“Cab Forward”. I think “engine room forward of the front wheels” described it better.
By 1993, our son was two years old, and there were future plans for a second child. The daily drivers of the two-seat RX-7 and the Ford F-150, with a bench seat for three, were still working out. But, with another child somewhere out there on the horizon, and the expectation of kiddo carpooling on deck, something had to be done. We needed capacity for more butts in more seats.
I carefully did my homework on family cars. My starting point was Fords and Dodges, as the friendly and familiar local dealer carried those brands. It seemed easy to ignore GM in all of it, for two reasons. The first was that their family cars just gave off the impression that they were my parents’ cars. I am sure there were some fine cars that could be easily differentiated from the melange of rather generic four door grey or beige GM sedans that popped up in my mind, but I didn’t really want to expend any mental effort to try to discern such things.
Secondly, while Chrysler and Ford seemed to try to do good work, even though they sometimes fell well short of the mark, GM’s attitude seemed to be “this is what we offer, and this is all you will get”. Looked at another way, GM seemed to be saying “we can do better than anyone else, but we don’t really choose to do so, not for you who are shopping in the cheaper end of the middle of the product line”. So the mental picture of Oldsmobiles, Buicks, Pontiacs, and Chevys, all stirred up in some sort of mechanical soup, and differentiated largely by badges and trim, was off-putting to me. Sure, there were Saturns by then, but they didn’t really register. All of this was purely subjective on my part, and I am sure a case could have been made for my shopping the GM offerings, but I just didn’t have any interest in doing it. My memories of repeated and various GM Deadly Sins (to use the CC label for them) simply stood in the way, and colored my thinking.
For some reason, I didn’t shop the imports either. We were looking for a larger car, and my mental picture of imports, at our price point, was smaller cars. Again, likely not entirely correct, but there it was. The upsized K-car Chrysler variants and the Ford Taurus offered cars that represented good efforts, and seemed to be a bit of a break from what had come before. They were also mentally easy to differentiate from what appeared to be our parents’ cars. Grand Victorias weren’t in the running for us, but the Taurus could be. I think Ford and Chrysler made extra sales, with late Baby Boomer families, by differentiating very well their newer offerings from the “older” ones that their parents would have bought. GM, not so much, Saturn excepted.
I also failed to shop the Taurus SHO (which I knew to be a great car and a fantastic performance value-for-money), or a leftover Dodge Spirit R/T, of which I was only dimly familiar with. This was to be my spouse’s DD, and it didn’t need any extra zoom-zoom, unless that was what she wanted. I had a race car for that sort of thing. So I did my homework on features, owner satisfaction, repair records, etcetera. A bit harder to do, pre-internet, but I managed. The verdict? A Dodge Spirit. That was the car for us. I preferred the looks and the space efficiency of the squared-off Dodge to the rounded Taurus, which settled the deal for me.
The Dodge Spirit, here showing some small ravages of time. But we know already that this was not to be.
So we headed down to the Dodge dealer, by appointment with the owner. Despite the dealership owner being a family friend, one still felt a bit like a chicken going in to get his feathers plucked. Sales are sales, and the dealership had a monthly quota to make. Especially as this place had recently risen from the ashes of the long-time Dodge dealership that didn’t survive past the eighties, and it needed to re-establish itself. I got all that.
They had a Viper in the older, smaller showroom, which could only fit one car, and the Viper was fun to get a look at up close. But we were there to look at and test drive the Spirit. Um, er, OK, hold on a minute (salesman, knowing we were friends of the owner, disappeared for a moment). We were told that a Spirit could be brought up from the back, but why don’t you take a look at the new Intrepid in the meantime? Bigger, newer technology, more comfortable, yadda, yadda. I am always a bit leery of first year cars, especially something that is novel and built from new and untested mechanical architecture. But, OK, let’s take a look, while they try to find a Spirit somewhere (I have a mental picture of the lot boy running out back, to the far reaches of the lot, as he has been instructed to quickly hose down and dry off a dusty new Spirit and install some hubcaps).
The car sure has a big back end. The whole thing is big, and long, and swoopy. Not really what I had in mind.
