Junkyard Find: 1982 Dodge 400 Landau Coupe

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

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
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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  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
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