(First Posted August 28, 2013) Lee Iaccoca was a huge fan of K car variants. By the time of his 1992 departure from Chrysler, nearly every Chrysler-, Dodge-, and Plymouth-branded product, from Caravan to Imperial, could trace its roots to the humble 1981 K car. One of the more unique, and arguably best-looking K car derivative was the appropriately codenamed “J-body” Chrysler LeBaron coupe and convertible.
Introduced as a 1987, the J-body replaced the 1983-1986 K-body LeBaron and woody Town & Country convertibles. Much to my dismay, a di noc woodgrain paneled Town & Country convertible was never offered on the J-body. This LeBaron was also one of the longest-running K offshoots, soldiering on for nine years with minimal external changes, save for new composite headlights and taillight lenses.
That’s not to say the LeBaron was left completely alone from 1987 all the way up to 1995, the last year for all products related to the K car. Trim, equipment, engine, and transmission choices were shuffled on a yearly basis. Over the course of its lifespan, no fewer than 7 engines and 8 transmissions were offered. The entire interior was redesigned in 1990, loosing Lido’s cherished boxy look in favor of a more rounded, cockpit design. The aforementioned composite headlights replaced the often cumbersome hidden headlights in 1993.
Despite these minimal advancements, the LeBaron managed to sell a respectable 30,000-40,000 units, even in its final years. Private buyers wanting a reasonably-priced convertible didn’t have many choices – this undoubtably worked in the LeBaron’s favor. Nonetheless, I bet a majority of sales were to Sunshine State rental fleets.
This 1993 white LeBaron was spotted a few months ago by your’s truly. It’s a base model, as indicated by the presence of black bodyside moldings. 1993 was the last year for the base trim; only the monochromatic GTC and chrome-laden LX would carry on through 1995. Its small badge ahead of the driver’s door denotes this one’s 3.0L Mitsubishi V6. As a measure of cost-cutting, traditional rear badging was excluded in favor of tape graphic on many later model LeBarons.
Considering their modest origins, these final LeBarons weren’t horrible cars. Mechanical components aside, the body lacked proper rigidity to ever handle like a sports car. Much like the later Sebring and today’s 200 convertible, the LeBaron was best suited as a boulevard cruiser (which I’m sure Lee was perfectly content with).
These must have had a hard life in car rentals(aka the glue factory).I saw quite a few in California and Florida.Wasn’t there some recall with head gaskets or was it another Mopar?They looked a lot nicer than the Ford and GM opposition,the CC effect strikes again as I saw a midnight blue coupe while at Blackpool’s punk rock festival earlier this month
That’s gotta be an extremely rare sighting for the U.K. – did Chrysler actually sell these there, or anywhere on the continent?! I know they had at least some kinda presence in Europe and were doing OK with minivans (and maybe the Neon too?) during this era, but I’d think a car like this would be obvious sales poison on the other side of the Atlantic.
Is this car punk rock in England, or was it just a coincidence? Serious question! Even the most boring Vauxhall would up the punx in the US.
Chrysler did in fact import these into Europe. Here’s the allpar page with some more info:
http://www.allpar.com/eek/LeBaronCoupe.html
~Export to, or import into.
It was a left hand drive with British registration plates,I could imagine a Vauxhall Cresta parked outside Gilman Street!
The Cruiser,Voyager and 300 all sold in decent numbers in the UK,the Neon sold reasonably well they were all RHD cars
It’s interesting how Neons in the UK could be equipped with leather seats and faux woodgrain interior trim. Neither of these were available in the U.S.
When Plymouth was dropped, only Dodge sold the Neon here. I’m sure this was because Chrysler dealers sold the PT Cruiser.
Ditto the JDM Neons which have arrived in NZ, like this one for sale here at the moment:
Wrong, Brendan.
The 2001 Dodge Neon ES and the 2001 Plymouth Neon LX were BOTH available with leather (in agate or taupe) and with the woodgrain trim.
I also have the promotional sales brochures to prove it.
