There is a big part of me that wants to triumphantly and enthusiastically title this essay “Dodge Dynasty – Among The Best Cars Ever Built”.
However, there is another part of me that wants to boldly and loudly title this piece “Dodge Dynasty – The Automotive Version Of Chlamydia”.
The hell of it is both would be correct because as often seems the case with Dodge there is no middle ground. Enriching this experience is how life has provided ample opportunity to have driven more of these buggies than the average schlub. No wonder my thoughts about them are so bipolar.
The Dynasty first entered my life in the annual Motor Trend update for the new 1988 model year. I seem to remember there was some literary skewering of Chrysler for naming their newest, largest Dodge the “Dynasty”. It’s hard to know what possessed Mother Mopar to give a car such a lampoon worthy name.
Yes, there was a nighttime soap opera at the time that shared the name but I prefer to think perhaps somebody at Chrysler had just made the voyage of a lifetime to China and had the Ming family on the mind. I also helps to think said person was gleefully oblivious to popular culture, mistake though it was.
Thinking about the Ming clan sounds so much better than some television show in which one was always worried about the possibility of sleeping with someone who was actually their amnesiac uncle (aunt, grandma, brother, etc.) or encountering their long-lost evil twin. Appropriate, as with all the Dynasties I’ve driven there was some evil lurking in a few of them.
The first Dynasty I laid eyes on had been proudly parked in my parent’s driveway by my maternal grandparents Albert and the late Violet. They were fed-up with their 1985 Dodge Aries, dumping it in late 1987 for a new base model 1988 Dodge Dynasty. My casual mention of the Dynasty being powered by a Mitsubishi built 3.0 V6 was nearly enough for my World War II veteran grandfather to become uncharacteristically apoplectic and threaten to return it to the dealer. After some amount of (dis)cussing the source of the engine, he calmed down. Part of that may have been due to my grandmother telling him to button his lip. He and my grandmother kept that car until late 1992. It never gave them an ounce of trouble except for the switch that turned on the a/c compressor.
Speaking of World War II, Grandpa Albert is doing great at 95. He’s been living in assisted living since late 2017; he is flourishing as he views it as an all-encompassing resort. During my last visit, as mealtime approached I got to witness Grandpa’s routine of walking down the hallway, knocking on doors to tell residents the “mess hall” was open. At one door was Louis, a slow-moving man whose hearing had departed him sometime prior. Poor Louis was slow to respond but that’s okay as he had just turned 100 a few weeks earlier.
Anyway, my grandparent’s Dynasty was so flawless as to inspire my parents to purchase a gray 1991 Dodge Dynasty LE in the summer of 1990. It was the first 1991 model anything I had seen. Unlike my grandparent’s Dynasty, my parents had purchased one with the 3.3 liter V6 and the Ultradrive automatic. Being an LE, it was also pretty well equipped.
The 3.3 in their Dodge was an amazingly smooth engine that was well suited for the size and weight of the Dynasty. It was also quite efficient for the time, often netting 27 or so miles per gallon on trips and around 25 miles per gallon in everyday driving. For my size and build, it was also a phenomenally comfortable car to drive. Drive it I did, too, as this was the car I would drive as far northwest as Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1995.
As another aside, that gray Dynasty my parents owned was capable of 120 miles per hour. I did it at least twice (and I suspect my sister did over 100 a time or two). It would have done more but the dashboard was shaking too badly at that point to explore further. Oh, the missed opportunities of youth….
The Dynasty had accumulated 135,000 miles by the time it was jettisoned in late 1995. In that entire time my parents had exactly one issue with it, a weird problem which turned out to be a bad sensor that would stall the engine three seconds after starting it. It happened two days after I returned home from my trip out west at which point it had around 125,000 miles. That was the extent of its problems. No hiccups from the Ultradrive, no trim falling off, no rattles, nothing. That Dynasty was, apart from one isolated event, as reliable as the sunrise.
