Junkyard Find: 1990 Chrysler New Yorker Landau
My quest for junkyard Chrysler New Yorkers has become something of an obsession lately. We’ve seen this ’85, this ’89, this ’64, this ’92, and this ’82 in the series, and today I’ve bagged a K-platform (actually C-platform, but it’s a K at heart) ’90 New Yorker Landau in Colorado.
Yes, the hokey vinyl-covered landau roof survived into the 1990s in Detroit; as far as I can tell, the last year for a New Yorker with this option was 1993. That’s right, we haven’t even gone 20 years since Chrysler killed the vinyl landau roof!
The 1988-93 New Yorker was really just a pimped-out version of the not-quite-Superfly-grade Dodge Dynasty. When I launch my Spec Dynasty racing series and become wealthier than Big Bill France ever was, I will allow the Dynasty-sibling New Yorkers to race as well.
Does Chrysler still use these crystal Pentastar emblems on any door panels these days? I’m assuming that they bought 50 million of them back in 1988 and still have warehouses full of the things.
Much as we make fun of these cars, they turned out to be surprisingly comfortable on the road, and not any less reliable than most of their Detroit competition.
You’ll find one in every car, kid. You’ll see.
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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Rented Dynasty 20-odd ago. No offence - didn't like it, front end was twitchy & vague. Seemed like 90's cheap blue-rinse K-mart glitz. Thank gawd for plastic wood think of all the trees saved. Have an 84 Panasonic clock radio in fake wood. Still has yellow 2 year warranty label not peeled off. 28 later still waking me fine.
Fond memories. In the summer of '93 we were living in rural WNY, formerly residing in Buffalo. We had two family cars, an '86 Taurus LX Wagon purchased new and a '85 Subaru Gl-10 4wd purchased used in early '90. Moving quite a few miles from "civilization" and roughly a 100 mile round trip daily for dad's work really piled the miles on both and the Taurus, well it was a first year Taurus need I say more. Dad took on a hefty mortgage to get us a big renovated country home, so a brand new car of any decent caliber was not an additional expense he looked for. Nonetheless we needed something newer, with more life to give. After looking at tons of more Tauruses, Crown Vics, Caprices, we came across the '91 New Yorker. White with blue velour. 3.3, ultradrive. It was a program-company car with about 45,000 on it. Nice clean car. Very well equipped and roomy for our family of four. We never had any of the ultradrive issues and besides normal wear items and maintenance, it was trouble-free. Yeah it was a little boxy but it was super comfortable and I was far happier to be seen in the shiny, semi-luxurious New Yorker compared to the rusted blue Taurus Wagon or Subaru with its bellowing exhaust system. It gave us four trouble-free years of service and with well over 170,000 miles at trade in in '97 on a Wide-Track Grand Prix GT, my dad still got about two grand for it, which he was happy with since he never really put any big bucks into it. My friends and I enjoyed it many evenings, waiting 'til my folks were tucked in bed and pushing her out the driveway and down the road a bit before starting up to cruise around the Elmwood Strip or around the Chippewa Entertainment District. The Chrysler-Infinity stereo was pretty nice for the day and the AC would freeze you out. My Dad felt even more confident driving the New Yorker through the snowy country roads than the Subaru. The fuel economy was pretty good too. I was impressed enough with it that I looked to buy one my freshman year of college when my Sable began showing signs of typical Taurus-Sable cancer. Instead I went with an '88 LeBaron Premium Turbo Convertible. Not too far off though, being just another re-engineered K-car derivative. Viva la K.