The K platform was in the works before Iacocca got there, as was the possibility of an exit from the truck business. The latter accounted for the stagnation of the pickups in the early Eighties...

In Response To: Current events are flashing me back to 1979, which is really the year that it felt like Detroit caved in ()

...as well as the Dakota being engineered by an outside firm except for the power trains. Might have been interesting to see it designed in-house...most likely would have had the Volare/Gran Fury transverse torsion bar front end, and be basically one of those with a full frame. The first-gen Dakota was just what Chrysler needed at the right time...I put 180,000 miles on one, sold it, and it was still on the street three or four years after that. Just the right size for a personal use pickup, rode like a car, great truck. I had both first and second generation Dakotas...second one was okay (looking back, I'd have bought a Ranger) but the first one was great.
--Mark

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I couldn't help noticing something interesting about this Friday's random image posts... Both Bill and I included images of Chrysler K cars in our selections (Bill, a very clean Aries wagon and me, a mockup of my Dogde 600 ragtop project)