(first posted 12/4/2018) Thanks to compounding traffic problems causing me to take some really odd detours to get home the other night, I stumbled across something I hadn’t seen in years: One of the last of the Chrysler LeBarons. Not only one of the last LeBarons, but of the AA variety-not exactly a common bird even back in the time…
This one wasn’t flawless, but it was in remarkable shape for a 25ish year old car in the salt-encrusted environs known as Metro Detroit. The big damage I saw almost looked like the aftermath of a forced entry some years ago.
Even the glass (or plastic, or whatever) hood ornament survived, making it through the early 2000s and the all-too-frequent theft of hood ornaments back then.
I didn’t spend a ton of time scrutinizing the interior, but it, too, looked to be in good shape. A bit lived in, but nothing a decluttering wouldn’t solve. I do wonder what sins are hiding under those towels, but given the rest of the car I’m wont to believe they’re old school seat protectors instead of replacement upholstery. I mean, it can’t be by accident they’re a perfect match for the interior!
My first car was a LeBaron, of the H-Body GTS variety. That car, and its J-Body relative, made sense to me. The K version, with the available turbo convertible, made sense to me. I realize that Chrysler applied the name to multiple unrelated cars over the years, sometimes simultaneously.
The AA LeBaron, though? I don’t get it. It always struck me as a pointless shameless rebadging years after it had gone out of style. I mean, is the AA a reference, a wink-and-a-nod, to the GM A-Bodies so infamously immortalized on the cover of Fortune a decade earlier? I have literally no idea what differences there are between this LeBaron and the Dodge Spirit and Plymouth Acclaim it allegedly stood over in the market. No, this LeBaron does not make sense to me.
But here we are, 24 or more years on. Despite not apparently offering anything different or even more than its AA brethren, the Spirit of this LeBaron sure seems to have found Acclaim with its owners over the years.
And at this stage, I don’t care that it makes sense. I’m just happy to see it, and I wish it and its old-school seat protecting owner well.
Wow, you found a rare, one year only 1992 Chrysler LeBaron LX. Basically the former Plymouth Acclaim LX with a Chrysler grill. Nice cars, roomy, with good pep from the 3.0 Mitsubishi V6. Not the most reliable due to oil burning and the Ultradrive, but a handsome modernization of the old K car.
I didn’t know about this one. Similar concept to the Chrysler New Yorker Salon of 1990.
I seem to recall Chrysler brought back the 3 speed auto/V6 option around this time for those that were trying to avoid the A604 Ultradrive. Or maybe that was in the minivans, don’t remember.
*PS – I’m still getting the “you’re posting too fast” error
Yup, starting in ’93 you could get the A670 TorqueFlite 3-speed rather than the A604 4-speed ProbleMatic with the 3.0 V6.
Was this Lebaron a little pet project by Lee Iaccoca? Most of these forgettable things had a cheesy landau roof and different taillights.
I saw way more acclaims/spirits than Lebaron sedans. I remember thinking it was weird the first time I saw one of them, as Lebaron coupes and converibles were relatively common, and the rear end and taillights were nearly identical yet the bodies were so vastly different
The 1990 LeBaron was described by an auto writer as a “trombone case on wheels.”
I remember seeing these new at the ocean county mall in Tom’s river New Jersey
Say what you want about the shear look ,but it made the car more space efficient
At the time I had my 2 door ’78 Malibu classic and it wasn’t fun putting my daughter in the car seat in that 2 door car
That back seat looked very roomy
I think the mandatory child seat law led to the decline of the 2 door car
Oddly enough, I’ve seen two AA cars this past week — a 1990 Dodge Spirit and then yesterday, a LeBaron similar to this one parked at Wal-Mart. It wasn’t in as nearly as good condition as this one though, and I didn’t stop to take pictures.
I’ve never been terrible fond of these LeBarons, other than just out of a curiosity for the fact that they were actually made… whereas I really did like many aspects of the Spirit/Acclaim, but with the LeBaron’s added pretension, much of the appeal got lost.