In 1996 I began my professional career. My first job involved a considerable amount of travel so every time I had to travel, I’d go get a car from the motor pool. Invariably for the first year it was a Dodge Dynasty, mostly from model years 1992 and 1993. I drove green ones, white ones, baby blue ones, gray ones, dark blue ones, and one that was burgundy.
Most were forgettable, silently doing their job of providing drama free transportation to countless drivers and passengers. These Dynasties were all equipped with a V6, primarily the 3.0 although a few had the 3.3. They were renowned for their effortless ability to smoke their narrow and undersized front tires at will, although the 3.3 had better low end torque for doing this.
By my best estimation, I’ve driven about two dozen of these Dodges.
Remember the lurking evil mentioned earlier? While maybe that particular baby blue Dynasty I was assigned wasn’t evil it was certainly possessed. And that possession made itself known when I had to make a sudden and unplanned business trip to Overland Park, Kansas. Naturally, I had to sweet talk somebody to get a car with no notice and that possessed baby blue Dynasty was the only passenger car available.
In retrospect, I would have had less drama had I taken the decade or so old, one-ton Chevrolet flatbed that had been parked nearby. The trip from Jefferson City to Overland Park is 150 miles – not far, but quite tedious when the Dynasty you are driving has consistent transmission slip. If forced to say something positive about this Dynasty it would be to say it never got worse as it was equally bad when I returned home as it was when I left.
Naturally I reported the problem when I returned. It likely got a new transmission. A coworker at the time got another Dynasty from the motor pool when the transmission decided to retire along I-44 near Springfield, Missouri. It retired so throughly he claimed it would still roll despite the transmission being in Park.
The odd thing is whenever I hear the Dynasty being maligned, I have this sudden bout of inner turmoil. How can they be so bad, I wonder. I was around some really good ones. Then I think about the really good ones and wonder what happened for them to avoid the mechanical maladies to which others succumbed and I experienced. The turmoil is real.
What is also real is there still being a Dynasty on the road; well, on the road four years ago. That same day I also found two similar vintage Imperials which tells me these cars aren’t as fragile as many would think. There were a lot of other cars from that era that aren’t being seen with any regularity.
So was the Dynasty all bad? No. But then again there is a reason they have cultivated their less than desirable reputation. My overall exposure time to all things Dynasty was great with the bad being but a fraction of the whole. It would be great if that scenario was more universal.
Found May 2015, Hannibal, Missouri
Related reading:
1991 Dodge Dynasty – Enter Alexis by Brendan Saur
1990 Chrysler New Yorker Salon by JS
One of my best friends parents purchased a dynasty in the mid 90s. I remember that played 500 for it and repaired the blown head gasket. They drove that car for over 100k miles after that with no problems. Thay finally hauled it to the junkyard with over 2 hundred thousand miles with a bad transmission and rust from Michigan salt and dirt roads.
I knew you had Dynasty (Dynastic?) experiences, but never realized you had so many of them.
I’ve only had two experiences with Dynasties. I had a summer job in the early 1990s with town government where my parents lived. This job involved a good bit of driving around town, and for this purpose I was provided the junkiest car in the town’s fleet: A 10-year old Cavalier that was used as a Park Security car. One day, I got in it and the drivers’ seat came unbolted. So it was hauled off to the shop, and I was given use of the Town Manager’s new baby-blue Dynasty. I felt like a Ming Emperor driving that Dynasty around.
The second experience was years later when the parents of a woman I dated owned a maroon Dynasty. She and I used it a few times — it was well-worn, but apparently they loved that car. Never gave them problems.
Both of my Dynasty experiences were positive; yet this is a car I’d never consider actually buying for myself. Even for me, as conservative and unadventurous as people can be, this car stretched my tolerance for dullness.
These are indeed as dull as a well used butter knife although the 3.3 helped compensate for it. That was a jewel of an engine.