As pretty as the 1987-95 J body Lebaron’s were they still were steaming piles of crap. The 2.2 and 2.5l engines would blow a headgasket just by looking at them hard enough(and crack the head with it). The 3.0l V6 was not any better. Now if you dodged(no pun) the engine bullets, you had a craptastic trans just waiting to die on you at the most inopportune time.
I had a 1987 J body Lebaron coupe that I owned for 2 years and literally spent every 2nd and 4th weekend of each month keeping that POS running until one day coming home from work on 495 the damn trans blew what looked like the front pump seal. Trans fluid everywhere and no more movement after I coasted off to the side of the road(likely it was not rush hour and it was not real busy or I would have been hit.
I called my dad up and had him come get me and bring the title, a pen and the spare set of keys. I loaded up all the crap I wanted to take with me into his car. I then signed the title and then tossed the title and both sets of keys on to the driver’s seat and left(effectively donating the damn POS to the road) The next day I went to the local dealership and bought a brand spanking new car with a warranty and free lifetime oil changes. It was my first car I had to make payments on but it was worth it and I paid it off in no time.
Lesson learned about buying a Chrysler product(I did not listen to my folks about shoddy Mopar junk and got burned) I even kept up with all repairs and services(I did it all myself)
If if was an ex-rental then it might have been beat hard before you acquired it. We’ve had two K cars, a 4dr ’88 Lebaron and an ’89 Plymouth Sundance (bought for $400 and $200 respectively). And while not sporty or even up to par with the cheapest competition from Japan, they made pretty good throw-away work cars. In fact, I remember the Lebaron being almost impossible to kill (this was before I learned the value of regular maintenance) and the Sundance actually being kind of fun to drive. Neither had much in the way of problems and parts were pretty cheap and easy to replace when something small came up. My friend’s dad bought a new Lebaron convertible in ’93 and only recently traded it in on a new Challenger. Interestingly enough I’ve had worse luck with my Toyotas, go figure.
I fell in love with a 93 coupe in pearl white…red interior-and red/black pinstripes-a truly beautiful car. Sadly it was a superficial love as the stereo died at 28k miles…then while driving to work one morning the transmission blew in traffic with fluid everywhere and I coasted into a mall parking lot and walked the remaining 2 miles in 5 inches of snow wearing a suit. The car had 29k miles. The morning after I spent fighting with the dealership who refused to put a new transmission in..since the car was 200 miles away from the warranty expiring. The fight with the dealer continued as they tried to pass a rebuilt transmission as a new one…after numerous letters to Hyde Park…the only offer I got was for a new “Sebring” at dealer cost–I declined…I drove the LeBaron to a Saturn dealership in the snow where we parted and drove off with a 96 SL2..and I will save that story for another day.
They truly were the most photogenic of the k-car offshoots. But so problematic. I preferred the post-1989 versions with the improved dashboards. Too bad they didn’t see fit to keep the GTS sedan around long enough to give it the same interior treatment – would have been a true sports sedan then.
And they are certainly better-looking than the current Sebring droptop.
I had the alternative J-body: a ’94 Dodge Daytona. Only kept it for a year, as it was the hard luck car. One deer, one hit-and-run in a parking lot, and finally a drunk driver at an intersection. Had the 2.5 and five speed, and while it was no sports car, it was definitely a very good blue-collar GT. Was quite happy with it for the short time I owned it.
talk about rotten luck.
Someone I knew had one of these — it might have been a ’93 — for a number of years. I only rode in it, never drove it, but noticed that there was a lot of cowl shake and that despite the car being a fully loaded V-6, the materials seemed kind of low rent. I don’t know how reliable it was, but as an undemanding ragtop commuter car, it seemed okay, if not impressive.
I’ve seen many J-body LeBaron convertibles over the years, but I can count on one hand the number of coupes I’ve seen. When these were new, the options for affordable convertibles with a back seat were few: the Rabbit-based VW Cabriolet, which was kind of pricey; the on-again, off-again GM J-body convertibles, which didn’t strike me as being any better than the Chrysler in materials, feel, or power; and the Mustang convertible, which if I recall correctly was often prohibitively expensive to insure, especially with the 5.0.