As an aside, I wonder when the last car rolled of an assembly line with a trunk-mounted luggage rack? I recently saw a 1991 Tempo that had one, and now this car. I don’t ever remember seeing one actually in use, so their very presence in the 1990s was somewhat bizarre.
The one that made zero sense to me then and still to this day was the trunk mounted luggage rack on convertible fox body Mustangs! I’m sure it was there because the trunk lost some of its room when the top was down and stowed in the trunk, but it just doesn’t look right to have a pony car with a luggage rack. Why not throw some white wall tires on it while your at too!
They were available on ’60s Mustangs, so I guess it’s a throwback…
True. I didn’t think about that. I don’t care for them on the older cars either.
At least you could actually put luggage on those luggage racks, the 90s style revival luggage rack were made “sleek”, so as to not look like a cooking grate like on that 66, at the cost of any pretension of luggage storage on it.
Only luggage rack that ever made some semblance of sense was on C3 Corvettes since there was no trunklid and the t-tops could be strapped to them. I still think they are a tacky appendage, but at least in that case there is a purpose.
Hmmm…. that is an interesting question about the last available trunk mounted luggage rack. My 1993 Topaz GS 2-door had one, and I know that it continued into the final year 1994. It was harder (in my area) to find one without than with. The Contour/Mystique didn’t have them.
The AA cars still continued to have them available until 1995, when they were replaced by the Cloud cars, and those didn’t have them.
The Buick Centruy/Olds Ciera were available until 1996, but it looks like the trunk mounted lugage rack was phased out prior to then (quick google search doesn’t locate any).
They were also available on the Custlass Supreme sedan, at least until 1993.
Cougars had them available up to 1997
the GM A-Bodies so infamously immortalized on the cover of Fortune a decade earlier
Do you have a link for this? What made it infamous? Given Fortune’s track record I’m guessing slobbering overpraise of mediocre vehicles by a journalist with little knowledge of cars.
Here you go:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/1983-fortune-will-success-spoil-general-motors/
Oddly enough the Chrysler LeBaron was one of the very few american cars that were successful in Europe. (The others beeing Corvette and Jeep Cherokee). There was one particular -if not to say notorious- version of the Le Baron Convertible that made it into bestselling ranks of Italy and even Germany. Mostly because of low price of course, but it couldn’t have been that bad either, because some survivors are still there.
Surprised me too. It was called the Chrysler Saratoga in Germany.
Yep, and here’s one German’s entertaining ownership account.
I will be the contrarian here. To me, the stodgy lines of this car just begged for the Broughamance treatment, as many in the over-50 crowd (certainly in the midwest) still liked their cars to be “plush”. My mother would have loved this. If gasoline had cost around 1990 what it had cost in 1981 this would have been a popular car.
This AA body was so odd – it was modern and relatively aerodynamic but just so frumpy at the same time. Kind of like how a 49 Plymouth would have been in its day.
When I think of AA I think of batteries. The A would have been the M body, the C would have been the 1979 R body and the D the traditional 1970s barge.
“This AA body was so odd – it was modern and relatively aerodynamic but just so frumpy at the same time. Kind of like how a 49 Plymouth would have been in its day.”
Try looking at it this way: Bargain Volvo.
An old neighbor back in the mid-90’s was a regional sales manager for Volvo USA. He of course drove whatever the top-line Volvo was at the time as a company car. His wife drove a Plymouth Acclaim 4 cylinder base model as her around-town Mom-mobile. Every time I see a non-Broughamized AA I think “Bargain Volvo”. It’s hard to comprehend until you look at a base Acclaim parked next to a mid 90’s S-70 or S-90.
Or super bargain Silver Spur.
The AAs should have debuted by 1985, or 1986 at the latest. Whatever their merits, they simply looked tired by 1990.
