Is this a three-for or four-for? The Olds Ciera is a staple hereabouts (at CC as well as Eugene), and the Chevy S10 is a legit CC, as well as the Omni behind it. The gen1 CRV? Obviously not at the time of shooting this, since it got cut out. But the one that got me to stop and pull out the camera was the Omni, a car that is starting to get a bit scarce on the streets. Let’s go check it out.
Walking towards it, let’s pay brief homage to the S-10, whose number on the streets aren’t exactly growing these days either, although basic little pickups have a way of hanging around for longer than one might expect.
Here it is. This is a 1983, according to its registration. That makes for some interesting speculation about what’s under its hood. Chrysler bought 1.7 L long blocks from VW for the Omni and Horizon, from its 1977 premiere. presumably, they bought the SOHC VW engine because they thought the Simca pushrod four used in the European Simca Horizon was a bit too overstressed for American use, and it had a rep for being a bit fragile.
But in the latter part of the 1983 model year, Chrysler dropped the VW engine, and did start importing the Simca 1600 cc four, as the base engine. I seem to remember that VW needed that capacity for its own cars. And by then the sturdier and more powerful Chrysler 2.2 four was available as an option on the Omnirizon twins, and was increasingly popular in them. Presumably the Simca engine was intended to be used mainly as a cheap engine for base/stripper Omnirizons.
Given that this is a pretty basic stick-shift car, it could well have either the VW or Simca engines. Horsepower? Did you have to ask? 62 for the VW, 63 for the Simca. But then these cars were pretty light (2175 lbs). Just keep rowing those gears.
Like so many all-new American cars, the Omni and Horizon did not have a stellar start in 1977, in terms of reliability and quality. There were a number of issues with the first year cars, and some recalls. But they managed to avoid scandal-level problems like GM’s X Cars, and within a few years, they became pretty solid little cars, especially so towards the end of their long run, in 1990. “Build it long enough, and it will become good, eventually”; the motto for the Big Three, back in the bad old days. And the Omni shares that with the Ciera across the street.
I suppose that applies to the S-10 too. Sadly, that applied to too many American cars back then.
Time to say farewell. And as a parting shot, here it is paired with its neighbor to the rear, another gray four cylinder car, a Mazda CX-7. Yes, we all know cars have gotten bigger. but it’s fun once in a while to see just how much.
And if you’d like my bigger story on the Omni and Horizon, here it is.
I discovered one of these for sale on a local Craigslist about Christmastime, I think the ask was between $1,000-$1,500. It was a decent enough looking car, the more common 2 tone paint job, if I remember the car, and of course…automatic transmission.
This is indeed somewhat rare in that it has a manual transmission and while the wheel covers don’t look original they do look like a same year Aries/Reliant wheelcover.
What road testers always griped about with these cars and the TC3/Charger “sister” cars was the steering wheel angle. Just a bit too upright for most folks.
They protected the Simca engine in the USA by only allowing it to be ordered like a Euro model, No AT no Ac, no 5sp. and no PS. The mileage was quite good with this roomy package.
The later America package was great, not just in a patriotic sense but in getting the price down by limiting choices. Out with the four speed and small engine and in with only a few packages of options. It was a great way to keep a well designed, roomy and sturdy car going for 13 years. It made it hard to replace however because the unit cost will be so hard to match on a new model.
We bought a new Omni or Horizon, forget which about 84-85 when Lee was advertising them as the least expensive car in America. Even went with radio delete so I could put a Pioneer Supertuner in it. Later added an aftermarket AC. I think it was $5795 or something like that. It was a good running car. Only Chrysler product I ever owned.
We had a Horizon. They were embroiled in one scandal, courtesy of Consumer Reports. Apparently, they had some test where they swerved the steering wheel back and forth a few times and then let go of it to see if it self-corrected to straight ahead. Omni-Horizons with the optional power steering did not self-correct as fast as was desirable to CR. IIRC, they stuck the Omni on the cover with an alarmist warning about the danger of cranking the wheel to full lock and then letting go of it. Their story influenced my Mom to get a Horizon without power steering, but there was never any real reason for Consumer Reports to attack the car. They sold 3 million in the US, and they never developed a track record for being any more unsafe than any other subcompact of the day.
Of course there was a reason for Consumer Reports to attack the car: to sell magazines and subscriptions and recruit more evangelists for the gospel according to Consumer Reports. It was neither the first nor the last time they behaved this way.
Thats Consumer Reports for you. Stopped reading that biased trash years ago. Not even worthy of bird cage liner. In my experience,things they endorse turn out to be crap, and products they pan turn out to be great. Much like Motor Trends “Truck of the Year”. Joke. They would not know a man’s truck if it parked on their foot.
Um – who would drive like that in real life? That’s a ridiculous trick to expect a car to perform.
