Some sights do a person good. Finding a Dodge Shadow parked next to a Ford Aerostar certainly seems to fall within that realm. Has this happened more than twice since 1995?
While a welcomed sight, this pairing isn’t exactly benign enough to not raise a few rhetorical questions. The questions almost flow like an artesian well.
Were all of these Dodge Shadows green – or simply the vast majority?
Was 1995 really almost a quarter-century ago?
Why does the phrase “old Ford minivan” seem oxymoronic?
How many Aerostars did Ford build with these plastic hubcaps?
What sort of person owns these now?
How many owners has each had?
What brought them together?
Whatever the answers, it seems like they had a good visit.
Found May 2019
Sioux City, Iowa
Great find. I would occasionally see an Aerostar with a five speed when I lived in San Francisco. I believe that transmission was supplied by Mazda. And the V6 in the later Shadows made it something of a sleeper. Both of these appear to be well cared for.
Yes the Mazda M50D 5spd manual was widespread across RWD Ford applications including the Rangers (on whose platform the aerostar is built on), F150s, etc.
And agreed on the Mitsu 3.0L in these light Dusters making them cheap and fun sleepers. I like to think of the recently departed Avenger with the optional 283hp Pentastar as a spiritual successor.
The ‘96-‘02 Mercedes E-Class may have been built in 1995 as well.
As many green Dodge Shadows as there were, there were more Aerostars (and other FoMoCo products) painted in that “Mocha Frost”.
Sorry, I am still processing 1960 as being 25 years ago. 1995 will have to get in line. There may be a bit of a wait.
In my part of the country, “old Ford minivan” is not so much oxymoronic as obsolete as there simply aren’t any.
I will leave the subsequent questions to some others.
I saw a incredibly rust free Aerostar on Keystone a few weeks ago, instant double-take. It had those goofy “phone dial” hubcaps to boot.
The 1st gen Windstars have all crapped their transmissions and blown their 3.8L headgaskets over a decade ago at this point. But I will say I see 2nd gen Windstars/Freestars trolling around in impressive numbers, just within a 2 block radius of my house I know of two, a ratty one and a very well preserved high-trim one. I guess they are mechanically more sound but have some scary structural rust that can loom underneath (rear axle recall and something else with body rot iirc).
My questions were:
Why does the Shadow still have clear coat on it?
Why does the Aerostar still have rocker panels?
Both of those items usually departed within a couple of years. I’m guessing these are both owned by the same fastidious owner.
Could be a particularly bad case of the peels on the Shadow that went bad while still under warranty and what we’re seeing now is the repaint?
We’ll see how robust the CC Effect is when someone sees a similar pairing in a day or two.
There’s an Aerostar cargo van that lives near me — other than that one, I see an example maybe once every other month. Shadows? Maybe twice a year.
And it looks this pair is bookended by a late-90s Sienna and a late-90s W210 E-Class too. What kind of time warp did you fall into??
I was thinking, move this to November of 1997 and you could cover all 4 cars. The Sienna actually looks to be an updated ’01 and the E is probably a post-00 update, but late 97 would fool even 90% of automotive enthusiasts due to the minor updates each received. As a bonus, the Aerostar was in production in 97, making the Chrysler P car the outlier, timewise.
I’m pretty sure the E-Class is a pre-facelift (1996-1999) because the chrome trim appear to run along the top of the bumper, not the outside of the bumper.
Shadows were 60/40 green/purple
IIRC, the Shadow was a good value for the era. Great engines, passable interiors, roomy, cheap, reliable.
I remember the cheesy Dodge commercials that depicted Japanese executives fretting (with the help of English subtitles) over the fact that test drivers preferred the Shadow over the Civic.
It was a very classically American solution: offer more power in a crappier built (but still quite passable) shell, and sell it at a low price. Like a fast food burger compared to sushi. Hey, sometimes the burger is quite satisfying and just the thing. Outside of a few Ultradrive failures and valve seal leaks (oil burning) on the Mitsu V, I’ve never heard too much fundamentally wrong with these things. The Avenger analogy applies. Here in the Midwest you could scoop up a 283hp Avenger for the price of a mid-trim Civic by the end of the run.
These were Canada’s go to cheap new car of the era. They were all over the place and most of the ones I saw were the old head gasket blowing 2.5 with the three speed Torqueflite. That said, doing the head gasket on these motors was pretty easy and it was also a non-interference engine.
It was in many ways a smart move for Chrysler. They could continue to flog the K-Car but with a more developed wrapper and interior. The ones I saw, especially the later ones, had rather nice materials in the inside.
I remember selling in Victoria BC for $5995, including automatic, air and a stereo cassette. That was a lot cheaper than any import.
And then, at like precisely 140,000 km, these cars, and most K-Car stuff, spontaneously go kablooey, because they are thorw-aways.
$5,995 for a Shadow? Canadian dollars? In the US, I think that was the advertised base price for the Horizon and Omni America circa 1987. Even then, they all seemed to come with some sort of ‘value package’ that made them well over $7K USD. I don’t recall the Shadow/Sundance/Duster ever being much a price-leader here.