Man, this just screams “K-car!”, especially that profile shot. Iacocca was really phoning it in by then and it’s easy to see why he was on the way out when the AA made its appearance. You have to wonder what Iacocca would have done if they had kept him around. Was he going to just keep re-using the K-car chassis, ad infinitum?
In 1994, my Wife was a outside salesperson and putting a lot of miles on her car. In addition, her parents had just moved to our city and we needed a car with rear seat room.
The local Chrysler dealer also had a Hertz car rental franchise. They had 70 plus used 1994 Labarons. All had 11 or 12 thousand miles and a 3L V6. There were only three colors. They were cheap because they overloaded the local market including the wholesale auction. They were selling retail at the wholesale level, saving the dealer the transport to the auction. Plus I doubt many sold at each weekly auction.
The Lebaron served her well until 1997. I recall a belt tensioner replaced under warranty, and reprogamming of the transmission.
That same year, 1994, my mother was in the market to replace her (terrible) ’90 Jetta. She wound up with an ex-Hertz ’92 LeBaron sedan. Except for the faux woodgrain dash and switch escutcheons, the faux stitching on the dashpad, the standup hood ornament, the grille and the taillights could’ve been an Acclaim: power locks and windows, cruise control, A/C, and FM/AM were the only options. It had a manual split-bench front seat, a 2.5 TBI engine, a column-shift 3-speed automatic, 14″ steel wheels with plastic hubcaps, etc.
70,000 miles when she bought it. Six years and 50,000 miles later, I bought it from her, put a muffler and pipes and some brake parts in it, and drove it another 30k miles, then sold it on to someone in Detroit.
Here’s what distinguished this LeBaron from the Plymouth Acclaim sold a year earlier: that deluxe hood ornament and woodgrain on the dashboard (but not the center console that mated with it since bucket seats were originally only used on the Spirit and Acclaim). The middle and upper Acclaim trim levels became the lower and middle LeBaron trim levels for 1992, I think to prepare for the axing of Plymouth. Or maybe that wasn’t planned yet and it was done for the same reason the Cordoba became a Chrysler instead of a Plymouth – the former could sell for more money.
I don’t have a problem with the appearance of these. Indeed, the upright shape and squared-off roof make for easy ingress/egress, a rear window that stays clean, good rear headroom, and a large trunk opening. Today’s sedans have nearly fastback profiles, tiny trunk lids, and mail-slot trunk openings, as well as a windshield that slopes back so far it makes it difficult to get in the car. I think the impracticality of modern sedans led to their demise.
Ah-ah-aaaah, don’t forget the simulated stitching moulded into the dashboard pad on the LeBaron that wasn’t present on the Acclaim and Spirit. Oh, and the woodgrain appliqué on the power-lock and power-window switch escutcheons*, and the chrome-rather-than-black finish on the lock, window, and HVAC switches.
I agree with you in re the practicality of the AA-body and its shapemates, and the impracticality of more recent sedans, but I hadn’t connected the dots—I think you make an excellent point there. The Chrysler 200 I rented in 2016 or so was as infuriatingly disagreeable as the AA-cars were agreeable in terms of practical basics (ingress, egress, sight lines, trunk space, etc).
*-Actually, I just like to say “escutcheon”.
Couldn’t agree more about the Chrysler 200. Drove one for about a month as a rental and nothing about it was pleasant. It was like driving a blind spot. And claustrophobic as hell.
My rant about it is here.
I missed the chance to rant about a rented Dodge Avenger, the sibling to the horrible Daimler-design Chrysler Sebring/200 sedan, maybe a littkecless ugly. They were the dregs of the dark and dreary DaimlerChrysler years when the Germans in charge lived down to that dark, dreary, dour reputation.
It was depressing to be in, and made me long for a return to the 1995 Cloud cars, and even to these AAs.
HEIL DAIMLER!!!
