Chrysler always had massive amounts of special models. Even now. I had a 1976 Dodge Dart Spirit of 76 Dart Lite once. It was two special packages in a bundle. Had a Dodge Omni 024 Miser. And now many different 2019 Dodge Chargers can you buy now? Mopars had gauges too. Always.
My uncle had a 1978 in orange, fully optioned and looked exactly like the catalog car. In 1983 I recall going with him to a junkyard to get a front bumper skin and there were 20-30 of them lined up. By 1986, you would go weeks without seeing one.
Notice the speedo/odo at 2:15. From 1978 to 1987 the US government mandated that new car speedometers read no higher than 85mph, with the 55mph speed limit highlighted. Before about 1985, American odometers had 5 digits, while German & Japanese cars had 6 digit odometers at least since 1980. Detroit didn't want Americans to keep their cars too long and to trade them in sooner. In 1986, American cars began sporting the 6 digit odometers we have today. Notice also that they didn't mention how much (or little) horsepower the car had.
Wasn't that when St. Joan of Claybrook was heading the Dept. of Transportation, under Carter, and was trying to save us from ourselves? I'd be curious to know the history of that particular piece of gov't social engineering. European manufacturers had six-digit odometers because they were measuring km, I think. They just needed to re-calibrate for the American market. One reason the US went with six digits was that as cars started lasting longer, DMVs around the nation wanted the exact reading on paperwork, rather than having to check the box that said 'the true reading exceeds the mechanical capabilities'.
I had a 1979 Dodge Omni 024 with air conditioning and 4 speaker stereo. Had had the same engine as this Horizon 1.7 liters 4 cylinder VW engine that put out a whopping 65 horsepower with a top speed of 80 MPH at 4500 screaming RPM's. Any speed over 70 miles per hour and the engine was screaming.
Subaru still had 5 digit odometers at the end of the 1980's. And my Renault Encore had a 6 digit. I did put 134,000 relatively trouble free miles on it before I bagged 10 point buck one night. Yes, it was kind of neat burrying the speedometer needle at the stopper at 85 m.p.h. Ha ha, the 55 mark was in red numerals and circled in white! Some cars started showing speedometers up to 100 m.p.h. for the 1986 model year.
@@gtpcruiser02 the VW 1.7 will happily run 200,000+ miles like that. Seriously...the 1.6/1.7/1.8 2-valve VW engines are coarse as hell but incredibly tough.
I love the look of this thing. Wish they weren't nearly extinct now. Even if it is kind of a K-platform crapcan, that lovely styling deserves to be appreciated.
Brad Dietz turns out people would rather have 40 mpg with 150+ horsepower power options leather sound deadening and a decent sound system. can you imagine a modern 1.5L that gets 50mpg in a car like this?
DrewLSsix No, people want big pickups and suvs they have tons of bullshit in them and get the gas mileage of a 76 Chrysler New Yorker. We have stepped back in time to the 70s,and had the wool pulled over our eyes that we want these big behemoths. What the hell happened? Oh well I’ll keep driving my vw diesels they get over 40 average all the time. Mileage is so good , I don’t even bother tracking it.
@@MrTheHillfolk . Rare to hear an American say that . Here in Qc we like small car but we don’t have the interesting little model available elsewhere in the world because we share the American market who only want big shit pickup & Suv who brings us even further back in time , like the fifty's when cars were high . So much energy lost by the engineer who insists on trying to pull the maximum mpg from front grill resembling pallissades .
Love the old car reviews. I remember being so thrilled on the weekends when this show would come on as a kid since they talked about cars - and unlike today you didn't have access to everything you ever wanted to know being instantly available. I'd go sit in the magazine section and read car mags when my mom grocery shopped, but outside of that, this was the only place you'd see and hear about cars (when I say kid I'm talking pre-teen so my friends didn't care about cars yet).
Rod Munch i did that too! good god that brings me back. loved the old mags... looking at the pics of the interiors and detailing my first cars to try and look as nice haha
Dude, same here! Then if you got a magazine you'd read it cover to cover what 200 times? You'd even read the page of staff members just to get the most out of it! Not like today where you look online get get your answer and be done with it. There's no appreciation today.
joe b Yeah I'd read it over and over, in fact I'd take it to school and sneak it into the laminating machine so I could preserve the covers. I still have boxes of them laying around, very interesting to read. I however much prefer today where I can find anything out about anything at anytime I want, it's awesome - but as a kid magazines were your lifeblood and if you found a show like Motorweek on, it was just amazing.
