2013 Chrysler 300 Base on 2040-cars

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Fiat Chrysler, GM are trying 7-year 0% loans, online buying to lift plunging sales

With auto showrooms shut during the coronavirus pandemic, Fiat Chrysler and General Motors moved to reboot demand with seven-year, no-interest loans and programs allowing customers to buy vehicles online. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' new "Drive Forward" marketing program includes online shopping tools that will for the first time allow U.S. customers to complete the purchase of a vehicle through an FCA dealer without setting foot in a dealership, a company spokesman said. The move toward online sales and home delivery breaks with a long U.S. auto sector tradition of manufacturers giving franchised dealers control of sales to consumers. Dealers have fought Tesla 's efforts to sell vehicles directly to consumers through its website. GM and Fiat Chrysler's promotions of extended, no-interest loans — made less costly by the Federal Reserve's recent interest rate cuts — echo the "Keep America Rolling" sales push GM launched to jump start a paralyzed consumer market after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But the pandemic has been pulling auto retailing into the digital age, with dealerships shuttered across the country and sales likely to take a further beating in April as social distancing guidelines remain in place.   Related: Auto sales drop in March as coronavirus hits demand, output   FCA shares were down 4.9% to $6.84 in afternoon trading in New York after the company posted a 10% drop in first-quarter U.S. auto sales, as the pandemic hurt demand and halted production from mid-March. The company, however, did not break out sales by month. General Motors reported its first-quarter sales fell 7% because of significant declines in March, and said customers can use its existing "Shop.Click.Drive." program to find, purchase and arrange for home delivery of a vehicle. A GM spokeswoman said across the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac brands the automaker has seen two to four times greater online site visits and sales leads than before the pandemic. Hyundai said earlier that its U.S. sales fell 43% in March due to the pandemic. "It goes without saying that the entire world is facing a tremendous challenge that is having a significant impact on business and our normal way of life," Randy Parker, vice president for sales at Hyundai Motor America, said in a statement. Toyota said its sales were down nearly 37% in March and 8.8% for the quarter. Nissan reported a 27% drop in first-quarter sales.

Junkyard Gem: 1982 Chrysler LeBaron Convertible

Things looked very grim at Chrysler during the late 1970s, as Oil Crisis-shocked car shoppers avoided buying thirsty land yachts and ancient-technology compacts in droves. The Carter administration grudgingly bailed out the company with loan guarantees in 1979 (leaving "small enough to fail" American Motors to seek help from the French government) and Chrysler needed a huge sales hit in a big hurry. Under the leadership of Lee Iacocca (freshly canned by Henry Ford II), Chrysler developed the modern, front-wheel-drive K Cars and the company was saved. The very first K Cars hit the road for the 1981 model year, and I'm always on the lookout for those historic early Ks when I'm searching for interesting bits of automotive history in junkyards. The '81 and '82s have become nearly impossible to find, but this once-plush LeBaron convertible appeared in a Northern California yard last month. While a bafflingly complex family tree of K-derived vehicles grew up in Chrysler showrooms through 1995 (including the hot-selling Caravan/Voyager/Town and Country minivans), the only "true" US-market K-Cars are the Dodge Aries, Dodge 400/600 coupe, Plymouth Reliant and Chrysler LeBaron. 1982 was the first model year for the K LeBaron and this car was built in March of that year, so we're looking at one of the very early successors to the Dodge Diplomat-based LeBarons of the 1970s. Chrysler developed a homegrown 2.2-liter, overhead-cam straight-four engine that proved very successful, and a 94-horsepower version of that engine was the base powerplant for the 1982 LeBaron. This car appears to have just about every option available that year, so of course the original buyer went for the 2.6-liter Mitsubishi Astron straight-four. With hemispherical combustion chambers, the 2.6 could be called a Hemi (a few Ks even got "2.6 HEMI" badging); horsepower came to just 93 in 1982, but the 132 pound-feet of torque beat out the 117 lb-ft of the Chrysler 2.2 that year. Silver-faced gauges and complicated radio controls were all the rage during the Late Malaise Era, and this car has both. Note the Chronometer next to the HVAC controls, a digital design with green vacuum-fluorescent display lifted from the previous-generation rear-wheel-drive LeBaron. The non-cloth bits of the convertible-top mechanism look decent enough, so perhaps some junkyard-shopping LeBaron owner will rescue them.

Junkyard Gem: 1983 Chrysler LeBaron Mark Cross Town & Country Convertible

When Lee Iacocca took the helm at the Chrysler Corporation in 1978, the company appeared to be doomed. The company's only modern front-wheel-drive cars either came from Japan or had been developed from Chrysler Europe's Simca operation, inflation was raging, and Middle Eastern conflict a year later sent fuel prices skyrocketing for the second time in the decade. Iacocca secured government loans to keep the company afloat until vehicles based on a brand-new front-drive platform could reach showrooms. Those were the K-Cars, debuting in the 1981 model year, and they saved Chrysler. The LeBaron was the ritziest of the early Ks, and today's Junkyard Gem is an example of the most prestigious LeBaron of 1983, found in a Colorado car graveyard last summer. The cheapest possible 1983 K-Cars were the two-door Plymouth Reliant and Dodge Aries, priced at $6,577 (about $19,959 in 2023 dollars). The 1983 LeBaron Mark Cross Town & Country convertible had an MSRP of way more than twice as much: $15,595, which comes to around $47,327 today. The LeBaron name came from a coachbuilder that Chrysler eventually devoured, and it was applied to the most glamorous Imperial models for decades. The LeBaron didn't become a model name in its own right until the 1977 model year, when a thick coat of bling was slathered onto the midsize Dodge Diplomat. That generation of Chrysler LeBaron stayed in production through the 1981 model year. The Town & Country name goes way back in Chrysler history, too. The very first Town & Country was a woodie wagon—with real wood— that first appeared as a 1941 model. Over the decades that followed, the T&C name was applied to sedans, coupes, wagons and convertibles, some with wood (or "wood") trim and some without, with only wagons getting that designation from 1969 through 1982. Beginning in 1990, the Chrysler Town & Country name went on minivans, and that's where it remained through 2016. The paneling on this car is plastic, but it was more convincing (when new) than most of the fake wood found on Detroit cars of the era. Convertibles made a big comeback for American car companies during the early 1980s, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth over "the last convertible" 1976 Cadillac Eldorado (it wasn't the last convertible you could buy new here, even at the time). The LeBaron convertible went on sale for the 1982 model year, and new drop-top LeBarons remained available all the way through 1995.