(first posted 10/6/2016) 1987 was a big year for small cars, so Car and Driver devoted a lot of ink to the newest offerings in the fall 1986 new car issues. In the October issue covering the ’87 domestic news, Car and Driver took a look at the revamped Nissan Stanza, while in the November issue featuring new cars from Japan, the editors tested the all-new Plymouth Sundance Turbo. Just like buyers, Car and Driver seemed to be toggling between Japan and the U.S. in search of compelling small cars to challenge the likes of Toyota and Honda. So while this was not a direct comparison test, reading both articles (and counterpoints) provide some interesting and unexpected insights into the state of the small car art, circa 1987.
Smack dab in the heart of the 1986 issue of Car and Driver, right in the midst of all the new-for-1987 domestic product news, was a road test for the newly introduced Nissan Stanza, imported from Japan. Was this yet another brutal example of the effective Japanese conquest of the American car market with superior product?
Nissan would no doubt have wished that Car and Driver’s subhead was correct–“the maker that can do no wrong”–but that was a stretch. In fact, the Stanza represented a lot of what was going wrong with Nissan at the time, starting with its very unadventurous styling. While the Honda Accord set the Japanese compact car standard for style, and the new-for-1987 Toyota Camry was sleek and wind-toned, the Stanza looked like it could have already been several model years old.
Part of the Stanza’s job was to mimic the flagship Maxima sedan in many ways, though with a package that was (a bit) cheaper and offered less power. However, like many knock-off goods, the net effect can appear markedly inferior to the genuine article.
The Stanza’s interior was a pleasant place to be. Build and material quality were top notch for the price. But performance was subpar, with leisurely acceleration and a disconnected driving feel. As a transportation appliance it was fine, but nothing more.
I always love reading Car and Driver’s counterpoints. With less space to comment, the feedback is typically right to the point with minimal sugar coating. In the case of the Stanza, the harsh truth comes to light quickly: this was no better than an average car, a middling automotive module for Middle America. Rich Ceppos’s line summed the Stanza up brutally: “Nissan simply took dead aim at the Chevrolet Celebrity.” In 1987, being compared with an uninspiring Chevy entering its sixth model year on the market was not a compliment…
Nor were the specifications and test results of the “knock your socks off” variety. Not particularly quick or nimble, the most impressive number–not in a good way–was the price: $12,259 ($26,940 adjusted). For that money, you could get a better compact sedan from Honda or Toyota, or you could go up a size class and get the roomier, equally bland and anesthetized Chevrolet Celebrity for less.
In contrast to the Nissan Stanza, which Car and Driver knocked for being pricey and bland, the Plymouth Sundance Turbo was hailed for its character and cost. Perhaps C&D’s editors deliberately placed the new Mopar P-Body review in the Japanese-focused November 1986 issue to make a point: Chrysler could cobble together an affordable, entertaining little rocket, but what about refinement?
Originally this car was envisioned as the successor to the Horizon (and Omni at Dodge), but Chrysler decided to keep the old L-Body “Omnirizon” in place as the low cost leader, so Mopar’s newest parts bin masterpiece was bumped a bit upmarket. Part of that included offering a Turbo model with more aggressive handling capabilities, which took the car out of the subcompact norm.
Rather than coming across as an alternate to imports, the P-Car felt like it was made for Peoria (a town in central Illinois, known for being a product test market when seeking to gauge the tastes of middle America). The Sundance was pudgy for a subcompact, but that give it a heavy “American” feel, as did the plasticky interior and squishy seats.
The brutal truth comes out: the Sundance Turbo was a good car, but not world class. Materials and finish were not up to the best standards of the Japanese, and the entire package had the aura of being good idea hamstrung by common components–great for the corporate cost accountants, but less compelling for customers. The nomenclature, at least at Plymouth, probably didn’t help either. I have to admit I’d choke if telling people I’d just bought a new Sundance, merely based on the cheesiness of the name alone.
As tested, the Sundance Turbo listed for $10,830 ($23,780 adjusted), which was a pretty fair price if cheap speed was your goal. Fuel economy, however, was decidedly lacking, especially for a car in the subcompact class.
