The American auto industry has been obsessed with beating the Europeans at the performance car game for a long while. You can see it with Cadillac’s modern performance cars and even with General Motors thinking you’d buy an Oldsmobile Eighty Eight with flashy wheels over a BMW. In the 1980s, Dodge also wanted to steer buyers away from European imports, specifically cars like the BMW 5-Series. Its weapon was the Shelby Lancer, a sports sedan based on the K-car platform and blessed by Carroll Shelby. The Lancer was hot but sold few copies before seemingly quickly fading away. Now, it’s time to remember it.
Several decades ago, European marques really left their marks on American buyers. Brands like Mercedes-Benz and BMW introduced American luxury buyers to a different kind of experience. In the past, automakers like Cadillac defined luxury with vehicles of ever-increasing length, a dazzling amount of chrome, and a ride so soft it was like you were riding on a cloud. The European imports went in a different direction, offering drivers svelte vehicles that traded girth and chrome for handling and a thrilling driving experience.
As these cars grew in popularity, America’s automakers didn’t want to lose potential sales and responded with their own interpretations of the same idea. Cars like the 1976 Cadillac Seville brought a revolutionary change. It was a flagship, but also the smallest car in Cadillac’s lineup at launch.
This was just one example of Detroit trying to run with Europe. Recently, I’ve written about the Chevrolet Cosworth Vega, a hopped-up economy car built in the hopes of keeping people out of Bavarian iron. Later, we’d see cars like the Oldsmobile LSS, the Oldsmobile Aurora, the Cadillac CTS, and so many more. Even cars like the Ford Focus have gone up to bat against the likes of the Volkswagen Golf GTI.
One brand I haven’t mentioned yet was Chrysler. In the 1980s, the brand lifted itself out of a slump with the help of Lee Iacocca and the K platform cars, but the giant didn’t want to stop there. Dodge was anointed as Chrysler’s performance brand the marque’s rides would be souped up with help from automotive legend Carroll Shelby. Numerous Dodge products would get the Shelby treatment from the Omni to the Dakota pickup truck. Then there was the humble Lancer, this sedan.
Like any good story involving Chrysler in the 1980s, this goes back to the wonderful foundation Chrysler used to produce a slew of different models for its brands: the legendary K platform.
Born From The Ks
In 1978, after serving the company for 32 years, Lee Iacocca was booted from Ford by Henry Ford II. This would turn out to be good news for Chrysler, which was in trouble, and brought in Iacocca to helm the floundering company. Chrysler had spent the 1960s courting the Europeans and rode through the 1970s by partnering up with Mitsubishi and importing cars over from Japan. This kept Chrysler afloat just long enough for it to fall into the dire straits from which Iacocca had to extract it.
Chrysler was sinking fast, and as The Henry Ford writes, Iacocca’s first mission was to stop the ship from floundering. That would come from securing a loan guarantee from the U.S. Congress. From there, Iacocca had to bail the water out of the ship. As the Bishop wrote last year, a major pain point and one reason why Chrysler was drowning was that the products struggled. At the time, Chrysler sold the Dodge Aspen and the Plymouth Volare, two cars that should have been cash cows, but by Iacocca’s own admission were unreliable misses.
The K platform wasn’t just Chrysler righting its previous wrongs, but a path to prosperity. Before the K platform, Chrysler built its vehicles using a handful of different platforms, each using their own set of bespoke parts. This meant that Chrysler was building completely different vehicles which often didn’t share many parts, which added complexity and cost to Chrysler’s production operations. Iacocca cited Chrysler’s massive parts inventory and complexity as reasons the company burned cash. The path forward was obvious: Chrysler needed a common platform.
This wasn’t unheard of in those days. European and Japanese automakers were already building cars off of common platforms, which allowed for savings through parts sharing. Chrysler’s K platform was designed from the ground up to be flexible and interchangeable, allowing Chrysler to make countless variations of vehicles without the complexities and costs it faced in the past. To say the K-car was a hit would be an understatement.
