Junkyard Find: 1987 Dodge 600 SE
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 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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And speaking of the "Mercedes-like" naming convention, ChryCo went one step too far in calling the Chrysler version of this car "E-Class".
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