In many ways, the Sundance Turbo was so close to being a competitive entry. Lingering doubts about quality and brand reputation probably hurt the car more than it deserved. Too bad Chrysler couldn’t have copied Nissan’s refinement (or vice versa, the Stanza could have surely used some of the Sundance Turbo’s brio). Then you really would have had a world class small car for the late 1980s.
I mentioned the other day that I appreciated what Chrysler was doing in 1987, and it was fairly successful for them, but K fatigue had set in with me without even owning one. This car ended up being a miniaturized Plymouth Acclaim / Dodge Spirit body. Even Mopar’s K styling was in a rut, you either had the early razor edged boxes, or a body that had been smoothed out after the car suffered a severe roll over, or something like that. In hindsight, the “H” body LeBaron GTS / Dodge Lancer was among my favorite K based sedans at the time, and they still are. The Sundance’s melted edge styling is too predictive of the truly awful first generation Ford Tempo styling.
The Cloud cars and the LHs, with Chrysler built V-6 engines, came in the nick of time – and I actually bought an LH.
I did buy one of these new in 1987. I drove it for 11 years and more than 140,000 miles. The only non-maintenance repair in the entire time I owned it was the typical 2.2 head gasket replacement around 110,000 miles.
It was fast, reliable, and great on gas. Car and Driver never has seemed to get good gas mileage with a turbo engine, but with the 5 speed manual and a mix of highway and city driving, I averaged 29 mpg driving it to work. The strange thing, though, is that faster highway trips always netted significantly worse mileage. A typical highway tankful at 75 MPH would only net 25 MPG.
The other thing about this car was the great seats. The seats in the 1987 Sundance were the same ones found in that year’s Shadow ES and were much more comfortable than the seats in the later, decontented models.
It doesn’t surprise me that your MPG fell off at high speeds; drag increases with the square of velocity, though there are other less-tangible factors like a “sweet spot” with engine tune & final drive ratio. And I wonder if boost played a role in your case.
This was why the widely unpopular Nat’l Maximum Speed Law was signed by Nixon in ’74, to save fuel during the Oil Crisis caused by his Operation Nickel Grass. It didn’t save as much as promised, either because of excessive optimism or defiance of the law.
BTW if you want to win trivia games about Presidential acts, you may come out ahead by reflexively answering “Nixon” to all questions.☺
The front seats were ok but the back seats were strictly for kids or midgets. It wasn’t until 1991 that Chrysler “borrowed” the back seats from the Spirit/Acclaim and managed to wedge them in back there, which was a vast improvement.
I agree on the Counterpoints, I usually read those first.
Nissans by this time were really blending into the background for me. As a budding Hondaphile, I found Toyotas a little dull, which meant that Nissan had become dull squared.
I really liked the P body when it came out, but never drove one. I thought the cars were modern and attractive and figured that they would be successful. Their downfall was what I found distasteful in all Mopars of these years – they did not feel substantial or well built. The cheap interior pieces conspired to undo the whole car in my mind. These really made me miss the good parts of Mopar from 10 years earlier.
It’s easy to see how Nissan ended up in that boat in the ’80s, and it wasn’t simply a lack of inspiration. Honda was bigger in the States, but that wasn’t true at home, where Nissan was the perennial #2 player in a lot of very conservative classes. Honda could afford to push the envelope because they were the upstarts, trying to distinguish themselves to cut a chunk out of pricier segments where they hadn’t previously had much if any presence.
Nissan was caught in a bind where they had all the smaller players (Mitsubishi, Honda, Mazda) nipping at their flanks, but where they were trying to hold onto their existing market share and not alienate their loyal customers. It was analogous to GM’s hesitant response to the aero styling trend, where they had to realize there was a shift taking place, but were also very worried that existing buyers weren’t going to go for that stuff except for small or sporty cars. Nissan also wasn’t as able as Toyota to churn out a whole raft of product variations.
Obviously, hindsight indicates that Nissan’s caution didn’t serve them, but there wasn’t an easy
I never realized those Sundances were hatches. Nicely done.
