Junkyard Find: 1982 Dodge 400 Landau Coupe
Lee Iacocca’s original Chrysler K Platform spawned an incomprehensible tangle of K-related offspring between the 1981 and 1995 model years, but only a few U.S.-market models were true K-Cars: the Chrysler LeBaron, Plymouth Reliant, Dodge Aries, Dodge 600, and Dodge 400.
Of these, the 400 has been the hardest for me to find in the self-service wrecking yards I frequent; in fact, this is the first junkyard Dodge 400 I’ve photographed.
Located in a Colorado junkyard near Pikes Peak, the resale value this first-year-of-production 400 appears to have been reduced to scrap prices by a hailstorm. Dimpled metal, smashed glass— an all-too-common occurrence along the Front Range. It might have been a nice, well-preserved classic before the hail.
The 400 was supposed to fit between the luxurious LeBaron and the sensible Aries. The 1982 400 coupe listed at $8,043 (about $21,500 in 2018 dollars), versus just $5,990 for the cheapest two-door Aries. The most affordable ’82 LeBaron coupe started at $8,143, a probably intentional exact hundred bucks more than the 400.
Chrysler didn’t put LANDAU emblems on these cars, but this one has the 1970s-style padded landau roof (which continued to be used on the Dodge Dynasty well into the 1990s).
The 400’s 2.2-liter Chrysler four-cylinder made 84 horses in 1982; a Mitsubishi Astron 2.6-liter rated at 92 horsepower was optional. This car has the Chrysler engine.
This is no way to treat a personal luxury car!
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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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Never quite sure how to feel about having a faux roof top named for the town my grandmother came from...
0-60 in 15.7 seconds. At first I thought that was the 1/4 mile time! Ugh! Ugggggh! What a gutless little turd this thing was.. https://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/dodge/400_dodge/400_base_convertible/1982.html