- The 1980s Chrysler New Yorker really took the ‘businessman’s express’ idea and ran with it.
- Chrysler’s most luxurious K-car featured a wood-effect dashboard shaped like an office desk.
- Other Ks like the Chrysler E-Class and Dodge 600 missed out on the weird console drawers.
New technology brings great opportunities for car designers, but it also poses some problems. How do you embrace the fresh gadgetry without totally alienating your traditional customer base? That’s a problem the Chrysler New Yorker design team obviously wrestled with more than 40 years ago, and their response was one of the most baffling car interiors we’ve ever seen.
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Related: Chrysler Celebrates 100 Years By Slapping A Sticker On A Minivan
The New Yorker nameplate made its Chrysler debut in the 1950s, but the one we’re talking about here is the 1983-87 sedan that was downsized to fit on a stretched version of Chrysler’s game-changing K-car platform.
Though the ’83 car tried its best to retain the chintzy gravitas of the previous year’s model, incorporating a similar formal vinyl landau top, fake basket wire hubcaps and front fender gills, this posh take on the Chrysler E-class and Dodge 600 was over 900 lbs (420 kg) lighter and 20 inches (510 mm) shorter.
A Powertrain That Didn’t Keep Up
It also switched from a rear-drive V8 setup to a 2.2-liter, front-drive inline four making a measly 90 hp (91 PS), which could be optionally upgraded to a Mitsubishi 2.6-liter four making 1 hp (PS) less, but an extra 15 lb-ft (20 Nm) of torque.
Performance was underwhelming by modern standards, but considered reasonable for the day: zero to 60 mph (96 km/h) took 13.9 seconds according to the Motorweek period test I for some reason found myself soaking up the other day.
But what really shocked me while watching the grainy 1980s footage accompanying host John Davis’s typically folksy narration wasn’t the yawning drag strip numbers or the fact that the rear end tried to overtake the front in the braking test. It was the truly bizarre dashboard and console setup.
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An Interior Only an Investment Banker Could Love
BaT
A mind-scrambling fusion of old and new tech, the New Yorker came with some digital displays (a full digital gauge pack became available later), a trip computer, and an annoying voice assistant to nag you about open doors.
But it packaged them in an old fashioned fake wood dashboard that looked like a desk lifted from some crusty banker’s Wall Street office, circa 1983 (not Gordon Gecko’s, of course – he was definitely sleeker).
Just check out that center console styled to look like an desk drawer cabinet. Motorweek’s video shows the ‘drawers’ are actually lids you pull down to reveal three storage compartments, or two in the case of the 1985 New Yorker in the pictures on this post. Powered by that year’s optional turbocharged 2.2 (146 hp / 148 PS) engine that wasn’t available at the ’83 launch, it sold for $6,100 on Bring a Trailer in 2022.
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A One-Off Throwback That’s Staying in the Past
There hasn’t been been another example auction on BaT in the three years since, and it’ll be an even longer wait before another automaker has another go at fitting Warren Buffet’s desk to a luxury car.
The 94-year-old business magnate may be alive and kicking and his intellect is as sharp as ever, but the rest of the world has moved on – for better or worse.