The reviewers are always quick to point out the lack of refinement. However they are not so quick to point out that in their base forms the Stanza cost almost 50% more than the Sundance. Even between these two the Sundance is almost $1500 cheaper and offers much better performance. I don’t think that kind of value is always the terrible thing so many reviewers make it out to be.
Additionally, Phil, the Sundance was markedly quieter than the Stanza. Makes up for any “lack of refinement” elsewhere were I looking at cars in 1987.
The Stanza is seven inches longer than the Sundance (with a wheelbase that is three inches longer). At the time, it seemed that the Sundance and Shadow were aimed at the Sentra, as opposed to the Stanza.
Perhaps, but the interior dimensions are very similar between the Sundance and Stanza, and the Sundance has a larger trunk.
I agree. I always thought the P-cars were supposed to be entry level like the Sentra, and certainly not upmarket. On the other end of things, one of the Counterpoints suggests the Chevy Celebrity was a comparable for the Stanza. Seriously? There must have been 12 inches and 700 lbs. separating those two cars.
I rented a lot of different cars during my work travel for two + decades.
The pale yellow Plymouth Sundance from Avis at ATL, driven by me for just one day and maybe 40 or so miles, sticks in my memory as the second most unpleasant rental car I ever had – behind in ranking only to the the white Chevette that Avis stuck me with at Little Rock several years prior. Number three on the bad list was a lime green Kia Rio from Hertz that I drove across the desert from Las Vegas to Ontario, CA.
The Cragar ad for rear window louvers is even more priceless than review itself. I have memories of those things from very early childhood – seems like they were affixed to every vaguely sporty-looking coupe from the late-80s/early-90s for a while. I guess they went of style really quickly as I haven’t seen that bizzare accessory on the street since about 1999.
Those louvers were kind of a Mustang fastback thing since the late 60’s or early 70’s. I think they came with the Boss or Mach 1 perhaps. You can still buy them today. I had them on my fox-body Mustangs and they were actually quite practical, keeping the sun out while maintaining the view out the back. They didn’t look near as good on those Camaros, but they were probably even more practical on that huge window.
I also remember those double wipers on the last page being popular into the early 90’s in a multitude of colors including chrome. I don’t think anybody who bought a pair ever bought a second pair.
*cough* Lamborghini Miura *cough*
That’s the flashpoint for the fastback louver fad. I quite liked louvers myself, but modern rounded jellybean designs don’t wear louvers well due to the squared off edges. There were a few adaptations made for fouth gen Camaros, SN95 Mustangs and MN12 Thunderbirds made out of molded textured plastic(the stuff that turns whitish grey in a few years) and rounded out to look modernized and they all looked awful. I think that marked the end of popularity
Lamborghini may have originated it, but Mustang owned it. 🙂
That ad stood out to me too! But window louvers are still out there…they never haven’t been as common as at the time of this ad, but at any time they’ve always been available for mustangs, F bodies and now the Challenger.
That Ronal wheel ad grabbed my eye too. On a small sporty turbocharged rocket (like ’80’s Mopars) those R-10’s look great. Ill take ANY of those designs with their high tech look, machined finishes and in-proportion diameter in favor of the chromed out blingy clown shoes with nonexistent sidewalls that passes for a tire/wheel package today.
Isn’t Ronal the one that makes the teddy bear wheels? I’ve wondered if they’re also responsible for the stylized metal flower wheels I see occasionally (mostly on New Beetles), although I’ve never been inspired enough to find out.
+1 Louvers on a Camaro IROC-Z… That advertisement couldn’t have been more 80’s if it had been acid-washed. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. There were definitely good louvers and bad louvers, and the ones in that ad look great. Makes me want to bust out my Generra Hypercolor t-shirt and Bugle Boy trousers (tight-rolled at the bottom, of course).
“Makes me want to bust out my Generra Hypercolor t-shirt and Bugle Boy trousers (tight-rolled at the bottom, of course).”
HA! Never all at once, but I was guilty of all 3 of those fads at one point or another.
“Makes me want to bust out my Generra Hypercolor t-shirt and Bugle Boy trousers (tight-rolled at the bottom, of course).”
