Any love for non-turbo K-cars?

A friend's aunt passed away this weekend. She was in her late 80's, never married, no kids, still lived in old family farmhouse with no indoor plumbing other than a sink. My friend is the nearest relative(and by nearest, it's still a 4-hour drive).

Anyway, she had an '88 Plymouth Reliant. 4-door, non-turbo, no fake wood sides, automatic. He said it doesn't look rusty, but it's lived outside so the paint is definitely weathered. His plan was to offer the title to a local junkyard if they'll come get it, but I wanted to see if these had any kind of cult following I'm unaware of first?

I know I'm probably alone on this, but this car is part of my trifecta of hate. K-car, tempo/topaz, and 1st gen taurus/sable. Yes those are my 3 most hated cars of all time.

Not alone Doc. My best friend in high school had a MINT Aries K and we used to have slow drags with that and an old Buick Century. It had a useless back seat, the front seat was only marginal (though cushy) and it was the slowest damn thing on the planet. That is all.

Grandparents had two. One carb'd and then later a 2.5 TBI. The carb'd one was a PITA to deal with the the computer controlled carb, so it was replaced with the TBI and it is still going to this day after being passed around the family and finally sold to a friend's niece who is a single mom and needed transpo to get to work.

Basically, I don't know that you could go wrong with one as long as you take care of it. Keep in mind most of the replacement parts on the market are cheap Chinese junk (which bought the pieces and plans to produce the 2.2/2.5 from Chrysler and stuck them in old Audi 5000's, yeah)

Granted I'm in the PNW where rust doesn't really happen, so you poor bastards in the rust belt should probably just move along since they're known for rusting.

In reply to turboswede:

It certainly hasn't had much use in snow/salt, but no one has looked underneath to see if it's in worse condition than the rust-free(appearing) body.

My mom bought my sister one new in '88 for her to take to college. Also a Reliant, but a 2 door with a fantastic padded vinyl roof. She had to sell her '77 Fiat Spider because my mom thought it would be too unreliable. The Plymouth made the Fiat look like a Honda. And that was when it was new. By the time it had 60k miles it was ready to be hauled away. I've never seen a bigger piece of crap in my entire life...except for the Renault Alliance my poor brother bought. But that's another story.

I find zero enduring qualities about a K car, in fact I still have nightmares. It was such an incredibly crappy car there simply isn't enough bad metaphors to start.

Sorry, I can usually find something good to say about most cars, but this one isn't one of them. We won't even talk about the dealer and the supposed 50k mile warranty.

i had a 90' plymouth sundance and it was pretty tough, drove it for about 10 minutes in town with zero coolant in it when the radiator petcock broke, just put a new one in and filled it with coolant and it kept going.

after many, many neutral drops (it was my first car) it ended up basically getting stuck in drive. in reverse it wouldnt move, in neutral it would drive like it was in drive, and in park it would lunge forward until the parking paw caught it.

overall it makes for a good cheap car, tough, cheap to fix, slow. if your looking for anything besides that then a k car isnt for you

Oh I'm definitely not interested in it!!!!

I just don't want him to give it away if it's worth more than scrap value.

Pics?

If it's solid underneath then it has some value. One of the Turbo 2.2 guys might pick it up to play with. If it was solid and local to me it would give me an excuse to toss one of the used 2.2 Turbo motors I have into something.

Not sure they make a lot of sense today, except for nostalgia, but an 84 Reliant saved my fiancee's life when she barrel-rolled it a couple of times off the 401 and landed on the top right corner of the windshield. Her only injury was a sratch on the back of her hand when she crawled out one of the windows. We bought another one.

I/my wife had an '84 Dodge version. While not a great car, it was not a bad car. Served it's purpose, getting my wife back and for the to work. She loved how well it performed in the snow. We/she bought it used, it was cheap because it had a manual transmission.

Seems like once a year we have this discussion regarding the K-car. I'm not sure anything else is that polarizing around here.

racerdave600 wrote: The Plymouth made the Fiat look like a Honda.

LOL!

psteav wrote: Seems like once a year we have this discussion regarding the K-car. I'm not sure anything else is that polarizing around here.

That's because you've got people who can't let go of their experiences when they were brand new (and the build quality was all over the place, so it is understood). However the ones that survive today were of the few that may have been built properly and/or legitimately collectable/loved.

I drove, built and rebuilt several of the K-based derivatives from the 90's to just a few years ago (when I stupidly decided that German cars of the 80's and 90's would be less frustrating. Hint: They aren't. Not by a long shot).

