Most obscure Chryslers ever sold

This is partly a matter of time (the company was founded nearly a century ago, in 1928), but it’s also due to Chrysler’s global reach and the number of brands it has owned. For example, a Chrysler model well known to Europeans might be almost unheard of in the US or Australia.

Here’s an alphabetical list of possibly unfamiliar vehicles sold around the world by Chrysler and its brands – a group known informally of course as Mopar:

180 is the overall term for a family of large saloons whose model names could also be 160 or 2-Litre, depending on engine size. They were co-developed by France’s Simca and the British Rootes Group, both of which became part of the short-lived Chrysler Europe when it was founded in 1967.

The 180 was not particularly successful, but it outlasted Chrysler Europe, which was taken over by Groupe PSA (consisting at the time of Peugeot and Citroen, the former having acquired the latter a few years earlier). From then on, the cars were known either as Talbots or as Talbot-Simcas.

The Chrysler Airflow is famous for being one of the first truly aerodynamic production cars, and for selling very badly because people thought it looked weird. Realising that it had gone too far, Chrysler introduced the Airstream, which was basically a 1920s Six with a less alarmingly streamlined body.

Although it was available only in 1935 and 1936, the Airstream was far more successful than the Airflow (partly, perhaps, because it was cheaper). But it was less historically important, so the Airflow is the one people know more about today.

This name – surely one of the strangest to be found in the history of the car business until perhaps the arrival of Ferrari LaFerrari – was applied to a version of the Australian Chrysler Valiant. Available as a four-door saloon (or, briefly, as a two-door hardtop), it was longer than the regular Valiant and had a significantly higher level of equipment.

It made its debut in 1971 and was abandoned five years later, during which time the fourth-generation Valiant was updated twice.

The Centura was the Australian version of the Chrysler 180, available either with Simca’s 2.0-litre four-cylinder or Chrysler’s much more powerful straight-six Hemi. The Hemi was the longer and heavier of the two, so mounting it further back would have been a good idea, but expensive. Mounting it in the same place, as Chrysler did, was a bad idea, but cheaper.

While the Hemi-powered car was quick, its weight distribution caused significant handling problems. In 1978, when Chrysler Europe disappeared and the now Talbot-branded 180 became the responsibility of Peugeot, Chrysler Australia was obliged to abandon production, which probably wasn’t such a bad thing.

The Cirrus was a four-door saloon produced from the 1995 to 2000 model years. Its most serious rival was the Dodge Stratus, which was a slightly cheaper version of the same car. There was no question about which was the more popular – annual Stratus production usually exceeded 100,000, a figure the Cirrus didn’t even approach in any year.

The Stratus went into a second generation, while the Cirrus name was dropped and replaced by Sebring, making Cirrus one of the shortest-lived Chrysler nameplates of modern times.

Chrysler Australia produced two Drifter models based on its Valiant – a panel van (pictured) and a pickup, known locally as a ‘ute’. A Drifter Pack was also offered as an option on the last version of the high-performance Valiant Charger coupe.

If you haven’t heard the name in this context, that might partly be because it was used only very briefly. The van and the ute entered production in 1977, while the Drifter Pack was introduced the following year. By the end of 1978, the Valiant had been mildly updated, and as part of that process everything called Drifter was removed from the range.

The E-Class was the least successful of the models based on the front-wheel drive E-body platform of the 1980s. Closely related to the New Yorker and the Dodge 600, it was marketed as an inexpensive luxury car. Chrysler buyers were not enthusiastic, and usually opted for the more expensive, higher-spec New Yorker instead.

US sales were so disappointing that the E-Class was abandoned after 1984 (only its second model year) and reworked as the Plymouth Caravelle, which is what it had been in Canada right from the start.

From the unlikely material of the second-generation LeBaron, Chrysler devised the Executive, available as a long-wheelbase saloon or an even longer, seven-seat limousine (pictured). In each case the fabrication was done by the American Sunroof Company, whose ability clearly extended well beyond making sunroofs.

A 2.6-litre engine supplied by Mitsubishi and Chrysler’s own 2.2-litre turbo, both with four cylinders, were the only options. Neither was particularly powerful, though high performance wasn’t really the point of the car. Clearly a niche model, it was in full-scale production only from 1984 to 1986, during which period fewer than 1500 examples were built.

