Junkyard Find: 1990 Dodge Daytona Turbo

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

We’ll continue on our Turbo Era junkyard tour, which kicked off yesterday with a 50th Anniversary Edition Nissan 300ZX Turbo, with one of the many Chrysler K-platform-based products to benefit from Turbo Era technology: this 1990 Dodge Daytona Turbo.

One of the most important features during the Turbo Era (which ran from 1984 through 1992) was the rear window louvers. This showed the world you were serious back then.

They were actually pretty effective at keeping the sun off your upholstery, and they didn’t block the view quite as badly as one might expect. But they were still silly.

According to Allpar, the ’90 Daytona could be had with a 150-horse 2.5 or a much more nervous 174-horse 2.2. I neglected to check the smog sticker in this car, so I can’t tell you which engine we’re seeing here. It’s a non-Shelby model, so I’m guessing it’s the 2.5.

Such a luxurious Whorehouse Red velour interior!

And look, an early airbag.

I’m guessing that none of these controls worked by about 1993, but they look pretty cool.

Just 152,907 miles on the clock. And, on that note, we now end this installment of Turbo Era Junkyard Finds.







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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  • Chicagoland Chicagoland on Aug 09, 2012

    With F-150's standard motor being a turbo V6, I'd say we are in a 'Turbo Era' now. Not as if turbos are like old tech carburators.

  • ELPROFETA ELPROFETA on Aug 11, 2012

    Hello friend good day oie i want to congratulate you for the photos of the Daytona, but take note that vi parts that i liked and i would like to know if we could reach an agreement for depositarte to any account and buy the louvers, as well as other parts of the interior, as it could be time to that agreement with you, I'm from Mexico but i have contacts in the U.S.

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