Story by Bill Cuttitta
Few cars have earned more scorn from the general public than Chrysler’s compact Dodge Omni. On the enthusiast scene, however, the special GLH package—and later the GLHS formulation—turned the plastic-and-sadness hatchback into a serious performance player. This little demon earned its final stripes when Hot Rod ran an infamous cover that proclaimed, “GLHS Whips GT350!” The …
Always liked these, my first car was an '88 Omni
Had an 86, bought new. Amazing how fast 150 HP felt in that car. Smoked a lot of sportier cars, did the best handbrake turns and wore out comp TAs every 10K miles. Yes I drove it hard. Maybe that is why it fell apart so fast. Ate the head gasket at 58K, water pump and alternator at 62K. Sold at 65K.
I remember the Car and Driver articles and fresh out of tech school, went down the Dodge dealer to test drive one. Loved it but could not afford the payments at the time. Always wanted one, I think I prefer it to the Shelby Charger as it is truly a "wolf in sheeps clothes". Looks like the few survivors are seling for serious coin on BAT https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1986-plymouth-horizon/
As someone who currently owns a couple glh turbos. They are still peppy even to today's standard.
I remember sitting at a softball game my junior year in HS talking with a guy whose girlfriends mom had a GLH with the turbo, this was in 88. The kid had a 4 door Ford Granada with some sort of V8 and auto in it. We were talking cars and he dais he could beat the Omni in a drag race because his car had an automatic and a big engine, I said he was crazy and that he would lose but he never believed me. That was such a cool car, have always liked them.
My parents had a regular old Omni and man what a POS that thing was. Maybe the worst car they ever owned. It was the car that I had to drive when I turned 16 and I was so embarrassed of it. It's funny to me now that the performance version is going for almost $40k on BAT.
ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) said:My parents had a regular old Omni and man what a POS that thing was. Maybe the worst car they ever owned. It was the car that I had to drive when I turned 16 and I was so embarrassed of it. It's funny to me now that the performance version is going for almost $40k on BAT.
Yeah, my uncles had GLH and Shelby Chargers and my grandparents had an Omni Miser (so powder blue inside and out, no console, VW 1.7L powered with an automatic). One of my uncle's used to swap plates and take Grandma's Omni through DEQ to get his DSP Omni to pass. Eventually they closed that loophole via vin checking and then they closed the loophole of unlimited trip permits, so he converted it to Turbo/EFI instead of the high compression dual weber setup he was running.
Dad eventually inherited the grandparent's Miser and drove the piss out of it. Melted the motor down on a drive back from the coast after dropping me off at Mom's. Got to take a fun road trip with Grandpa and Dad to go pickup a donor motor from a Rabbit (complete with a stop at an old school diner for lunch). Headgasket meltdown aside, it was a surprisingly reliable, if not uninspiring car. Certainly built cheaply and not meant to live very long.
Doubling the hp and the amount of traction makes them A LOT more fun, but they certainly live shorter lives. While in some ways they are built better than their VW contemporaries, they are still tin cans with a grenade under the hood. I loved all of them that I ever drove/had and in my family we had at least one of every color Shelby Charger (from 83.5-87), an 86 GLH-S, plus nearly every color GLH/GLH-T (except blue, always liked that color) a few Daytona Shelby's, an early Lancer ES, a Turbo Caravan ES, Rampage 2.2, K-cars, The Miser and my 87 CSX. Aside from the numbered cars, they all more or less changed hands amongst us all at least once.
I just gave back a GLH Turbo that i built an engine for (forged pistons/rods mostly). I've been into k-cars for 20 years and l-bodies like Omnis and Chargers are associated so closely i've been around and worked on a ton of them too. Haven't owned many, though.. The difference in build between the 1978 Ls and the 1981 Ks feels like the biggest 3-year improvement in automotive history. But I do own a Rampage because when it comes to cool-looking tiny trucklets that you can just drop a giggle-factory engine into with basically no extra work, you take what you can get!
But as far as my low opinion of L-body construction..
While in some ways they are built better than their VW contemporaries, they are still tin cans with a grenade under the hood.
I am at least glad i'm not the only person in the world who thinks that Mk1/2 VWs are WAY WORSE! Those cars are cool looking and highly swappable too, but on the tin can totem pole they are about the lowest i have experienced.
Gutted and set up for the track they were a ton of fun.
My first autocross car was an 84 GLH (which I still own) and I had an 87 GLHS for 10 years or so. The cars handle reasonably well but shifting them on an autocross course was somewhat challenging.
