Junkyard Find: 1985 Chrysler Laser XE
The Chrysler Laser was the futuristic K-car-based answer to all those science-fiction Japanese cars of the middle 1980s. We’ve seen some of the Dodge counterparts to this car in this series, including this ’92 IROC R/T, this ’90, this ’88, and this ’87 Shelby Turbo Z. Since I’ve been collecting Japanese 1980s digital dashes, I just couldn’t resist adding a Detroit 1980s digital dash to my collection, in the slipperiest of slippery slopes.
Yes, I’ve grabbed this Laser’s digital dash and hooked it up to power, and in the meantime I’ve grabbed a few more Detroit digital instrument clusters from junkyards.
Check out the cool fader/balance joystick control. Less cool is the fact that Chrysler used this exact rig well into the 1990s.
The Laser XE came with all manner of computerized gadgetry, plus it talked! Unlike the earlier Nissan Maxima, this setup was all-digital.
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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My best friend got an '84 Chrysler Laser XE Turbo as his first car in 1990. It was bronze (brown) with tan leather and loaded with the digital dash and power everything (most of which no longer worked). It had over 100k miles on the odo and a manual gearbox that was impossible to shift smoothly, quickly or without plenty of grinding. After a few months in his 16-year-old hands, the electronic voice constantly repeated- "Engine overheating! Engine damage may occur!" And it did....
I learned how to drive in a car just like this (ours was the base model Laser though, but the same colors in and out but no "talking dash") It was a 2.2/5-speed car, it seemed faster and a whole lot nicer than the 81 Pontiac Phoenix my parents traded in for it. My dad had looked at Turismos but the Lasers were a "step up" in feel from the TC-3/024 things. It's nice to see one this old that's not a complete rust bomb, I haven't seen a Laser/Daytona here in Wisconsin for years and years. These seem to be "overlooked" Chryslers, you only hear about the Shelby's or the generic K-cars. Oh yeah, I always thought with the triangular back side windows these looked a LITTLE like Porsche 928's, but that's probably because both cars are 2-door hatchbacks, not for any real reason.