The Phaeton was the first of many Chryslers to bear the Newport name. It’s not well known now, partly because only six were built, but it was famous in its day on account of one of them (pictured) having been used as the pace car for the 1941 Indianapolis 500.

Futuristic bodywork concealed a Chrysler Imperial Crown chassis and a 5.3-litre straight-eight engine. Owners included film star Lana Turner. If Chrysler had any plans to build more examples than it did, they were scuppered by the US entry into the Second World War.

The Australian Chrysler Royal, unrelated to earlier American cars of the same name, was a large saloon produced from 1957 to 1964. Versions with other body styles had different names – Wayfarer for the pickup and Plainsman for the estate.

The Plainsman was the rarest of the three by a long way. Only 224 are believed to have been made, 192 with a straight-six engine from 1957 to 1959 and 32 with a V8 in 1958. These figures do not include Plainsmans built as commercial vehicles or hearses.

From our Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time files we select the TC by Maserati, which mostly used Chrysler components but had a two-door convertible body designed in Italy, where the car was assembled before being shipped across the Atlantic.

It has its defenders today, but during its brief production life from 1989 to 1991 its price was regarded as being much higher than the car seemed to be worth, yet not nearly high enough to recoup the cost of the project, which has been quoted at $600 million.

Chrysler Australia first used the VIP name on the Valiant and 1967, and then made it a luxurious, long-wheelbase model in its own right in 1969.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because the same principle was used to create the previously mentioned Chrysler by Chrysler. That car had a short life, but the VIP’s was even briefer. It was available only in 1969 and, after a facelift, 1970.

The Wimbledon, a large saloon with a 3.3-litre straight-six engine, was assembled in Chrysler’s factory in Kew from a kit created in another plant in Canada. It was actually a Plymouth, but to UK buyers that name meant a city in Devon rather than a car, so the brand was changed to Chrysler, and cosily familiar Wimbledon was used for the model name.

A similar policy resulted in cars such as the similarly forgotten Chrysler Kew and DeSoto Richmond. We’ve picked the Wimbledon for no better reason than that Keith Moon, the late drummer of The Who, once owned one.

Chrysler’s DeSoto brand is not at all well known outside North America, and, since it was discontinued in 1961, not particularly there either. One of its last hurrahs was the glamorous, luxurious and very powerful Adventurer.

Delightful as this car sounds at first, there were quality problems, and DeSoto in general was badly affected, as the whole of the US motor industry was, by a recession which saw it plummet from success to oblivion. The Adventurer, once its figurehead, lasted only from 1956 to 1960.

If you’ve ever read anything about streamlined cars of the 1930s, you have almost certainly come across a reference to the radical Chrysler Airflow. It’s slightly less likely that you’ve heard of the DeSoto Airflow, but such a car certainly existed.

Of the five types of Airflow, the DeSoto had the shortest wheelbase and was produced in the largest numbers. Despite its relative success, the fact that it was DeSoto’s only model for 1934 was problematic, so it was quickly joined by the brand’s version of the Chrysler Airstream, a car already mentioned here. Production ended in 1936, one year before the last Chrysler Airflow left the factory.

On its introduction in 1957, the Firesweep was the cheapest DeSoto you could buy new. In addition to that tempting fact, it had room for six passengers and was available in just about every body style that could be imagined. Needless to say, it was popular in its debut year, which presented a problem – the best-selling DeSoto was also the least profitable.

This quickly stopped mattering as DeSoto entered its death throes. The Firesweep, which probably wouldn’t initially have been thought of as a car with a short production life, was discontinued after 1959, within two years of the brand’s demise.

The new entry-level DeSoto for the 1953 model year was named after its engine – a 4.1-litre Chrysler straight-six flathead which DeSoto marketed as the Powermaster. The car’s life was remarkably short, not because there was a serious problem with it but because of a change in strategy. 

For 1955, DeSoto stopped using the six and instead offered only the Hemi V8 engine, known by the brand as the Firedome. Since there was no point in selling a car with the name of an engine that was no longer available, the Powermaster was discontinued after just two model years.

