PS amusing thing, car names. Example: the Chevy Nova. One presumes named after the celestial sense wherein a bright light appears in the night sky where once there was none, hence a “new” star. Of course, amusingly, they’re not really stars, leading to their fade over a relatively short period of time. I guess Chevy should have seen that coming. But more immediately, the Espanol no va (va being the singular present indicative conjugate of “ir” meaning “to go”) roughly means “he/she doesn’t go”. I think we’ve all heard that one.
But I hadn’t thought about an Intrepid. What is intrepid? According to Merriam Webster, it means " characterized by resolute fearlessness, fortitude, and endurance". A shorter synonym is “brave”. Thus, this car is known as the “Dodge Brave”. Not sure that’s something they meant. I’d think you’d want to embrace brave.
That was my 2nd real car. Same year and everything. Mine was red with those gold mag rims. It had a miss in the motor which was super sporadic. Also after driving it a while the thing would get hot and when you parked it, the coolant would blast out of the overflow tube and into the parking lot. I don’t miss it driving it.
Credit where due, though, Chrysler ushered in the modern minivan phase back in the 80s, ushered in the era of fwd on practically everything but pickup trucks, pioneered modern shared platforms with their “k-cars for all” period, and, case in point, were among the first to use “cab forward” design principles. Pretty much all of these have found success in mainstream usage, sometimes greatly improving upon the respective status quo. But the effects on the market lasted much longer than the cars, it seems.
Those of us that are “old enough” remember when the that first K-car failed to start coming off the assembly line on live Television - that should have been a sign.
I do give Lee Iaccoca credit though - under his leadership, he paid the taxpayers back for the loans to keep Chrysler afloat and American based car maker.
I think the first successful production front wheel drive American car was the huge Toronado with the big block 455 cu in V8 pulling it down the road.