Seeing these two cross-hair grilles sitting next to each other was too irresistible to pass up. We’re not going to do a full-on CC on the Dynasty right now, but let’s just stop our walk for a minute or two and quickly contemplate some of the differences and similarities of these two Dodge sedans, separated by almost a quarter century.
Just as a frame of reference, a Dynasty started at $12,295 in 1988. Add the V6 and a few other amenities now standard, and its inflation adjusted price would likely be fairly similar to the $25,495 base price of a Charger. That’s perhaps the biggest similarity right there, because once past that, the pickings get slim pretty quick.
Well, that, and the cross-hair grilles. But what’s behind them perhaps most glaringly points up the changes. The Dynasty came standard with a 96 hp 2.5 L four, and the optional Mitsubishi 3.0 V6 packed 141. Both came with the none-too smooth but reliable three-speed transaxle. The zippier 3.3 L Chrylser six was still a couple of years off, as well as the Ultra-Masochistomatic. The EPA adjusted numbers for the Dynasty are 20/26 (four) and 17/25 (V6).
The Charger’s state of the art Pentastar 3.6 L V6 packs a hefty 292 hp, or slightly more than triple the Dynasty’s standard engine. Of course, it was only just three years ago that I tested a rental Charger with the standard 2.7 V6, and found it very lacking. As in considerably less enthusiastic than the 1993 Camry V6 I compared it to. Progress is often not linear. I haven’t had seat time with one of these new ones, but I’m sure performance is more than “adequate”. The five speed automatic is till the base tranny, but an eight-cogger is available on the higher trim models. Hmmm. EPA numbers are 18/27. Now that’s progress we can believe in! And I won’t even begin to compare the the other dynamic aspects, especially handling.
I find myself almost surprised to say it, but this interior isn’t so bad, especially for what it is: an old-school sedan, even if it is on a reduced scale. Seats look reasonably comfy, and I like the open feel of no console, unless it’s a car that just really calls for one. Even the dash is fairly innocuous. And that looks like an airbag. Truth is, I don’t know what exact year this Dynasty is, but I’m using the first production year as a point of comparison.
And I’m not sure of this Charger’s exact year either (sorry). But let’s just say the current Charger’s interior is a pretty substantial improvement over its predecessor, which was a hard black cave.
There’s not much point talking about the stylistic evolution, which speaks for itself, and is pretty subjective. Let’s just say that for me, they’re about similarly unappealing (in their respective time periods). Just not my thing, baby!
What’s surprising is just how much similarity there is in their tail light treatment. Heritage!
Which is which? That’s too easy, but a bit surprising, nonetheless.
My dad had an 89 Die-Nasty as a company car in Tulsa. It as a leftover from Texaco trying to be cheap by ordering I4 cars only, which meant the Dynasty was one of the few midsizers you could get. Prior to that, he had a turbo Alliance in San Diego.
I remember a few trips to Baton Rouge or Houston where passing a truck might take multiple tries. Fuel was free for personal use, so we never took our (then) new Sable wagon.
Otherwise, it was a decent car, I do remember that every door’s fake wood trim fell off, so my dad used some screws to put them back in. Made it look better, quite honestly.
When Texaco allowed V6 company cars again, my dad skipped past a Taurus LX and slipped in an SHO (all black). A few of those types of orders, and they had to put a limit on the model line you could order. SHO was a rocket in comparison.
The Fxx plate and its March sticker means the Charger must be a 2011.
Cast wheels mean no hubcaps to fall off. That’s progress of a sort.
Looks like the Dynasty would have quite a bit more rear headroom. I’m surprised how similar the taillights are between these two, although I’m sure the stylists were trying to recall the 1970 Charger taillights and not the Dynasty. And the Charger probably won’t have a Brougham package with landau vinyl roof. FYI, that Charger redesign came out in 2011. You can actually get a red interior on it too, which is a nice change from the usual black or beige.
I’d say this is at least a 1990 Dynasty, since it does have the airbag. We spent a week in a rental one in 1988 when my Grandfather died. It wasn’t a bad car, although, it’s kind of a weird car, like a more pretentious Cutlass Ciera (looky you with your Japanese overhead cam V6 and baroque styling. LATEEEDAH!).
I have to say certain elements of the new Charger appeals to me, but I don’t know if I could sit in and live with one on a daily basis. I had two cars with dark interiors, and god willing I’ll never drive another mobile cave.
You said it. I really don’t care for black or charcoal interiors. Drab, and they get way too hot in the summer.
BTW Boo on Eugene getting a real fall, I particularly love the last shot.
Laurence, I’ve got a rake and some bags here in Boise, if you’d like to enjoy similiar fall colors.
Charger looks like it’s about to inhale that Dynasty and crap out a Caliber.