A basic description of the Suburban makes it seem, from a 21st century perspective, like a very large SUV, but in fact it was a sedan. There was enough space for nine occupants and a reasonably amount of luggage, or, if you folded down the second and third rows of seats, you could almost move house with the thing and still carry three adults.

Part of DeSoto’s S-10 series, but with a longer wheelbase than the other versions, the Suburban provided enormous practicality from its introduction in 1946 until its demise eight years later.

In the complicated history of Chrysler’s K-body cars of the 1980s, the 400 was a relatively luxurious derivative of the Dodge Aries/Plymouth Reliant (the same car with different badges) and roughly equivalent to the Chrysler LeBaron. The 400 was the least successful of them all, and at least one authority has suggested that this was because luxury car buyers didn’t want a Dodge and Dodge buyers didn’t want a luxury car.

The 400 was produced only in the 1982 and 1983 model years. The saloon was abandoned in favour of the similar, but longer-wheelbase, 600, which survived until 1988. Coupe and convertible versions remained as before, but now carried 600 badging.

If you’re wondering why a car as famous as the Dart is on a list of obscure models, you’re probably thinking of one or more of the generations produced in the 1960s and 1970s. We’re not talking about those, but about the far more recent, yet at the same time more forgettable, compact sedan launched in 2012.

Although it wasn’t outstanding in any one area, the Dart was regarded as okay in most of them. The problem was that people didn’t buy it, or at least not in the numbers that its maker had expected – despite an award-winning Superbowl TV ad starring Eminem. After it was discontinued in 2016, the ever-loquacious company boss Sergio Marcchione (1952-2018) admitted that the Dart and its Chrysler 200 twin were “the least financially rewarding enterprises that we’ve carried out” in the past eight years. “I don’t know one investment that was as bad as these two were.”

Every so often, a manufacturer will create a model intended to be particularly interesting to women. Galloway, whose manager and most of whose employees were female, got this right in the 1920s by producing a car with more practicality and convenience than manly chaps thought necessary at the time. Other attempts have been less successful.

The La Femme was in the latter category. Dodge created it by taking the Custom Royal Lancer, painting it pink and white, throwing in accessories intended to delight the ladies (such as a lipstick case, a purse and a rain hat) and marketing it as being ‘by special appointment to Her Majesty . . . the American Woman’. Her Majesty was not impressed. Introduced in 1955, the car was so unsuccessful that Dodge abandoned it after 1956.

The Matador was one of two full-size Dodges introduced in the 1960 model year, almost identical to the Polara but with slightly less equipment and a less powerful engine, though the Polara’s more muscular V8 was available as an option.

As things turned out, this was a bad time for an American manufacturer to be producing such a large car. Most people who bought a Dodge bought the smaller Dart, though the remainder tended to choose the Matador. However, while the Polara nameplate remained in use for over a decade (and would return for the Brazilian version of the European Hillman Avenger), Matador was axed almost immediately and has not featured since in any of the Chrysler brands.

Meadowbrook does not at first seem to sit easily among other Dodge nameplates, but there’s a good reason for it. It’s derived from the Meadow Brook farm estate near Rochester, Michigan (now the site of Meadow Brook Hall) which company co-founder John Francis Dodge (1864-1920) and his wife Matilda (1883-1967) purchased in 1908.

The car was a full-size sedan, and sometimes station wagon, produced from 1949 to 1954. Almost identical to, but cheaper than, the contemporary Coronet, it was sometimes used as a taxicab, and appears as such in the original 1951 version of the science fiction movie The Day the Earth Stood Still.

The Mirada shared its J-body platform with the almost identical Chrysler Cordoba and the last-generation Imperial. If you’ve heard of the latter two but not the Dodge, that’s partly because it was the only one with a new nameplate, and partly because only 52,947 examples of this personal luxury coupe were built in four years.

This was far higher than the Imperial figure but not much more than half that of the Cordoba. None of them was considered a success, and they were all discontinued after the 1983 model year.

European readers might have trouble believing that this car had anything to do with the Chrysler Horizon, but in fact it did. The regular Omni, also sold in North America as the Plymouth Horizon, looked almost exactly the same as the car marketed on the other side of the Atlantic, but the 024 was the coupe version, often available (confusingly enough) with a 1.7-litre Volkswagen engine.