These were good cars. I still see lots of them (and the Chrysler-branded counterparts) around for their age. Yes it was based on the K-car, but there were numerous engineering tweaks along the way as well as a much nicer interior than any Aries, and its roots weren’t obvious; almost nothing you see is shared with the original K, nor was its engine (or after the first year, the transmission). It really was nice inside one – good sightlines looking out the large windows, easy ingress/egress from the squared-off door openings, excellent ergonomics, luxurious upholstery on tall, comfortable seats (even in the base model) and lots of soft-touch surfaces. The Dynasty could be had with four wheel disk anti-lock brakes from their intro in 1988, two to three years before the Taurus offered them. I rented one while on holiday at Disney World circa 1990 and was surprisingly impressed.
These were called the Chrysler Dynasty in Canada (and Mexico too evidently). Why?
I preferred the New Yorker for its quad standard headlamps (which could be replaced with good aftermarket lights from Cibie or Hella – that used to be the first thing I did after I bought a car), and also the lower bumper-height trunk liftover. Well that and the Broughamed-out seats and richer species of fake wood on the higher trims.
Jason (and Eric), you dance around what ended up being this car’s killer flaw, the one that relegated it to aging empty-nesters and official fleets in the first place;
The styling was ten years out of date on the day Job One rolled off the line. *On purpose*. Iacocca wasn’t ready to let go of the Brougham Era and build “jellybean” cars, and he gambled with the company’s money that enough buyers were of the same mindset to take his square-rigged alternative or even move up to one of the heavily-decorated square Chrysler branded models. There’s not a lot of future in catering to holdouts so it’s ultimately the car that led to his being pushed into retirement.
While this is a rare thing, I have to disagree about the Dynasty’s styling being the primary (sole?) killer as your statement reads.
The shape of the Dynasty was by no means groundbreaking, breathtaking, or exciting. We certainly agree on that.
However, I have yet to meet anyone who bought a car based strictly upon styling, which is what you seem to infer. Rather, it’s been a combination of mechanical bits, price, and styling. From my experience styling is often a third place consideration at best. Sure, it can be a significant influence but it is hardly the prime motivator.
Think of some of the Japanese cars sold in the US during the 1970s and 1980s. They sold well, they had great mechanical bits, but they were breathtakingly ugly.
The mechanical bits, primarily the Ultradrive and the reputation it built, need to be considered here also.
Sales of the Dynasty declined annually but it also went unchanged for six years. The consideration of buying a brand new car that could be confused with a six year old car enters the equation at that point.
If anything I’d submit the decline of the Dynasty was due to a combination of the Ultradrive fiasco and the absence of updating. Styling, in and of itself, is a subjective thing whereas a car being around and maintaining the same appearance is not.
All that said, I don’t disagree with how the Dynasty could have been treated differently. I just don’t agree that it was styling alone that did it in.
Dynasty sales:
1988 – 54,000
1989 – 138,000
1990 – 113,000
1991 – 11,320 (I highly question this)
1992 – 96,000
1993 – 66,000
The Ultradrive fiasco sure didn’t help.
The usual pattern with people finding a car’s styling objectionable is, that car is normally never put on the shopping list in the first place and whatever engineering qualities they may offer never come into consideration.
I’m inclined to agree with the Lutz camp within Chrysler that they couldn’t have gotten away with another generation of brougham after ’93 and a clean break to radical change was needed. But we all know how well the cab-forward cars sold and how highly regarded they were by the automotive press so that’s 20/20 hindsight on my part.
I’m pretty sure they had to have sold 111,320 ’91s, unless it was a very short model year for some reason.
I agree. The styling did not kill this car. It sold well in the post Taurus introduction world. In fact there seems to have been room in the automotive world for both boxy and stodgy and aerodynamic cars at that time. The Buick Century and Olds Cutlass Ciera sold very well and if these were not the poster child for stodgy outdatedness then I don’t know what was. Dating back to 1982. By the time the cars pulled an Elvis and left the building in 1996 they were 14yr old cars with minor changes to the exterior
The things that killed the Dynasty were the transmission and the wish for Molar to go to the next set of cars.