Paradoxically, if there had been more choices, there might have ended up being almost none. There was a niche, but it was small enough that dividing it up three or four ways might have left each with too small a slice to justify the tooling and certification costs.
The coupe always had lower sales and was actually discontinued in 1993. That’s probably why you, as well as I, have seen so few LeBaron coupes.
And there’s no doubt that its niche in the market helped sales. This is the same reason why the Sebring found buyers. If you wanted an affordable 4-seat coupe with trunk space in the late ’90s-mid ’00s, your options were basically Sebring, Mustang, or Solara.
It was a looker with the hidden headlamps. When those went away it became as forgettable as the Sebring. I detest those almond and peanut shaped headlamps from the 90s.
I had a ’92. It wasn’t a bad car for me, and my problems were limited to a bad wheel bearing, and inoperable rear window regulators due to poor water drainage. This was a common problem, as evidenced by the large number of these convertibles seen driving around with the top down and rear windows up.
I drove it for a couple of years, then traded it even-up for a BMW K100 motorcycle. Needless to say, I came out ahead on that deal.
Oh man, that Iaccoccamobile Town&Country… LOL. Can’t believe that was an actual cover of TIME magazine!
I’ve seen a surprising number of these this summer – the drop-top version, at least (haven’t seen a coupe in god-knows-how-long). Generally speaking, I know people tend to hold onto, maintain and pour money into convertibles more readily than all other body styles, but Chrysler J-bodys seem to greatly outnumber all similar models from their era.
I don’t want to re-hash a story I’ve already told on here, but very briefly – I’ve always liked the looks of these and had a friend with a mint ’87 LeBaron convertible back in the day. 4cyl/5-speed, fully loaded – wanted to like it so bad and it was a huge disappointment. Just a bad car in every way. I’d like to think he got a bad egg or they were a little more pleasant with the turbo/V6 engines and upgraded suspension, but I’m not so sure!
Well, we owned a bright red w/white seats and panel inserts and charcoal interior 1992 LeBaron convertible for 8+1/2 years, 1999 – 2007.
It was a beautiful, fun car, but as it had 101K, the 2.5 was problematic with heating issues – probably cracks in the block that multiple head gasket replacements couldn’t quite fix.
The engine finally gave up the goat one nice day in September, 2007. Sold it for $500 to our mechanic. Enough was enough.
Here’s a photo of our LeBaron which I have posted at least once before, FWIW.
So not a special car, it further cheapened the Chrysler brand and these were about as budget a vehicle as you could get during those years.
Very popular with old people.
“Very popular with old people.”
Zackman, are you gonna take that?! 🙂
I guess I have to – I called ‘Dude on that, jokingly, over at TTAC a couple of years ago. I always get a hearty laugh out of his comments.
I was 48 when we bought our 1992 LeBaron. Hardly old!
Yeah, I’m 62½, getting old, certainly don’t do what I did as a kid – thankfully – but I still have a great time, am in pretty good health and so is Wifey and we stay very active and busy.
After all, I drive a 2012 Impala LTZ, which I love, so what does that make me?
The most noteworthy thing about the J-car convertible was how it so effectively killed Lido’s pride and joy, the craptacular Maserati TC by Chrysler.
OTOH, the TC probably didn’t need a whole lot of help and likely would have died quickly of its own accord, even without the presence of the similarly styled (but one helluva lot cheaper) J-car.
I’d forgotten about the Chrysler Maserati,I was expecting some exotic looking Italian body with a big Mopar V8,what a let down.It was like going to a Pavarotti concert and being told he would not be there so here’s Chas and Dave instead!
LOL!