Consumer Reports had to make up a test so they could lambast a strong American challenger to their pet foreignmobiles. Pretty much the same as their fetishes with exposed screw heads and hard plastic. “What can we come up with to complain about?”
This might have been the same test they performed to claim that the Samarai and Trooper were unsafe.
Haven’t seen one in Chicago though in at least a decade–I wonder if there are any left in the salt states.
If I saw one today in good shape with a manual at a decent price, I’d be tempted to get one.
Theres a few here
Dad had two of these, an Omni and a Horizon, in the 80s. He called the Omni “George” after former Michigan governor George Romney. One had the VW engine, the other the Simca engine (which I remember hearing called a Peugeot engine at the time). They struck me as nice albeit not very substantial cars at the time. Up here in the realm of the tin worm, most had a habit of shedding their rear bumpers once they got to be a few years old. Some bolted 4x4s to the bumper shocks in their place, others just went without.
By the ’80s what had been Simca/Rootes, then Chrysler was called Talbot and owned by Peugeot, so that sounds appropriate. A friend of mine had one of these for a while. It worked well enough but it always felt a bit tinny, particularly when shutting the doors.
Some of the VW engine Omni-Horizon 4 speed cars had VW transaxle’s as well. I was told by a few customers that ordered internal gears, syncros, bearings and such that Chrysler did not supply internal replacement parts for these transaxles and told customers to get them from VW.
And yet they’d supply parts for the VW engines?
I don’t know if Chrysler did or not, but I don’t remember anyone ever asking about engine parts for Horizon/Omni at the VW dealership, so I would assume those parts were available from Chrysler.
VW didn’t use the 1.7 until 1981 in the US.
Mopar, in Canada anyway, supplied VW parts up until 2000. My stealership unloaded a bunch of it circa 2005. After that, it was special order only. All the part numbers had a “VW” prefix. We called their parts “very weak” as many were!
While there were some issues with the Omni/Horizon when it launched, the car may have had the best launch of any Mopar from the early 1970s until the K car. The 74 C body, the 1976 Volare and the 1979 R body launches were all unqualified disasters, as was the 81 Imperial. The L body OmniRizon for 1978 was certainly better than any of those, which is pretty amazing considering how much different it was from everything else Chrysler had built since forever. I agree that they got better the longer they were built.
I remember the 2.2 making up the bulk of the engines in these once it was made available in 1981 or 82. From 1978-80, the VW 1.7 was the only choice. Availability of engines from VW was capped at 300K per year, which proved to be a serious capacity constraint when gas prices skyrocketed in 1979-80.
I am surprised that so many had experiences with rust on these. Chrysler used a lot of galvanized steel in the lower bodies, and where I lived, these held up to corrosion better than a lot of other cars.
If you bathe steel in enough salty brine, its eventually gonna rust. Galvanized steel is all well and good, that makes a huge difference. But all it takes is one little nook or pocket that crud can collect and sit. Before long it starts festering into a full blown rot hole. This is what caused so many Jeeps to rust. The steel they used was as good as anything, there were just tons of little hiding spaces where soggy muck collected and set up rust.
Galvanized steel only slows down the process, but cars eventually rust anyway if driven on salty road. Without galvanized steel and the steel happens to be pretty thin, or not so well made, the suspension tower could be shot after one or two winters.
OmniRizons are tough little cars. This one being a stick and with a clean straight body…I see an Autocross car ready to happen! A DOHC 2.0 from a Neon R/T or even a 2.4/5spd from a PT Cruiser would liven this up nicely.
That S-10 is like a time warp back to the mid 90s. I remember when everyone and their brother had those horrible ‘teardrop’ wheels on their trucks. I couldn’t wait for that ‘ninja blade’ wheel fad to die, thinking the next big thing in aftermarket wheels couldn’t be any worse. Little did I know, that the ‘clowns’ were about to come marching in….
True that, on them stupid looking wheels .Oh man did they give them away somewhere 20 yrs ago? They’re still very popular around here on the average trailer park Camaro or clapped out G body. Right up there with the 90’s Fear This decal.
The Euro Horizon is now so rare that I haven’t seen one on the road in the UK for longer than I can remember, and car show examples only at marque specific events.
I did see one in France last year though.
A car that defined heavy, low geared (non power) steering
I had a good friend who had an early 80s Omni. It was pretty temperamental, especially in cold, humid weather, when it would lurch and stall for no apparent reason. It was not nearly as much fun to drive as a VW Rabbit of a similar vintage, despite having very similar appearances.
CC effect. I followed it’s Plymouth brother for a couple of blocks into work today! Pittsburgh salt hadn’t killed it. (might have spent it’s life elsewhere?) In a modern vehicle you can see OVER the horizon! LOL!
