Plymouth allowed you to earn your money the old fashioned way . . . in a rebate check.

"You come in here with your skull full of mush and, if you survive, you leave here thinking like a lawyer."

Seriously, those cars were great in snow.

Sure looks like a Granada to me...especially from the hubcap.

I dunno, Murilee. I'd say the K platform had much more to do with Chrysler's comeback than the L platform wonders did. Although they didn't have a "Shelby" version :)

'78 - '80 Granada / Monarch stuck in the rut, a Subaru GL of mid-70's vintage is directly behind it. There's also another Monarch coupe further down the block. I remember when those things were actually popular.

My first car was an '84 Plymouth Horizon I bought from my grandmother for $300. Looking back I should have removed the "riz" from the badge and left the Hoon. I beat the trash out of that poor car and it kept going, I jumped it, e-braked it, off-roaded it, the works. I once punctured the oil pan and without realizing it drove it 2 miles home. New oil pan, and a couple quarts, and it was good to go. Two weeks after the valves stopped ticking, I totaled it. I hate my 16 year-old self for that.

I always thought the Horizon was a poor mans VW rabbit.

Yeah, jumpin' L-bodies! This was a friend's '86 GLHS...

Reliant K - 6 passenger??? HA!

@Vipper Of Vipp: They are also apparently good in fake commercial snow.

Ahhhhh! Reverse donuts in my mom's Reliant, in an iced over church parking lot.

Good times.

Am I going to Hell?

@smalleyxb122: you're there already

Looks like the stuck car was a Granada.

What is it with all the omni love here? That car was an underpowered turd.

Those cars may have hauled Chrysler out of the abyss, but they did long term damage to the brand perception as a whole. I doubt Chrysler with ever recover from their work in the eighties and nineties.

six passenger, 41 MPG highway K-car. Yeah, I know the trade-offs and the inaccuracies of government fuel economy ratings, but still that's pretty impressive.

@teargas: (Insert roughly the same thing you just said).

I would seriously, unironically rock that Horizon. WSW and all, it's very cool.

"Smoke on the Horizoooohn!"

The Horizon was totally the poor man's Rabbit. Although, I have to admit, the Horizon I used to drive was built like a tank.

@Evil-Jeremy: Volare, whoa...
I'm not quite sure where you are coming from with the assertion that the '80s and '90s Chrysler vehicles were somehow denigrating to the brand. After all, that was the era that gave us the original minivan-creating a category and then dominating it. We also got the Viper out of the '90s, and the Jeep Grand Cherokee. I would say, that the mid-'70s were the darkest days (until now) for the automaker. I mean, you ever drive a 4 or 5 year old Aspen?

@Evil-Jeremy: Most small cars of that era were underpowered turds. The Omnirizion was one of the better small cars, especially when compared to the crap that the other domestics (Chevette / Pinto / Escort Mk I) offered at the time. And it was downright zippy when Chrysler shoved the 2.2 under the hood.

In England we had the Lotus Sunbeam,basically one of these with the 2.2 engine from the Esprit,it was epic,& i still lust after a mint one. Did they have them in America?

@graverobber- Same great taste, new low price!: The Aspen was no great joy fresh off the showroom floor, either.

[www.rootes-chrysler.co.uk]

Definitely a Granada. When I was a kid, we had a sweet 4 door jobbie with vinyl interior.

GLHS stands for Goes Like Hell Shelby I am pretty sure.

And the K's were *great* in the snow and driving up hills of all kinds. My Laser's (may she rest in peace) fondest memory is passing a sliding 5-series on a snowy hill.

@DannyBN: Didn't they offer a special "Buyers Remorse" edition of the Aspen?

There was a Shelby "K" The Shelby CSX, CSX-T and CSX-VNT as well as the Shelby Lancer.

The Omni/Horizon were basically the Talbot Sunbeam (cause Chryco bought the company) Some of the Omni folks tried to get some of the nicer parts from the Sunbeams over there, namely the 3-point belts for the rear, the bumpers, etc.

My grandparents had a 79 Horizon. Base model blue interior (to match the blue exterior) and automatic driven by the 1.7L VW engine (which BTW made more power than the CIS injected version, at least until the Holley carb ate itself)

@jasonaskelton: GLH-S = Gomes Like Hell Some More

Gomes = Goes

:duncecap:

@graverobber- Same great taste, new low price!: I think the SE was "Sucker's Edition".

Woohoo! I loved my Horizon... It's too bad it met it's demise due to an Oldsmobile. I loved it in the winter... one of the best winter cars I ever had!

@crustyjoe: An Oldsmobile killing a Plymouth? I'm pretty sure there's irony, or a metaphor, or something else from English class I ignored in there.

@smalleyxb122: I would hope not. A couple of very religous friends (one wanted to become a pastor) from high school talked about doing donuts in their church parking lot. We also did e-brake turns in the Catholic high school parking lot. I don't think there are any verses against hoonage.

