I was a Chrysler Tech at a Chrysler / Plymouth dealership in 86 and 87.

The K cars were the cheapest base model cars on the market at the time. They were pushing the "All American built K Car America and the Horizon/Omni American" as the cheapest 5 passenger cars that you could buy in the entire country at the time, and those cheap cars came with a 7 year, 75,000 drive train warranty. Most of those cars made it through that warranty with flying colors. We had very few drive train issues, for the number of cars that dealership sold, pass through our service department under warranty.

Those K cars were very good basic transportation. Not fancy, which really showed up as the cars aged, Resale value is part of the reason for the collective "poor quality" opinions. They were Ok for the original buyers, but looked pretty rough around the edges after 4-5 years. That cheap cost has to come from something being short changed, Chrysler chose interior and trim to cut the corners on. Most 5 year old K cars were pretty rough looking but mechanically sound. For a bit more money you could have bought better quality and better optioned cars with much better interior and trim at those Dodge and Chrysler/Plymouth dealerships. Those higher level cars had better resales prices. The people that thought it was a great idea to add the options onto the basic K car found out that wasn't a good plan. Those people that came in to buy the "cheapest car in America" all thought the sales people that told them the interiors were really crap and the other cars were much better quality, all thought the salesmen were just trying to rip them off.

Its interesting that today so many people want to compare the "cheapest car you could buy in the USA" in 1986, to other cars costing $500 more from the same time frame. I see that hasn't changed. Those K cars were good reliable transportation for 85% of the people that bought them new, drove them until they were paid off, then traded them in. Its the people that bought them used and probably didn't take very good care of them that give them the bad reps.

Once you had the early OEM head gasket replaced (by 86 that was mostly solved), they turned out to be pretty good cars for the time. No one was making good cars during that time frame, not even the famed [censored] cars were all that great. The biggest difference between the car companies was their attitude concerning warranty. The Japanese companies made the process easy for the customers, the American companies, not so much. The vehicles were all the same poor quality, but some companies chose to make warranty easy, so their cars got better reputations.

Neglect, crappy interiors, CVC joint torn boots then bad exposed joints, and rust (especially in the rust belt) claimed them before most drive train issues ever caught up with them (pretty much all those issues were industry wide standard issues during that time frame). Resale values across the car industry showed the down turn in the auto industry in the 85-91 time frame. By the early 90s, the industry was in a slight upswing again.

I drove several 84-86 Chrysler front wheel drive cars well into the mid 1990s. Nearly every one made it past 200,000 miles. In the late 80 to mid 90s, you bought a used car based mostly on the car itself. We have once again returned to that time concerning used cars. When the current junk the car companies are producing (and have been for at least 5-6 years) hit 7-8 years old, if you are in the market for a used car, you better be looking at the condition of the car itself. That includes most current used cars on the market today. Would you really expect the line of cars that was the cheapest cars you could buy 7 years ago to be the best car you cold buy today?

Today, there is not a car company that doesn't have some level of issues with their current model year vehicles, but at the same time, there are examples that are going to be pretty much trouble free for hundreds of thousands of miles. The 1980s was the same way.

As far as the one posted, that price tag may be higher then the price the cars sold for new. To me, it doesn't look like one I would have bought used in 1992, but it isn't 1992 anymore either. I would want to look it iover really close.