Yeah, I suspect that Iacocca’s ego really got the better of him with the Maserati. Because of his spectacular rescue of Chrysler, he probably figured he could do anything and get away with it. As it turned out, the TC was one of his bigger duds, right up there with the last, big ’81-’83 Imperial. Iacocca has always tried to beg off his involvement with that car by saying he got there too late and it was too far along for him to stop. Pretty damn hard to make the same claim with the TC. That one was all Iacocca’s doing.
It’s really ironic, too, since it’s an identical error to the original ’64 Barracuda, which looked too much like the compact Valiant to sell for a premium price. Iacocca seemed to forget that in order to correct a problem like that, the upper tier car had to be really indistinguishable from the base car it was derived from, something he had done with masterful skill on the Falcon-based Mustang.
The TC was just way too close to the J-car convertible in everything except price, which was twice as much. It didn’t help matters any that the TC wasn’t built as well, either (and that’s really saying something, considering Chrysler’s traditional lack of quality),
It was the 80 Imperial that Iacocca tried to blame on a prior administration, which was in planning when he arrived in the fall of 1978. The TC was supposed to be first in a line of collaborative projects with Maserati and Chrysler, something with a whiff of the exotic to burnish the Chrysler line. The TC was supposed to be out a year before the J LeBaron. The plan was for the TC to garner a lot of press and some showroom prestige, then for the J body LeBaron to come out a year later with similar looks as the really expensive TC, but at a popular price. The problem was that Maserati got so far behind dealing with multiple issues, the car actually came out after the J body. The result, of course, was disaster.
I am no fan of the original plan (bring out an expensive car then sell a cheap lookalike knockoff immediately afterwards) but what happened was even worse. There are some good resources about the TC over on Allpar.
Sounds like a rehash of the ’62 downsizing disaster, which also broke one of the cardinal rules of the auto industry: you can make a lower-tier car look similar to a higher-tier one that’s already been out for a while, but you can’t do the reverse. The ‘plucked chicken’ ’62 Mopars looked like bigger Valiants which had been out for a couple years, and failed miserably.
Likewise, when the TC finally arrived, it looked way too much like the LeBaron convertible that was already in production, pretty much guaranteeing its failure. If not for that, they might have actually sold a few more. At least the TC coming out after the LeBaron wasn’t a purely intentional, boneheaded move. Iacocca should have known better but the project, like the Imperial, was likely too far along to stop, so he just had to accept the inevitable.
Had a 94 GTC convert I traded with my sister after she wrecked it. I fixed it with junkyard parts (under $250.00) and drove it about 30K miles before the transmission crapped out @88K miles.
It was a nice looking car, if an odd color combo. That silver shark looking color popular on chryslers and Grand Cherokees at the time, nice alloy wheels with gold accents, and tan interior. Always thought the shark color and tan was a strange but oddly attractive color match.
It was alot like driving a wet noodle down the road. Something I haven’t experienced since last week when I drove my mother in law’s Solara with the top down.
I was lucky, I only had to drive it for about 8 months before it died. I was actually very happy to watch it go away on the back of a truck.
Pop had an ’85 LeBaron GTS, which was the “five-door” version of this kart. Decent enough for three years and 100k, and then stuff started falling off. Gold star if anyone finds one of those.
My dad had one of those too. Black/Black leather, gold pinstriping, every option except it was a 5 speed manual. He bought the first one that showed up at the dealership when they came out. Did the paperwork as it was coming off the truck.
When we picked it up, driving home in a snow storm, he had to roll the window down to pay a toll….yup, the power window broke (while down) the first time he used it. Nothing like driving home in a brand new, quite expensive new car, in a snow storm with the power window broken.
That was just the start…
I had a 1989 GTC Turbo coupe as my second car & while it was a bit of a money pit (I bought it used & I had to fix the A/C, as well as some front suspension issues, as well as the power window motors going on me), I had no engine or transmission issues, thank goodness. I still think that it was a rather underrated design for its time. I loved the driver’s seat position & how the hidden headlights went “thunk” when I closed them.
Did anybody have a name for their LeBaron? I named my Newton because gravity always seemed to make random shit fall off the damn thing