Sales were not strong, and in 1983, four years after its introduction, the car was rebadged Dodge Charger – a strange decision, given what most other Chargers have been like. A similar process led to the companion Plymouth Horizon TC3 becoming the Plymouth Turismo.

While the word ‘rampage’ suggests something fierce and unbridled, the Dodge of that name was actually a car-based pickup (the equivalent of a South African bakkie or an Australian ute) closely related to the Omni hatchback. While the Omni, and its Plymouth Horizon relation, were popular for over a decade, the Rampage found very few buyers. Having launched the vehicle in 1982, Dodge dropped it just two years later.

The Rampage had a corporate cousin in the form of the Plymouth Scamp. This was available only in 1983, and didn’t do much except steal sales from the Rampage.

The St Regis was part of an unfortunate series of cars based on Chrysler’s R platform. It was the largest Dodge of its time, which was bad news because it was introduced right at the start of the second oil crisis to hit the world in the space of six years. Sales were dismally low, and production, which had begun in 1979, came to an end in 1981.

Much the same applied to the other models in the series, namely the Chrysler Newport, Chrysler New Yorker and Plymouth Gran Fury. Today, the Dodge is the most obscure of them all, because although the other nameplates were also used for more successful Chryslers and Plymouths of different eras, there was only ever one St Regis.

The Trazo achieved a startling level of obscurity which would be difficult to replicate even if anyone wanted to do that. It was simply a Nissan Tiida with Dodge badges, intended for sale in Latin America where it would face opposition from, among other vehicles, the actual Nissan Tiida.

It was launched in production-ready form at the São Paulo Motor Show in late October 2008, but within four months, before anyone had a chance to buy one, it was cancelled. Speculated causes include an unfavourable exchange rate between the US dollar and the yen, and Chrysler’s transfer from a relationship with Daimler to a new one with Fiat.

The Wayfarer was the cheapest of the three Dodges introduced in 1949, occupying a lower place in the market than its mechanically similar equivalents, the famous Coronet and the much less well-remembered Meadowbrook mentioned earlier. All three were available with several body styles – in this case saloon, coupe and roadster – but unlike the others the Wayfarer was only ever offered with two doors.

Perhaps because its level of standard equipment was low, the Wayfarer was the least successful of the trio, and was abandoned after the 1952 model year. The name reappeared later in the decade in Australia, where it was used for a pickup version of the Chrysler Royal.

Most of the really obscure Jeeps (such as the very rare CJ-10 built for export markets) went into and out of production before Chrysler took over the brand. The Comanche of the 1986 to 1992 model years began life during the American Motors Corporation era, but was built mostly under Chrysler ownership.

This pickup version of the second-generation Cherokee was extremely unusual in having unibody construction, rare among non-car-based pickups even today. It was available with a choice of load lengths, rear- or all-wheel drive and several engines. A modified version set several speed records for trucks on the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1985, including 141mph over a flying mile.

The Bagheera was the first fruit of a collaboration between Simca and Matra, both of which  were part of Chrysler Europe. Most of the mechanicals, including the 1.3-litre (and later 1.4-litre) engine, came from the Simca 1100, but the engine was mounted in the middle, and the car had a single row of three seats.

Nearly 48,000 examples of this attractive little sports car were manufactured from 1973 to 1980. Relatively few survive today, due to inadequate rustproofing.

Nearly 40 years after the last example came off the production line, the Rancho still seems like a very odd vehicle in Europe, and must appear almost unbelievable in other parts of the world. Closely related, as the earlier Bagheera was, to the Simca 1100 (which it also resembled at the front), it had a high-level rear roof, which provided an enormous amount of vertical space for luggage and an airy cabin for back-seat passengers.

Drive went only to the front wheels, so the Rancho wasn’t as much of an off-roader as it looked, but it was still reasonably capable on rough ground. For most of its life it was badged as a Talbot, following Chrysler Europe’s takeover by Peugeot, but from its development until the change of ownership in 1978 it was definitely a Chrysler vehicle. It deserves to be better remembered perhaps, as a very early example of a crossover.

The Cambridge was never sold in the UK, which is perhaps just as well, since the fact that it appeared to have been named after two British towns might have caused confusion. It was launched in the 1951 model year as a lower-priced version of the Cranbrook, and became the cheapest available Plymouth in 1953.

