Junkyard Find: 1984 Plymouth Turismo

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

The Simca-derived Omnirizon platform led to some sportier-looking variations as the Malaise Era ground to a close. The hatchback-coupe Dodge 024 and Plymouth TC3 became the Charger and the Turismo, respectively, in 1982. Turismos were never plentiful, and these days they’re nearly extinct. Here’s a rare example I found yesterday at a Denver self-serve wrecking yard.

The Turismo certainly stood out from the crowd in the middle 1980s, though the Omnirizon platform was getting a bit dated by that point.

By 1984, buyers could opt to replace the VW-derived 1.7 engine with Chrysler’s more powerful 2.2 liter engine. 96 horsepower was decent in a 2,300-pound car in 1984.

You can still find evidence of the car’s Franco-Chrysler heritage here and there.

The 1970s had been over for a few years when this car was sold, but the brown-on-brown tape stripes of the prior decade were able to hold on well into the 1980s.







Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

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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  • Lotherius Lotherius on Jun 27, 2012

    Wow, looks *identical* to my first car, except for being a Plymouth Turismo instead of a Dodge Charger. Could be the SAME car... interior color, exterior, all the same. And I disagree with others, having actually owned basically this identical vehicle in this color - the interior looked very nice as did the exterior when not found on a junkyard 30 years later.

    • See 1 previous
    • SPPPP SPPPP on May 14, 2019

      @Ryoku75 Weird greens and oranges? Where are those? I remember them from about 10 years ago, but I can only think of about 2 cars available in any bright shade of green or orange right now.

  • DaneClark DaneClark on May 29, 2019

    I was brought home from the hospital in a light blue '84 Turismo

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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