My '74 Plymouth Satellite

When Angel blogged last week about her '72 Gran Torino, I thought I'd do a reciprocal post due to a similarity of vehicles (at least, I think so). It just took me a while to find the pictures to scan...

My first car was a '74 Plymouth Satellite—remember when the car company was Chrysler / Plymouth / Dodge?—which was very similar in style to Ford's Gran Torino of the same era. Both were huge with bulging rear fenders making the back end look exceptionally large. (By the way, I did see the Clint Eastwood movie and if anyone cares I highly recommend it. It may not have been especially surprising in the manner in which the story unfolds, but it was very well done imo. Then again, I'm not the sort of person who insists that a movie has to have a surprising plot twist every ten minutes and be a roller coaster ride of suspense to the very end.)

Like Angel and her Torino, I didn't consider my Satellite a "muscle car," at least not in the way I drove it, but it definitely had some power and heft to it if I needed it. I'm sure folks who like to tinker on cars and modify engines and such could have done a lot to transform it more into the "hot rod" realm. Me?... I just needed it for transportation, simple point A to point B stuff.

The car was eight years old (but with only 32,000+ miles on it) when my folks got it for me for high school graduation in 1982. I remember it only had an AM radio, so I got an FM converter box to mount below the dash to at least hear some decent music. I wasn't into amassing a private music collection in those days, so I didn't opt for the state-of-the-art audio cassette player. (At least it was post-eight-track era by '82.)

I did love the Plymouth and drove it for the next eight years. It served me very well, but when it got up around 100,000 miles it seemed like I was having to get something fixed for $500 here, $800 there, every month or two. The master brake cylinder needed to have fluid added periodically or else I might find myself suddenly lacking in braking ability. Luckily I didn't have an accident because of it or anything like that. In fact I still drove it that way for a while, just making sure to check the fluid periodically. But eventually that was the proverbial last straw for me as I just got tired of worrying about it and wondering what else might go wrong with it next.

That was when I decided to upgrade and bought my shiny new '90 LeBaron (which was actually a demo driven by a salesman and had 1,500 miles on it already, so I got a little bit of a deal). Considering that I'm still driving it 18 years later, I think I've done even better with this one than with the Satellite. Spreading the original purchase price out over the length of time I've owned it, I figure it's significantly less than $1,000/year and still getting lower. (Of course, that's not factoring in maintenance and fuel costs, plus ordinary occasional necessary repairs, but I'd have all that with any vehicle.) So I certainly have no complaints with it. It may be a lot more decrepit cosmetically these days, but hey, so am I! And it still runs great, though unfortunately I can't say the same for me. (Just kidding... mostly.)

A good engine and a good radio/CD player is all I really require in a vehicle. Oh, and in these times of up and down gas prices, good gas mileage doesn't hurt either, but my old 'Baron still remains surprisingly competitive in that department, judging by mileage figures I see cited in commercials for new vehicles of about the same size and type.

Anyway, back to the Satellite... Below are some pictures (click'em for full view, of course). Even though it may look almost white in some shots or just at some angles, it was actually a very pale baby blue. The first shot is me with it, probably circa 1982, but I can't be sure. If so, I would have been 17 or 18.