The car was silver grey on the outside (the color was “Driftwood Metallic”, if I recall correctly), and grey inside. Lots and lots of grey. The car was somewhat low (though not low like the RX-7), and amazingly large inside. The interior was not particularly distinguished, but it had a swoopy (that word, it will keep coming to mind) dashboard dominated by plastic, and not hidden behind any fake wood veneers or anything like that. The seats were big and comfortable.
A spacious and comfortable interior. Our example had the shift lever on the steering column, which eliminated the center console and made the roomy seats even wider. The center armrests folded up and down, with cup holders located in the “noses” of them.
The back seat was amazing. One sat low, but hip room (for two) and head room were ample. Knee room was limousine-like, with plenty of room to stretch your legs. The doors and sills were wide, but they felt light, not heavy and clunky like the Detroit doors of old. The car drove just fine, like it was supposed to, as cars built in the ‘90s tended to do. It was big and a bit ponderous, but it drove “smaller” in the steering and handling, than one would expect. “Ponderous nimbleness”, perhaps?
The back seat had lots of room in every direction, and would eventually make the car the one we would take home. The reason is not obvious here.
The engine (which I would take a closer look at later, as the dealership visit was a bit of a whirlwind affair) was mounted longitudinally, ahead of the transmission and the front wheels. That’s the reason for the extreme front overhang on these cars. This was a legacy of Renault design, which found its way into AMC, and then to the LH model Chryslers, inherited through Chrysler’s buyout of AMC. If you want a scorecard, the heritage is Renault 25, then Eagle Premier, and finally leading to the plethora of Chrysler LH’s. The base engine was a pushrod affair, not overhead cam, but it was a narrow (60 degree) V-6. Almost a straight six, but not quite. It did share the straight six characteristics of silky acceleration and lots of low end torque.
A narrow 60-degree V-6, stuck out on the nose of the car, facing forward. A bit novel for Detroit.
We never did get to look at the Spirit, but that didn’t matter. We got a fancy and elaborate first-year brochure for the Intrepid, back when they were pulling out all the stops to sell these things. We spoke a bit with the finance guy about how the payments would not be materially different than the Spirit, and how the owner was making sure we got a bit of a discount. A bit. That was OK, his kids needed new shoes too.
But what sold us (Vicki, actually, as it was to be her decision, ultimately, and her car) was a set-up that, in hindsight, could have been envisioned from the moment we walked onto the lot. I am sure it was spoken of and strategized out in the morning sales meetings, and we walked right into the trap. After driving the car, talking a bit about the financing options, and a bit about optional features and warranties and such things, the salesman walked us back to the car we had test driven, and opened up the back door. He reached for a tab between the rear seats, and dropped the center cushion. It was not a cushion, it was a built-in child’s seat. Perhaps not the ultra-safe gigantic plastic toddler seats of the day, but a child seat nevertheless, with padding and comprehensive seat belts and straps for little people. Done, sold, where do we sign? One could put two children’s seats on either side, and still have room for a third child in the middle. Genius. Preschool carpool, here we come.
The feature that sealed the deal. Young family? Get a built in child seat. Sold!
The car came home with us, the RX-7 was sold off, and carpooling commenced. The ownership experience was just fine, with only one serious issue during our tenure. Cresting the top of a hill on the Interstate, on a hot summer day, the transmission let go. Not only did it let go, it did so spectacularly, NASCAR style. It simply exploded with no warning, with fluid smoke everywhere, and the tinkling sound of bits of metal bouncing along the pavement with 80 miles per hour of momentum. A quick coast to the shoulder, and that was that. Fortunately, it was still under warranty, so a new transmission was installed without charge. We got a secondhand Spirit from the dealer as a loaner! After seven years of ownership and an almost entirely good experience, it was time to move on. Little things such as switches and window tracks were getting a bit sketchy. We also had two kids of our own by then, and we had moved to a neighborhood distant from the elementary school, but with no bus service, and with a highly developed carpool arrangement. Time to up the carpool capacity once again.