I was more of a Girbaud jeans guy…wish I still had the ones I donated back around 2000, along with the matching jeans jacket. I could probably sell them on eBay and have enough to pay the sales tax, title and license on my next car or truck!
Funny how as the population got bigger, the style of jeans you see featured in stores got less baggy.
Don’t be so sure! As someone who works with high end retail on Michigan Avenue, it’s certainly catered to the youth generation (as in it hasn’t caught up with them yet, as a whole). That said, the sizes and styles carried over the past few years have gradually become, shall I say, roomier. Most people only notice the slimmest of fits these days because it isn’t the norm anymore.
There is a reason why Kimonos are everywhere for women these days, and why you can find, once again, relaxed fit jeans for men outside of department stores…
Over the last 70 years or so, tailored versus relaxed fit seems to swing back and forth in cycles, as does pleated versus flat front trousers.
I’m just glad I can still wear skinny fit Lucky Jeans at my age, and not look like a fool. However, it does require daily exercise and sensible eating, something most of my peers are unwilling or unable to do.
The bad louvers were the ones that used end caps to fill the second gen F body wraparound windows, while the main louvers were down the center. I really really hated these
Yeah, those three-piece style louvers were a sleazy, cheap-ass way of using the same louvers of the early, 2nd-generation GM ponycars for the later, wraparound rear window cars by simply adding side extensions, rather than coming up with a completely new, cohesive, one-piece design. Might have saved on inventory and production cost, but looked like hell.
Regardless, never much cared for the louvers, although they were somewhat practical in keeping the sun out of the interior. The biggest issue was that it always seemed that if someone had the louvers, they just had to have the absolutely useless, tacky, pedestal-style rear wing spoiler, too. The cars I remember most vividly getting both, besides Mustangs, were the B-body Mopar musclecars.
What? I’ve never seen a B-body with rear louvers?
Correction… It hit me nearly as soon as I posted this. You mean the 1971+ cars… Yeah, I wasn’t fond of that look, either.
Chrysler’s ’71-’72 intermediate coupes, as well as the ’70-’71 Ford Torino, seemed to be be aping the earlier ’68-’69 GM intermediates. What’s fascinating is that the design of these rear windows had a devastating effect on NASCAR aerodynamics. GM was never a big NASCAR contender at the time, so they didn’t care. But Chrysler and Ford seemed to be throwing in the towel on the whole aero thing with their car’s rear window treatments. They could have easily tacked-on aero nosecones (Ford famously even came up with a couple of running 1970 ‘King Cobra’ NASCAR Torino prototypes) but it would have been more difficult to sort out the badly non-aerodynamic rear windows.
Further, something else worth noting is that while both Chrysler and Ford offered rear window louvers for their cars, now that the rear windows allowed them, the GM products did not, even up through 1972 when wild stripes and big-ass rear spoilers were de rigeuer with everybody.
Personally, I’d like to see a CC examination of the whole early seventies’ intermediate rear window styling thing. I’d do it myself by my writing skills aren’t nearly as good as some of the other B&B contributors.
Yeah, the inability to get the “good” louvers kept my 1978 Camaro “louver free”.
Funny to see them coming back now on the Camaro / Challenger / Mustang triplets.
Louvres were very popular for all kinds of cars in Australia back then, sedans included, and were often available as factory options for locally-built cars. Our ’89 Mitsubishi Magna was ordered with a factory set. To young folks they looked sporty, but older folks appreciated them for keeping the sun off the rear seat passengers. When I got my old Cortina I bought them for the looks, and appreciated the shade effect years later when the kids came along.
I had an ’85 Honda Accord hatchback with those — not installed by me — and I shudder a bit whenever I think of them, which is what they did: squeak, rattle, and shimmy over bumpy pavement, as well as rendering the rear wiper basically useless. It seemed like the louvers’ manufacturer had measured the height of the wiper blade on the glass to allow clearance, but neglected to consider that (a) wipers don’t move in a completely flat arc even over mostly flat glass and (b) the louvers would inevitably sag a little in the middle, bringing them into contact with the top of the moving wiper arm. Not a fan.
That Stanza may be a rather uninspired design, but material quality and reliability in Nissans of that period were as good as they were ever going to get, which is to say excellent.