“However, I have yet to meet anyone who bought a car based strictly upon styling.”
To me, not quite true. But even if it is, I would say for most people objectionable style can easily make them rule out a car, even if everything else about it is agreeable. And even if it’s not the primary criterion, it will keep many from looking at a car in the first place.
To me, the Dynasty’s styling is forgivable because it was competing a relatively conservative market segment (mid-size sedans) for which there were still numerous buyers who preferred traditional designs.
On the other hand, Chrysler’s AA cars (Acclaim, etc.) seem to have been much more hampered by stodgy styling because they competed in a segment that attracted a much younger, and stylish customer base. In my opinion, the AA cars were the ones that signaled that Iacocca’s mindset had become stale.
Good point. Add in that they were trying to replace both the plain Aries/Reliant and the more upmarket Lancer/LeBaron GTS with one body.
Or maybe Chrysler just valued practicality and shaped their cars for other people that likewise did. The squared-off, upright shape of the AA body led to excellent outward visibility, as well as easy ingress/egress thanks to a tall roof and nearly rectangular door openings. The vertical rear window yielded a triple benefit – improved rear seat headroom, less susceptibility to the window becoming soiled and dirty, and a larger trunk opening. Compare these attributes to this car’s eventually successor, the Chrysler 200 and you’ll start to appreciated the AA (or Dynasty) shape a bit more.
Here is my take on the Dynasty. Lido was incapable of doing anything that would not appeal to his generation. As Lido aged, so did his cars. Just compare the Dynasty to the Mustang. One is for a young man, the other an old man-and that was the same man
This means when this customer died off, there was nothing for them in the Mopar stable. The same can be said for GM.
We mustn’t forget that the Fox Mustang was in or near production by the time Lee left Ford and that the Intrepid and its bretheren got the green light from Iacocca. It would be interesting to take a deep dive into this era at Chrysler, something I have not done. Was it that Iacocca made demands of styling? Or did styling management give Iacocca what they thought he wanted and were afraid to take a chance to push something else more daring? The company was only a few years out of a near-death experience, so it would not be hard to imagine entire layers of management with a “play it safe and don’t screw it up” mentality.
People often forget that not only was Iacocca responsible for the 1979 Mustang, he was also responsible for the 1978 Ford Fairmont/Mercury Zephyr.
The Fairmont and Zephyr were boxy, but that was less about being a “Brougham” and more about imitating the European approach of maximizing interior volume in a reasonably sized vehicle.
Most likely Iacocca was “boxed in” by his notions of what role a vehicle should play. A Mustang could have adventurous styling because it was supposed to be a stylish car aimed at younger people. A Fairmont could be plain and boxy because it was aimed at people looking for maximum space in a manageable package – and at a reasonable price.
But a 1979 LTD had to be upright, over-decorated and “formal,” as did a 1980 Thunderbird, because that meant “ritzy” and “expensive” to Iacocca and the people he saw as potential customers. There was no way Iacocca would ever have approved the 1983 Ford Thunderbird or 1986 Ford Taurus.
By 1988, the Ford Taurus had proven that family sedan buyers were ready for something different, but he stuck to his formula for too long, as shown by this Dynasty.
From what I heard working at Chrysler, where lore ran deep, was the LH cars had little to do with Lido. They were basically a Renault 21 adapted for North America. They were to be AMC cars, but Chrysler got it when they bought AMC to get Jeep.
At the same time, dealers saw their customers dying off. There was not going to be a trade in of a Dynasty for anything, since the owners had died. The dealers screamed for a product that would attract a younger buyer, and the LH certainly fit the bill. There were huge fights are Chrysler when Lido wanted to broughamify the LH cars, which Lido also resisted.