Much like people remember the last time Fiat was in the States and all the bad things that happened. Meanwhile my folks bought a brand new Strada in 1980. Dad took it off the lot and set TTOD at a hugely wet autocross, then Mom drove it well into the 90's without a hiccup other than a plugged cat that caused a HG failure which was covered under warranty.

I should have some pics later this week, and will probably make the trek down there with him sometime over winter - the question then would be whether to bother dragging my trailer 4-hours each way to haul it back.

I've had plugged cats before that never resulted in a head gasket failure.

I had one. It was a total babe magnet. ;-) It ran great, except when it rained... Which being Massachusetts, it did often.

In the rain it wouldn't start. I discovered that if I wiggled the front wire harness a few times, the car would start.

I drove it for 6 months and passed it along a single mom and taught her the wire harness wiggle trick.

Mine wasn't terrible. But I don't want another. The bench seat had its uses. Collectable? There are a lot of things I'd collect before k cars....like stamps, scars, diseases.

My memories are fond, but that was because I was a kid. My father had an '84 E Class for a company car. It was the one that talked..."Your door is ajar" "Please fasten your seatbelt", etc... I thought it was cool. I do remember it was a piece of crap, it was in the shop a lot (our loaner car was a Mercury Topaz...another piece of crap). One time the talking mechanism malfunctioned, it wouldn't shut up...my father had to disconnect the battery to make it stop. They kept company cars for 60-70k miles...this one was turned in before 50k. Looked just like this, hubcaps and all, except it was silver.

My Mom had an Aries woody wagon and the thing wouldn't go past 55 (even downhill). The speedo pegged at double nickel for some reason.

I almost had one for a winter beater when I was in college. My brother's constant pleas for his own car finally got answered when my Mom bought him the 1st piece of junk she could find which happened to be a dark blue Aries (circa 2000 or 2001 mind you!). The idea was once he got a job and saved up some money my parents would help him buy something better. At some point it started running terribly and sounded like it needed a new HG or head. My friend was going to college to be a mechanic at the time so we were going to fix it.

We started taking hoses off and when we pulled the main upper coolant hose there was dried crust inside it. Turns out my dumb@$$ brother completely ignored the fact that the temp gauge had broken and failed to tell us and there's no telling how long it had been overheated and not getting coolant to the head. We decided it was probably toast at that point and sent it to the junk yard. This was also the same kid who drove the next family beater for the summer and didn't tell me that it had started to have a trans slip until AFTER we sold my Mom's equally clapped out Blazer which was working fine. I wanted to punch him in the face for that.

I was genuinely sad about the K-car though. I had dreamed of painting flames on it and giving it a pimp fur dash. After my Mom owned one when I was younger I had regarded these things as an icon of 80's automotive infuriority.

LuxInterior wrote: Collectable?

When I say collectable, I'm speaking of the K-derivatives like the Daytona Shelby, Maserati TC, Shelby CSX, CSX-T, CSX-VNT and the Omni/Charger Shelby GLH-S, etc. Not the actual Reliant/Aries K-cars they were based off of. Though the US Government/Military did buy Reliant K's with Turbo power plants. Very sneaky other than the hood vent. These were different (mostly in the front end and the interior options) from the Lebaron Wagons that were available with Turbo's, etc.

http://www.polybushings.com/pages/k-carwagon.html

http://www.allpar.com/eek/k/k.html

My parent's last car was a 1986 Dodge 600. It was pretty slow, but otherwise there wasn't anything wrong with it. I don't recall they ever had any problems.

One thing I liked about my K car was that I could change the oil and filter without having to raise the car and get underneath.

Best thing about K-cars is how cheap and easy they are to keep running. Second best thing is how easy it is to bolt on better parts from higher/newer models. Unfortunately, that aspect is slipping away as more and more stuff gets recycled.

As for it being a stock, nearly 30 year old transportation device with 70 hp to the wheels and no performance capabilities to speak of? Well, if you plan to leave it stock you better have low expectations. If you DONT plan to leave it stock it may end up being the car that 'ruins' you on the stuff normal people think feels fast. The possible torque-to-weight ratio just by mixing stock stuff together and running it on pump gas is insane. Less so on actual horsepower, but still great if not insane. There are people on this forum who have run 12s@~108mph on a very stockish turbo setup in a 2600lb k-car or l-body. Great sleeper factor. How much is that worth to you? Might be worth nothing if you cant/wont ever acquire the necessary parts and bolt them together. If not, it's just a supremely boring 80s transportation device.