For some unknown reasons, the Dynasty (a well as the Intrepid and the K-car derived Daytona) was sold as Chrysler models in Canada and we didn’t get the Eagle Premier rebadged Monaco, strange considering it was built at the Brampton, Ontario plant (strange then Chrysler didn’t taught of sold the rebadged Premier as a Plymouth model).
Edit: I spotted a French ad of the “Chrysler Dynasty” who was broadcasted in Quebec, Canada on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxvSb25S0ak
Its funny, if you would have told me to name the manufacturer that would still offer a RWD family car in 2011 back in 1988, I would have never guessed Chrysler.
Even more interesting is too compare a 2010-11 Taurus with an early 90s one. For all our economic complaints, the newer cars look like they were produced in a much wealthier society, whether they were or not.
The funny thing about the latest Charger is that its greenhouse shape screams Mitsubishi Galant to me, where the previous generation had a more Chrysler like appearance. As for the Dynasty, it’s obviously a K car with a formal roof line grafted on.
My folks had a rental one during our last family vacation before college.
What a God awful hideous piece of shit on four tires. The trombone case red interior… the weird turn signal clicking that came straight out the glovebox… the puff-o-matic leather seats with their weird 70’s boutique styled groove patterns.
There were only two things good about this car. The room… and the 3.3 Liter engine that it had in later years. Otherwise this car was rolling proof that some folks are just completely oblivious to the car market.
Sorry if anyone here had a good one. But these cars are the automotive version of herpes at the auction. Nobody ever wants one.. they just wind up getting it at some point. Then they can’t get rid of it.
Right after my family moved to Florida in 1989, my dad traded his 1988 F-150 even up for a 1988 Dynasty LE. It really seemed like an upscale car. It was comfortable, reasonably quick and had a kick-butt stereo (Chrysler-Infinity).
I know this makes me the oddball here, but I liked those cars. The boxy styling made it unique, and I kinda wouldn’t mind having one.
FWIW, the Charger pictured is a new one, and the Dynasty is between a ’90 and ’93 model. Oh, and it does indeed have a driver side airbag.
Right on, Mr. Brougham. Nothing wrong with this car in context – it was an S-class compared to a Buick Century of that era. Screwed together better than an LH, too. That said…where’s my Maxima?
Remember seeing the old one in 1990 or so in Moscow, Russia. In the sea of domestics (Ladas, Volgas, etc.) it really stood out and seemed kinda large. It also looked extremely foreign then.
As for the new one – it’s kinda attractive and has much prettier cabin. Pity the front seats have very weird profile. Oh, and the 3.6 felt only just about adequate in it. Hemi is the only option unless you are not afraid of getting bored to death in a few days of driving it.
The most striking difference to me is the difference in size between the two. The Dynasty was 192 inches long, a little less than 69 inches wide — in other words, small by a significant margin than a modern Honda Accord. It was the basically biggest Dodge available from 1990-93, after the Diplomat left. (IIRC, the Monaco was very close in exterior dimensions.)
The Charger, by comparison, is 200 inches long, 75 inches wide, and has a wheelbase essentially as long as that on a ’66 Polara. Overall, I’d say we’ve come a long way in the last twenty years.
The sad thing is that the new one was designed when the old one was still “fresh” the LH was designed to be a FWD AWD or RWD cars from the git go. Unfortunately the money was tight and the AWD sedan market was a bust having been over-saturated. So those designs were set aside and drug out when it was time for a reskin. Unfortunately the “merger of equals” happened and rather than tool up to produce those designs Daimler forced some redesigns to be able to accommodate their trans and differential. So one is a car that was produced in the late 80’s while the other (at least it’s basic chassis) is a car was designed in the 80’s.
Wouldn’t saying that the Charger was a late 80’s design be like saying that the current Mustang is a Lincoln LS? IIRC, the Mustang and the LS started out as part of the same project, but diverged early on due to cost constraints, and by the time the ’05 Mustang was released, it didn’t really have much in common with the LS/S-Type/T-Bird.
Then again, now that I think of it, every modern car is “evolutionary”, with a few exceptions (i.e. electric cars): with every new generation, there are some parts shared with the previous generation.
Certainly the Mustang is a derivative of the LS architecture being a pretty much carbon copy from the firewall forward the big difference a whole new back end to accommodate that live axle. However that is a lot newer chassis to start with and was re-purposed to a new class of vehicle. The LX is a reskin of the plans that were intended for the original LH, slightly tweaked due to the “merger” to “reduce costs”.
Unlike some of the people at other sites I don’t have a big problem with platform sharing and evolution it’s a fact of the modern segmented industry. I just find it ironic .that so many look at the new Charger as a completely new modern design and direction when in fact it was last ditch, low budget re-skin of the leftovers of their last hail-Mary play that wasn’t fully run. The LX is very much more the car that the engineers wanted to introduce in the late 80’s than the LH that did eventually make it to market.
