• the 3700 miles 1982 Chrysler Le Barron Might not be your dream car, or, if your dream comes from the Malaise Era Detroit, it might be.
• This Chrysler is powered by a 92-horsepower 2.6-liter inline-four and features a tape player, giving you a top-to-bottom ride just like before.
• LeBaron has an unreserved auction on Bring a Trailer, which ends Saturday, April 2nd.
one of many glory bring a trailer (who likes car and driver, part of Hearst Motors), and one of the reasons I check his list every day is for his Herodotus time capsule vehicle demo. To me, the most striking of these cars are the ones that evoke the domestic car stigma committed to the public during my childhood Detroit malaise. Often, these fine and sordid artifacts are set in the Midwest, where endless winters, rain-soaked bridge seasons and crumbling salted infrastructure have spawned a cryogenic laboratory to preserve the bizarre material culture of the Big Three.
the 3700 miles 1982 Chrysler LeBaron Convertible is a perfect example. Of course, it’s clad in period metallic mahogany, highlighted with a contrasting thin orange safety orange stripe. But what’s really fascinating is the caramel and mocha-colored ribbed leather and leather interior, especially since it’s trying to hide (see what we’ve done there?) the front-wheel-drive K-car platform commoner, but with American Hermès Complementing the luxury of each other, the Mark Cross company, like its French rival, was founded to aid the horse and carriage trade.
Archives: Lee Iacocca’s Private Baron
Remember K-Car and its derivatives
But it’s not just nostalgia that piqued my interest in this car, or one of the archival prototypes. is archaeology. ’82 LeBaron was responsible for reintroducing the factory convertible to the U.S. market, a shape that was punitively dropped as domestic manufacturers panicked and (as usual) resisted increasingly stringent auto regulations. Safety. It had a 92 hp/131 lb ft 2.6-liter transversely mounted Hemi I-4 engine from Mitsubishi. It was a four-cylinder mid-displacement behemoth, and used dual counter-rotating balance shafts for smooth running—a technology that was later licensed to Porsche for its big 2.5 and 3.0 four-cylinder engines in the 1980s.
White top close up. Air conditioner blowing cold. Cassette players will blast any old mixtapes you can dig up. Is this car historic or just hysterical?Either way, it’s fascinating, and bid For just $2,500, but with almost a week to go — an inexpensive way to top-to-bottom driving, historic preservation, and Radwood’s darling status.