Start with what the Plymouth Acclaim is: a 4-door sedan with 2.5 L Chrysler K engine#2.5, built from 1988 to 1994, in the age of turbocharging and the first electronic engine management. What it meant takes a little longer.
Where it came from
The Plymouth Acclaim is a four-door, front-engine, front-drive mid-size sedan manufactured and marketed for 1989–1995 model years, replacing Plymouth's E-body Caravelle and the K-body Reliant. Chrysler marketed badge engineered AA-body variants for its Dodge and Chrysler brands, the Dodge Spirit, the Chrysler LeBaron sedan, and the export-market Chrysler Saratoga. The Acclaim was replaced by the Plymouth Breeze in 1996.
Under the skin
The engine is 2.5 L Chrysler K engine#2.5; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. On the scales it comes to 2783 lb base. Drive goes through a 5-speed manual / 3-speed A413 automatic / 3-speed A670 automatic / 4-speed A604 automatic. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 1991–1995: 103.5 in / 1989–1990: 103.3 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
In context
In the Plymouth line-up the Plymouth Acclaim has a clear place: it replaced the Plymouth Caravelle / Plymouth Reliant; it handed the line to the Plymouth Breeze; the factory was Newark, Delaware (Newark Assembly. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Subaru Legacy, the Ferrari F40, the BMW 5 Series. Nearby in the Plymouth catalogue sit the Plymouth XNR and the Plymouth Laser.
Owning one today
MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Plymouth Acclaim has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.