As a rental car manager in the day, I drove many a mile in a Dynasty. The first year/cycle we had were the 4cyl, then the 3.0 mitsu’s and the last years were the 3.3’s. They had a “special” 2 stripe goodyear tire and I always liked the ones that were black cherry colored. We mid-level managers drove Dynasty’s, upper managers had Marc Cross New Yorkers. The owner had an Imperial. Now that car was laughable. Even at the time I told him he needed bull horns on the hood. The Imperial version on this platform was crap!
I loved the Dynasty back in the day because of the formal roofline and blown-out interior. I would’ve picked the Chrysler rendition, though, as I’m not a fan of Dodge – they just looked cheaper. My issue with these is in spite of the blown-out interior was the resulting thinness of the doors that scared me off. Purely perception, but being used to doors that are at least 7-8″ thick, the seemingly 4″ thickness just didn’t appear as “safe”.
I give Chrysler credit for the one-piece rear door glass – they did go down just over half-way. All in all though, we bought a 1990 Plymouth Acclaim just the same and drove it for 10½ years. A wonderful car. My brother-in-law owned a Dynasty for many years and got good service out of it, too.
The new Charger? I like the non-slab-sided look but it looks like the Mustang’s side panels are grafted on backwards! No bright window reveal turns me off, too, as I like “chrome” trim and that would add so much more to the car’s appearance and look of quality. Chrysler needs to address this issue to make their cars more eye-appealing. Or, maybe it’s just me, as I, like a moth, am attracted by bright, shiny objects!
The mid-80’s to the mid- 90’s sure was Chrysler’s decade and I was one of their biggest fans. Back to Chevy for now.
Granted, I wasn’t around back then, but why were the “big three” obsessed with “formal” rooflines? To me, they make the back of the roof look hacked off on anything smaller than a big sedan.
I notice this effect most on the Grand Ams, Cougars, and, of course, K-Cars of this era.
I have to give credit to Lee Iacocca for “saving” Chrysler with the K-Cars, though I don’t know if its engineers ever expected the platform to last until the mid-1990s!
I never understood what the point of that eyesore Imperial was, however.
As for the Charger, I’m glad to see they improved the interior!
I think the “formal” roofline was originally an answer to a problem: how to get adult-sized headroom in the rear while still keeping the proportions of a small car.
In the 20s, the way it was done was to have the carbody end behind the back seat. The trunk was literally A TRUNK, tied to the rear of the carbody.
Cars of the 50s, dropped the roofline on the rear-seat occupants…no matter if it were kids back there; but a car used for groups of adults needed something bigger.
And a big car, with a long roofline and long trunk behind the backseat…took up space. And added weight. So, with “downsizing” and in the middle of the Brougham Epoch, the “formal” roofline was built on the theme, that of long roofs, wide C-Pillars, upright backlights, and cubist lines.
And as somebody whose head unfailingly touches the ceiling while sitting in the back seat of (seemingly) every car made since 1991, I miss those days of the squared-off rooflines. My 1988 Electra had fantastic rear headroom due to the almost vertical rear window and high roof (not to mention the superb visibility).
The back-to-the-1960s cockpit designs with the ever-widening center console is another thing that drives me crazy about the new cars – I feel shoehorned in. One of the huge advantages of FWD cars is the flat floor which allows for significantly more interior room, and now we’re completely wasting that space by covering it up with plastic.
I have rented one of the new Chargers (must of had the V8 as it was pretty quick) and I really didn’t care for the lack of rearward visibility. You really have to have your side mirrors adjusted to the blind spots (instead of straight back like most people set them at) for quick lane changes.
By the 1990s, the K-car platform really was much improved over the early 1980s cars in just about every way – that’s one advantage of keeping the same basic design and improving upon it over several years (much like the Japanese used to do).
/ramble
Just bringing this one back to life because it’s Dodge’s first trip to Victory Lane at Talladega since 1976.
Heck of a race.
The Dynasty was a horrible, horrible car. Any K car was a POS! The Dynasty was as ugly to look at as it was to drive. The Charger won’t win any beauty prizes either but, dynamically, the Charger is a pretty decent driving automobile. The last generation Dodge Intrepid was the best looking sedan that Dodge had produced in many years. 1998-2004 Intrepid’s suffered from a bevy of quality control and mechanical issues, but they looked good and were packaged leaps and bounds better than the LX RWD models.
Weird, my parents actually owned one of these for 13 years. Only a couple minor problems once it got to be around a decade old. Held up to two accidents like a champ. Sold it in 2001 with 140k and it was still seen driving around town well after that.
So I think they were likely fine cars – the one in this article is what, 22 years old? Still looks ok considering it doesn’t seem babied. Thinking you’re pulling random opinions based on nothing out of your rear.