In 1984, the New York Times described the impact of the K-car:
The K cars, Plymouth Reliant and Dodge Aries, succeeded admirably. Not only did they almost single handedly save Chrysler from certain death, they also provided the company with a vehicle that could be stretched, smoothed, poked, chopped and trimmed to create almost a dozed different models with prices from $7,235 to $22,475.
”Chrysler’s been brilliant in marketing the K car in a situation where Chrysler could not have afforded to strike out,” said Michael A. Driggs, formerly staff director for the Government’s Chrysler Loan Guarantee Board and currently deputy assistant secretary of commerce for automotive industry affairs. ”They’ve been very successful in finding niches in the market, adapting the K car and bringing out new products.”
Since the front wheel drive Reliant and Aries debuted, Chrysler has sold almost 1.2 million K car models, nearly half the 2.6 million passenger cars the company has delivered overall in the three years.
The Ks were such a home run that Iacocca credited them as the reason why Chrysler was able to pay off its loans early. One of the variations of the K platform was the H body, which was nominally the K platform stretched out to create mid-size cars. Birthed on this variation was the 1985 Chrysler LeBaron GTS, a more upmarket performance-oriented take on the K-car LeBaron.
Whereas a regular LeBaron was a soft and perhaps a little sloppy ride with a 100-inch wheelbase, the LeBaron GTS was pitched as a sort of “affordable sports car” and stretched out on a 103-inch wheelbase.
Same Car, Different Name
The LeBaron GTS was morphed into the subject of today’s Holy Grail, the Lancer. The Dodge Lancer was really just a LeBaron GTS with a new face, but the marketing went in slightly different directions. Chrysler marketed the LeBaron GTS as a premium car bargain compared to something like an Audi 5000 while the folks of Dodge leaned hard on the performance qualities of the sedan. Marketing copy made such claims as “We Hid A Sports Car Inside” and told buyers to “forget everything you’ve previously believed about sedans.” The Lancer was said to be designed with a “new regard for the fun of the road” and that you’d have that fun without “never ending stops at the pump.”
Despite the marketing, the LeBaron GTS and the Lancer were mostly the same. Car and Driver noted that the biggest difference outside was the grille, and inside the only logo you’d find was of the corporate Pentastar logo. No mention Chrysler or Dodge anywhere. The only indicator that you’re driving a Lancer, aside from the grille, was a small badge on the trunk lid.
Suspension was handled by a semi-independent iso-strut design up front and a trailing arm beam axle setup bringing up the rear. Other components included thick front and rear sway bars plus fast-ratio power steering. The standard cars had a choice of a softer touring suspension or a more taut sport suspension with higher spring rates and the option to add jounce bumpers.
At launch, the hottest engine available to the Lancer and the LeBaron GTS was the 2.2-liter Turbo I four-cylinder, good for 146 HP and 168 lb-ft of torque. In Car and Driver‘s hands, a LeBaron GTS got to 60 mph in 8.3 seconds and the magazine found that the car was a mixed bag:
Conceptually, the Lancer/LeBaron GTS may be the most intriguing four-door built in America these days. In the flesh, some aspects of it are second to none. Other asÂpects are, well, second to some, maybe even third, but by no means out of the ballpark. It’s a car that, if it were a little more refined, could be the answer.
The famous David E. Davis, Jr. added his own bit:
Chrysler does it again! Yet another new car based on the same bits and pieces that the New Chrysler Corporation inherited from the Old Chrysler Corporation. But the LeBaron GTS promises much more than that. Seen rolling by on the highway, it looks almost as fresh and exciting as the Chrysler minivans did a couple of years ago. It is a neat looking car, no question, and it has a number of endearing practical virtues. But why does it have to be so noisy in the lower gears? Why are the front seats so skimpy and lacking in support, lateral or otherwise? Why did I have a backache every mile that I drove it? Why is the shift linkage so vague and rubbery? Why isn’t it as nice to drive or to sit in as an Omni GLH?
