Junkyard Find: 1993 Dodge Dynasty
The TV show Dynasty was long gone by 1993, but Chrysler kept the glamorous Dynasty name on their C-Body cars (the 114th variation of the K platform) until 1993. The Dynasty is one of those cars Chrysler wishes we’d all forget (right down there with the Diplomat-based LeBaron), and thus it seems historically significant when I find an example in the junkyard.
Say what you will about the misery of a very-long-in-tooth platform being used as the basis for a luxury car that caused the Europeans— or even GM— exactly zero lost sleep, but you must admit that this is one seriously pimp-grade red velour interior. I’m tempted to go get these seats for my A100!
You’d have to be a pretty low-budget pimp to feel at all fly in a Dynasty, once you looked at the exterior. Perhaps a pimp working the Oildale, California, Greyhound station in 1996 might have felt a tiny glimmer of car pride while stepping out of his Dynasty… no, he’d have traded it in on the Dodge C-Body’s much better-looking replacement: the Intrepid.
The Chrysler-made 3.3 V6 made a pretty-good-for-a-K 149 horses, and it also benefited from not being a Mitsubishi product.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I once rented an '89 Dodge Dynasty LE. Possibly the worst-handling car I have ever driven. I always wondered if "LE" stood for "Linda Evans".
My parents bought a Dynasty in 88 brand new. It was the same grey color, with dark grey on the inside. I don't remember there being as much wood trim though. I used to want to sit in back on the left, and peer up to the drivers side to watch the little lines pop up when one of the doors was opened. I always thought that was so cool. I also remember getting in quite a bit of trouble a couple of years later, as I sat up front waiting for my mom to run something inside over at the babysitters house. I grew impatient, and decided to stick my two front teeth through the top of the vinyl door panel. Left two little punctures there, which took a while to notice. They had the car for about 6 years, and about 88k miles it started burning oil horribly, and having an issue where it would just die at random times (intersection, highway on-ramp, etc). They dumped it in 94 for a Plymouth Grand Voyager in ice blue. Aside from that, my grandfather had a New Yorker (91 I think) in the same grey color, with a dark grey landau top on the back. I loved all the buttons in that car (all chrome surrounded IIRC). It had a terrible oil leak which he didn't want to bother fixing, so he got rid of it quickly. Even back then, I liked the longer, larger New Yorker better than the smaller Dynasty counterpart.