New management gave Chrysler a bunch of hits, like the LH cars and the PT Cruiser. However, the quality of both those cars was so bad, and the cloud cars for that matter, that buyers sold their cars and bought imports.
In 1991, my wife and I were in the market for a new car to supplement our Daytona. We needed something a bit more practical. My wife kept telling me she liked the “big square Dodge” her coworker had, as it looked like it had shoulder pads like her favorite dress. Mind you, we were both 30 years old.
That weekend, we went to the local Dodge dealer and checked out the Dynasty. She was in heaven! She loved the interior, how roomy and comfy it was, and most of all the “classy square look”, as she said, of it.
We took a few for test drivers and even though I thought it to be really nice, she was like, “Wow, I love driving this car! I can see perfectly out of it”.
We headed back to the dealers office to settle on. Dynasty, and to do the pricing game. As we we sitting at the salesman’s desk, he excuses himself and says I’ll be right back. He comes back holding a set of keys and says to us, “OK, come back outside as I just remembered we just got a new Dynasty in today. We head outside and what does he show us? A white Dynasty LE complete with a navy blue faux convertible roof, luggage rack, and spoke wheel covers ! . You would of thought I just presented my wife with a 5 carat diamond ring! She was in heaven !!
Needless to say, that car ended up in our driveway and we had it for a good seven years without any issues, putting about 25k miles per year on it. When it was time to say good bye to Danny Dynasty, we handed him over to our nephew who kept the car for another 5 years without any major issues.
NJarguy – I read this post and comments last week and remembered reading yours. Today I see this ad. Uncanny. Given your story, I felt you would appreciate.
https://richmond.craigslist.org/cto/d/richmond-1992-dodge-dynasty/6954904378.html
Great piece, Jason! I have just a few thoughts. First, I’m so glad to hear that Grandpa Albert is doing well. From your previous pieces that features him and your late grandmother (RIH), I think I have a sense of what a cool dude he is.
As for the Dynasty, I also remember snickering at its name when I picked up my ’88 New Car Buyer’s guide from the local Meijer in Flint. And that styling. It had me saying something like, “You can’t spell ‘Dynasty’ without ‘nasty’.”
However, and as evidenced by the plethora of them I kept seeing on the road years after, they must have been substantive and good cars. They may have looked like they were styled using a ruler and a protractor, but beauty is only skin deep.
I like to think it was “Computer-Aided Design.”
*Outstanding.* It’s amazing how much this MS-DOS depiction looks like the actual Dodge Dynasty.
I had the Apple ][ version of this program as a kid- I spent many, many, many hours on it. 🙂
And of course the LE level trim stood for Linda Evans. Seriously though compare the Dynasty with a 700 series Volvo which preceded it by a few years. The taillight look, the greenhouse, hood and grill lines. Its as if Chrysler took a Volvo to the studio, sanded a few corners just a little, and said here’s your car Lee.
Wow, that truly is a dynasty of Dynastys (Dynasties?)
There is something compelling about the peeling and sunburned paint on this example, a grizzled veteran going about it’s business. Who knew some of these would survive long enough to become grizzled?
These didn’t appeal to me due to their styling (among other things) – just too long and narrow, very much in the idiom of some Japanese cars where they are/were taxed depending on their width, leading to some weird (to our eyes) proportions. I get that these were lengthened K-cars so the width was fairly fixed and the size increase came front and rear.
They aren’t ugly though, just a little misshapen. Overall they remind me more of a mini-TownCar (early 90’s) than anything else, which is correctly shaped and proportioned, although these came first.
Good to hear that they seemed to be remarkably durable, at least a few of them anyway. Even a blind pig finds a truffle sometimes…
I remember kind of liking them when they came out – they seemed like a kind of mid-point in styling between the older GM A body cars and the Taurus.
