Continuing the An Car vibes from the previous post about the Pontiac Sunfire, today we have another An Vehicle from another auto-manufacturer that starts with "P". While the K-Car, the platform that saved Chrysler, is fairly well known by auto enthusiasts, the actual cars it produced were well, not very notable. They were cheap, not particularly stylish, not particularly powerful, and not particularly fun to drive. So most of them were retired in pretty short order, disappearing into junkyards and crusher maws before my time. But at the edge of Uncle Tony's U-Pull It, this very complete 1987 Plymouth Caravelle SE sat in the new inventory row before being sorted. From later photos it's now been set into the normal rows to be cannibalized.
Pulling it's records, this car originally came from Connecticut but passed onto the Treasure Coast of Florida by the year 2000. Amazingly, it seems to have been active and driving until 2020, when it sustained what really looks like pretty minor side damage, but that totaled it anyway. (I imagine a deep enough paint scratch would total something this old and worthless in an underwriter's eyes.) However, since it didn't hit the auction block until 2023, I wonder if it was bought back, put up in outdoor storage for 3 years, and then dragged to Copart anyway, maybe as part of an estate liquidation? Who knows.
Incidentally, the name "Caravelle" comes from the circa-1400s Portuguese word Caravel, a fast and maneuverable small sailing ship. A bit of an optimistic name for a pile of Lego bricks being dragged around by a blistering 2.5L 100 HP Chrysler I4, hooked to an 80s-era automatic. But I'll give it more points than some of today's random letter-number generator economy car names.