Non Collapsing steering column was the reason for it.The steering wheel had to be able to be able to collapse to absorb the brunt of an impact in a front collision
I had an '81 024 miser. Ordered it and waited 4 weeks for it to be built. Was in the dealership when Reagan was shot. Still have the window sticker from my first new car. $5,299 base price. Black with Sunroof, console, cargo carpet, clock, R defrost, cloth seats, dual mirrors and a $9 cig lighter. No radio. Only $237 dest charge. $6060 total. $118/mo for 4 years. I put louvers on the back and side windows[from JCPenney Catalogue, not Whitney]and a yellow/red/orange spear stripe down the sides. painted the steel wheels black and got trim rings and hand painted my own white tire letters. Put amber fog lights in the lower air dam. Looked WAY different that this stripper. I could sit inside those headlight buckets Slept in the hatch many times. Used to vapor-lock once a week in the summer. Went through numerous driver door handles, thankfully my Dad worked at Chrysler. Got broadsided by a 73 Caddy, no injuries. After 6 years, an old Delta 88 rear ended me and bent the whole back of the car down onto the wheels and totaled it. Got a 86 Shelby Charger next. It was my Omni '80's. Then came the Shadow Turbo '90's...
My friend had a '79 Horizon which putting it kindly, was a piece of junk. He would also go thru exterior door handles on a regular basis. I remember one time, the driver's door handle broke off and flew thru the air and landed on a cop car driving down the street. Of course we laughed hysterically and the cop wasn't too pleased lol.
Just a decade ago, I was driving a 325,000 mile '81 Horizon. It was an ungodly pile of scrap but it worked. The wiring harness caught fire, twice. The front exterior door handles didn't work. The emergency brake sorta worked. But the wheels, they stay bolted on just fine. Everything else fell apart around it. XD
Matthew VandenBerg I think your confused, the wiring harness didn't 'catch fire' that was the emergency heating feature. The door handles 'falling off' was the best anti theft feature available.
King of The Castle hardly. I had one 12 years after it was built and everything worked just fine. Not one issue until a full size van ran a stop sign and hit me hard enough to send me into a stone wall. It still ran fine but began to have issues afterwards. I then just beat the snot out of it until it died. Took quite a bit abuse beforehand. Junked it after the auto trans gave up, but no auto likes full throttle neutral drops for long.
When i was in jr high, a teacher had a honda prelude he constantly bragged about the "quality" of. It was a year or two old, and i pointed out the fact the rockers and quarter panels were becoming more and more religious by the day. He didn't believe me, and went out and stuck his finger through the rocker panel. 30 years ago, and i still remember the foul language!
Well. It’s hideous but I think it’s because of the wheels and tires. They just had crap 13 or 14 inch tires back then. I know because I grew up with those cars. I miss the simplicity.
Ah, the early 80's... Remember when 0-60 times became 0-50 mph times? And yes, cars did get 40-50 mpg because they weighed 1900-2300 lbs and tuned for low hp and high economy.
Take it from me. With the standard 2.2L engine, the Horizon-Omni was a hoot, even with an automatic. The ground clearance was so high I took mine off road. I could do my own oil changes without jacking up the car. I used to look forward to heavy snow days just to see how many inches of unplowed snow I could get through. My friends used to say things like, "this thing is a tank" because it could go almost anywhere but a lake. It started reliably all the way down to -20 F, despite being carbureted. Many things to love about this pre-Iacocca product.
I had an ‘84 Charger 2.2 5 speed. I remember it being a pretty quick car for the time. Good mid range and no need to rev, but it ran so rough at high RPM you didn’t want to rev it anyway.
My parents had one of these when I was a little kid. It took at least 20 seconds to get to 20 mph on a hill start. The kicker panels rusted through within 2 years -- in Colorado, not a notorious rust zone like the northeast. My dad sometimes claims he took a job at Ford just for the company car hookup because he hated the Horizon so much.
My first new car, an 81. It absolutely got that kind of mileage. Front seats had no recline feature and were uncomfortable. A surprise coming out of a 71 Corolla. The car handled snow like a champ tho, central Ohio winters ftw
My first new car was a 1980 Dodge Omni 024, metallic blue with a white pinstripe. Carb mount was plastic and kept leaking..finally recalled for metal one, also starting losing elcectrical power one night...made it home, opened hood to see the alternator had snapped off the mount and was still running but sparking like crazy... loved the car but engine and build quality left a lot to be desired. rarely see these cars around anymore. It pains me to say what i traded in for it: 1972 Chevelle Malbu.
