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Junkyard Gem: 1976 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham Hardtop Coupe

Even after OPEC served notice that cheap oil would no longer be a given and notorious eco-fanatic Richard Nixon decreed a national 55 mph speed limit, plenty of Americans continued to buy enormous coupes equipped with big-displacement V8 engines and cubic yards of cushy upholstery as the early Malaise Era ground on during the middle 1970s. In 1976, Ford offered the Lincoln Continental Mark IV, the Mercury Marquis Brougham, and the Thunderbird. The General had too many such cars to list here, including the Buick Electra and Olds 98 Regency Coupe. Chrysler was right there in the battle for Broughamic supremacy that year, with the New Yorker Brougham at the very top of the company's prestige ziggurat. Here's a raggedy-but-still-opulent New Yorker Brougham Coupe, found in a Denver car graveyard during the winter. Just look at that spacious Whorehouse Red™ interior and its pillow-topped Corinthian Leather split-bench power seats! I admire this luxury so much that my band in the late 1980s recorded a hymn to the Chrysler New Yorker. This car appears to have the $598 (about $2,750 in 2020 dollars) St. Regis option group, which included a "boar-grain" padded vinyl roof and opera windows. A few years later, Dodge offered a full-sized model called the St. Regis. The New Yorker Brougham was the most expensive model offered by Chrysler in 1976 (the Imperial went on hiatus for the 1976 through 1980 model years, only to return as a much more modest car). The buyer of this car got rung up for at least $7,269 (about $33,520 after inflation).  Curb weight wasn't quite as high as this car's imposing bulk might suggest: 4,752 pounds. That's a bit less than a new Dodge Durango today. A junkyard shopper scored the engine, which would have been a 440-cubic-inch (7.2-liter) V8 rated at a startlingly low 205 horsepower and all the torque in the world (actually, 320 lb-ft). Numbers like that prove that we now live in the Golden Age of Car Engines; even the base V6 in the current Charger makes 292 horsepower out of half the displacement of the 440. Even in a car this swanky, any kind of an audio system cost extra (contrast that to 2020, when even the humblest econoboxes have standard-equipment Bluetooth-ready rigs with many speakers). A plain old single-speaker AM radio cost $99 ($457), while the top-of-the-line AM/FM/8-track set '76 New Yorker buyers back $375 ($1,730). This is the AM/FM stereo radio, which cost $197 ($908). Not legal for sale in California.

Fiat Chrysler's next-generation Uconnect is faster, built on Android

If you're a regular reader of Autoblog, you know that for a long time we've liked Fiat Chrysler's Uconnect infotainment system for its bright, clear, responsive touchscreen interface. Now, according to the company, it will be better than ever with Uconnect 5, the latest iteration of the system. It has upgraded hardware and a revamped graphic user interface (the stuff on the screen). Looking at sample screens shown above, there are characteristics shared with the old system, such as the time, status and shortcuts at the top and the menu icons at the bottom. In the middle, the major change is the addition of home screens that can be customized with favorite menus and readouts that are always available. Each of these home screens can have up to four functions and you can have five pages to flip through. The graphics themselves feature more legible fonts and updated icons. Each car brand will get its own set of icons, colors and textures to help create unique experiences. And while each Fiat Chrysler product will be able to have Uconnect, including Alfa Romeo that has until now lacked Uconnect, each brand has the ability to make small tweaks including the screen orientation. The system will support displays in landscape, portrait or square, so different brands may choose different shapes. Powering Uconnect 5 is a processor Fiat Chrysler says is six times more powerful than what's in current systems. It features 6 gigabytes of RAM and 64 gigabytes of internal storage. The processor also supports screens as large as 12.3 inches with as many as 15 million pixels, or nearly twice that of a 4K resolution TV. The system can display information on up to four screens, too. Uconnect 5's firmware is built on Google's Android operating system, joining a few other automakers in using Android as a base for their infotainment systems. Uconnect 5 brings with it a number of new features. It brings full Alexa integration, so you can use it just like you do at home, provided you have a data plan for the car. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto continue to be standard, but now they can be used wirelessly. You can also now connect two phones via Bluetooth wirelessly so you can access content from both. Navigation gets real time information and updates from TomTom. Users can create five profiles with unique climate, radio and instrument settings, plus one for a valet.

Junkyard Gem: 1978 Chrysler LeBaron Coupe

From the early 1930s through the middle 1970s, Chrysler used the LeBaron name (taken from a coachbuilder eventually consumed by the car company, much as Fleetwood and Ghia were absorbed by GM and Ford, respectively) on high-end Imperial models. Then, facing decreased demand for mammoth land yachts thanks to certain geopolitical events, Chrysler created a separate LeBaron model, based on the midsize platform used for the Dodge Diplomat/Plymouth Gran Fury. Production of this LeBaron began in 1977 and continued until the debut of Lee Iacocca's famous K-Car LeBarons for the 1982 model year. While you'll find the occasional Diplomat these days, the 1977-1981 LeBaron has become all but extinct. Here's a crash-victim '78 in a Denver car graveyard. Plenty of times, I'll find discarded cars of this era that seem to have moldered outside for decade after neglected decade, but this one drove to its final crash. That means that the 318-cubic-inch (5.2-liter) V8 under the hood would be a good bet to buy for another Chrysler project… but nobody seems interested, because this Malaise Era engine made only 140 horsepower when new. The base engine in the 1978 LeBaron was a 110-horse Slant-6, so at least this car had the upgrade. Sure, the Diplomat was the not-so-plush successor to the non-plush Aspen/Volare and the even-less-plush Dart/Valiant, but Chrysler installed a reasonably nice interior in the Diplomat's Chrysler-badged sibling. This one has the standard "Cortez" cloth-and-vinyl bench seat, but not the optional power windows or door locks. This one has stickers for Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, Slayer, and MegadethÂ… plus one for the Oakland Raiders, hated rivals of Denver's local sportsball team. I'm pretty sure the car was not being driven by the original purchaser when it crashed. Believe it or not, this car was available with a four-on-the-floor manual transmission and a V8 engine. Were any sold that way? I wouldn't bet on it. Molded-in faux stitching proved very popular in American cars of the late 1970s and early 1980s. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. This advertisement may have resulted in some cannibalization of Cordoba sales, though the Pontiac Grand Prix stood as the primary rival for the '78 LeBaron coupe. Featured Gallery Junked 1978 Chrysler LeBaron Coupe View 39 Photos Auto News Chrysler Automotive History Coupe Chrysler LeBaron Junkyard Gems