Chrysler has spent enormous amounts of time, talent, and treasure to produce a car that’s a great leap forward in concept but a retrograde step in exeÂcution. It’s clear that their hearts were in the right places on this one, but we all know that the road to hell is paved with . . .
The Grail
So, how do you make a car like this better? If you’re Chrysler, you ring up your old pal Carroll Shelby. Back in the 1980s, Dodge was centered as Chrysler’s performance brand even though, as I pointed out above, it was often just selling the same cars as the other brands, just with more spicy marketing.
As FCA’s Dodge Garage writes, there were essentially two types of Dodge Shelby specials. Some models would get some Shelby styling and tuning, but would otherwise be manufactured by Dodge. Other vehicles would get the Shelby treatment and be built in Shelby’s facilities in California. Some cars, like the Dodge Spirit, got Shelby parts but not Shelby labeling.
In this case, Shelby did some tuning to the 1987 Dodge Lancer ES, creating the Shelby Lancer.
The biggest change was perhaps under the hood. The team at Shelby took the Turbo I and converted it to Turbo II specifications adding a new top end and intercooler, which meant a 175 HP and 175 lb-ft of torque output just like a regular Turbo II. That engine was paired with either an A520 five-speed manual or a three-speed automatic. You really wanted the manual here as this was very much during the era when going with an auto choked-out speed.
The upgrades didn’t stop there. The Shelby Lancer got wider Goodyear Gatorback tires, Monroe Formula GP struts, and upgraded sway bars. Shelby also gave the Lancer four-wheel disc brakes, which was a pretty novel thing in an American sedan back then.
Also novel was some of the Shelby-specific additions like a Pioneer 120-watt CD player connected to 10 speakers. The Shelby Lancers came standard with the full complement of Lancer features, which included power locks, power mirrors, power driver seat, power windows, warning chimes replacing warning buzzers, a full console, bucket seats, a leather-wrapped wheel, and more. Of course, like other Shelby products, it has a body kit, wing, and wheels. Shelby’s official numbers claimed a 7.7-second sprint to 60 mph, though magazine tests show times both faster and slower.
The Shelby Lancer was built at the Shelby Automobiles facility in California before getting into Dodge’s hands for 1988 and 1989. Shelby’s marketing didn’t even beat around the bush. Shelby saw this car challenging the Mercedes-Benz 190 2.3, the Audi Turbo Quattro, and the BMW 535i. The coolest part is that, according to this MotorWeek review below, Shelby wasn’t just blowing smoke:
In reality, the Europeans had nothing to worry about. In 1987, the launch year of the Shelby Lancer, Shelby constructed 800 examples, of which half were automatics. It’s believed Chrysler built 487 more between 1988 and 1989. The Chrysler-built version, called the Lancer Shelby, also lost some content.
The Shelby graphics package was eliminated and Shelby-branded parts, like the shocks and wheels, were replaced with Chrysler equivalents. Even the Pioneer stereo was tossed for the in-house Infinity system. On the plus side, at least the Chrysler-built Dodge Lancer Shelby models had a real Turbo II.
It’s unclear why the Shelby Lancer was a dud. Sure, the $16,995 price tag ($48,188 today) was up to $20,000 cheaper (up to $56,708 today) than what Shelby thought was the European competition, but it was pricy for a car of its type in America. A regular Lancer ES was $11,246 ($31,887 today), so that was a decent chunk of cash to get a body kit, tighter handling, and 29 HP more.
Also, keep in mind that this was still an ’80s K-car-derived car, so we’re talking torque steer, front-wheel-drive, and turbo lag. It’s definitely ’80s-tastic.
Either way, not many of these were sold new and who knows how many have survived abuse and rust to make it into the modern day. Should you find one, it would seem that even clean examples are cheaper than $10,000. That’s how forgotten and seemingly unwanted these cars are.
But I think these are worth taking a look at again. If you’re into those weird Chrysler Ks, the Shelby Lancer sounds like a fun car that has spent the past decades largely ignored. It tried to beat the Europeans and didn’t really do the job, but that doesn’t really matter today. To some, this is the best kind of Holy Grail. It’s the best version of a sort of crappy car nobody cared about, and even these cars need some love.