Chrysler had built in rattles and squeaks and rust as they rolled off the assembly line. This is the achilles heel of Chrysler (now Stellantas) products since the late '50s. Their power trains are solid though!
I had the '85 Dodge Omni sedan --- same platform --- and it would spin out without touching the brakes, just throttle-lift oversteer on damp pavement. It was just plain SCARY!
They were slugs. You took your life in your hands trying to pull out of a parking lot. Plus,in the cold east coast it only took a couple of three years for the underbody to rust out from street salt..dangerously.
back in '82 the company my dad worked for bought a fleet of these for their salespeople to drive. Dad put over 150,000 in 4 years with no major problems. Not bad for a basic stripped down Chrysler Product.
Cars are much heavier today. A number of cars today get rated fuel economy north of 35mpg while being faster, safer, more reliable, and having more options.
I thought the low end acceleration for this gas sipping car was actually good, the quarter mile acceleration however was only fair since this car doesn't have much top end power.
82 was the last year for the 1.7.1983 and up used a 1.6 4 cyl from Peugeot as the base engine but most were being equipped with the 2.2.87' and newer all were 2.2's@David Malinovsky
In late 1976 I bought Ford's version of a super economy car, the Pinto MPG (Ford also sold a Mustang MPG). Apparently, the MPG models were regular cars but with an appearance package that consisted of special styled steel wheels with whitewall tires, bodyside tape stripes, with the " engineering " part limited to extra long rear axle ratios. I didn't buy my car for the fuel mileage but I bought it envisioning an eventual V8 swap. But even so, fuel mileage was dismal. I forget what the EPA numbers were, but that car got a consistent 22 MPG no matter what I did. And as bad as that was, the economy rear axle ratio made that car VERY slow to 60. In 1982 I had no idea this Miser model existed, but since I was living in Texas at the time, a lack of air conditioning would not have swung me to a Plymouth instead of the Pontiac 2000 I did buy in 1982.
I had a 1981 Dodge Omni 024 with the 2.2L 4 cyl, 4 speed manual. It was great, until it rained....idiot engineers forgot to cover the distributor cap from the water splash into the engine compartment. They fixed this by 1982. I only put 14000 miles on that 81 Omni 024....in a little over a year and replaced it with a 1985 Dodge Lancer, same 2.2L 4 cyl engine...but bigger ride. Watching/listening to these old reviews....really makes it like they told John Davis "just speak the lines"....and once he was freed from that...Motorweek took off. Been watching since 1981.
I just got one of these things a few months ago. I’m rebuilding the motor in it. I got the 1979 VW engine in mine and the car is MINT I’m so excited to be able to drive it
They didn't get a 5 speed until late 83, and then only with the optional 2.2. That yr, it was a double OD with terribly wide ratios. '84 on had close ratios with a tall OD 5th that actually gave better overall mileage and much better performance. After they retired the VW 1.7, it got a Peugeot 1.6, again with 4 speed only. Misers were true stripo cars, with limited options, no sound deadening, tiny tires and very few power assists. As a result, they weighed about 2,100lbs. They also folded up like tin cans in crash tests. You can google a '79 in a crash test against a Mustang and see for yourself...
I am quite addicted to watching these MW Retro Reviews! At first, one of them appeared in my related vids, but after I started watching, and continuously being surprised at how similar the UK and US market of the 1980s and 1990s was at the time when it came to some Japanese and Korean cars, I almost literally cannot stop. To the extent I've now moved onto the America-only ones, like this!
