Junkyard Find: 1996 Eagle Vision
After honoring— if that’s the right word— the junkyard-ubiquitous Ford Tempo last weekend, it seems only right to give some space to the even-more-common-in-junkyards Chrysler LH. These days, walking through the Chrysler section of a big self-service wrecking yard is a matter of searching for unusual cars in a sea of Neons, Voyagers, and Intrepids (and their badge-engineered siblings). This is about the only place where you will have no problem finding Eagle-branded vehicles. Here’s a Vision I found in Denver last month.
The Eagle brand, which flew out of the shrapnel of Chrysler’s absorption of AMC, wasn’t much of a hit. Out of all the rebadged Renaults, Mitsubishis, and Chryslers that got Eagle badges, only the Talon and Vision are seen in any numbers nowadays.
Other than some pesky transmission and front-suspension weaknesses, these weren’t bad cars. Comfortable, reasonably powerful, and plenty roomy, they were pleasant to drive… but they depreciated so fast that there’s no point in fixing one when it breaks. Next stop, The Crusher!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I realize this post is almost a year old but what Junk Yard is that Vision at? I love my 96 Vision unfortunately my daughter just ended a deer's life with it and I could use that hood, grill section, lights etc if it is still there and available. Might be there are not a lot of them on the road any more getting repaired.
I have a '94 Chrysler Concorde that I bought from my neighbors, and it's basically the same car, except for the weird slapstick transmission setup. very unique cars, that were built on the LH Platform.