The top…
This is just a quick summary for those who do not want to read the full Allpar survey results.
First, let’s look at the corporate history for ten years past and ten months forward. Fully 81% of respondents feel that the Daimler takeover did immense damage to Chrysler; 90% feel a GM takeover would do the same. Just 3% feel a GM takeover would save Chrysler from death; just 5% feel Daimler saved Chrysler.
The readers’ favorite Mopars of all time are an interesting group, not least of which because they selected two Plymouths and three Dodges - not a Chrysler-brand vehicle in the bunch:
- Dodge Challenger
- Original Dodge Charger
- Plymouth Road Runner
- Dodge Viper
- Plymouth Cuda
Now, if we look at what people actually owned, we end up mainly with Dodges (the Neon could be a Plymouth or Chrysler):
The Barracuda and Daytona, incidentally, tied for seventh place.
As for next year’s best seller, the largest vote went to the Ram, which has been the best seller in the past. Though it’s not supposed to be a sales leader, the Challenger got the second highest vote, followed by the Caravan, and then the new small car (to be announced). After that, nothing got more than 5.2% of the vote. Oddly, our readers picked the Caravan rather than the Town & Country which looked like it would supercede the Dodge as minivan king.
Readers’ favorite brand was Dodge by far, with 50% of the votes; Plymouth took half that popularity (26%) and Chrysler, half of that (12%). We expected Jeep to come in at 6% given that pattern, and it was close, at 5%; following the pattern of halving, though, was Imperial at 3%. Go figure.
What about the favorite car of the past ten years?
| Vehicle | Cases | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Dodge Challenger | 93 | 23.10% |
| LX (300, Charger, etc.,
including SRT8) |
54 | 13.40% |
| Ram trucks | 46 | 11.40% |
| Viper | 42 | 10.40% |
| Neon (including SRT4) | 33 | 8.20% |
| LH (Intrepid, 300M, etc) | 30 | 7.50% |
| PT Cruiser | 19 | 4.70% |
| Minivans | 18 | 4.50% |
| Prowler | 15 | 3.70% |
| Dakota | 12 | 3.00% |
Given a list of significant cars, minivans came out on top with 25% of the vote, followed by K-cars at 20%, and LH series at 7%. Note that these were all cited as “the car that saved the company.” Just 6% each voted for the 300 letter cars, and the original Hemi cars.
The favorite engine was by far the Hemi V8 with 40% of the votes, followed by the LA V8 at 14%, and then - get ready - the 2.2/2.5 liter fours with 10%, and the 2.0/2.4 fours with 9%. (These were called Neon/PT/minivan engines in our list though they were in the J-cars too, to differentiate them from World Engines.) The Viper V-10 came in after them!
Your favorite people from Chrysler history were a pretty divergent group, so you’ll have to see the main survey results to get them all. The only ones to get more than 10% of the vote were the Pettys (23%) and Lee Iaccoca (17%).
The favorite Allpar sections were an interesting grouping, because when we asked people for their favorite part of the site, they rarely typed in what they had picked from the list. In any case, it was mainly news and rumors, and individual car pages.
That’s it for this year. We’ll come back to you in ten years and see how we did. We hope.