The Shadow/Sundance were everywhere when they came out, then disappeared seemingly all at once by 1997 or so. The tone of that review was overall very positive, and the earlier well-equipped versions of these cars really did present themselves very well. Unfortunately the vast majority of the ones actually seen on the road were the decontented examples, which I can remember dealers hawking by the thousands for $7999 in the late ’80’s/early 90’s. I knew a lot of people who bought them, and overall they seemed to serve their purposes well.
Dodge Dart is the Plymouth Sundance/Dodge Shadow of our age, and Chrysler 200 is the Plymouth Acclaim/Chrysler LeBaron sedan.
Well said and I agree with you 100%. Don’t forget that the Plymouth Horizon/Dodge Omni, Chrysler/Dodge/Plymouth Neon and Dodge Caliber were also part of the Dodge Dart/Chrysler 200 ancestry in their Subcompact/Compact Family Tree as well. Other than being related in their Family Tree niche’, these cars were of course made from different and unrelated platforms except the Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon (including the O24, TC-3, Charger and Turismo) and the Dodge Shadow/Plymouth Sundance were both based from identical chassis though. In addition, the 1G and 2G Neons were in fact using the same chassis carryover from the 1G even though the Neon was redesigned in 2001.
Meanwhile, here are their Two Door counterparts.
Owned the 2 dr shadow version. 5 spd. Non Turbo. Drove it for 9 yrs.No significant problems. Sold it to a friend of our son and he drove it for several more years. Great second car.
I learned something today…never knew the Sundance had a turbo variant. I remember seeing the Shadow so equipped, and somewhere in the early 90’s the turbocharged models were discontinued, and the performance package P bodies (Duster and Shadow ES) were downgraded to that oil spewing, lower performing Shitsubishi 3.0 lump.
I agree with the comments about the Sundance name being kinda ‘fruity’….it set the tone that it was a girls car. Downplaying any performance upgrades and the styling being so mild vs the Shadow seems to drive that point home. All that said, I would love to find a clean P body with manual trans and any turbo engine. The holy grail of these would be the Shelby CSX. It had an experimental variable vane turbo (commonplace now) and intercooling. Fast and sharp little cars.
Sadly most of these were sold as basic, if well equipped everyday transportation. My sister had a ’89 5 door Shadow (2.2/auto) as her first car. It was reliable and well made but a total dog with that power train…but no worse off than any contemporary 4 banger crippled by a slushbox.
A friend had an ’89 Shadow in the late ’90s. It was ok, which pretty much summed up these cars. Ok, but nothing special. I recall it had an engine vibration from the 2.2 that transmitted thru the steering wheel like all Ks, and the interior was very plasticky. The front buckets were, however, pretty comfy as mentioned by others.
I vaguely remember Lee Iacocca saying that an all new subcompact replacement for the Omni was cancelled due to cost, and result was the K to P car instead.
And Stanza was overshadowed by the Big 2, Camry/Accord, that it got a rename to Altima. Rarely done in Japan Inc. Although, same car got upsized when the Big2 did same thing.
I remember driving a rental ’87 Stanza when I was on assignment for 2 weeks in the Seattle area…I had the weekend off, so I decided to drive to Mt Ranier…on the way back, I decided to take what looked like a more direct road home, but turned out to be a logging road, what started out as a “normal” road deteriorated from there…so I ended up spending a lot more time driving (even if the mileage was undoubtedly less than if I had gone back the same way I came)….the problem after a point was that there was no place to turn around and at some point I was “committed”…but the Stanza was a trooper. Though it was FWD, I think it was a decendant of the ’74 710 I drove while in college.
I liked the idea of the Sundance, but in ’87 I ended up buying a (slightly) used ’86 VW GTI with less than 9000 miles on it. Guess I kind of went the other way, when lots of people were “discovering” Japanese cars, I went to European ones, having traded my ’74 710 for a ’78 Scirocco, then onto the GTI. I’m still only on my 3rd VW
(in 35 years)..but probably would be satisfied with a Stanza (or a Sundance)…I was particularly intrigued by a particular Sundance body style (the hatchback for people who don’t want to be seen driving a hatchbacks)…but I guess I should be the first person to say that I like hatchbacks, styling be damned (probably a big reason I drive European car…more consistent offering of hatchback body style than with the Japanese cars).
