I was never as enamored of Iacocca as many were and still think he was the ultimate slick talking car salesman.
From what I have read there were a large number of banks pushing that government loan. Hundreds of banks and there were warning signs of Chrysler problems even before Iacocca took over.
Part of the payback was millions of shares of Chrysler stock and not long after Iacocca started wanting all of that stock back for little or nothing.
Several car dealers I talked to back in the day were very, very skeptical about taking in Iacocca built Chryslers and not because of build quality. It was because of horrendous depreciation. No matter how good the deal seemed they were afraid of taking a financial bath on those cars.
And he did build a number of crummy tin cans. Omni, Horizon, Reliant, K-Car, Spirit, the Mitsubishi âChallengerâ and so on. The first 2 years the Omni and Horizon had VW Rabbit engines in them; replaced then by Mitsubishi engines.
At some point, they even resorted to Peugeot engines, IIRC.
And, let us not forget about the crapalacious Chrysler TC by Maserati.
A lot of dealers lost money BIG TIME when they had to sell those things far under their own cost, just to get them off the lot after a year or so of no customer interest.
Not long after the car was released Chrysler began offering incentives to dealers, the dealer I worked at ordered a couple dozen more TCs. There were no left over cars at the end of the year.
Someone volunteered me as the TC technician, the buyers were somewhat eccentric and very particular.
I did enjoy the smell of the Italian leather and driving the ones with the 200 hp 16 valve turbo engine was a rare experience. 200 hp was a lot in 1990 after suffering through the 1980âs with those low hp engines.
While Iacoccaâs efforts may seem to be for naught, there are hundreds of thousands of manufacturing and dealer network employment positions today that would not be if he had given up.
I stand corrected on the Mitsubishi engine part of it. Itâs something I read in the distant past which may have been incorrect. My bad and I take your word on it without hesitation.
Many years ago I actually owned a 79 Omni, red on red and clean as a pin. Itâs not something I bought or would ever buy. It just happened to come to me by accident. A local car dealer had heard about me and gave me a call about a couple of problem cars he had and which a shop across town had quoted many hundreds of dollars to repair for fuel injection problems. I told him iâd be glad to look at them. An Audi had a cracked distributor cap and the BMW just needed a mixture adjustment on the CIS injection. That was it. He then sent me the Omni which had been into that other shop twice with no positive results. Someone had misadjusted the valve lash badly and boogered up some valve lifters. So I ordered parts and a week later later got a call that the dealer had suffered a heart attack and died.
That left the bank carrying the floor plan wanting the car back from me for free after I was halfway back through assembly. I told them they had 3 choices. Pay me to fix it completely, pay for the partial work and parts I had purchased, or go eff off. I actually went into the bank and said that to the bank president and loan officer behind all of this mess. They refused all 3 options and actually tried to send a repo guy to break in to the shop and steal it back. He got caught by a business man next door and sent packing. Then I moved the car into another part of the shop, chained it to the wall, and piled cars in behind it to make sure the car stayed mine until the bill was paid or I got a title for it.
I filed a mechanicâs lien after finishing the car up , got a title, and drove it for a while. Just like the VW Rabbits, kind of woefully underpowered with an automatic transmission. If it had not been so slick I would have just sold it immediately and moved on. For a car that only cost me a few hundred in parts it was a whale of a deal to come across.
Befoe you defame the Omnis , Horizons, Reliants, Caravelle, Dodge 400s and 600s, in my family we owned most of them. Donât compare them against todays cars. Compare them to the competition.
Chevette, Citation and all there GM clones, Pinto , Escort and Fairnont and their cousins.
Going back I would not have changed my choices for low cost transportation.
In the Omni and Horizon, Vw refused to sell them any more engines because the Omnis and Horizons were selling too well. When I bought my 81 Horizon, the 2.2 Chrysler built and designed engine was a no cost engine engine vs the one from the VW Rabbit. I chose the 2.2. We had one of the 1.6 Peugeot engines in a standard shift Omni, it got fantastic gas mileage.
Never had an engine problem with any of ours except an 87 Caravelle 2.2 that turned out to be carb. icing because the heat box on the exhaust manifold that supplied heat to the carb had rusted off.
I donât know, The VW engine was a 1.8 and the only one I drove was a stick, my 2.2 s were a quieter more torquey engine. I had a 2.2 Caravalle was a much larger car and still had adequate performance. I donât know if it would do 100 like the Horizons would but it handled well in the 90s.
Fast acceleration is fun, but not a requirement for me in a car. As an over the doad trucker I know that making good time on a trip depends more on how little you slow up rather than how high a speed you obtain. With our interstate system , where can you use more than 85 mph and keep a license? It was different in the two lane days when getting around people in a short space was vital.
yes, the Dodge equivalent was the 600. It was one of the stablest car i have ever driven in ice snow and rain. A lot of power is not your friend in bad weather.
Yes the 2.5 was reliable but it had more internal friction because of the balance shafts so it did not feel any faster than the 2.2 and the gas mileage was noticeably worse.
I knew someone who had one of the little TC3 coupes with the turbo 2.2 engines. Talk about a sleeper. I almost said Q ship but I figure a lot of people would not know what a Q ship was.
The Omni I had was faster than the Rabbits for sure. Especially with automatic transmissions involved. My gut feeling is because the Omni was carbureted and the Rabbits started using CIS injection in 1977.
When the GTI came out that was a whole new ball game. That car was snappy.
In the late 70s and 80s I worked for VW and part of the PDI was a test drive so I drove a ton of those things. A co-worker bought a brand new Rabbit with an automatic and it was the biggest mistake of his life. Four of us would pile in for lunch (and this was a large college town) and it aggravated him to no end to have college kids on bikes outrunning us from red lights. He would shove it into LOW and hammer it to no avail; still getting outrun.
Even worse was the diesels. The running joke was 0 to 30 MPH should be measured with a sundial; not a speedometer. A PDI test drive would lead to shoving the throttle through the floor and looking out the window at the roadside to make sure you were actually moving because the speedo needle sure wasnât. VW came out with a bulletin about changing the injection pump timing but it didnât make much difference. A slightly faster sundial. Maybe.
16.8 Second 0-60 time for the 1978 Rabbit Diesel according to C&D, you did get great mileage but really you were pushing your luck to go more than 60-65. It was a rock solid winter car though. Early one Sunday morning we were at a stoplight on the way to church when a '57 Chevy street rod pulled up next to us. Like we had a prayer anyways but it was one of those slightly comical encounters.
The diesels would regularly tick off 60 MPG and some would complain over only getting 55. Iâm surprised at the 16.8 second time though. One could barely see the speedo needle even move with the pedal to the floor.
An old 40 Horse VW air cooled Beetle would outrun them. I know. I ran one once for the heck of it and the diesel did not have a chance against my 65 Bug.
The 0-60 was the time recorded by Car & Driver at the time with the manual transmission, Might have depended on if you followed the marked shift points on the speedometer.