I see. Well, the 1970-72 Monte Carlos are nice but the 1973-75 models are just nasty. Little wonder a brand new one was deliberately wrecked in Street People. The 1976-77 models were a slight improvement and seems GM decided to wash most of the mud off the name for 1978.

The colonnade-body GMs are at best rather "blah" to me. I'm not ragging on GM though, I'll admit that Ford and Chrysler also made plenty of oversized, underpowered and unattractive cars in the 70s. I am rather puzzled though as to why Khan - or Mr. Roarke - or Ricardo Montalban if one wants to be formal, was willing to plug cars for a company that was doing so badly before Lee Iacocca stepped in.

That little red K-Wagon is really nice looking ! That is the same price the good looking
ones sell for here. And it's got the cloth seats ! Very cool !

I would believe that gas mileage. My 88 Dakota 3.9 v6 long bed 2WD can get 26
highway @ 55-60 It has a OD Automatic.

My parents '79 Colony Park (LTD) wagon with 302 and vacuum run VV 2700 Carb
engine and 3 speed also got 26 pretty solid on the highway 55-60.

MPG pretty much depends on how you treat the car. Gunna be the first from
one red light to the next, well then yer gunna get single diget mpg.

That is a nice wagon, same thoughts I had with the wagon, good for tv's
Hope you get it, I would love to see more pictures !


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Hehehe lol! Mopar or no car.

Eh, the big American cars in the 70s were strangled with emissions junk that they really didn't have the tech to compensate for. Ironically, those emissions standards that were trying to help the air quality basically necessitated burning WAY more gas, which I'd imagine would pollute even more. That's also where the notion that foreign cars are better on gas comes from. Because the only foreign cars you could buy at the time were miniscule Civics and Beetles, when all the Americans were land yachts.

You talk about Chrysler doing badly, look what happened to GM a few years back. Same thing! Government bailout! Lee Iacocca had to pay back the loan way early, as he didn't like owing THEM money.
I bought a 1982 Dodge Ramcharger, even though the company future didn't look that bright. I drove it for 13 years. The only real expense was a timing chain at 91K miles. A 318, the best small-block engine in the business.

Well, my first car was a '73 Mustang, AKA Rustang. And yes it was a kinda not that
great a car compared to later models..... And the thing I hated most was that if you
didn't see it, they didn't paint it. And the frame rails seemed to rust from the inside
out Also galvanized outside, but rusted inside....

I also hated the 9mpg it got, 12hwy. I put a VV carb on it and got mpg up to 17, and
21 hwy. I was impressed, and again 55-60 mph, not racing it. So the engines as built
were capable of some economy. It was really something, the tail pipe ash went
from black, to light grey almost white ash with the VV well tuned. Spark plugs
never got dirty...... really freaky..... 351C engine, FMX Auto Trans.

I really can't complain about the service I got out of it for the 140K miles it lasted,
and I had fun with it too....

I see at car shows that the old cars are capable of running really well, and good fit
and finish when restored. They were what they were.

If I had to pay $20K or more for a car, I have thought about this a lot, I think I would
put it into a '73 mustang, or a 78 TA. I see reasonable looking ones on ebay all the time.
I read about how people hate the functionality of new cars, and I hate the idea of all
those electronic dashes, knobless radios.

It's the overall experience. And the "Start" button really bugs me.....


Lee Iacoca was a good guy, a car guy, and did a lot to get the company back on track.
I remember reading that the K-cars were the lengh they were so one more row would
fit on the train cars that carried them to market. Kinda like the gimmick they had for
the Chevy Vega, they packed them on standing on their nose.

Growing up my parents had a 70 Coronet 225 six station wagon. Dad had a 74 Dart
with a 318 I took my driving test on. They were cool and very tough cars. The Coronet
was our pickup truck. And as kids we rode in the cargo area and lived !


.

I like the start button concept on the new cars. The only thing is, I keep forgetting to take the keys out of my pocket when driving my Dakota pickup or my Jeep Wrangler.
My Prius has the start button and the engine first starts about 10 seconds after it's put in drive or reverse.

I wasn't ragging on Chrysler either. In fact I find it hard to understand why they were doing so badly in the 70s considering their offerings during the smog era were the best of the big three in my opinion. That isn't saying much, but still. Even their least visually appealing models from back then aren't that bad. Putting the Charger name on a full-size seemed kind of weird though.

Too bad Chrysler was unable to make 2-door and wagon versions of the R-platform cars, which might have done better had they been introduced a few years later. The 1979 New Yorker Fifth Avenue at least with a 360 and dual exhaust came without cats up here which must have been some help at least.

I'm aware of GM's problems from a few years back but I don't hear as much about that. Besides, I was speaking of smog-era vehicles, not those whose biggest advantage is that when they're used up their owners can step on them and return them for a refund.

Chryslers problem at the time was poor planning! The wrong product at the wrong time. Lee Iacocca stated that in his book.
When the other US manufactures were started building small cars to compete with the imports, they were still building the old product line.

Many of Chrysler's problems when Iacocca came on the scene were mismanagement and not necessarily the products. Over-dependence on rentals, excessive production capacity, over-dependence on the RV industry, as someone else said "poor planning". I've had 70's Chrysler products that were pretty good compared to some of the garbage coming out of Detroit back then.

That's not to say they didn't have their fair share of lemons (e.g. Volare/Aspen). I know people who bought those and that didn't outrun their payment books before (literally) falling apart.

My Dad was a dedicated Chrysler guy for as long as I can remember and in 1978 he bought a brand new Plymouth Volare wagon. What a huge POS that car was, I have never seen anything that bad. It was the last Chrysler product he ever owned.

Gregb

I'm guessing that the main problem that plagued the Aspen and Volare was poor fit and finish, making it very much "hit or miss" on getting a good one. Seems they have a decent following today. I just remembered one fellow I knew who had one and said the back floor would get so wet that toadstools were growing out of the carpet.

I wonder how many owners of Chev Vegas didn't finish paying for their car before an engine failure.
You could imagine those poor souls were making two payments a month, one for the car loan and one for the engine replacement.
GM really never had a decent warranty on their cars. They were always afraid to guarantee their products for more than 2 yrs, 20k miles. If they included a longer warranty on their products, they would've had money problems a lot earlier. :scratch2:

That's just what the warranty was back then, 1 year/12k miles. I think Chrysler was the first to provide a long powertrain warranty in the 80's, think at first it was 5/50

K cars have outlasted most of their domestic contemporaries at this point. I still see a few Reliants and such on the road here in Phoenix, but it's been years since I have seen a Topaz or Citation. I would recommend avoiding the turbos, unless they have some sort of service history. That being said, I would also recommend that you go for an M body and buy a Diplomat. In an accident, an M body will demolish just about anything currently on the road.

I couldn't agree more, and see more K-cars on the road then any other 80's cars...however, I took this pic a few weeks ago in Phoenix. Ford fans, here you go!

https://i.imgur.com/kjmnDlV.jpg