I didn’t realize the new low-end LeBarons got the thick-padded dash and silvery switchgear too. Curiously, the 1982 and later K-body LeBaron had the same relationship to the Reliant/Aries, also getting a thickly padded dash top and extra chrome and woodgrain to distinguish it from its cheaper Dodge and Plymouth sister cars.
You do make a good point about sedans, la673. The thing I don’t understand is why sedans didn’t all become hatchbacks???
Our 2010 Prius is about as aero-shaped as a sedan can get, but it’s a hatchback with good rear headroom for adults and great cargo access. Last weekend with the rear seats folded down we carried an 8 1/2 foot Christmas tree inside with the hatch closed. Why don’t more carmakers build sedans this way?
Rear vision is not good, but lots of SUVs and crossovers have poor rear vision too.
Some sedans are being replaced by hatchbacks – Buick Regal and VW Arteon (which replaced the CC) come to mind.
The European-market Mondeo (Fusion in US) is available as a hatchback, and the side profile is difficult to tell apart from the sedan.
Some of these sedans were actually hatchbacks but hid that aspect well. The Dodge Shadow/ Plymouth Sundance were not 2 door coupes or 4 door sedans. They were actually 3 and 5 door hatchbacks. A lot of folks probably though they were coupes and sedans with stubby trunks. But they were hatches. In fact only the Shadow convertible had a trunk.
The only other car that came close to hiding its hatchbackness was the Mazda6 Hatch. It also looked like a sedan
I’m not actually ashamed to acknowledge I’m a (recovering) AA-body cognoscento and aficionado. These cars, particularly in LeBaron guise, were rolling contradictions: the basic car was honest and unpretentious—a practical box on wheels, reasonably well engineered and built (A604 ProbleMatic transmission and 3.0 Mitsu V6 valve guides notwithstanding), reasonably durable and dependable, reasonably economical and easy to repair, reasonably pleasant to drive, and a large cut or three above the GM and Ford competitors on most all of those counts.
But then Iaccoca just couldn’t resist glooping them up with his mouldy old pretentious gingerbread. The padded vinyl “landau” half-roof, the phony wire wheel covers, the tufted velour pillowtop seats, the opera lights, the 8-track deck with a Frank Sinatra cartridge glued in.
This ’92 LeBaron LX, as others have mentioned, is a bit of an odd duck that made (a bit) more sense in ’89-’91 as an Acclaim. Kind of a spastic, halfassed effort—hell, they didn’t even bother using the LeBaron taillights and rear fascia; just left the Acclaim pieces in place—and really, nothing says “luxury” (as in “LX”) like a faux luggage rack on the trunk lid, nu!
Still, when I was in my long AA-body ownership run, I kept my eyes open for these and their Spirit ES counterparts. Not so much for the deeper-drop front bumper cover with useless toy foggy lites, but because they tended to be well equipped, which as these things went meant something better than the wheezy basic 2.5/TBI motor, power locks and windows, an upgraded instrument cluster and speakers, and otherwise like that.
AA LeBarons never had opera lights, although they would have fit in perfectly.
Well, alright, I’ll give you that, but I’m still going to picture Iacocca being dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the styling studio after trying to make them do it.
As rentals, the LeBarons got a higher daily rental fee than the Spirits and Acclaims, which also usually had the 4-cyl. engine; LeBarons had the Mitsubishi V6. At the time, Chrysler owned the Thrifty and Dollar car rental companies, so they could build the LeBarons for not much more than it cost to build the Acclaim/Spirit, rent them out for more, and then after 12,000 miles, sell them through their dealers as Certified Pre-owned for a higher price.
Follow the money. From that viewpoint, the LeBaron did make sense, and developing it didn’t cost much.
When these were new, I frequenly rented cars and liked the LeBarons better than the Acclaim/Spirit because of the nicer interior and the V6. But the Ford Taurus swept them aside, finally closing the book on the K-Car.
Was this a Canadian spec model? I seen someone mention the different taillights, but I was under the impression they always used a similarly inspired taillight setup as the LeBaron Convertible throughout the production run.