Take the badges off the Stanza, and you have a perfect “generic car” for Geico commercials. At least the contemporary Sentra had a passing resemblance to an E30 3-Series.
Count me in as another one who never knew the Sundance, and not just the Shadow, had a turbo version. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.
Cars like the Camry and Stanza were primarily aimed at one key buyer: the freeway warrior, of which there were more of them in SoCal than anywhere else. These folks who were spending 60-90 minutes eacjh way already back in the 80s were quick to realize that these cars had exactly what they wanted: reliability and comfort, along with good economy. These folks were not the kind that were looking for canyon carvers or cars with turbos.
My Executive Assistant bought one of the Stanzas new in 1988 or so, and she had a long Bay Area commute. It was totally anonymous looking, but it did exactly what she wanted it to. She had it for quite a few years and it never let her down.
The Sundance/Shadow might have been fun in the turbo version, but I can assure you California buyers weren’t buying them. There were other alternatives if one wanted some fun along with dead-reliability and solid materials .
FWIW, there’s still a few Sentras of this generation in front line service here, but good luck finding a P-car; it’s been quite a while since I saw and shot my last one.
Two cars as different as apples and oranges; one built for the long haul, the other not so much so.
And yes, the back seat in the P Cars was undersized. Something had to give when the shortened the LeBaron to create it.
“and the new-for-1987 Toyota Camry was sleek and wind-toned”
I don’t see too much difference in styling of the 87 Camry.
A very nice, unpretentious, three-box sedan, reminiscent of a late sixties’ Valiant. Sure wish Toyota would go back to that style.
My first car was a 1988 Stanza, which I got in 1998 with 160,000 miles already on the clock. I took it to just over 200,000 when I sold it in 2005 to someone looking for a cheap winter beater.
As far as I can tell, the ’88 was the same as the ’87 except that the ’88 was a bit rarer due to the Nissan’s extended ’87 model year. The ’89’s got a redesigned taillight before this generation was replaced in 1990.
Mine was a dark blue GXE sedan with a dark blue interior and as far as I can tell had every option except the automatic. Though reading the review I never realized the base model came so well equipped. I always assumed things like the cruise control and tilt steering were options. One oddity was the switch to operate the power sunroof was in French for some reason, whereas the rest of the switchgear was in English. Never did figure that one out.
I found the car quite comfortable and it drove well. However, as it was basically a re-skinned Maxima with a 97 HP motor it was heavy for its class and therefore a bit underpowered. I have to imagine the automatic was even more sluggish. I suppose that was for the best as it kept me out of trouble.
The car was reliable and really didn’t give me any major trouble during my ownership. Mechanically the car seemed quite durable – a teenage driver and I used the car to teach several of my friends (and siblings) how to drive a stick and it didn’t really seem to phase it.
It did have a few naggling old car maladies. When I got the car someone had already replaced the power antenna with standard whip one. The air conditioner died shortly after I bought it. I repaired it once, but when it went out a second time I never bothered with it again. The cable release for the trunk and gas door rusted through, and my solution was to simply glue a magnet in place to hold the gas door shut (worked just fine), and just used the key to open the trunk.
The main issue with the car and the reason I sold it, being in the salt belt, was rust. Granted, that is pretty much expected from Japanese cars of this vintage. At 10 years, it already had significant rust, and through 7 more Minnesota winters it had only spread. By the time I sold it, a couple of suspension parts had already fallen off, the flaps behind the wheels had fallen off, and the flaring/arch (not sure of the exact term for it) above the real wheels was basically gone. However, the powertrain was working just fine, and the car still ran and drove well, and the interior was still in decent condition.
These cars never really seemed to be that common compared to its main competition the Camry or the Accord, or even the mostly unrelated Stanza Wagon (aka Nissan Prairie). The 5-door seems to be really rare as I can only recall ever seeing one in the metal. It’s been a couple of years now since I’ve seen one of these Stanza’s on the road. On the other hand just yesterday I saw a similar vintage Camry and there’s a couple of late 80’s Accords still driving around here too.
