The Chrysler K-Car Club

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Buying it or talking up the group here?

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We are a small army, but growing in numbers everyday. More and more people looking back and saying "Oh, yeah, the K-car, I almost forgot." It will be more endearing as gas prices reach $5 a gallon and beyond.

It will also be endearing that in 2020, our cars will be so rare that they will be easily worth $5000-10000. Also, the nature of the classic car hobby is changing. Mundane models like Pinto are starting to command high prices, and they have a huge club.

I absolutely cannot stand Pintos.I dislike GM,but the Vega was always a more appealing car over Pinto in my book.Although,Pinto wagons are a little more acceptable,as opposed to hatch or notch models.

BTW:The last old Chevette around here turns out to be a 78,and the owner lost a timing belt the other day.Should have seen the belt,almost 1/2 the teeth were stripped off.He is having a devil of a time locating a new one,last year they fit was 79.Guess he should have RockAuto'd it....

My wife had a Pinto when we got married. My first reaction was who would want one of those, but after driving it, I changed my mind. Hers had the 4 speed stick and the largest engine available in them (something found rarely, even then). She had also put steel-belted radial tires on which were the new thing at that time. The thing stuck to the road no matter how you threw it around, and had some serious power. I even beat out a Jaguar on a curvy mountain road one time with it. Ultimately, it was a well-disguised sports car. If that seems doubtful, consider that Ford put the Mustang on the Pinto chassis for a few years, complete with a V8 option. It wasn't their best decision for Mustang, but it definitely worked better than when it was next put on the Fox (Fairmont) platform. All in all, I've always thought it would be a fun car to own again.

I even beat out a Jaguar on a curvy mountain road one time with it.

But did the Jaguar know it was competing with you?

The main problem with the early Fox Mustangs is there were too many four cylinder cars. It was a bad choice for Mustangs image as a performance car. The four was just a slug in that car. At least the four cylinder Pinto based Mustangs were well timed. I came out weeks into the first oil embargo and sold 400k copies. But it was also a slug and hurt the Mustang image.

The "Flying Pinto" Mizar,set the Pinto image back by decades.Yea,the car chosen to be equipped with airplane wings and engine,that crashed and burned in a test flight.Years before the "barbeque that seats 4" jokes,2 men died when a wing strut broke,slammed into a pickup and burst into a ball of flame.Effectively ending "Advanced Vehicle Engineers" and "Galpin Ford's" flight of fantasy.
Maybe the Gremlin would have made a better choice....