I never experienced one in person until an office secretary showed up with a 91 New Yorker with a carriage roof (which I wrote up here a long time ago). I got to drive it once and could see why people liked them – it was very nicely done inside, in a traditional kind of way. Hers was eventually done in by electrical gremlins in the engine control systems which would occasionally leave her stranded somewhere.
There cannot be enough good things said about that 3.3 V6. That engine was in my 99 T&C and even at over 200k I never had to add any oil to it. If the transmissions had been as good as those engines these cars would still be common as cockroaches.
Jason, it’s always a treat to read a story involving your family, you have such a masterful way of telling them. It is good to hear that your grandfather is doing well in assisted living.
My memory of Dynasties and similar New Yorkers is primarily from when I was in college, when they were on their second or third owner. They seemed to be driven by many young women at the time, presumably as hand me downs from their grandparents. In that role, they seemed to serve well as transportation – no more, no less.
There will always be a market for conservative vehicles for conservative buyers.
Today’s example is the Chevrolet Express/GMC Savanna. Ford and FCA long ago moved to Euro-style vans, but the General is still plugging away with a fully American-style van, last redesigned in 2003. And GM still sells plenty of them to van buyers who are conservative and don’t want one of “them newfangled vans”.
Dad had an early nineties Chrysler New Yorker – with a Dynasty badge on the glove box. Other than that quality control lapse, I remember it being a good car.
A guy I know special ordered a new ’78 GMC 3/4 ton 4×4 pickup. He was at the dealer the day it arrived. It showed up with a Chevrolet tailgate!
I remember riding my bike to the local Dodge dealer in the late 1970s to look at the cars on Sunday (when the dealer was closed). There were cars that were Aspens on one side, and Volares on the other.
As a Rental Car Manager during this cars era, I have driven many a mile in a Dynasty LE. My favorite was the black cherry color. I loved these cars. Give me a square car with an upright back window any day. Chrysler was heavy into rental/fleet sales in the day. We’d get 2 “turns” per model year and run them 6-7 months.
It was cheaper to have the return inspector charge us for an oil change than to have it done ourselves. They’d have around 15-17,000 miles on them when we returned them. I think that’s one of the reasons you saw so many smoking 3.0’s later in life.
The aforementioned Dynasty I rented was that color, inside and out, and is my favorite too. Wasn’t an LE, but even the base model was very plush inside, with two different soft velours covering the seats and door panels, and lots of soft touch surfaces. Didn’t look poverty-spec at all.
By the time the Dynasty and its Chrysler siblings appeared, the bugs had been shaken out of just about everything that went into them, except the transmission…that took a couple more years. The Dodge Dynasty became Chrysler’s best selling car (the minivans are clsssified as trucks) for several years.
These Dodges may or may not live well, but they always Die Nasty.
These were common rental cars and being in that business meant I have driven many of them. I also have always thought of them as rental cars, not serious cars for home use. It has been years since I have driven another, but this is what I think I remember about them.
They were a dependable, plush riding car. While they also seemed a bit plasticky and a bit shaky compared to their competition, but they seemed to hang on and get their job done.
They were obviously a KCar, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. By this time we saw the KCar as the car that saved Chrysler and a dependable everyday vehicle seen everywhere. The van was based on it. It was all Chrysler offered back then. So, when these big KCars came out they weren’t looked upon as completely new, but actually, rather old and dependable. That was their good points.
But they were sadly weird looking. The Fifth Avenue was an obvious old Aspen that wore a cheap tuxedo, but the styling from that car needed to have been discontinued. They Dynasty took that severe box look and did it in an extreme way. Putting that shoulder padded box look and updating it, caught your eye, but didn’t impress.
The first time I rode around in a Dynasty, I finally got curious enough to look at that back window to certify that it was as goofy and square as it initially looked. There was no denying it as I actually rubbed that C pillar – this car is freaky looking.
The Dynasty was a better car than the old obsolete Diplomat, but like the Diplomat, the Dynasty was serving up a style that was visually obsolete and contrarian.