I must be living right or something, as I’ve now had two of my former cars show up as Holy Grails / Fails: 76 Cosworth Vega and now my old 87 Shelby Lancer. Maybe three, I can’t remember if my 85 GLH Turbo was in there somewhere as well?
IIRC, the 87 Shelby Lancer got to be titled as a Shelby manufactured instead of a Dodge Automobile (as the 88 and 89s were) because Shelby did the EPA certification since the Turbo II hadn’t yet been certified by Dodge as a thing yet. The 88s and 89s also were decontented as noted, with the standard Lancer sport suspension and lacking the 87s custom rear discs (pads IIRC were over $100 a set in early 90s dollars!).
The Shlancer was a lot of fun, and I got it for a lot off MSRP from Brooks Robinson’s All-Star Dodge in Baltimore because it had been sitting on the lot so long. It was optioned out as noted with the 5-speedband trick Pioneer DEH CD stereo (had a rear seat controller!), and at the time was faster than pretty much everything else on the road that I encountered back then, especially after I inserted a bleed valve in the waste gate’s vacuum line.
The suspension was waaaay too stiff for the purported luxury level it was supposed to compete at, but boy did those gatorbacks stick like glue. With the 5-door hatchback versatility it did get us through our first child, before we went whole hog in on a Grand Caravan ES in all white. It just occurred to me that our first three new cars were (Santa Fe) blue (GLH Turbo), red, and white, I guess we were a pretty all-American family, LOL.
I must be living right or something, as I’ve now had two of my former cars show up as Holy Grails / Fails: 76 Cosworth Vega and now my old 87 Shelby Lancer. Maybe three, I can’t remember if my 85 GLH Turbo was in there somewhere as well?
The Shlancer was a lot of fun, and I got it for a lot off MSRP from Brooks Robinson’s All-Star Dodge in Baltimore because it had been sitting on the lot so long. It was optioned out as noted with the 5-speedband trick Pioneer DEH CD stereo (had a rear seat controller!), and at the time was faster than pretty much everything else on the road that I encountered back then, especially after I inserted a bleed valve in the waste gate’s vacuum line.
The suspension was waaaay too stiff for the purported luxury level it was supposed to compete at, but boy did those gatorbacks stick like glue. With the 5-door hatchback versatility it did get us through our first child, before we went whole hog in on a Grand Caravan ES in all white. It just occurred to me that our first three new cars were (Santa Fe) blue (GLH Turbo), red, and white, I guess we were a pretty all-American family, LOL.
I worked for Chrysler back when the Lancer and LeBaron GTS launched. I remember thinking “Damn, they nailed the styling part as well as the packaging.”
What the old Chrysler could do with the humble K platform was absolutely astounding.
Of course, I ordered up a white Lancer Shelby 5-speed for my field car as soon as I could. That thing was memorable amongst maybe 100 or so company cars over 30 some years because it was such a breath of fresh air for the time.
I’m thinking Tom Gale did the styling on this thing if I remember correctly?
White wheels, grey leather, and that funky Infinity sound system was kinda awesome. I realize the Turbo II doesn’t seem like much by today’s standards, but, it seemed to scoot pretty darn well hauling a lowish 3,000 lbs. or so curb weight.
The design has aged extremely well IMO. I get all the rightful criticism with mediocre NVH control and quality compared to the European sedans of the time, however, at that price point it was a heck of a nice ride.
The LeBaron was, imho, a very handsome car for that era. The Lancer, not so much. It’s all about the grille. I don’t really remember Lancers, but it’s wild to see some of the same grille design elements that persisted for quite a while on Dodge products dating back to then.
I drove a Dodge Aries station wagon as a company car for a few years in the mid-80s and it was actually pretty competent for what it was, when it was.
I mean, I can see why people didn’t buy too many of those… if you had the means to get into something sporty in 1988/1989, you could instead buy the newly released BMW E34 535i/5 which had over 200hp from a naturally-aspirated 3.5L straight 6 that had a smooth, flat torque curve. And it was RWD with a much nicer interior.
Sorry, but Lancer to me means Mitsubishi. I’m surprised they let Chrysler get away with that.
Dodge had Lancers going back to the ’50’s. Mitsubishi is the copycat here.
They were probably fine with sharing names. Raider is a good example, though it’s quite funny Dodge used that name for a rebadged Pajero then Mitsu used it for a rebadged Dakota.
I had a 1985 Shelby Charger back around 1990. Had aftermarket chip and way more power. About the only production cars on the road that could take me was the Vette. Anytime an IROC or Monte SS pulled alongside me, they would want to race and I would blow the doors off them with ease. The only 2 things I ever lost to in a race was an RX-7 with nitrous and a 25th anniversary TransAm with the Grand National engine in it.
But the torque steer on those K car chassis Shelby infused cars! I could scratch rubber going into 3rd gear. 1st and 2nd gear were just absolutely wild holding onto the steering wheel and trying to keep it straight while burying the throttle. And you don’t let up the throttle. If you did, boost immediately dropped out and any acceleration was over greeted by the car jerking to whatever last direction it was losing traction. I remember my dad had a Lancer ES and even with that little 4 banger in it, it would torque steer like mad due to the unequal length drive shafts going to each front wheel.
Manual shifting with massive torque steer. You kids got it too good today, LOL!
100% they have no idea how good they have it today LOL
All of the K-car Mopars hols a special place in my heart, but I’ve always wanted a Shelby Lancer since new.
I wanted a Shelby Charger as my first car (back in 1992), but parents wouldn’t let me have a Turbo so I ended up with a non-Turbo Plymouth Turismo. Even with the NA 2.2L and a 5spd manual, there was still a decent amount of torque steer.
The Charger/Turismo weren’t actually K-car based. These were the smaller L-body cars that preceded the K by a couple of years. They still had the same engines, but weren’t part of the k-car family.
Correct! But I do remember having to go to a junk yard to try and find the K frame for the front end of my Charger due to it cracking. Basically it was the shape of a K and went under the engine between the frame rails and the suspension tied into it. Semi important part that cracked and was falling apart. 30 years later, the letter K still has a special place in my heart, LOL.
(in my mind) “wow, what a cool 20 year old car!” (checks calendar) Oh no…
Back in the day, with 1980s eyes, this was one of the best looking 4-doors around. The LeBaron GTS was second only to the Audi 5000 in this regard.
But oh yeah, the rear hatch aperature revealed weaknesses in the K structure. Overall a great car design betrayed by Lido’s bean counters.
Later, Dodge went next-level torque steer with the Spirit R/T. You could recognize their drivers by their tremendous shoulder muscles and brown stained pants.
Legend has it that a few of the knowing took these engines and stuffed them into Omni shells.
I had one of these! My grandfather bought one new in ’87 that I bought from him in 2001. It was 5-speed, so cloth seats, and it was an absolute hoot to drive. Torque steer was severe when the boost hit, and it absolutely loved to destroy upper motor mounts. Despite being given the baby diaper treatment by my grandfather, it was still a K-car at heart, which meant the Chrysler parts broke just by looking at them. Still, I do wish I had kept the car, and I was heartbroken when the Pioneer CD player stopped working in 2002 with no way to fix it (despite all the press at the time, 2000s Pioneer refused to acknowledge they even made the thing, let alone made spare parts).
In my 85 Shelby Charger, I ended up dropping a valve shoulder and had to replace the entire valve train. And just like everything else in an 80s K car, it fell apart faster than I could put the parts on. I used to joke that they cut so many corners to make this car it should be round and that it was a 1985 model, but 1992 from the windshield forward.
The original K-cars didn’t have a very solid structure, and when the rear bulkhead was eliminated in these H-bodies (as well as the later P-cars), the chassis got floppy as all getout.
I had a LeBaron GTS as a winter beater when it was way past its prime. The cowl shake was what you might have expected from a poorly-reinforced convertible. I have to imagine that the stiffer suspension in the Shelby version was even worse.
