CARAVELLE

This Plymouth nameplate began as a Canadian-market mid-size sedan for the 1983 model year, part of Chrysler’s push to give its front-wheel-drive cars more distinct branding across Canada and the United States. The car reached U.S. showrooms for 1985, when Plymouth used it to fill an upper-mid-size slot above the smaller K-car-based lineup. In that American form, it was closely related to other Chrysler E-body cars and shared much of its engineering and general packaging with the Dodge 600 and Chrysler New Yorker of the same era. Early cars wore a Plymouth-specific nose, while a 1986 update gave the car a more Chrysler-like front-end treatment and kept it competitive through the rest of the decade. The model was offered in sedan form and became one of Plymouth’s more restrained, traditional-looking family cars during a period when the division was increasingly associated with smaller front-wheel-drive products. It remained in production through the 1988 model year, after which Plymouth replaced it with the Acclaim for 1989.