Based on the pictures in the ad, today’s Nice Price or No Dice LeBaron looks almost brand new, wears fake wood on its sides, and sports a wonderfully ’80s digital dash. A convertible top and a turbo engine offer even more to like, but will its price tag leave us wanting?
Something strange happened this last summer in my neck of the woods. The massive garden spiders, which during the relative cool of the night would spin macabre tree-spanning webs, seemingly found greener pastures. This year, I didn’t see a single one. They were conspicuous in their absence, as in past summers, I would invariably run face-first into one of those webs on an early weekend morning jog. This year? Not so much.
The 1997 Alfa Romeo Spider that came our way yesterday was also something one doesn’t see every day. A private import of a model never officially sold here, that handsome drop top came with a $15,000 asking price. Unfortunately for its seller, that proved about as popular as an impromptu arachnid encounter, as you all sent it scrambling in a 60% ‘No Dice’ loss.
Special K
Before we get into today’s laudably clean and wonderfully kitschy 1985 Chrysler LeBaron, we should discuss a bit of background on that name, LeBaron, because it sounds like some Austin Powers antagonist or strudel snack. In actuality, the name harkens back to the 1920s when Raymond Dietrich and Thomas Hibbard founded LeBaron Carrossiers Incorporated as a design house. Later, changing the name to simply LeBaron Inc., the company began building custom coachwork on chassis from high-end manufacturers like Rolls-Royce and Packard for wealthy buyers.
Briggs Manufacturing, based in Detroit, Michigan, bought the company in 1926 and operated it as a coach-building subsidiary. In 1953, Briggs was bought by Chrysler, giving that company the rights to the LeBaron name. For the 1955 model year, Chrysler introduced a new line of luxury models under the Imperial brand name, intended as direct competitors to Cadillac and Lincoln. The top model in the Imperial line used the LeBaron name. Chrysler would continue to use the LeBaron nameplate over the course of the next four decades, with it even outlasting the Imperial name.
Town and Country
One might not think of this LeBaron as a Cadillac competitor, but keep in mind that the Cimarron existed in the same timeframe, so it’s not such a stretch. This, of course, was during Chrysler’s K-Car kerfuffle, when 80% of everything the company produced was based on that FWD platform.
This is officially a LeBaron Town and Country owing to its faux woodgrain siding. That was a three-year-only model intended to harken back to Chrysler’s iconic woody convertibles of the 1940s. That’s part of the tarting up that Chrysler did to the car to further separate it from its lowly K-Car siblings, the Plymouth Reliant and Dodge Aries, thus allowing the company to make more bank on the model. In addition to the wood, this LeBaron sports leather seating surfaces, a fancy stereo with a joystick for the balance and fader controls, air conditioning, and a digital dashboard that features voice recordings for things like door ajar alerts.
According to the ad, that instrument cluster has been replaced, and while the odometer in that currently reads 5,629 miles, the car’s actual total is somewhere in the range of 54,000.
Not that you would know it from looking at the car. Based on the pictures, this LeBaron appears almost as-new. The black paint and woodgrain show no sign of fading, nor is there any chipping in the chrome on the factory alloys. Plus, who doesn’t like whitewalls? Hubba, hubba!
Almost perfect
It’s just as nice in the cabin, although there the illusion of time stopping is broken by a missing lever on the stereo’s graphic equalizer and some poorly-fitting trim around that replaced digital dash. Overall, it’s not anything to get your panties in a twist over. The upholstery appears to be in fine condition, except for some fading on the steering wheel center. On the outside, the Pentastar covering the trunk keyhole doesn’t seem to want to stay in place, but, again, that’s a minor issue.
This LeBaron’s got the goods under the hood, too. Power comes from Chrysler’s turbocharged 2.2-liter SOHC inline four, which in this model year was good for a claimed 146 horsepower and 168 pound-feet of torque. That’s paired with a three-speed Torqueflite automatic driving the front wheels. The rear end is held up by a beam axle on coils and doesn’t have much to do.
The dealer selling the car doesn’t give us much to go on relative to the car’s mechanical condition, but if it’s in the same ballpark as the looks, it should be A-OK. After all, there’s not much else besides the digital dash that could cause problems on these, and that has already been replaced.
How much?
This is a real dad-bod of a car, meaning that not everybody will dig it, but those who do will most probably like it a lot. That’s good because the selling dealer isn’t fooling around, having set a substantial $23,980 price tag for the transfer of its clean title.
It should be noted that, despite the storied history behind the LeBaron name, these cars were never intended to be collector’s items. That means that few are still around, and even fewer will be in as nice a condition as this one appears to be. Could that make it worth that $23,980 asking?
What do you say? Is this LeBaron “le good” deal? Or is that price way out of line, no matter how nice a time capsule this car is?
You decide!
Henderson, Nevada, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Don R. for the hookup!
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