. Those were definitely installed by hand and is the only reason that all of the Superbirds came with vinyl roofs; the Daytona didn’t, and required more extensive finishing
That looks like something I made in my back yard. Under the proverbial shade tree.
That’s how they did it! A little fiberglass, adhesive and mastic….instant formal!
Did the 1987 talk?
I don’t know, but oh how I loved the talking cars of the 80’s! The wave of the future, I was sure of it.
That was my first question too:
Clank, clank, “All monitored systems are functioning normally”, clank clank..
Yeah,especially with that disembodied ,stentorian voice that sounded like Alfred Hitchcock on downers.
The 87 did talk my COAL here:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-pentastar-partners-short-timers/
Your door is a jar.
Nope, my doors are doors and my jars are jars- no intermingling.
These were pathetic at the time but not now. The sensible size and economy make it great for a kid today. Imagine the looks the kid gets from his friends has they pile in to those loose pillow overstuffed seats. Nothing like they have ever sat in. He then can pull out his crystal key and have the car announce the door is a jar. In the giant blind spots created by the top treatment hang portraits of Iacocca, call him Uncle Lido, preferably with his cigar. Then to top it all off let the turbo pull off one of those always funny FWD burnouts.
Indeed. This seems like a much safer ride for a high schooler than an aged, top-heavy SUV. Quite a bit less likely for them to get into some sort of non-recoverable driving situation in an old, beater, K-car New Yorker (even one with a turbo).
If I had the storage space I’d seriously consider it as the antithesis stablemate to my ’66 New Yorker.
Added bonus, 1987 is the last year for emissions-test-exemption here in Ontario.
Where’s JPCavanaugh when you need him to be a voice of reason in terms of Chryslers?
I was never a big Chrysler fan, but when the K-Car came out I liked them 10K better than the GM X-Bodies. And I always wondered how a company gasping on life support could turn out such a decent product, while the biggest automaker (GM) can turn out such junk.
First glance I thought CIMARRON. I think I was right in philosophy if not in the maker.
This could be a good car for someone who wants some luxury (I’m taking a leap here- I’ve never driven one or sat in one) but gives not a darn for power or the opinion of others. It strikes me as a vehicle that would be comfortable to drive, but not fast.
New Yorker or not, with apologies to Gertrude Stein,” A K car is a K car, is a K car,is a K car,is a K car”, etc.
That was my thinking too. Worth no more than 2K in excellent condition only because the nicer interior. Otherwise no K car is worth more than 1700 and most are far less. No offense as I drove one recently a 1988 Caravelle with 67,000 miles. Failed smog so I offered the owner 1K and he turned it down. Been for sale for months and will stay that way forever.
$4k is a lot of scratch for this thing. I’m a Turbo Mopar fan to the core and one trait of being a TM guy is thriftiness (we tend to be cheapskates really).
It’s a nice ride but the TM folks and the SDAC folks (www.sdac.org) find these cars in the $1000 range in pretty much the same condition relatively often.
When it comes to sales, the same old sad tale of a dying demographic holds true here. I knew of many elderly people in the 1980s who bought fancy K-Kar variant after variant until they finally passed away or could no longer drive by the 1990s. They never kept them more than 4 years, and they always paid cash. But after that Greatest / Silent Generation died off, there was no one left to love stand up hood ornaments, vinyl roofs, and fake wire wheel covers. Hence, the LHS / Concorde / Intrepid cab-forward revolution.
But Chrysler’s window stickers sported consistently smaller numbers than competitive Ford and GM models. So if grandma couldn’t spring for nice new Grand Marquis (never mind a Town Car) she’d find some more palatable prices in the Chrysler showrooms. My own grandmother almost always bought a MOPAR product. The last ones she owned were a ’78 Aspen, ’82 Dodge 400, a random ’87 LeBaron GTS, and finally, the car of her dreams, a ’93 New Yorker Salon. The cut-rate one with no vinyl roof. She kept that about 8 years until she couldn’t drive, and I ended up selling it with about 37,000 on the odometer. Even with minimal mileage, it had several mechanical maladies that may or may not have had something to do with various incidents involving curbs, fences, trees, and so on.
We also had an elderly neighbor who became a Krysler Konvert, and his last cars were an ’83 New Yorker Turbo, just like the one pictured, an ’88 New Yorker Landau, and finally he went aero with a Chrysler Cirrus. Truth be told, none of them wore very well. They just didn’t seem to hold up mechanically or cosmetically despite the limited number of miles he drove.
