Junkyard Find: 1992 Dodge Shadow America
When I go to my local wrecking yards to photograph cars for this series, I’m looking for historical significance. Some might say that the Chrysler P-body (based on the ancient and venerable K platform, like so many Chrysler products of the 1980s and 1990s) lacks such significance, and that I should instead shoot the 60s Chevy pickups and VW Beetles I mostly ignore, but I disagree. Someday, wise old men will discuss the importance of the fourth Plymouth to bear the Duster name, but it’s the “America” series of stripper P-bodies that really get my attention. Jack Baruth explains why the Omni America and the cut-price P-bodies that followed it sold so poorly, and it’s the rarity of these things that gets my attention. So far in this series we’ve seen just two: this 1991 Sundance America and today’s ’92 Shadow America.
The selling points of the Shadow/Sundance America were spelled out very plainly in this ad: cheaper than the Civic, cheapest car with a standard airbag, and cheaper (per day) than lunch. Did we mention cheap?
The non-America versions had an equally exciting commercial.
The base two-door 1992 Shadow America with manual transmission listed at $7,984; the four-door we have here would have listed at $8,384. You could get a ’92 Hyundai Excel for $6,595, a Subaru Justy for $6,445, or a complete stripper Honda Civic CX for $8,100.
This one didn’t rack up many miles, and the condition of the paint and interior suggest that it spent a decade or more parked in the Colorado sun.
If Allpar is to be believed, the 2.2 engine was still being built in China as of 2000. Its final year in an American-built car was 1994.
The optional automatic transmission would have added $585 to the cost of a new ’92 Shadow, and what would have been the point of such extravagance?
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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One of the first cars I drove was a 1988 Plymouth Sundance. I went on to buy a used 93 Mitsu6 Duster coupe and then another modded up 92 Plymouth Duster that put out 186HP at the crank..162 to the wheels. It weighed in at 2700lbs. That car embarrassed a lot of people off the line. The motor had an awesome sound to it. It embarrassed a lot of much more expensive machinery off the line. It was practical, fun, and loud. It went 200K before blowing its head gasket.
My dad had a '92 Shadow America, the coupe version, in Electric Blue. He actually got it even cheaper than advertised, because it was a factory misfit car-- it had somehow ended up with "Shadow GT" stripes and decals. Great car, ran fine to over 315,000 miles, was still running all the way to the junkyard.