My first car was a 1991 Dodge Spirit, aka a refresh of the Dodge Aries. Had the 'piss poor' Mitsubishi 3.0L V6 under the hood, which made the car quite peppy. Not as fast as the
Spirit R/T, I'm sure, but it got up and went when called upon. I can say for a fact that the car would begin to shake violently if I tried to drive much faster than 95MPH..........
It had its quirks, to be sure. It resisted every single attempt I made to upgrade the stock AM/FM stereo (installed a 'Infinity I' cassette stereo, and got nothing out of the speakers; tried using a later version AM/FM/cassette head unit, but the brackets didn't line up correctly). The previous owner had been extremely obese, and had managed to break the front seat, though we got it fixed. One nice "feature" was that I could remove the key from the ignition while it was running, which came in handy when it was cold, as I could keep the engine running with the doors locked.
I put a few dents and dings in it as a rookie driver, but it just kept on running. Even the infamous "
A-Sick-Oh-Four" 4spd automatic just kept on going, apart from one time it glitched and got stuck in "limp home mode" (wouldn't shift higher than 2nd gear, which made highway driving "interesting".....). The one time I thought it was a goner, it turned out that it was bad motor mounts that were causing the engine to tilt when trying to drive in reverse, making a nasty racket as I backed up.
It was somewhat ugly and didn't have much in the way of features, but it was a solid little car. I sure can't say that of its successor, a
1996 Chrysler Concorde that was handed down to me. Looked sleek, and had all sorts of bells and whistles, but had more reliability issues than Carter had liver pills. Dead transmission (before I started driving it), overheating issues, stalling issues, and culminated with the entire rear suspension collapsing as I pulled away from a stoplight.
Should've just stuck with the Spirit. Here's a 'beauty shot' of it in its later days:
