Hit the Woodward Dream Cruise in this 1978 Chrysler LeBaron Medallion
With the annual Woodward Dream Cruise nearly upon us in the greater Detroit-area, there is the expected surge of Craigslist ads promising last-minute cruisers a classic ride for the show. Few of these would-be Dream Cruisers are as crushingly brown, bland, and yet so intriguingly right as this 1978 Chrysler LeBaron we found for sale locally on Detroit's Craigslist. The ask? A way-too-tempting $2750.
Let's start with the paint. The Chrysler is brown, as any late-1970s-era American luxury sedan should be. The vinyl top, similarly, is brown-though, here's the exciting part, it's a lighter shade of brown-and the interior is very nearly the same light brown, but different. As the seller notes, the leather interior "stretches for what might seem like a mile." Great stuff.
Interred under that flat hood is a 318-cubic-inch V-8 that, when new, put out 145 horsepower. Today, who knows, but in our 1978 test of a Dodge Diplomat coupe-essentially the two-door, Dodge-branded version of this LeBaron, which also was offered in coupe form-the combination of that V-8 with a three-speed automatic transmission could be leaned on for an ice-cold 19.4-second quarter-mile time. Given this LeBaron's low mileage (the odometer shows a believable 43,000 miles), it might only be slightly slower than watching paint dry.
Speaking of dry, however, the seller notes the car came from Colorado and has no rust, an assertion backed up by the photos that depict possibly the cleanest LeBaron we've ever seen. Are there dreamier cars you could buy and cruise Woodward in? Absolutely, but they're not this cheap nor do they have this much ’70s chic.
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