No, it’s a US-model car. Taillights did not differ between the US- and Canadian-market versions of any of the AA-body cars.
I grew up in flyover country and the geographic center of the lower 48 was 2 hours from my house. So I remember a lot of Acclaims and Spirits when new, but not these. In fact I only remember seeing one ever, when my friend had one in high school. These were very uncommon and I remembering wondering why Chrysler bothered, except as a rental car when grandma and grandpa came to visit.
I completely agree with your premise, Daniel, that too little was done to differentiate the AA LeBaron from its platform-mates. I was genuinely confounded when this generation of LeBaron came out – *after* the Dodge Spirit and Plymouth Acclaim. I was like, what, exactly, does that extra money buy? With that said, I warmed to the AA’s blocky, ever-so-slightly rounded styling and thought its look was better executed than the larger Dodge Dynasty / Chrysler New Yorker.
Yup, the AA-body cars were proportionally correct, while the AC-body (die-nasty, etc) was proportionally awkward: too long for its width—or too narrow for its length, if you prefer.
Just came in at the auto auction I work at. 78,000 miles. Runs like a top.
In front of the Hirshhorn Musium in DC. A Chrysler Spirit.
Yup, a Mexican car. I’ve seen it, I just didn’t recall where.
One of my friends in college inherited a Buick Century with one of those luggage racks. We bungeed our sleeping bags to it on a camping trip. It worked great. Maybe there was a lively broughamista camping subculture in the 80’s?
Oh! Oh! And another thing about these: Y’member how Lee Iacocca loved to bash Japan (when he wasn’t busy buying engines and steel and, um, cars from them)? Those nameplates on the decklid (“CHRYSLER” and “LEBARON” here, but on another car it might be “CHRYSLER” and “SPIRIT” or “CHRYSLER” and “SARATOGA” or “DODGE” and “SPIRIT” or “PLYMOUTH” and “ACCLAIM”, “DODGE” and “SHADOW”, “PLYMOUTH” and “VOYAGER”, etc)?
Those nameplates were made in Japan.
Iacocca didn’t like anyone who didn’t stroke his ego or line his pocket. Mitsubishi lined his pocket so he was all smiles. Iacocca was also strangely quiet when asked where this almost fully formed FWD Horizon platform came from.
these were called “AA” simply because that’s when Chrysler moved to two-letter codes for vehicle architectures. Everything which was already in existence simply got “A” pre-pended to its body code; e.g. the D-series Ram became “AD,” the G-body Daytona became “AG,” and the “S” body minivans became “AS.”
the original “A” body cars (Valiant and derivatives) went away in the ’70s, so it was able to be reused for the last re-working of the K-car platform. Thus, Spirit/Acclaim/Lebaron were “AA.”
I see this as the last kick of the K cars, which surely have to claim to one the biggest sellers of its days, if you add in all the variations and derivatives over, what,15 years?
Has anyone ever counted them up? Paging Jason Shafer…..
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-the-curbside-classic-comprehensive-chronology-of-the-chrysler-k-car-family-tree/
The A in front of the body desgnation represented “air bag”. The K body Lebarons never had airbags so their designation was simply K followed by the body style number (mine is a K27 convertible). I will say, that with the TurboII engine and 14 psi boost setting it is quite the sleeper, even with what I call a warning label, license reads T2K-CAR.
I had a ’93 Dodge Spirit with the 2.5 was a pretty good car, no problems until tranny gave up the ghost at 124k. Ma Mopar didn’t tell you until later to use the correct tranny fluid! (Chrysler/Mopar label, of vourse)
I drove a 91 Acclaim company car for a few years. It was overall a good car with only a couple of warranty issues. It was the top line LX model in the dark cherry color and a good looking rig. Many people would ask what kind of car it was. I always responded “Plymouth ” to see the reaction. Most acted like they hadn’t seen a Plymouth in years and had forgotten all about them. Therein maybe the logic behind the LeBaron name switch.