Jon J Riccardo,Iacocca Predecessor

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Oops...sorry,his name was "JOHN",not "JON".I don't know where the "H" went...
 
Praise for the K car and Omni, I don't think so? The K car might have saved Chrysler but was one of sorriest vehicles ever made. Same for the Omni/Horizon. Chrysler Corp may have been known for its engineering in 1930s ,but by 1970s it was making *^#@. Sorriest vehicle I ever owned was a 66 Dodge Dart that I special ordered. Hamtramck pos.
 
Originally Posted By: HosteenJorje
The K car might have saved Chrysler but was one of sorriest vehicles ever made.

Agreed. The K car having saved Chrysler speaks volumes about the industry at the time. If that kind of a piece of garbage saved Chrysler, what might have actually resulted from them designing and building a real vehicle?
 
Originally Posted By: HosteenJorje
Praise for the K car and Omni, I don't think so? The K car might have saved Chrysler but was one of sorriest vehicles ever made. Same for the Omni/Horizon. Chrysler Corp may have been known for its engineering in 1930s ,but by 1970s it was making *^#@. Sorriest vehicle I ever owned was a 66 Dodge Dart that I special ordered. Hamtramck pos.


I owned a 1979 Plymouth Horizon which was without a doubt the worst piece of junk of a car I've ever owned. Chrysler never "designed" that vehicle, they rushed it into production by buying some Volkswagen Rabbits and tore them apart in an attempt to copy the design. The only halfway decent thing on that car was the engine and that was because they bought them from VW since they didn't have a suitable powerplant for the first few years.

Everything broke on that car. When the salesman was demonstrating the car's features to my parents at delivery he broke off one of the heater knobs trying to actuate it. It was downhill from there.
 
Originally Posted By: NHGUY

It was Riccardo who oversaw the emergence of Omni/Horizon,and approved the K car program to move Chrysler ahead of Ford.


And yet the best selling cars of the 80's were Ford's. Love it or hate them the Escort and Tempo dominated in the 80's, as did the Taurus in the later half of the decade. GM also did well with their vehicles.

The K-cars were abysmal. They may have saved Chrysler but in reality it should have been buried along all the other junk nameplates that didn't survive. Why we insist on propping it up is beyond me.
 
Fords and GMs will always sell well,just because of the names.Citation was a piece of doo doo but fooled hundreds of thousands into shelling out for one.Many K car buyers were former GM owners who dumped their X cars.And the early J cars were slugs that were overpriced.The 60hp Escort wasn't much better.The 84hp 2.2 Omnis were sports cars next to Cavalier and Escort.
 
Praise for the K car and Omni, I don't think so? The K car might have saved Chrysler but was one of sorriest vehicles ever made. Same for the Omni/Horizon. Chrysler Corp may have been known for its engineering in 1930s ,but by 1970s it was making *^#@. Sorriest vehicle I ever owned was a 66 Dodge Dart that I special ordered. Hamtramck pos.
 
The early K-cars suffered from the usual smog control added to carbureted engines, but once they added fuel injection they became pretty good cars.
 
Originally Posted By: NHGUY
Citation was a piece of doo doo but fooled hundreds of thousands into shelling out for one.Many K car buyers were former GM owners who dumped their X cars.


The very same could be said of the Omni/Horizon L platform and the K car platform. The only thing that sold the L cars and K cars was a very aggressive add campaign where Iacocca himself gave the American people his sales pitch of how they were a marvel of new technology and a new era at Chrysler. And pricing. They were cheap. IIRC, the Omni was cheaper than the Chevette, which in a stripped down version could be had for just under $4000. My recollection was a stripped Omni was about $3800. The VW engine helped too. Americans still remembered how reliable the old air cooled VW engines were in the Beetle models.

Some claim that these new cars saved Chrysler. They probably helped, but IIRC, it was about that time that Chrysler got a huge bailout from Uncle Sam.
 
Originally Posted By: kschachn
Originally Posted By: HosteenJorje
Praise for the K car and Omni, I don't think so? The K car might have saved Chrysler but was one of sorriest vehicles ever made. Same for the Omni/Horizon. Chrysler Corp may have been known for its engineering in 1930s ,but by 1970s it was making *^#@. Sorriest vehicle I ever owned was a 66 Dodge Dart that I special ordered. Hamtramck pos.


I owned a 1979 Plymouth Horizon which was without a doubt the worst piece of junk of a car I've ever owned. Chrysler never "designed" that vehicle, they rushed it into production by buying some Volkswagen Rabbits and tore them apart in an attempt to copy the design. The only halfway decent thing on that car was the engine and that was because they bought them from VW since they didn't have a suitable powerplant for the first few years.


No, that's wrong. The Omni was based off the Simca Horizon, designed by Chrysler.
 
Originally Posted By: crazyoildude
car was not so nice but the motors were pretty good


Yeah the 2.2/2.5 TBI with the 3 speed were decent. The 2.5 had some good low end torque, and the balance shafts smoothed things out. The 2.2 was rough and underpowered in everything but the L cars.

The '86+ K's and '88+ L's were pretty decent cars.
 
Originally Posted By: Papa Bear
All the manufacturers were building some bad cars in the '70s

A few roses and many thorns .....


And they were building some of the most legendary of all time. Big block corvettes, chevell SS ,hemi cuda, mach1.

I don't care that the new ones are faster. They're also more tame. There's something special about getting bent out of shape on G70 15s

Yea most BITOGers think they're pos vehicles because they won't go 300k mikes.
 
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