Dudes!, I picked this rag up at a "Shop and Rob" in Spokane on my way to Montana. The restoration of the plastic car on the front page didn't interest me, but the article on the all aluminum slant did. The article also had some good history on some of Chrysler's prototype engineering, like the two prototype aluminum heads and, factory turbochargers. Boy if only the K-car didn't come along and screw things up we would have had some much cooler slants. Pick it up at you news stand, it is worth sitting on porcelain until you legs fall asleep.

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Been talked about already, V-B_66, but thanks anyway. As a matter of fact, I think the above is what I did with my copy.

Personally, I don't think it was the K-cars that hurt the slant. It was the advent of the new 3.0L V-6 that Mopar wanted so badly to succeed that caused the demise of the slant. Had they left the slant in production, the V-6 may not have survived. I will admit though, that front wheel drive helped a bunch, too.

Roger

uhh, yeah. it's more like "boy if chrysler wasn't going down the tubes for whatever reasons we would have had much cooler slants!" the k-car is one of a few models mopar built that really sold, saving them from the brink of disaster.

-james

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Not only the K car, but alsso the omni horizon deal helped a lot us to have MoMopar around alive and well till today. Not all the times the ones we like so much are the ones that saves us.

One had little to do with the other. The 3.0 — not a Chrysler engine but a Mitsubishi — didn't come along until 1987, three years after the slant-6 had been dropped from passenger cars and two years before the end of Chrysler RWD passenger cars.

I think you might mean the 3.9 V6, which "replaced" the slant-6 in trucks and vans and would've done likewise in passenger cars had RWD not ended. Not half the engine the slant-6 was, but much cheaper to produce since it was nothing but 3/4 of a 318. Also shorter front-to-back.

The slant-6 was neglected to death. It was cheapened progressively starting in 1975, and was passed over for badly-needed upgrades. Had it been updated and improved, particularly in the areas of induction and combustion chamber technology, it could've remained a very good truck-and-van engine (witness the Ford 300 CID inline Six).

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