“But they were sadly weird looking.”
I would argue that this was the very end of the period when other companies looked to GM for styling leadership. The 1985 GM fwd C body (DeVille, Electra, 98) had this same look with the upright rear window and the kinda-sorta aero treatment up front.
When I first saw these I immediately figured that they were going for the look that GM had popularized. Unfortunately, the odd proportions on these (quite narrow) did not work as well. Kind of like the 57 Studebaker President – it was not a bad looking car, but it was no Pontiac Bonneville styled with modern proportions for the class.
I rented a few Dynastys. The ones with V6 engines were perky and pleasant to drive, though understeerers that squealed their front tires when pushed hard. The four-cylinders were lighter on the front, but their acceleration was…adequate. I preferred the Dynasty to the various GM offerings in their class, but picked a Taurus when given the choice. One time the choice was a Dynasty or a Mercury Topaz…that was a no-brainer (and that Dynasty was the nicest one I ever rented, a V6 high-line model).
RLPlaut, in his COAL series, remarked on renting a Dodge Dynasty before purchasing his Mercury Sable wagon…he said it was a nice car. The nasty Toyota salesman sneered at it but that was apparently after Mr. Plaut had said the Toyota wagon he test drove was rather rough and unrefined (that’s how his description sounded to me). By then, I think he’d been put off enough by the Toyota dealer’s antics that the shortcomings of the car finished him off.
One could almost see Lee Iacocca as the successor to KT Keller, successor to Walter Chrysler, who stepped down due to illness. In 1949, when GM and Ford were going to sleeker, lower designs, Studebaker and Kaiser-Frazer had already gone that way two years prior, and Hudson had introduced their Step-Down, Keller’s first postwar Chrysler products were high and boxy, so that (he said) an owner could wear a hat inside the car without brushing the ceiling. The Dodge Dynasty and its Chrysler New Yorker siblings gave that impression; and like Keller’s boxes, they did find some appreciative buyers, even as they fell behind automotive trends of the time.
K T Keller has gotten all of the historical blame for the 49s but I don’t think this is a fair rap. The engineering mavens Zeder Skelton and Breer were a powerful force in that company. Walter Chrysler had sort of kept them in their lane but Keller was a manufacturing guy who probably let engineering’s strong opinions win the argument. Remember that styling was under the control of engineering there, so engineering had veto power on any ideas stylists might dream up.
Keller was a pretty well-rounded guy, a college grad, and recognized almost immediately that the 49s had been a mistake. Remember that 1949 was the year he hired Virgil Exner to take over advanced styling and within a few years styling was out from under engineering. Exner would never have made that happen without some pretty powerful juice inside the company, and I have to believe that Keller backed him in those changes. Keller did not retire from the Chairman’s office until 1956 when the 1957 models were in pre-production.
Agreed: and bringing on Exner was what HAD to be done. His reskinning of the senior makes Chrysler, Imperial and DeSoto for 1953 was only partly successful but was probably all he could do given the Korean War and the attention paid to the 1953 Dodge and Plymouth, which looked nearly as modern as their Chevrolet and Ford competition. By then, though, Chrysler had lost second-place in sales volume to Ford Motor Company…permanently. 1955, when the cars from all the major manufacturers swept away all that had come before, was probably clearly in everyone’s sights by then.
If I recall correctly, K.T. Keller would often visit the styling studios and make “suggestions” (which every involved understood were really orders) regarding the direction that the stylists should take.
No doubt the engineers ran the show, but I strongly suspect that he had no problem backing them up at every possible opportunity.
Exner really didn’t gain total control over styling until it was painfully apparent that the 1953 models weren’t going anywhere in the market (and it would get far, far worse for 1954). By that point, even Keller understood that Chrysler was a dead duck if it didn’t make a radical change in direction when it came to styling.
