Junkyard Find: 1991 Dodge Shadow ES Turbo Convertible
The Dodge Shadow was one of many, many versions of the Chrysler-saving K Platform, and it sold in fairly large quantities before being replaced by the Neon. As recently as five years ago, Shadows and their Plymouth Sundance siblings were among the most numerous Chryslers in American wrecking yards, but massive numbers of Sebrings have replaced them nowadays. I ignore most of these cars when I see them, but I can’t resist photographing examples with excessively 1990s tape stripes and decals or super-stripper no-option packages.
Today we’ll be looking at a car that puts turbocharging, overwrought 1990s tape graphics, a convertible top, and fire damage all in one K-car package.
Yes, the factory applied these decals, not Manny, Moe, and/or Jack.
This car has an automatic transmission, but at least it has the 150 horsepower 2.5 Turbo I engine under the hood.
TURBO was still something of a magical word in 1991.
It appears that this car was parked with its trunk facing something that burned, or perhaps the last owner installed 3,000-watt taillight bulbs.
Up north, French-speaking Canadians had Celine Dion pitching Shadows.
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 drove one. The turbo lag was crazy, especially in wet weather conditions. Eventually, I bought one with the 2.5ltr 4 instead. You got a lot of stuff for not a lot of money. The car handled better and had better torque than a Toyota Corolla, but build quality was atrocious. My car came with the feature of a leaking cam bearing. To fix that, the dealer squirted gunk sealant all over the side of the engine head. Body panel gap lines were never even anywhere on the car. The car was also very easy to break into and steal. Our car was stolen twice and broken into 3 times. Once was by a 13 year old kid at 3am when the car was parked right in front of our house. But that's another story.
I had an '87.5 ES turbo, first model year they came out. Sweet little motor that Chrysler, to be honest in it's brilliance that came only from the mind of a mad genius, lumped to an amazingly terrible 3 spd automatic which at 70mph sounded like a coffee grinder getting it on with the Kerby vacuum. The car was pretty nice and speedy!, once you got used to the 2 second turbo lag upon stomping on the accelerator. It had the quiet charm of an '70s MG once you engaged the Cruise Control at any speed over 55mph as the electrical system would immediately bypass the $2 fuse and would fry itself with ILM smoke effect eminating from the dash. And the cherry on top was it's marvelous ability to blow up it's turbo every 50k miles or so, leading me to take it back to the dealership and begin the what can only be described as a hard-slog footbal game to get them to adhere to the warranty. This car was always my favorite mistake.