In an effort to find a car that we would not modify, that will get good mileage around town, we have come across what we consider to be the coolest cheap beater ever...

behold Amanda's new beater..






its a 1983 dodge aries coupe. 32,000 original miles, and the only cosmetic problems is the rust on the bottom of the doors. the interior is very very clean, with the exception of a cig burn on the drivers side. (not drivers seat, as it has front and rear benches...pimpin')

it is packing a carbed 2.2L building an awesome 84 horsepower. it runs like a top, although slow, and is amazingly smooth at speed. ive done some checking around, and im about 99% sure that even the tires are original. the undercarriage is nice and solid, and the engine bay is very clean..the only real downside to the aries is the rust on the doors, and the extreme lack of power..along with the lack of AC or a radio...as it is a BASE model...the guy who we bought it from has had it for 4 years, and only put about 2,000 miles on it.

we plan to do nothing to it, shy of replacing the severely dry rotted, 24 year old tires...and we will most likely be rockin' the white walls.

 

Cool, right when I read the subject line, I knew what I was in for reading about.. Isn't this the model type car they consider the K Car?

 

i havent done much research into it, but everything that i have read says that it is an aries K, but ours doesnt have the K..im not sure why.

also, i found that in 1981, there were about 150 aries sold with "hemi" badges on the fenders...until chrysco realized that it was stupid, and removed them.

i really think that this will be the last car that we get, until the challenger is released. we are out of room.

 

That is THE original K-car, although I think they dropped the 'K' from the moniker in '82... looks to be a pretty good driver, clean and with a lot of miles left in it. Willing to share what you gave for it?

 

we were wondering why it doesnt carry the "K"...

we got it for 700 bucks...and in my initial look over, the only thing that it NEEDS is tires. i drove it around 70 miles yesterday, and it didnt miss a beat...and a few miles of that includes rough dirt roads. i plan on doing a tune up..changing the plugs and oil, having a look at the brakes, etc. this car is, however, by far the slowest car that ive ever driven, although i notice that its running better the more that i drive it. ive yet to find anything that doesnt work..the only problem with this car is the rust on the doors...down the road, if we fall in love with the car, i might check around with some salvage yards for nicer doors...

i could have gotten a similar car much cheaper in PA, but with michigan not having any safety or emissions inspections, no car is junk. in PA, if you find a car that has any substantial rust, or running problems, it wont pass inspection, so the car is essentilly junk, and you can use that as bargaining leverage, but that doesnt happen in MI. some of the cars that we looked at in the 500-1500 range were unreal. we looked at a sundance sedan that was a grand..it was rotted so badly, that the panel below the rear drivers door was rotted clear into the drivers compartment, and the rear bumper was so bad that i could pull handfuls of metal of, with my hand...it also ran very poorly, and i noticed that it had pulley bolts broken in the crankshaft..."1000 firm"...

 

I'd say that's a pretty good buy! And I think you'll find once you give it a tune up, that the more you drive it , the better it will run. Sitting for a long time like that isn't good for a car.

 

the guy said that he didnt drive it much, but he would start it and put it into gear once a week...all of the fluids and such look good.

 

Nothing worse than gummy gasoline. Hopefully he used gasoline stabilizers in the fuel.

 

To answer Techman's question, yes those were K cars.

Auto or manual? Those were very reliable basic cars. My Grandparents had one of those and had four more cars that were decendents of that engine line and platform line (2.5L powered Acclaims and Spirits). Who did it belong to? A senior citizen? If not why so few miles in such a long amount of time? What brand of tires are the originals out of curosity?

 

the tires are old goodyears..the spare still has the factory chalk on it.

unfortunately, it is an auto.