I remember the Dodge Omni. My cousin Bud had a twin car, the Plymouth Horizon. At the time, I found both cars less attractive than the VW Rabbit/Golf that was being produced at the time.
The Peugeot/Simca engine offered in the 80s went in what Chrysler called the Omni/Horizon “Miser”, IIRC. Road Test Magazine, in it’s waning days tested one. It was, well, miserly. Their tester had red orange and yellow accent stripes, but everything else was basic: no AC, etc etc etc.
You Tube ad shows a test of a Miser against an Escort and claims 50 some odd MPG on the freeway.
Paul,
Have you or another writer considered an article focused on the gen1 CR-V (and/or RAV4)? These cars seem to be polarizing … people either love them or hate them. Yet, they introduced many people to CUVs before the term was invented, and they have proven themselves over the years to be dependable, relatively inexpensive cars. I’m amazed at how many gen1 CR-Vs I still see as daily drivers here in northwestern Illinois. Boring? Yes. Outstanding reliability and utility? Yes. I don’t know much about the story of the development of either the CR-V or the RAV4, but I maintain that engineers and designers at Honda and Toyota deserve a great deal of credit for essentially creating a new market segment, even though they weren’t the first small, car-based SUVs (off hand, I can think of Suzuki as a pioneer in small 4-door SUVs with the Sidekick).
There was a great blog a couple years ago by a young guy who bought a really cheap gen1 CR-V, built a camping platform in it, and drove from Maine to Oregon by way of Florida, Texas, and California, before returning to Texas to pursue his romantic interest. By the time he finished his trip he had quite a few blog followers! http://www.crvownersclub.com/forums/29-bikin-campin-hikin-kayakin/39969-life-my-honda-camping-traveling-next-few-months.html
Disclaimer, my daily driver is a gen3 CR-V, which I find to be a very satisfying car, even if it’s not macho … not unlike your xB!
I have done a somewhat brief post on the original RAV 4, which was really the first of the genre: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1998-toyota-rav4-two-door-the-first-modern-cuv-and-electric-one-too/
But the gen1 CRV is due for one, and certainly has earned it, as one of the pioneers of the segment.
I had not seen your RAV4 write-up. Nicely done! In my neck of the woods, which is coincidentally Tom Klockau’s stomping grounds, old CR-Vs are much more common than contemporary Toyotas. While the gen1 CR-Vs didn’t appeal to me much when they were new, I like them much better now. Character improves with age, I keep telling myself! I’m sure many would disagree with me, but I contend that any car that is at least 15 years old and is still commonly seen as a daily driver is a CC … even if it’s not broughamy!
Thanks to you and your colleagues for maintaining this excellent site and keeping it both entertaining and informative!
I remember the 50mpg claims for the Miser. Didn’t realize there were French engines though…I thought they were all 1.7 VW or 2.2 K-Car variant engines.
While similar to the VW Rabbit, the Omnirizon was bigger and about 200 lbs heavier. Also, it was tuned to be ‘softer’ for American tests, so it was softer than even the “Malibu-ized” 1981-84 base Rabbits sold in the US.
While a good car, not as entertaining as a late 70s Rabbit, Civic, or Fiesta.
But the 85 GLHs were very entertaining…
Good read!
My best friend’s family bought the first Omni/Horizon sold in our small town. It was a very well-equipped Plymouth Horizon in metallic maroon – complete with a maroon velour interior. The exterior door handles kept breaking (they were squeeze-type handles), and it had a habit of stalling at traffic lights. His parents were very good friends with the owners of the local Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge store, so I’m sure that they received top-notch service. This was probably why they kept that car for several years.
I had an ’85 Omni for about 5 months. Fun to drive but the interior rattles were so bad that I had a bad feeling about it’s longevity. Sold it and got an ’84 Toyota Tercel, that thing refused to die despite advanced cancer.
I noticed the driver seat appears to be in good shape for its age and looks reasonable comfortable. Could this be the French influence since its based European bones.
I took a look at the referenced article concerning Omni/Horizons (see below) and the seats in these cars look to be in good shape as well.
Paul, that Omni might very well have the 2.2L in it for all we know. Chrysler made a fair number of 2.2L manual Omnis and Horizons (as well as Aries and Reliants). I had a friend in college who had a 1990 Horizon with the 5-speed and the 2.2L.
Late in it’s production life, Chrysler subbed Omnirizon production, along with some larger Chryslers to the AMC plant in Kenosha.
This video was shot the last day of production in Kenosha, Dec 21, 1988
I had a friend in high school who was given a used Omni at 16, he drove it till he was 26 and had about 300k when he dumped it.
The so called “Down-Sizing” has lost its real meaning… Once “big V8-cars” became small(er) in comparison with nowdays bloated unimaginative IL4/hybrid models…