So, the Shelby Lancer I had wasn’t horrible about the cowl shake, but it wasn’t great as well. Mine had an aftermarket strut tower brace in the front, but what appeared to be a Shelby-installed X-brace behind the back seats (it was the exact same red as the car).
So I got curious if others had the X-brace too, and a quick internet search suggests the X-brace was also aftermarket and added by my grandfather. All these years I had assumed that Shelby intentionally made it so, despite having a hatch, you couldn’t make use of the full cargo area by folding down the rear seats all for the sake of handling. Then again, my grandfather did track the thing, so he was definitely willing to make that sacrifice.
That Pioneer stereo is stunning. It seems to take some inspiration from modular hi-fi sets, and I think it looks great. Seems like they made other modules in this series, at least a multi-cd unit and one that looks like just some volume indicator LEDs.
I myself dig the gauge cluster. I love non-symmetrical layouts like that, with their connotation of being focused on function, not aesthetic, considerations.
Yeah, I like that gauge cluster too. I’ll choose function over looks for that kind of stuff any time.
The Pioneer CD player was baller. When mine broke I ended up replacing it with a boring Sony head unit, but kept the Pioneer around just on the odd chance I could figure out some way to fix it. It was definitely the focal point whenever someone got in the car, even more so than all the Shelby badges that sprinkled the interior.
Oh, I know I would lose my shit if I got in a car with one of these. I’m a sucker for good looking stereos. How was the sound? Shelby went to town with the audio in this one, 10 speakers?? Like, If you had speakers built into all doors and two more pairs on the dash and rear shelf, that’s only 8 total. I’m wondering where they put the other two speakers – maybe they had front and rear sub-woofers? If you remember anything about the audio setup I’m very curious 🙂
So, prepare for disappointment – it only had six speakers. Since it was the 80s they counted all the component parts of each speaker as separate speakers (single 2-way speaker = 2 speakers) to come up with the count of ten. It sounded pretty good with the original Pioneer stereo, and absolutely amazing compared to what other cars came with in the 80s, but when I swapped in the Sony head unit the factory speakers couldn’t handle the extra power at their advanced age and I had to swap the speakers too. If memory serves, there were two 2.5″ mid-tweeters in the upper dash, two 4.5″ 2-way mids in the doors, and then two 5×7″ 2-way mid-woofers on the rear strut towers.
In my Shelby Charger, I had all Sony but I had a CD player AND a cassette player, which was mind blowing to anyone at the time. Plus a separate 11 band EQ with subwoofer controls to my 15″ Kicker in the trunk hatch. Looked like a mini-rack system in the dashboard with 100 lights on it.
Removed the spare tire and built a cutout the size/shape of the entire hatchback about 6″ high. This gave me X cubic feet of compression space for the 15″ sub driven by a 600 watt amp. Had Boston Acoustic speakers with separates upfront with tweeters mounted on the A posts. Alpine amps driving everything. Headlights dimmed every time the bass hit.
Glad to see these get the spotlight after unceremoniously being excluded from Torch’s K-Car Election. I’ve always liked these and I looked at buying one many years ago, but ultimately passed on it. Considering the Shelby-built cars were all intentionally low production (along with the rest of the Shelby Dodges), I’m not sure I’d call them duds.
The Shelby Lancer was the first American car to be sold with a CD player as standard equipment. And as you pointed out the Dodge-built Lancer Shelby is ironically rarer than the Shelby-built Shelby Lancer. 800 of the Shelby cars were built in 1987 vs 487 of the Dodges built in total in 1988-1989.
Totally agree, both yesterday and today!
If you can believe it, I actually came across a Dodge Shelby Charger in the wild about a month ago. Parked off to the side at one of those middle-of-nowhere gas stations that I come across when ranging out on the weekends on my motorcycle.
No idea if it still ran, but it looked in decent shape for a car of that vintage from what I could see. And immediately identifiable for what it was…there’s no missing that massive stripe.