My experience with LH cars comes from a ’93 Intrepid and a 96 Concorde LXi. I didn’t own the Intrepid long, but the Concorde bled me dry and I ended up giving it away for free to a scrap hauler with a blown powertrain. I shoulda just stuck with Tauruses lol.
I’m glad your experience was (mostly) good.
Dutch 1960 writes; “…GM’s attitude seemed to be “this is what we offer, and this is all you will get”…”
That’s exactly how we saw it too.
We ended up with a 3.5 Eagle Vision TSi (no built in child seat) which was the LH model sold by Jeep dealers.
It was fast, fun to drive, (yes – swoopy is a good description) and had very fragile mechanical components and hardware.
And it worked well enough, for quite a long time, actually. GM was the #1 carmaker, they knew it, and took advantage of it. That vast dealer network comes in quite handy, even when you’re selling crap.
If it weren’t for the much better built, more efficient Asian Invasion, it would almost certainly still be business as usual at GM, mediocre as their vehicles might otherwise be.
Those built-in kid seats were a great idea. The minivans offered them too. I’m sure they sold lots of cars to recently-new parents just because of that feature. Do they still offer it? If so, why not?
It reminds me of someone I know who bought a Tesla Model 3 largely because of dog mode. With every other car he had the quandary of what to do when most stores, libraries, etc. don’t allow dogs when he has one in the car. Electric, shlemetric. He’d learn to fuel up in a new way, he didn’t care.
First generation Neons and Cloud cars could be optioned with the seats, as well.
I would assume built-in child seats are no longer a feature because, among other things, child seats are considered unsafe to use after 6-10 years.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen one of these in person, but they were cool when they came out in ’93. One of my high school friends’ moms bought a top-of-the-line Intrepid in dark green; it had (I believe) the 3.5 V6, which was actually pretty gutsy for back then. It was a really nice car.
LH cars & the family…
Mom was in with a 94 Intrepid. Generally good, just the outside world was not good to it.
She liked the bench seat, as most were the buckets & console. She also wanted it in emerald green. Order wet in and she waited. After 8 weeks, she was told that bench seat options were built at the Delaware plant and was on hold. Phoned a neighbors uncle who worked at Auburn Hills with a VON, asked what was holding things up, it was the seat color, but he could fix that. Moved the order to the Canada plant, car arrived 2 weeks later.
Parked at work one day, under a utility pole, a transformer connection let go, spraying the car with a copper shower. Body panels did OK, but every glass panel had copper melted into them. The utility claimed an act of God, so with a $100 deductible & 2 months time, all glass was replaced.
Another engineering feat with the LH cars was the composite fenders. You could usually tell because of the unusually large door to fender gap. Mom had someone back into the RH side, it literally shattered in place. Strange, though, the replacement was a steel fender, with the right door to fender gap.
Lastly, an aunt was down with a 96 Concorde. They had very few issues with it until the optional 3.5L V6 engine just up & died on them. Somehow they were not told that the engine needed a timing belt replaced every 100K miles (theirs was at 170K). The local volunteer fire dept got a great practice rescue car.
The plastic front fenders on the first generation LH were supplanted by steel in 1996. The plastic ones expanded and contracted with temperature, so the panel gaps were intentionally made larger than in the steel versions.
It hadn’t been a month since i had replaced the (not broken) timing belt and (yes broken) intake gaskets (among other major components not directly related to the engine) when my ’96 Concorde’s 3.5L suddenly lost oil pressure at near idle and died with a bang almost immediately. This was after the transmission had entered “limp home” mode earlier that day (INCORRECT GEAR RATIO GEAR 3, INCORRECT GEAR RATIO GEAR 4), and I had nursed it home at 30-35 MPH in the misguided hope that it was fixable. The engine self-destruction cured that notion quickly. When these cars failed, they failed hard.
I briefly considered buying a 300M at copart and transplanting the H.O. 3.5L and accompanying trans (I MUCH prefer the first generation LH cars to the 2nd, 300M included), but ultimately decided that was a project for someone else and I was sick of pouring money into the car. After months of advertising it starting at $500 and dropping from there online, I discovered the cats and alloys stolen one day and gave the rest of the car to a scrap hauler. Perfect body and interior. Lots of new components. Thousands down the drain. Oh well. Win some, lose some. I tucked tail and drove home in the 1993 Taurus with 290K by then that the Concorde was supposed to replace.
