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Junkyard Gem: 1986 Plymouth Horizon

Chrysler imported quite a few Mitsubishis and sold them as Dodge and Plymouth Colts, but the Colts of the 1980s had to compete with the Plymouth Horizon and its Dodge Omni sibling. Based on a Chrysler Europe design, production of the Plymouth Horizon ran in virtually unchanged form from the 1979 through 1990 model years. A simple, cheap econobox, the Plymouth Horizon sold well enough, but was such a disposable car that very few remain today. Here's one that lasted long enough to end its days in a California wrecking yard at age 31. The genealogy of the Omnirizon gets a bit tangled when you go back far enough; the car is based on the chassis design of the 1975 Simca 1307, though by the time it got to Detroit it had evolved considerably. Chrysler was desperate for an American-built economy car during the late 1970s, and the Omnirizon got the job done. The 1978-1982 Horizons had 1.7-liter Volkswagen engines, while the 1983-1986 models came with a 1.6-liter Simca mill as the base engine. The Chrysler 2.2-liter four was an optional Horizon powerplant starting in 1981, and the only engine available from 1987 through the final Horizons built in 1990. This car has the 2.2, rated at 96 horses in 1986. The '86 Horizon weighed a mere 2,100 pounds (about the same as a 2017 Mitsubishi Mirage), and so 96 horsepower made it peppy enough by mid-1980s econo-commuter standards. The interior is right out of the Slippery Plastic With Fake Stitching™ playbook, but nobody bought an Omnirizon for the luxury. This car was basically identical to its Dodge Omni sibling, and both had MSRPs of $6,209 in 1986 (about $13,900 in inflation-adjusted 2017 bucks). You could get cheaper new cars in 1986— the $4,995 Hyundai Excel and $3,990 Yugo GV come to mind— but the Omnirizon five-doors were better-built and had the sales advantage of being known quantities. Even by 1986, the Omnirizon was showing its age (though not as much as the amusingly obsolete Chevrolet Chevette, which was sold through the 1987 model year). Still, it remained sufficiently relevant to sell in decent number for another four years. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. The pride is back! Featured Gallery Junked 1986 Plymouth Horizon View 14 Photos Auto News Chrysler Hatchback Classics

Dodge shows can-do attitude with grand Can'avan sculpture

There are lots of ways to celebrate an important birthday, and all of them are well deserved. You can throw a big party, buy yourself something nice, or - if you're the altruistic type - do something for others in need. The latter is how Chrysler has opted to mark the 30th anniversary of its Dodge Grand Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country.
Together with hunger-advocacy organization Canstruction, the Chrysler Foundation has built a full-scale replica of the Grand Caravan out of 30,000 food cans in the square at the corner of Yonge and Dundas in Toronto, a ways down the highway from where the real vans are built in Windsor. The sculpture was built over the course of 10 hours by 30 volunteers and was displayed earlier this week.
Now the installation is being taken down, and the cans of food are being donated to the Daily Bread Food Bank, which will assemble them into 2,000 food baskets to be distributed to those in need through its network of 200 food banks across the Canadian metropolis. Check out a neat time-lapse video of the build and the press release below.

Jeep Cherokee faces on-sale delay

A report in The Wall Street Journal looks at some of the obstacles to the 2014 Jeep Cherokee that go beyond its mootable yet "very contemporary" looks, almost all of them based on Fiat's financial position. Starting with that sheetmetal, in defense of it SRT president Ralph Gilles and Jeep design head Mark Allen said they wanted to "make sure the design still looks modern five years from now."
The WSJ piece doesn't cite longevity as a factor, instead saying that its features originated in a design for an Alfa Romeo, the transformation into a Jeep design meant allowing Chrysler get it to market more quickly and save "hundreds of millions of dollars" in engineering.
The need for Fiat to save money while it weathers the European situation has cut budgets for development, engineering and the pace of retooling the Toledo, Ohio plant to build the Cherokee. In a familiar case of snowballing at work, among the effects will be pushing back the Cherokee's volume sales date and delaying updates to some of Chrysler's other products.