I do like the styling they put on, although regular use was horrid to all of it. I'd also drive it, if I could get my gut in behind the steering wheel.
These rusted on the dealer lots. To see one that looks this nice in New England, especially with the leak-prone t-tops, is amazing. I would FOR SURE bring a magnet when looking at this car, and take a real look at the front torsion-bar mounts, and floorpans in general. If it IS solid, that price is a good deal. The only real issue I'd have is lack of a/c, but for a weekend cruise-night car, just pop off the tops and enjoy.
I've owned one T-top car in my lifetime, an 83 Mustang GT. The lack of A/C never bothered me. Perhaps it was because I was young. I'd be happy to own this one. It's certainly unique and that's what I lean towards nowadays.
I know nothing about these. Has the front bumper been tucked? I'm used to seeing huge bumper fillers on late '70s cars. It's hard to tell in the pics, but it looks like the rear bumper has a decent size bumper filler in there. Sharp car!
Thought you car nuts might like a good old car story. Not mine for once. I sent that Aspen ad to my uncle, who bought the sister model, a 76 Volare wagon new, and was in the military and actually took that car to Germany in the late 70's. Long but interesting read. Enjoy! From my Uncle Lloyd: Hey Mike, I learned a lot about car repair with the 1976 Volare Station Wagon that we drove over there in Germany. That was in the middle of Chrysler's cheap shot at meeting emission requirements and their previously good running engines were suddenly low power and poor running. The worst, and down right dangerous characteristic, was when you pulled out into traffic from a stop sign. The car would surge away from the stop sign for about a half of a second, just enough to get you directly into oncoming traffic, then stall. After hesitating for 1 to 2 seconds, it would again rev up and be on it's way. Making the problem worse, the more you tried to accelerate, i.e.. the farther you initially pushed down on the accelerator, the worse and longer it would stall. I had a set of tune-up tools, left over from my Corvette racing in California, including timing light, dwell meter and vacuum gauge, and went to work on the Volare (bought it in Poplar Bluff, MO and shipped it to Germany with less than 1000 miles on it). Normally, you have vacuum distributor advance on a carburetor engine, which advances the timing as soon as the carb is off idle. The vacuum port hooked to the distributor has no vacuum at idle, but immediately has several inches of vacuum when the carb starts to open. This immediate advance in timing gives the engine an immediate power boost before the increase flow of air and gas through the carb can reach the cylinders. When I started watching the timing on the Volarie, I noticed that the timing actually retarded when you first opened the carb. I could not believe this at first so I hooked my vacuum gauge to the port on the carb where the distributor hose was attached and sure enough, there was actually vacuum at idle, which would immediately go to zero when the carb opened, but would then slowly recover over a 1-2 second period. So the factory configuration was to time the engine with vacuum present, which would then retard when you opened the throttle, which would not burn the fuel completely when the throttle first opened, but that reduced the initial surge of Nitrous Oxide gases on acceleration. And as a byproduct, the car would stall. Amazing and dangerous!! My solution was to try other, blocked off, ports on the carb and sure enough, I found one with no vacuum at idle, but immediately had a jump in vacuum when the carb butterflies were opened, and continued to increase in vacuum as the engine revved up. I'm sure this was the port used in the past before the pressures of emissions controls. So I rerouted my vacuum hose to the distributor and retimed the engine and all of a sudden I had a 318 that ran like a charm, with no hesitation. I made this same change for several other people who were afflicted with mid 70's Chrysler cars as this configuration was common on both their 6 and 8 cylinder engines. While I'm on a roll concerning the Volare, while in Germany, found that the car would not hold front end alignment in camber and caster. Turns out the upper A arms did not have the grooved surfaces that were common on front ends so no matter how tight you tightened the bolts on the camber/caster adjustment, after a few hundred miles, the front wheels would have negative camber and who knows where the caster would be. I could actually get factory warranty service on that car in Germany, but at the time there was no factory fix for this so the German mechanics, who laughed about the poorly built American cars, aligned the front end then tack welded it in place. It stayed this way until I returned to the states and the factory finally put out a recall. If you remember one of my other emails, this is the same car that would overheat when I got back to the US and started to pull my 20' boat, even after installation of an oil cooler and transmission cooler. About 2 years after we moved to GA, I was washing this car one evening and felt a lump behind the right front wheel down low on the fender. I thought it must be gum or something but got a flash light to look and found it was a big bubble under the paint. My Volare was rusting from the inside out!! This also turned out to be a recall item. The front fenders had pockets where dirt and moisture would collect but did not drain. So Chrysler put two new front fenders on the car. A few months later, I found similar bubbles under the paint behind the rear wheels. That's when I went down and ordered the deep blue Olds 98 Regency Sedan "mafia car". I think it was a 1982 but it looked like the one in your other email. Now THAT was a great car! That Volare was a real jewel. I believe there were 7 major recalls on that car while I owned it, and it was the last Chrysler product for my lifetime. Forgive the long message. LT
Yup, Chrysler's long downhill slide. And the part about the stall on acceleration, that's a nightmare, I've done the same on customer's cars. The really effed-up thing, is that Chrysler engines would carbon up so easily in the heat and EGR passages. I've cleaned more than a few 318s for that, and once the EGR begins flowing again, the NOx emissions drop like a rock, so my opinion was that the powertrain engineers knew about the carboning problem and put the distributor fix in as a fail-safe.
Manufacturers were busy adding on emmission control devices to old designs, instead of developing new engines to meet standards without the need for adding peripheral devices. I guess, if one of the Big 3 started doing just that, that 1 would be putting itself at a production cost disadvantage
The Big Three were doing all kinds of research...the problem was divided into: 1) the carburetor designs were owned by the car companies; any design changes would result in having to patent the changes, then watch as others paid to use those redesigns, removing control from the owning corporation, and 2) the one idea (EFI) was owned by two corporations (one foreign), and to use their designs was deemed too costly. However, cooler heads prevailed as the emission standards tightened up, and EFI became necessary, so they gave in and embraced it.