I had a similar relationship with a Chrysler Cirrus, but I hadn’t invested nearly as much. It became a Roper washing machine, too (well, when the engine went, I sold a few high demand parts like the instrument cluster and distributor that’s hard to get off, tried to help a buddy by giving him the headlights for a Sebring convertible but they wouldn’t fit, and I sold what was left to a guy who desperately needed a transmission). I still kinda like a Plymouth Breeze tho, with a 5spd. Given my luck with cab forward Chrysler products, I’ll probably never buy one if I found it.
My Dad went for one of these, a ‘94 Concorde with the 3.5L to replace either the ‘84 LeSabre he inherited from his uncle, or the ‘85 Grand Prix he had… I forget now.
This was only the second Chrysler product he ever owned after a ‘60 Dodge Seneca.
He didn’t have any major problems with the car, but likely he simply got out from under it before anything bad happened, trading it for a 1998 Buick Regal GS.
I recall the car feeling like it had a V8 under that long hood, as it accelerated almost as good as my ‘94 T-Bird with its 4.6L, and better than my ‘88 5.0L T-Bird.
His was a deep burgundy over silver, with those wheels that looked like they were designed on a Spirograph. It was a really sharp looking car.
I was in love with these when they were new. They seemed larger than the Taurus in almost every dimension.
My only firsthand experience driving one was a single time in a sister-in-law’s version that was really, really past its prime, and at around 200k on the odo. I was amazed it was still on the road at that age, and lots of things didn’t work. But that 3.5 V6 still pulled hard and I could see how they had been so popular when new.
I thought the first gen Intrepid looked very much like a GM design when it was introduced. What an advanced design study concept of the first gen Lumina may have looked like. Before Chrysler better established their own unique design language, while expanding their family of cab forward designs. Credit to Chrysler for leapfrogging much of their then competition, after being tied too long to the K Car platform. The reasonable pricing likely foretelling their cost cutting. Manifesting itself in compromised long term durability.
Are you kidding. All of them ( Chevy,Ford, and Mopar.) Did “cheap cutting” back then. And the only thing that the Japanese really made was “cracker boxes” and little trucks. And not all of them were rock solid, bullet proof rigs. I bought a 1987 Isuzu Pup truck at the age of 26. No money down. As Basic They came. Bumper delete radio delete. Installed an aftermarket Pioneer Super Tuner. Payment was $146 and some change. Was the best I could do at that age and time. It was far from reliable. Also japanese vehicles rusted quickly and badly.
I have posted a different photo of this car before. It’s a 1995 Dodge Intrepid, and my daily driver. It has the integrated child seat, which was an option but one that I have never used…it was on a lot of Intrepids ordered for dealer stock. Its front split-bench seat interior is grey, too, identical to that of the featured car other than the 1995 seat fabric pattern. The only touch of color really is the red button on the seat belt buckle.
Chrysler Concordes had a strip of woodgrain on the dash.
GM in the 90s wasn’t on my family’s radar either. Dad was happy with his 88 Bonneville and would have accepted another, but to me , GM sedans seemed to be frozen in time for over a decade. Dad bought a 99 Concorde, as it was more advanced than GM and Ford offerings. Once we were sure they’d be reasonably durable we pulled the trigger. Fortunately we chose the superior 3.2 V6 and not the failure prone 2.7.
And those 90s-00s GM FWD sedans? They’re king of the hill for value in the used market. Nobody wants them these days and can be purchased for a song. Solid, predictable and reliable, they’re the go-to for people like me who refuse to spend any more than three figures for a winter beater. Look for one owned by an elderly person and you’ll have a luxurious creampuff for pennies.
I’ll hold back and see if someone else will mention the (nominal) headlamps.
Oops…!