I had a car based on this car called a "Shelby Turbo Charger 2.2L" That was pretty fast and fun as hell. (just put up a short vid w/ pics of it on my chan)
hehe. Yeah it was 1991, I was just out of high school. I saw it at a little used car dealership on the way to work one day. All I knew is that I wanted it. Haha. Bought it for $3000 and it has 60k miles on it. It was an '86 in really nice condition. Was Silver with Blue stripe. I loved that car!! I was the coolest kid around for a while. :-)
Hey I just made a short vid with all the pics (4) I ever took of this car. Newest vid on my channel if you want to see my old Shelby. Told you it was in great condition! :-)
I know Dodge had a version......What about the GLH.....Forgotten hot , pocket rocket....Not the same as the muscle cars, but at least of fun for its size. GLH stands for....Goes Like Hell
The Dodge version of the TC3 was the Omni 024. In '83 they became the Turismo and the Charger (meanwhile dropping the 1.7l VW engine and adding the 1.6l Peugeot engine)
My first car was an 81 Omni 024- the Dodge version of this. It was funny because it had both the Dodge and Plymouth logos on it 024 & TC3. It had the VW/Audi/Peugot engine and A/C that didn't work. The fuel pump failed, the alternator failed, the ignition coil failed, the emergency brake broke. Needless to say, it was a heap of junk, but what do you expect for a first car?
I kinda like the styling of this car, but the front is a bit off. I think pop up headlight would had made this car better looking in the pre aerodynamic headlight era.
I remember this car from college. My girlfriend had one of those dark red ones, and we took it on the highway for a few hours. No cruise control, of course. My leg was in so much pain. I still get an ache in my right thigh when I see one.
I guess the Ford EXP was the answer to this car, or vice versa. Super advanced styling for it's time with that plastic front clip like the modern cars that were to follow even today. Both look beautiful and weird and rare today.
My older cousin had one of these in the 80's and I remember thinking that they looked cool. I was a stupid child. I'm also glad that we didn't die in an emergency braking situation.
Impressive gas mileage!! Back when you could buy a car for under $6k.. And don't hit me with the "Todays Dollar" stuff because $6k bought a lot more back in those days than whatever the equivilent dollar figure is today. Just compare prices vs inflation rates.
"$6k bought a lot more back in those days than whatever the equivilent dollar figure is today" uh... no it didn't - if that were the case then it wouldn't be an "equivalent" dollar figure, would it?
@@jeffb.6642 Check out the Materials and Workmanship and Service Levels that you used to get with that Equivalent then compared to now and you'll see that it is FAR from equivalent. That's why you would have to get Custom Work and pay Premium Prices to get the same stuff today.. My point still stands.
My aunt had an 80 TC3 with the 1.7 and 4 speed. It was a terrible car that she finally gave up on after just 3 yrs. The outside door handles broke off, the rear hatch leaked water profusely, and the rear tail lights leaked water into them causing the bulbs to break, blow fuses, and sockets to short out. She had ungodly trouble with the carburetor, as well as the mentioned shifter and linkage. I remember that the shifter easily had 2 inches of side to side motion while in gear, when she got rid of it. The steering wheel placement was terrible, as it was non adjustable and was large, while 1 sat down low and far back from it, making it feel as though 1 was driving an old truck. With about 65hp on tap, it was also dangerously slow and with 3 of us kids in the car, she had complained often that the only way to keep that thing at 60+ was to have her foot planted.
I was looking to UNLOAD my 1981 Bonneville Diesel and was being offered $5000 trade on a 1 year old $13K car. I came accross the Dodge Brothers on a SUB ZERO day. They looked over my car for trade on the 1983 Charger 2.2 Black with the GOLD package, for $8,700. They offered me $7,900 for a trade. I didn’t get right away how come so much more until I figured out they didn’t know my Bonnie was a diesel. Delivery day it snowed 14 inches but I made it to the dealer and parked far away in the lot. Handed them the keys after I signed the papers that said “Is your car a 8 cylinder?” I checked it off. I ran to my new car I had everything already swapped over including the plates. When I walked in my front door the phone was ringing and the manager of the DEALER on the phone YELLING at me “NO DEAL!!!” I simply said, “Everything is signed” “Well, we didn’t it was a DIESEL” I said “next time take a better look” Was he mad. but they unloaded my old Bonnie in 2 days to a school teacher who paid almost what I paid for the car so they were happy again. My little 2.2 Dodge I drove every week 4o miles round trip to work and from Worc. County to Portland Maine once a week to see my GF. I really enjoyed the peppy little car. I would of kept it if it had A/C. It was a 5 speed and black dash and wheel seats where like a bucket cordiroy material. I noticed how cheap the car was put together with very thin plastics over the Sail panel covering the Quarter Windows for the 2.2 CHarger. I know this was how they did it back then. I was 21 and loved trading cars yearly.
Ok...... Wait.....hold it now. The Horizon's ass end comes around under hard braking. This is a plus for when reverse gives out. It's built in fail safe.