Still, as much as I'd love a GLHS, the Horizion is the car with a magnetic attraction to small statues (the pizza delivery car in Home Alone).

I also loved my $250 '89 Horizon. My $150 '85 Omni, not so much. They both absolutely kicked ass in the snow, however.. I also had a similiar experience to Teargas re: the low-slung oilpan, except I knew damn well it'd happened (KRUNK!), and I was 20 miles from home. JB Weld + 4 qts. oil= another year of driving "pleasure" before I junked it.

And reserve me a cell in the shadowy netherworld for pulling donuts in the local church parking lot at least once every winter since I was 17...

GF had a '79 TC3. It was a great little car. 5 speed, zippy, rattly. Got me to and from several bike races. It finally died a grizzly death while parked at the side of the road when a drunk hit it.

Just before above mentioned death, we (now married) picked up an '88 Omni. (Hey, her dad worked for Cryco, had to fit in.) Other than the lack of A/C, it was a great little car, too. Never had a lick of trouble with it. Finally sold it when the offspring started passing out in the back seat due to the heat and humidity of an Indiana summer.

@layabout: The Talbot Sunbeam was a Chevette, basically, based on the Avenger. Which is why it was a hoonarific rally car, like an Escort.

The European Horizon and the US Horizon/Omni was a close copy of the Golf. At least Chrysler copied the smartest kid in the class.

I can remember enjoying a new L-body Duster. It was a tinny piece of shit, but not much worse than an Escort or a Cavalier, and more useful, IMO. Only flaw, if you can call it that, is that the rear seat was less useful because it was an actual low coupe instead of a two-door sedan. But the hatchback bay could hold anything you could lift into it.

Stylin'.

The VW Golf was a copy of the Simca 1100. The Omnirizon platform was Chrysler and Simca's update to the 1100. And while the Golf was shackled with a tired and cranky K-Jet FI, the L-Jet system used by Chryco's 2.2 and 2.5 engine families was superior by a wide margin, as anyone who has tried to adjust either knows.

The US cars used engines from Volkswagen, and didn't use the Simca suspension.

The 2.2 was nifty in the L-bodies, but not available before the K-cars.

I remember going with my dad to buy one of these for my aunt after her car got repo'd. It won out over a Vega wagon and a Monza. $300, twenty years ago. I think the aftermarket stereo was probably 1/3 of that. Sadly, it was twice as nice as the repo'd car.

Save me a seat in hell for pulling the "Flip a Bitch" into my parking spot for morning scripture study at the church. Constant Seattle dampness and 4/$100 tires offered endless opportunities to perfect that maneuver.

My very first car was a 1982 Plymouth TC3. i think I paid $200 for it. It was a sort of cream color with a burgundy mouse fur interior.

You could drive alone at 14 where I grew up, and I realize now that the car was really in appalling shape for being only about 10 years old at that time. It had negative braking performance and rode on 4 mismatched, totally bald tires. It had an e-brake mounted on the floor, though, and I have to believe that my experiences inducing 4-wheel drift on the snow-covered streets of my hometown have a lot to do with who I am today.

I didn't have it long, though, maybe 8 months. A fuel line broke as I was driving to school one day and it burned to the ground. I lost a lot of good tapes in that fire...

My mother had an '85-ish Charger Shelby.

It sucked ass in the snow. Living on a dirt road in East Bumfuck at the time, This Mattered.

She traded it in on a Bronco II. Damn shame.

past Girlfriend had a Horizon she nicknamed Gidget. What a piece of crap the car was. Having said that, the car took all sorts of abuse and had zero maintenance and never died. Car happened to smell/look like an ashtray on the inside because said girlfriend smoked like a chimney but never used the ashtray because she never cleaned it out. ahh the memories...

No, no, no.

The Omni/Horizon and French Talbot Horizon were built off the FWD Simca 1100 platform.

The British Talbot Sunbeam was built off the RWD Hillman Avenger platform.

Entirely different cars that just looked similar.

A Granada? Well, I thought it was a Mercedes of the same vintage! They almost look the same!

@hootjigga: Wow, you're the target market, thirty years too late.

My first car was a used 79 Horizon. Great in the snow and best skitching car ever.

I got a speeding ticket for supposedly doing 55 in a 30. I pointed out to the judge that I was traveling UP a steep hill at the time and my car would have had a hard time doing 55 DOWN the hill. He laughed and asked the cop to confirm the road and direction I was traveling. Once he was satisfied I was traveling uphill, he tossed the ticket.

Alas my '46 Willy's CJ2A would not make it to college so I purchased a '76 Rustang II which after the summer working on it, did not make it either. After a transplant from a Bobcat and another failed trip home. I purchased a brand spanken used '80 Horizon, its saggy butt was given the gift of coils from a rabbit. Instant 4 inch lift and a set of snow tires all around and I going places my Willy's dreamed of. In '87 I traded for a GLHS.

@prndl: I should add that the Shelbyfied Rampage I first bought was accepted back by the dealer because of said "Known" problems and the GTX I really wanted, I purchased in '95.