I remember way back when I switched my ’89 Grand Prix (5-speed!) with a ’95 Ciera (generic!) I was bummed about the plastic lenses, and didn’t realize that had become a thing, because my ’87 Celebrity had glass ones as well and I hoped this was an obviously dumb trend that would end soon.
It never did. They’re dumb to me even now.
-and with headlights, size matters as well.
The 1995-1997 Intrepid headlights really were better than the 1993-1994. They had (weak) optics moulded into the lenses, though they lacked horizontal lines which were on the 1993-1994 for esthetics only. The optics made a difference…and I say this from actual experience.
The original headlights on my 1995 Dodge Intrepid daily driver got foggy and I spotted a set of “new old stock” genuine Mopar headlights for the 1993-1994 cars on EBay. I got them at a good price but even clear and clean, they didn’t throw as good a beam (should say, “they were more bad”) as the cloudy 1995 headlights. Maybe “beam” isn’t correct, anyway; what those headlights threw was some blotches that “sort of” merged at the edges. They went back.
My next step was the aftermarket and they were even worse. So they went back and I set to work sanding and polishing my original, fogged lights. Chrysler (Wagner was the OEM) made them with a plastic that seems harder than what goes on some other cars so it was more work; but thus far, with a coat of UV protectant sprayed onto them, they’re the “least bad.”
The headlights on the first generation “cloud car” Chrysler Cirrus and Dodge Stratus were even worse.
I’ll give you “a bit less completely unfit for purpose”, but they were still nowhere near the country containing the state containing the county containing the city containing the ballpark of “better”. Chrysler simply didn’t spend enough money on them. If they insisted on headlamps that small, especially with more or less window-clear lenses, they really needed separate low and high beam bulbs, preferably with projector optics—and a good grade of them, at that. But no, Chrysler went the cheap route with a single 2-filament bulb in a single reflector. Drivers of these cars pined for the sealed beams of decades earlier.
The export Chrysler Vision had separate low and high beam bulbs with lens optics. Still not the world’s greatest headlamp, still too small for the job it was asked to do, but a whole lot better than the domestic-market garbage.
First 1993 my second intrepid is a 1997 I bought this car 2006 it has 74,000 miles one previous owner special ordered from the dealership still have all the paperwork in the glove box now the car has 258,461 basic maintenance I literally just changed valve cover gaskets and gaskets I love this car always be my favorite car 3.3 l of course
Bought a 95 for Mrs. Fred on the enthusiastic recommendation of a co-worker. Great car, back seat room really good. 3.3 engine was good. Good on the highway. Weak point in the sunbelt was the plastic cladding on the C pillars, I think they might have been replaced under warranty. Got rid of it when the transmission started going into “limp mode.” Discovered that shutting off and restarting would sometimes reboot things.
@Daniel Stern: yes, the headlamps were a joke, and the redesign did not improve them!
“Weak point in the sunbelt was the plastic cladding on the C pillars…”
The “blackout look” was popular at the time. Chrysler Concorde and Eagle Vision had body-paint C pillars.
The black Intrepid ones look awful after too much time in the sun. The clearcoat fails, and what remains looks white, on black. I destroyed a set by trying to sand and paint them; the automotive urethane paint attacked the plastic, which swelled up, enlarging the sanding scratches. So I bought a second set. When the clearcoat on those failed (the car was 25 years old by then), I bought a third set. After that, no more were to be had, and when that set started to show deterioration, I asked around to see what could be recommended to fix the prior set, that I had stored away. Krylon Fusion All-In-One® spray paint in gloss black fills the bill. It does not attack the plastic. I brought out the gloss with 3M Swirl Remover after color-sanding out the orange peel from the rattle-can. It needs polishing every couple or three months to maintain the gloss, but that’s easy to do.
I have vague memories of Lee Iacocca touting these in a TV ad of the day – “When it’s your last at-bat, it’s sure nice to hit a home run.”
These did have good interior room for their size, and a reputation for turning in excellent gas mileage on the highway.
Dodge, Chrysler, Eagle … was there a Plymouth equivalent?
I didn’t realize these had a North-South engine. I think Toyota did likewise with the early FWD Corollas.
They didn’t seem to last here on the unforgiving Canadian prairies – I think I’ve seen a lot more of the older K-Cars and their derivatives than cab-forward cars over the last decade or so.
–no Plymouth LH car
-the FWD longitudinally mounted drivetrain Toyota was the Tercel, sometimes badged as “CorollaTercel” and sold along side the RWD Corolla for a while. The 4wd version used the Corolla’s rear axle. Had an ’83. Hated it.
That’ll be this ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVnxDUJ-Gfk
The one I remember is the shameless copy of the Lexus LS ad with the stacked-up champane glasses on the hood of the Intrepid running at 80 mph on a dyno.
After buying the car, I would occasionally chit-chat with the salesmen and the owner, and the subject came up that these LH cars had not been flying off the lot. I had noticed that the media ads were all about “revolutionary cab-forward”, with dramatic graphics and such, but nothing about the actual practicality of the car in daily use (which was very good for a sedan, IMO). I wrote a letter, cc’d to each Chrysler board member, asking them why they didn’t tout the family-friendliness of these cars, perhaps using buyer testimonials. My idea was that families would then perhaps actually consider these cars as choices. With a young family, ads making the cars look like zoomy space ships, or novel reconfigurations of standard sedans, didn’t exactly appeal.
I got a nice letter back from one of the older, long term board members, and a very snippy one from the ad agency (obviously, the letter had been forwarded). The agency bragged about winning all sorts of awards, claimed that it did not ask for or accept public comments, and stated that they knew exactly what they were doing.
Googling the subject, I note that, in 1993, Chrysler threw its entire roster of ad work up for grabs. Maybe I was not the only one noticing that the ads were not really working too well…
A “Plymouth Accolade” was planned, but never produced. But had it been…
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/what-if-plymouth-accolade/
The LH cars are very roomy. I have a 2004 300M and really the interior may have more actual usable passenger space then about any sedan built since the early 80’s. The back seat is very comfortable. I was a teen when the LH came out and I knew a lot of people that had them. I remember riding in several for boy scout trips. The early ones had a load of transmission issues, these used a heavily modified version of ultradrive. They got better as time went on most post 97-98 transmissions seem to live to at least `150k miles. The engines were not bad again, but got better later in the series (with the possible exception of the 3.2 and 2.7 in the 2nd gen. which failed pretty regularly). I still see some first gen LH cars driving around kind of like a mid 90’s minivan I assume the transmissions have been replaced.
The 3.5 in mine has been pretty good with just one flaky sensor at 60k miles (now at 130k). I have had several mechanics comment the later 3,5 will hold up remarkably well with the most common catastrophic failures being timing belts and water pumps.
2nd Gen LH:
Mom sold off the 93 to my sister, she wanted a 99. Zero issues with it, I bought from her in 2008 with 48K miles. Great driver, decent mileage, loades of room. Didn’t have the fold down seat, which would have been a big plus. Had the infamous 2.7L….who in their right mind thought that burying the water pump in the engine was a good idea ?? Watched it religiously, but at 122K, it let go, antifreeze & oil don’t mix, trashed the moving parts. Had a 3.2L swap going when I let the car go to a church group to finish up, but they promptly threw it away.
Bad enough one time, but Ford did exactly the same thing with their 3.5L engines…
After our twins came along we replaced my wife’s Suburu Legacy with a 2001 Intrepid. With the infants facing rearward we could place our older childs seat in between. That car worked until we had to turn the twins seats around and replaced the Intrepid with a mini van.
We had a 1994 Concorde with the 3.3 we got in 1997, and drove that until 2002 when we had a great offer on a 1996 Concorde LXi in dark green and every option but a sunroof. My mom liked both of them, and overall they were good cars for us. My sister hated the 96, and it was known to be temperamental to her some days. But it always worked for me! I know these cars had a lot of issues, but they were extremely comfortable, fairly powerful, and very easy to drive.
Thanks for a great article! I didn’t know about the narrow v6 being the reason for the long overhang, or the French engineering connection (explains everything!) These LH cars are probably some of my favorite Detroit sedans—— awesome styling made an impression on me as a kid