After the Omni/Horizon left the market, the Sundance/Shadow Americas were IIRC the lowest new MSRP of any car on the US market. They were definitely Chrysler’s price leader.
The Shadow America arrived in 1991. Base price with a manual transmission in a two door was $7,984. They went up from there. You could still buy a Hyundai Excel or Subaru Justy for fifteen hundred less. I only know what I see here about pricing in Canada. If the Shadow had any claim to pricing fame in the US, perhaps it was the least expensive US-produced car that year.
$5995 seems really low. I remember my father paying $9995 Canadian for a Ford Tempo L in 1988 and it was one the cheapest new cars around. I can’t imagine a Shadow being 60% of the price.
“I remember the cheesy Dodge commercials that depicted Japanese executives fretting (with the help of English subtitles) over the fact that test drivers preferred the Shadow over the Civic.”
I spent a month driving a Plymouth Sundance rental car in high school, and all I can say is; are there no rules whatsoever governing truthfulness in advertising? They’re not the worst cars ever made, but even Lee Iacocca would have felt like he’d died and gone to heaven if he climbed out of one and into a forth generation Honda Civic.
Car show in the year 2079.
Great find(s) Jason. Based upon the driving lamps, bodyside graphics, optional alloy wheels, and rear spoiler, this would be the sportier Shadow ES. With the 3.0 litre V6 I believe. The Shadow/Sundance weren’t refined, but they were rugged, and highly affordable. Lack of rear seat legroom was a significant liability.
According to the VIN, it is a ’94 Shadow ES, but has the 2.5L I4 and not the 3.0 V6. The Aerostar is a ’95 XLT with the Vulcan V6.
Gosh, in Oregon Aerostars a still a relatively common sight though usually they are the passenger version. Good finds Jason. Where I live in Tualatin the mid-to-late 90s and early 2000s seem to be alive and well when it comes to cars.
I know of a single Aerostar around here that I see ocassionally and a dark red shadow convertible and Sundanese driven by an old lady.
I want to know why all four cars are backed in to their spots. Is this a valet parking situation? I just find it hard to believe that everyone in Iowa backs in to their spots.
A very good question for which I have no answer. However, let’s make that five cars backed into their spots; the ’81 Granada I wrote up recently was found at the same time in the same parking lot and it was backed into its spot.
Interesting. Since they all appear ready to drive away which is your order of preference to take one home with you? (knowing nothing beyond what is visible in the pix but at least we are pretty sure reverse gear works!)
Here’s my list:
1. Mercedes E-Class, I’m assuming its an E320 sedan
2. Toyota Sienna minivan, hoping not a lot of milk was spilt in the back
3. Dodge Shadow I suppose as the sportiest of the lot
4. Ford Granada, not sure why
5. Ford Aerostar, I guess I have even less love for these than the Granada.
I think it’s a random occurrence. I was curious about that myself, so I looked up the location on Google StreetView. The cars are parked at a hotel, and in this July 2018 StreetView image, the Shadow, Previa and Mercedes are all in the parking lot:
That leads me to believe that all three of them belong to hotel staff — since they were all in the same lot in May 2019 image, and then the StreetView image from 10 months earlier. But in the Google image, none of those three cars is backed in.
Incidentally, there’s also a Corsica in the StreetView image. Maybe the Corsica owned traded it in for an Aerostar sometime in the past year!
The Corsica is still around – your statement triggered my memory on seeing it. In your initial picture the Granada is in the exact same space where I found it and it’s parked next to a Lumina.
We spent two nights at this hotel and all these (except the Granada) came and went during that time.
Not much of of contest on preference. You must be kidding! Yes, I’ll take the Mercedes..
Blech! Hideous vehicles best left forgotten! The Dodge Shadow and the Aerostar both represent the absolute worst products of their respective manufacturers. I could not tell you the last time I saw examples of either one of these pigs running under its own power in the wild. I mostly see them at my local LKQ salvage yard, propped up on steel wheels and in various degrees of dismantlement, awaiting the day their carcasses will be squashed flat and forever forgotten. Good riddance to bad rubbish!
The Windstar was just as bad if not WORSE than the Aerostar. There are a good bit of Windstars at Pull-a-Part & I bet they all wound up there for the same reasons: TRANSMISSION & REAR AXLE FAILURE. I owned my ’96 Aerostar for 5 1/2 years & it kept running till the day the water pump failed as it was being loaded on the wrecker to be sent to the junkyard–transmission was already dying & the front end was damaged from not one but TWO deer hits! But it kept going to the very end. Had I been in a front-wheel-drive ANYTHING when the deer hits occurred there would have been NO front end left. Picture below is from Nov. 2017 & was one of the last I took of the Aerostar before I let it go…notice how well my Wells Cargo Trailer (still own) matched with the van in color AND overall size profile. Perfect–until you tried opening the tailgate without lowering the adjustable trailer jack so it wouldn’t hit…something I do NOT miss. 🙂