I don’t know if most of these buyers even knew a K-Car lurked beneath (and not all that far beneath) the New Yorker’s thin luxury trappings. They saw seats that would their living room proud, a jeweled crystal hood ornament out there above the chrome stand up grill where God and Lee Iacocca intended it to be, and a nice mushy ride. I doubt by Grandmother even knew she had front wheel drive. Honestly, consumers are a lot more cynical and sophisticated today, witness the failure of the Saabaru and other silly badge engineering exercises.
These K’s arent bad cars in and of themselves, but man oh man does it look confused with all the pimptacular doodads combined with a ‘turbo’ badge and a louvered hood!
Why was this really necessary? The Fifth Ave had the traditional luxury car covered perfect. And by this time, the Lebaron GTS had the bodywork, handling and performance that were appropriate to a semi-premium American attempt at a more European car being compact, and with a modern turbo 4 fwd layout.
But is this as cynical as the Cimmaron? At least the K’s were a better made car than the rotten J platform.
In the early 80’s cheap gas was expected to be a thing of the past, but then it got cheap again and stayed cheap. Had gas stayed expensive, this car, wearing it’s time honored New Yorker badge would have been the luxury car offering and the disposable 5th Avenue name would have bit the dust. Ford did the same thing with the Continental making it smaller and more economical expecting to kill off the Town Car when gas prices went up but it didn’t work out as planned.
Say what you will about this New Yorker but those seats look mighty comfy and they’re Red!
There were quite a few of them in our family. They were MUCH better cars than my Pontiac Phoenix X. The Reliant was an honest little car. When they were transmuted into more posh models, they still offered good mileage, which mattered to people who didn’t see any ceiling to gas prices in the future. I was personally chagrined at the tiny tires nearly hidden by fake wires that sat on them like a upside down pie plates, but many people generally had lowered expectations of cars in those days as long as they were comfortable, and accepted geegaws in the place of powerful presence to get economy of operation.
My Uncle Dean had one that he got after he ran his Cimmaron into the ground. Yeah, I know. But he was stuck on American luxury car – the type of guy who called Germans and Japanese people Krauts and Japs – he loved his New Yorker Turbo. It was silver with a blue leather interior. The only thing I liked about it was the leather – it was soft – baby bottom soft. And his son canned the Mopar stereo and put a decent Blaupunkt in it. But the plastics in the interior were positively toy-like and it had an awful ride. Also it was in the shop often due to problems with the turbo. And the turbo was loud. And the ride was not the ride of my grandpa’s 65 Newport. Far from it. When it got totaled in an accident on I-95 outside of Philadelphia, he traded it in on a 1998 Dodge Intrepid. Now that was an awesome car.
My first car was an ’87 LeBaron sedan in the same shade of silver as this New Yorker. As a LeBaron, mine was shorter, had a velour interior instead of this styling leather, and had an NA 2.4 instead of a Turbo. It had the same digital dash, though.
I’m tempted by this. I could relive my high school and early college years and party like it’s 1999!
The main problem with these cars is that there is just too much roofline for the size of car. The rear C-panel is particularly too thick and gives the car a top-heavy look. Compare the New Yorkers roofline with the old Versailles and you’ll see what I mean; on the Versailles, it looks fine because the roof doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the car, in fact, I think the ’79-80 Versailles is one fine looking car.
I think if Chrysler had not added the fiberglass extension, just filled in the quarter panel window and then added a thickly padded roof, leaving the angle of the rear window alone, it would have looked so much better.
True, but this is Iacocca we’re talking about here, and everyone knows he was all about the brougham. Hell, it’s surprising he wasn’t able to, somehow, wedge some sort of opera window into that big C-pillar.
He was saving the big opera window finale for the portholed Maserati TC.
Sawzall FTW!
As someone who once owned an ’87 Reliant, I am deeply ambivalent about these cars. On one hand, it’s a Reliant Deluxe – all the goodness of a Plymouth that I was once perfectly happy with, but with more retro cheese. On the other hand, I disliked this kind of tacky gingerbread at the time and would still much prefer a Reliant or a Caravelle if I were to buy another K-Car.
I do remember these cars being very popular as used cars for a while, there were plenty to be found inexpensively in great condition from some little old lady. Then one day they all just disappeared. This one could still be kinda fun in a very ironic way for a young kid today, but with a straight face for someone old enough to have been around back then – gawd, no.