Chrysler GS (1986) – Into the Wild

With those questions we mean of course that many people will not just know what they see when they walk past this Chrysler. No wonder, according to our data, there are currently only fifteen Chryslers GS in our country. So what is it exactly? Well, actually it’s a Dodge Daytona. In the country of origin, the United States, the affordable sports coupe with relatively modest engines was sold under that name, here in Europe we got the version with the largest engine as Chrysler GS.

The Daytona was intended to compete in the American market with Japanese competitors such as the Nissan 300ZX and Mazda RX-7. No wonder the Daytona (and the GS as well) might look a bit Japanese. It mainly resembles the RX-7 and especially the Mitsubishi Starion. The latter is somewhat explainable, since Mitsubishi and Dodge had a fairly close relationship at the time. In fact, the Daytona’s predecessor, the second-generation Challenger, was essentially little more than a rebadged Mitsubishi Galant Lambda coupe. At the same time as this Daytona, Dodge (and Chrysler) also sold the somewhat higher market Conquest, which was the Dodge variant of the Mitsubishi Starion. Van de Daytona, however, was not a Japanese twin brother. The Daytona did get a 3.0 V6 from Mitsubishi in 1990.

In the long nose of the car in front of us is the most powerful engine in the Daytona at the time: a 177 hp turbocharged 2.2-liter four-cylinder. A block developed by Chrysler itself, which was not only in the Daytona, but also in the variant intended for Europe and renamed Chysler GS. The Dodge Daytona with this engine carried the extra designation ‘Shelby Z’, which betrays that the famous Shelby had interfered. Shelby provided the Daytona (and therefore also this GS) with other anti-roll bars and struts to improve handling. With a 0-100 time of 7.7 seconds and a top speed of 226 km / h, you had a pretty fast car for that time.

Whether this Chrysler GS, spotted by AutoWeek forum member Afentoe, can still live up to those performance figures, we wonder a bit. In general, he unfortunately does not make a very fresh impression. In addition to the bonnet in a different color, some other parts where the paint is missing are also noticeable. Furthermore, the car is on Linglong tires, often not the sign that perfection is being pursued down to the last detail. The GS has been with its second Dutch owner for two years now, in 2014 it was registered here for the first time. Hopefully there are still plans to get the GS back in a more beautiful condition, because the owner has something special with it.