It may have been kind of a generic car that just blended in, but I still miss it. I managed to dig up a picture of the old Stanza, chilling in the long-term (dirt) parking lot at college.
Great story. I’m originally from MN, and miss the days where you could easily tell when the car was registered from the first series of letters on the plate. You said yours was 1998? My GKN plate was registered in May 2001, and my LNR plate in September 2003. TDK came in April 2006.
Thanks. The car was a Minnesota car before I got it, and as you probably know the plates stay with the car when it changes hands. I’m stretching my memory trying to remember the plate history on the car, as I certainly had to change plates on it once during my ownership (in MN you get new plates every 7 years). I think I had to buy new the plates the first time I had to renew (Dec 1998), and then kept those plates for the remainder of the time I had the car.
My second car came with GYE. I had to replace the plates in Jun 2008 so the GYE plates were from June 2001. As a replacement, I managed to get one of the last of the old-style plates with the embossed letters, SEJ. ‘S’ was actually the last of that series. Normally they went alphabetical, but they skipped over ‘S’ because it caused problems with some automated system. After they got through ‘Y’ they had fixed the problem so they went back and issued ‘S’ plates. ‘Z’ was never issued. When I finally took those plates off the car in June 2015 it was one of the last cars on the road with the old-style with the embossed letters.
I liked these when they came out, but I, too, felt they were cheap in many areas, and how quickly they aged proved it.
Still, I liked the general style, but I’m happy we never bought one.
Later, the P-bodies, just like the Omnizons had the “America” tag applied to them, which meant bargain-basement stripper before they were discontinued!
Nissan? Meh…
I had a friend who had the Dodge version (Shadow) with the turbo motor and five speed; it was a hoot to drive. I liked everything about it, including the torque steer. Whenever she came to town, I took the Shadow out on some twisties near my old house, we had a blast with that car. It inspired me to buy my Dodge Lancer ES turbo, which I loved.
The only Stanza of this generation I ever spent time in was a car on our used car lot when I lived in Georgia. It was a maroon colored car with a maroon velour interior and damned hot in the Georgia sun. Many folks were interested in that car, but no one bought it, IIRC it went back to auction because we couldn’t move it.
My 89 Sundance coupe had a surprisingly comfortable ride and decent steering. But the interior was shit – The dash and doors were padded, but cheap, low-rent plastic dominated the IP parts, the console and the shifter. And after owning it for four years, it started to literally fall apart.
You say “cheesy”; Don Sherman said “fruity”. In 1987 nobody thought twice of using a euphemism for gay as a pejorative—haw haw haw, who’s gonna object? A buncha fruits? Haw haw haw.
Chrysler
wrangwrongwrung a lot of money out of the P-cars starting with the ’89 facelift. A lot of components got a great deal cheaper and chintzier. A lot of people bought them anyhow.I loved the “hidden hatchback” design of Chrylser’s P-body. In 1989, I bought my first new car: the 1989 Plymouth Sundance “Highline” (that was a Canadian trim model, which was not actually labelled on the vehicle). I chose the Sundance over it’s Dodge Shadow twin, because I preferred the chrome grill and window moldings of the Sundance. I also had a chrome trunk rack (dealer installed), and white wall tires. I had the “large” 2.5 litre 4 cyl. engine, with 3 speed auto. It was metallic aqua-blue, with a pop-up sunroof installed. It was a cool ride, and lasted me well for over 9 years! Here’s a similar pic. (mine was not 2-tone).
The Nissan and that mouse milk, overhyped Power Gloss car polish deserved to share a page in the magazine.
I would like to share a photo. of that 1989 Sundance “Highline” of mine, with interior image. This pic. was found on the ‘Net years later in a used car lot, far up in northern Ontario. I now drive more fancy and sophisticated cars and SUV’s, and still miss my Sundance a lot.
I would like to add here an update of a pair of photos to my 1989 Plymouth Sundance. I believe this is my actual car – years late – in a used car lot, in northern Ontario. Everything is identical! This also shows the interior.