1990 Chrysler New Yorker Salon

The K-car front wheel drive platform arguably helped a moribund Chrysler battle its way back into the black from near-bankruptcy in the early Eighties, after it had been pulled from the brink by a government loan.

Other than trucks, the legacy RWD sedans, and the L-body compacts (Omni/Horizon/Charger/Turismo), pretty much every vehicle made by Mopar in the Eighties and Nineties was on a variant of the K-car chassis. The K-car platform was to Chrysler what the ground-beef patty is to McDonalds; shuffle a few basic ingredients around it and you can come up with a pretty good-size menu.

Need a sporty coupe? Shorten the K-car for the Daytona. Need a minivan? Stretch the K-car for the Caravan*. Need a largish sedan to replace the Diplomat & Fifth Avenue? Hey, check out the stretched K-car in the picture above!

That's a 1990-1993 Chrysler New Yorker Salon in Black Cherry Metallic. The Salon was a sort of base model New Yorker introduced in 1990, that deleted the hidden headlamps and the half-vinyl roof off a New Yorker Landau, had a simpler taillight treatment, and used a bluff chrome grille similar to the cheaper Dodge Dynasty. The corner of the car you can't see in the photo is all stove in, but it's in otherwise nice shape, including all four fake wire wheel hubcaps.

Power would have been provided by Chrysler's port fuel injected 3.3L 150bhp pushrod V-6, and sent to the front wheels via a 4-speed A604 Ultradrive automatic transmission made right up the road at the plant in Kokomo, Indiana.

When Car and Driver hung their test instruments off a regular '89 New Yorker, it turned in a 10.8 zero-to-sixty time and made it through the quarter one tenth under the eighteen second mark. Not any kind of race car, but enough power to merge safely.

Base MSRP on a New Yorker Salon was $16,342, which was several thousand cheaper than the Landau and came to $39,500 in current dollars.

This photo was snapped with an iPhone 13 Pro Max in December of 2023.

*To head off the tidal wave of ackshyually emails, the minivans didn't technically use the K-car chassis. They had their own platform...that used K-car drivelines and suspension.