Rich, Wind-Tunnel-Defying Simu-Wood(TM) Trim Adds Style To Reagan-Era Chrysler Town & Country
Thick faux-wood trim on a Chrysler wagon as late as 1986? Hey, it’s 2011 and you can still get Super 8 movie film!
I can’t decide whether this is the most hideous station wagon ever made or one of the greatest. Chrysler had gone entirely front-wheel-drive by ’86, and their minivan was already delivering multiple tire-iron-to-the-kidneys blows to station wagon sales… yet they still honored the 5,500-pound wagons they’d built 15 years before.
The K platform made for shockingly spacious interiors; this wagon rivaled some of the monstrous battlecruiser wagons of years past for interior space.
Turbocharged and fuel-injected! Too bad they never made a Shelby-ized LeBaron Town & Country. This car listed at $11,998 with the turbo package, about the same as an ’86 VW Quantum wagon and $1,500 less than an ’86 Volvo 245 Turbo wagon or an ’86 Olds Custom Cruiser.
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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Seeing the above pics brought back memories and made me realize that maybe the AMC Pacer wasn't really that ugly after all...
I would love to know where this car is located. I need the wood grain off the sides for mine. Technically just the buttons that cover the nuts that hold it on, but having replacement parts would be nice. Quite difficult to find anything that pertains to the wood grain. By the way, as most here note, great little cars these K ones were and are. Mine has 222,200 miles and counting, with the recommended light maintenance. The only thing thats giving me trouble with it now is the steering.