Presented here for your viewing pleasure is my former 1989 Chrysler Lebaron Highline convertible with 58k original miles. To clarify, "Highline" is the entry trim level. It's a pretty common older car, but was in abnormally nice shape with low miles. It turned so many heads. It got double-takes, stares, and compliments surprisingly often.
Needless to say, with a 100hp 2.5L 4cyl. and 3-speed automatic, the car wasn't made for performance. I recorded 0-80mph time and put it on youtube if you want to check it out. 0-60mph was about 15 seconds. No joke. The advantage of having the weakest powertrain was that it was fantastic on gas. I easly got 32mpg or so on the highway and it had plenty of passing power at highway speeds. It was pretty crude driving by today's standards though.
As you can see in the pics, the car was pretty much loaded for the base/entry trim level. It had a blue vinyl interior (which I loved because it looked upscale and was really durable), faux wood trim galore, a cool digital trip computer that tells the miles per gallon and other info, a newer Chrysler AM/FM cassette/CD stereo, power windows/locks/mirrors, glass rear window with defrost, and aftermarket alloy wheels a previous owner added at one point in time. It was also equipped with 4-wheel disc brakes, a pretty unheard of feature on an American car at that time. You could definitely say the 1989 Lebaron was an upscale car. Near the top of the Chrysler fleet in 1989. The current Chrysler Sebring convertible, which replaced the Lebaron in 1996, is the Lebarons predecessor.
Blue is my favorite color and I love metallic paintjobs, so I loved this color. I loved all the chrome trim on the car too. It's something you don't see much of anymore on cars and it gives the car a classy, upscale look. I also loved all the fake wood interior trim for the same reason. It really classes up the interior.
After owning the car for a year and putting on about 21k miles (currently at 79k miles), I'm pretty desperate to get rid of the car. It's been nothing but constant headaches and money wasted. I've had to dump about $1,600 into various repairs in just 12 months. It overheated and left me stranded back in August '07, and again overheated and left me stranded in November of '07. This car is my daily driver for work and school, school being over an hour away. I can't keep this headache of a car! I unloaded it for pretty cheap.
In December '07 I bought a 1997 Mercury Tracer LS Wagon from a friend of my family. She's an elderly lady who bought it brand-new, so it's a one owner car. She was a non-smoker, and managed to put only 35k miles on it in 11yrs! It's basically spotless inside. Your typical one-elderly-owner, clean, low mileage car. I can't go wrong buying it. She's practically giving it away it seems. I'll create a page for that car as soon as I can clean it and take some pics to post.
