Junkyard Find: 1987 Dodge 600 SE

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

For most of the 1980s and well into the 1990s, most cars made by Chrysler were members of the many-branched K-Car family tree. In the early years, the K was sold as an all-American economy car for the frugal, but Lee Iacocca had his eye on stealing some sales from European luxury marques. Perhaps a K made to look something like a Mercedes-Benz would do the job?

This approach wasn’t so convincing for the Ford Granada, but Chrysler went ahead and made the Dodge 600 with suspiciously Mercedes-ish badging.

The 600 was available with the turbocharged 2.2-liter engine, as we have seen, but this one has the ordinary naturally aspirated 2.5.

This one has the Whorehouse Red Velour upholstery so beloved by American and Japanese car manufacturers during the late 1980s. 1992 may have been the peak year for this phenomenon.

The final owner of this car was NOT A LIBERAL, just in case you were wondering what sort of Coloradan might drive a 30-year-old K-Car.

You can’t beat ’em!






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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  • Higheriq Higheriq on Feb 17, 2017

    And speaking of the "Mercedes-like" naming convention, ChryCo went one step too far in calling the Chrysler version of this car "E-Class".

  • Ponchoman49 Ponchoman49 on Mar 01, 2017

    Looking at this car brings back lots of auction memories where scads of K-car based sedans used to go through the red light "as is" lanes with piston knocking engines, leaky head gaskets, check engine lights and rocker panels you could put your foot through. Those red and blue cloth interiors did seem to hold up fairly well though. For the most part they ran albeit poorly

  • Allen Fischer It all started with the 1973 Arab oil embargo. High gas prices made people look to the Japanese for fuel efficiency, then realized the other benefits, like longevity. The Toyota Camry has many times been seen as "the most Ameican made car" in the U.S. I own one and question why "the big three" have not been duplicate this, its just a car. Toyota and Honda have lean business models and know how to "trim the fat". May the lean survive!
  • SCE to AUX If Pontiac died by 1000 cuts, this had to be at least 10 of them.
  • Bd2 Another excellent article Murilee, I have always admired the engineering, quality and styling of these vehicles and credit their inspiration with the legendary Hyundai Tiburon which can fetch low six figures these days at private auctions.
  • Ravenuer Looking forward to it!
  • Daniel J I love my mazda 6. It's getting harder and harder to drive it around where I live as municipalities fail to repair roads. SUVs are just easier to drive with all of the potholes.
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