I think it’s fair to say that people bought the 49–52 Mopars despite their styling, not because of it.
“The Automotive Version Of Chlamydia”. I thought L.O.G. (Lada Owners Group) had that market cornered… 🙂
The immediate association I make with the Dynasty is as the misanthropic Dr. House’s car in the the T.V. show House. I always thought the drab, staid Dynasty was a curious choice for such an eclectic character.
I pride myself on being able to identify almost any car on the road, but I still have some troubles with the Iacocca-mobiles of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Distinguishing a Dynasty from a New Yorker from a Fifth Avenue from an Imperial takes more than a quick glance for me. Of course, that’s becoming less and less of a problem as they disappear from the roads.
I just happened to find a TV fansite where the Dynasty in the TV series “House” is featured. It’s generally insulting to the Dynasty and includes this description of the 3.3L Trenton V6 in the later Dynastys:
“Later years used a Chrysler-designed 3.3 liter V6, Mopar’s first clean-sheet V6 design and another well-known mechanical nightmare.”
Mechanical nightmare? And “well-known” as such?
So much for TV fansites!
Why didn’t the Volvo 740 catch this much flack for its boxy styling, which isn’t all that far from the Dynasty’s? (compare the grille and front end, or any other part of the car for that matter)
Because the 700 Series dated back to the early ’80s.
And it was pretty quickly replaced (in Volvo time) by the 900 series, which was as rounded as possible on the 700 series’ bones.
Volvo’s image was built with the 140 and 240 — boxy cars that didn’t change. Apparently, even Volvo thought that the 700 series went too far.
The 740 caught plenty of flack! Remember it came out in 1982 and the Ford Sierra and Audi C3 100/5000 were showing the way into the aerodynamic future. The Dynasty is one car generation newer.
All the while reading this, I was comparing the 1988 Dodge Dynasty with the Dodge of ten years earlier, the Charger. Thankfully they spared use of the Charger name for this car. I was struck by how little the Dynasty resembled the Dodge of ten years prior, both in style and substance. Not that the 78 Charger-Cordoba was a great car, it had its moments and ups and downs and pros and cons to be sure. Call it evolution? OK I guess so. Not to disparage the Dynasty in any sense either I suppose. I’m pretty sure I would not have purchased one if I were to revisit 1988. The angular and somewhat plain design were not compelling, albeit perhaps not unattractive either. Quite unlike the TV show.
These Dynasty’s always messed with my OCD — people would hardly ever turn the little Pentastar back upright to cover the keyhole on the trunk lid and I’d have to stare at it the whole time I drove behind them…
Aside from the urky name (Dynasty? What kind of name is Dynasty?), these were decent cars to drive. My ex-father in law had a white 1991 LE with a 3.3 (no Ultradrive issues, BTW…). It was a comfortable car, had decent room inside it nicely-trimmed interior (I really liked the full gauge cluster–no rows of idiot lights here!). and A/C that worked rather well. The car worked for him and gave him no problems (which changed when he traded it for a similar-year Chrysler Fifth Avenue). The 3.3 had decent power, the Ultradrive worked flawlessly, and it was reasonably economical to operate (as compared to his old 1974 Plymouth Fury Gran Sedan Brougham with a 440…).
I still say these would be a great anonymous daily driver. These are definitely invisible to the police. I always felt that they were just a set of performance tires and a set of KYB front struts/rear shocks away from being a great driver.
Parents had a Dodge Spirit looked similar, ran like a gorilla on meth, never had any problem
I am the 3rd owner of a Dodge Dynasty in fabulous condition, as in it runs smooth, but needs a new fuel pump after having sat still for 5 years. Less than 75k miles, odometer broke. I’ve only driven it to keep it running. I want to sell it as is. Pensacola Fl, 32504.
$1800
Look for a 1991 dynasty 3.3 V6 fuel rail ….I really need my car on road. Please do let me know where I can find fuel rail for my car.