2014 Chrysler Town & Country Touring on 2040-cars

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Unboxing Chrysler's ridiculous Pacifica board game/media kit

At auto shows, manufacturers often hand out new-model info on USB sticks. It's how we get the press releases and photos onto our computers quickly and easily. Some still use brochures, which direct you to a website to download the relevant files. And then there's Chrysler, which often dreams up elaborate packages to transport the information and make a big impact. That's what it did for the 2017 Chrysler Pacifica, which made its debut in gasoline and plug-in hybrid versions at the 2016 North American International Auto Show earlier this month. The Pacifica press kit is in a zippered folder along with the 2017 Chrysler Pacifica Race to the Family Reunion board game. To share this with you, we decided to make use of one of the internet's stranger formats, the unboxing video. You can watch our version above and learn a little more about what's inside the silver pouch – besides a USB stick and a brochure. Want one of your own? Silly media kits like these usually pop up on eBay from time to time. But ours and our ethics are not for sale. Green Detroit Auto Show Chrysler Hatchback Hybrid Videos Original Video 2016 Detroit Auto Show chrysler pacifica

2022 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid loses base Touring trim, starts at $48,255

The Chrysler Voyager is going fleet-only for 2022 while the standard 2022 Pacifica picked up some price hikes and some gains and losses in the equipment department. Time to dish on the 2022 Pacifica Hybrid, which, unsurprisingly, follows the majority of the non-hybrid Pacifica template. Mopar Insiders got info on pricing for the revisions Chrysler made to the lineup. The most important change to the overall Pacifica range, according to MI, is that model and option rationalization leaves just 53 combinations instead of the previous 3,550. That's way more than the Honda Odyssey at just seven permutations, but well behind the Toyota Sienna that has 206. The 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 and its eFlite variable transmission don't change, nor does the inability to spec all-wheel drive. What does get added are the new rear-seat reminder and Clean Air Filtration system that Stellantis is sprinkling throughout all its models. That filtration unit captures 95% of particulates in the air including bacteria, allergens, and pollen. The color palette goes the same way as on the non-hybrid Pacifica, dropping from 10 free colors to seven with just three free. Only Bright White, Brilliant Black, and Ceramic Grey will be no charge. Granite Crystal and the new Silver Mist, which replaces Billet Silver, will cost $95. Fathom Blue and Velvet Red will cost $395.   Product planners pulled the AWD option on the non-hybrid Pacifica Touring. For the hybrid, the Touring trim gets pulled completely, and in fact, it's already happened for the end of 2021. That makes the Touring L the new base model, and it makes this year's optional $995 Safety Sphere Group standard equipment for next year. That installs features like ParkSense for front, parallel, and perpendicular parking, and a 360-degree surround view camera. Conversely, the roof rack and side sunshades won't come as standard equipment anymore. MI says next year's MSRP will be $48,255 after the $1,495 destination charge. Comparing that price to the MSRP on Chrysler's 2021 configurator, next year's van will bring a $1,840 increase over 2021.  Next year's Limited trim will add the $1,895 Premium and Safety Sphere Group as standard equipment. The package adds the parking aids from above as well as a 19-speaker Harman Kardon audio system with a 760-watt amplifier. There's a change up top, though, this trim giving up its three-pane sunroof for a dual-pane sunroof, as well as shedding the side sunshades.

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.