Start with what the Plymouth Reliant is: a 2-door coupe (1981–1989) / 4-door sedan (car) / sedan (1981–1989) / 4-door station wagon / wagon (1981–1988) with 2.2 L Chrysler 2.2 & 2.5 engine#2.2, built from 1980 to 1988, in the age of turbocharging and the first electronic engine management. What it meant takes a little longer. 1,114,618 were built.
How it came about
The Plymouth Reliant and Dodge Aries are mid-size cars introduced for model year 1981 as the first "K-cars" manufactured and marketed by the Chrysler Corporation. The Reliant and Aries were the smallest cars to have the traditional 6 passenger 2 bench seat with column shifter seating arrangement favored by customers in the United States (Chrysler marketed the car as being able to seat "six Americans"), similar to larger rear-wheel drive cars such as the Dodge Dart and other front-wheel drive cars such as the Chevrolet Celebrity. The Reliant was powered by a then-new 2.2 L I4 SOHC engine, with a Mitsubishi "Silent Shaft" 2.6 L as an option (this engine also featured hemispherical combustion chambers, and all 1981 models equipped with it featured "HEMI" badges on the front fenders). The Reliant was available as a 2-door coupe, 4-door sedan, or as a 4-door station wagon, in three different trim lines: base, Custom and SE ("Special Edition"). Station wagons came only in Custom or SE trim.
As rebadged variants, the Reliant and Aries were manufactured in Newark, Delaware, Detroit, Michigan, and Toluca, Mexico — in a single generation. After their introduction, the Reliant and Aries were marketed as the "Reliant K" and "Aries K". The Aries was sold as the Dart K in Mexico, and as the Michigan in Japan. The Reliant replaced the Plymouth Volaré/Road Runner, while the Aries replaced the Dodge Aspen. The Reliant and Aries were selected together as Motor Trend magazine's Car of the Year for 1981. Initial sales were brisk, with both Reliant and Aries each selling over 150,000 units i
The hardware
The engine is 2.2 L Chrysler 2.2 & 2.5 engine#2.2; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. On the scales it comes to 2300 lb. Drive goes through a 4-speed A460 manual / 5-speed A465 manual / 5-speed A520 manual / 5-speed A525 manual / 3-speed A413 automatic / 3-speed A470 automatic. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 100.3 in / Wagon: 100.4 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
In the Plymouth line-up the Plymouth Reliant has a clear place: it replaced the Dodge Aspen / Plymouth Volaré; it handed the line to the Dodge Spirit / Plymouth Acclaim; the factory was Newark, Delaware. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Dodge Ram, the Audi Quattro, the Lancia Delta. Its Plymouth stablemates include the Plymouth XNR and the Plymouth Laser.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the Plymouth Reliant — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.