That was the final year of its short life. It was replaced in 1954 by a new entry-level model called the Plaza.

Even more obscure than the Cambridge, the Concord started out as the least expensive of the three Plymouths introduced in 1951. Plymouth buyers seem to have wanted more equipment than it provided, and to be prepared to pay for it, since the Concord was discontinued after just two model years, making it the rarest of the series. There was therefore no shortened 1953 version of the Concord, as there were for the Cambridge and Cranbrook.

The name was used again (though with an extra letter) for two generations of the Chrysler Concorde, manufactured from 1993 to 2004. These are by no means the most famous of all Chryslers, but neither are they at all obscure.

The Hillman (later Chrysler, later still Talbot) Avenger was a medium-sized rear-wheel drive saloon regarded, in the UK of the 1970s, as an acceptable alternative to the Ford Escort and the Vauxhall Viva. Its reception in North America was very different.

To give it a more local flavour, it was mildly redesigned, and renamed Plymouth Cricket. Americans were not impressed, and decided en masse to buy something else instead. Production lasted only from 1971 to 1973, compared with 1970 to 1981 back home. In Canada, the name was then used for a rebadged Dodge Colt (itself a rebadged Mitsubishi), as if to take away the taste of the Avenger derivative.

The Duster was the coupe derivative of the Plymouth Valiant, and the 340 was the muscle car of the range. Named after the displacement of its 340ci (5.6-litre) Chrysler LA Series smallblock V8 engine, it was priced at just $2547, or just under $19,000 in 2023 money. (For reference, the cheapest Chrysler on sale in the US today costs $34,295, not including delivery.)

Understandably, the 340 was very popular in its first year, but sales fell rapidly, So, in due course, did power outputs, thanks to increasing demand for high economy and low exhaust emissions. Introduced in 1970, the 340 was replaced after the 1973 model year (when production was little over half of what it had once been) by the 360, which had a larger engine but hardly any more power, and sold in far smaller numbers.

‘The first Plymouth of the ‘90s’, as it was called in the brochure, was a two-door coupe available, if you were prepared to pay for them, with a turbocharged engine and/or four-wheel drive. It was one of three very similar cars produced by the Chrysler/Mitsubishi joint venture, the others being the Eagle Talon and the Mitsubishi Eclipse.

Despite a promising start in the 1990 model year, sales soon became disappointing, possibly because the car didn’t fit easily into the Plymouth range. Unlike the Talon or the Eclipse, it didn’t survive beyond the first generation, instead being cancelled during 1994.

The three models of the Plymouth P25 series introduced in 1954 were closely related, but had different names to identify their positions in the market. At the top was the Belvedere, in the middle was the Savoy, and at the bottom was the Plaza, which replaced the Cambridge as the entry-level car.

Its entry-levelness may in fact have been excessive. Less popular than the others, it was discontinued in 1958, though not before undergoing (as the others did) a dramatic change in styling. There were to be more Belvederes and Savoys as the years wore on, but no more Plazas.

The 1938 Plymouth was available in two forms, the more expensive known as Deluxe and the cheaper, initially, as Business. Times were hard back then, and the latter was sought after by people wanting to pay as little as possible for a new car, but according to one authoritative source they objected in large numbers to the name. Plymouth responded by calling it Roadking instead.

The new name was short-lived. In 1941, Plymouth changed its policy, calling the lower-priced model Deluxe and its fancier counterpart Super Deluxe. For the next 60 years, until the brand was discontinued, there was never another Plymouth Roadking.

The boxy Simca 1000 saloon and its beautiful derivative, the Bertone-designed 1000 Coupe, made their debuts in 1961 and 1962 respectively, when Chrysler was a minority shareholder in the French company. The Coupe was later updated with a restyle (again by Bertone), which made it even more beautiful, and an engine capacity increase from 1.0 to 1.2 litres.

This happened in 1967, by which time Chrysler had taken a controlling interest in the brand. This delightful little car, not well known outside Europe and now largely forgotten even there, can therefore be described as a relatively obscure model produced entirely under the ownership of the company which also gave us the much more famous 300, New Yorker and Voyager.