Those cars were fun, but so badly made and unreliable. I can see how a really clean one would sell for that much though, there were only ever 500 of those and I would be surprised if even half are still around, and they would be near impossible to find factory parts for now to restore one.
Tk8398 said:Those cars were fun, but so badly made and unreliable. I can see how a really clean one would sell for that much though, there were only ever 500 of those and I would be surprised if even half are still around, and they would be near impossible to find factory parts for now to restore one.
Factory parts are not terrible to find, I'm in the middle of making on nice, and it hasn't been to bad.
I am glad there are still people keeping them on the road. When I had my Shelby Charger I remember CV joints being hard to find, starter solenoids, etc. I liked it but I was daily driving it and had to repair it pretty much every weekend, and I eventually ended up selling it because I couldn't get the engine to stop cutting out while driving. As far as I know someone still has it and was fixing it up. My dad had an Omni GLHS he bought new, and he liked it but in 170k miles it went through a cylinder head, transmission, several alternators, a power module and a few other things I don't remember.
Tk8398 said:I am glad there are still people keeping them on the road. When I had my Shelby Charger I remember CV joints being hard to find, starter solenoids, etc. I liked it but I was daily driving it and had to repair it pretty much every weekend, and I eventually ended up selling it because I couldn't get the engine to stop cutting out while driving. As far as I know someone still has it and was fixing it up. My dad had an Omni GLHS he bought new, and he liked it but in 170k miles it went through a cylinder head, transmission, several alternators, a power module and a few other things I don't remember.
At the time it wasn’t uncommon to go through two cars in 170k miles. I’d say it did well.
I have a vague memory of a friend's GLH having a weird quirk where if you hit the dash above the instruments with your fist, the speedometer needle would jump to some number and "stick". A number that wasn't "speeding". He claims he got out of a ticket with it . . .
I haven't seen any Omni or Horizon in years.
My first turbo 4cyl impressions were forged in the passenger seat of my uncle's GLH cars. He owned two gold cars with tan interior, and a black/red one. Those experiences make up a very large part of why I started into 2.3 turbo Lima stuff when all my friends were driving v8 cars.
I remember one of the major car mags at the time likened driving a GLH to trying to steer a ping-pong ball, that image always stuck in my brain.
The 86 GLHS was the most fun I ever had owning a car. It introduced me to autocrossing and what it meant to be a fast driver, not just someone who drives fast. I sold GLHS #429 after about 60,000 miles to an enthusiast in Baltimore who had it stolen within two weeks. It was never recovered. Sad end for such a cool little car. I sometimes wonder which of today's cars best fits the mould/spirit of the GLH/GLHS. Perhaps the little Fiesta ST, but I think it falls a little short of the mark. Oddly my eye and consideration get drawn to the Veloster N. A hopped-up version of a "normal" car though certainly one better than the base Omni which was so crappy it was basically disposable. None the less I like that Biermann is taking basic cars, applying a formula to them and reusing basic parts in many cases.
This is a long, drawn-out way of saying I still miss that little GLHS after over 30 years. Man that think was a giggle festival every time I drove it. Except that one time when the electrical system blew out on a dark backroad outside of Winnemucca Nevada...
My grandma had a normal old mid 80s Omni. When I was a teen they moved her in with my aunt and offered the car to me. Being young an uneducated about cars, I wanted nothing to do with it. It had almost no miles and was like new but had sat for a couple of years in the carport and wouldn’t start. I think they sold it for a couple of hundred bucks. A few years later I had finally saved enough money to buy a 77 Trans Am with a 400. 18 years old I thought it was the baddest thing around. My first weekend owning it I went to the street races and got destroyed by an ugly old Omni. Ever since then I have wanted one. I’m currently working on a buddy of mine to sell me his Spirit RT project
I had a friend that really loved turbo Dodges of all flavors when I was in the Navy. He had lots of fun with them and they ran surprisingly strong.
Huh, never knew they started out as normally aspirated, I always thought they were all Turbos.
I do recall seeing a comparison between a Mustang, a Camaro and a Daytona and thinking that the FWD 4-cyl Turbo was dumb. I have never owned a RWD V8, but plenty of 4CYL FWD Turbo cars!
Hasbro (Forum Supporter) said:$38,995
I think I'll print that out and put it in the mailbox of the house down the street that has one of these sitting under a tree in the front yard. It has not moved in at least 5 years. Which reminds me of the 1969 Dusk Blue with the white stripes 4 speed manual Z28 that would have notes on the windshield left on it continually over the years as it sat and rotted on a street a block away from the ocean in Moss Beach CA in the 2000s.
My two most favoritest cars were my GLH and my 74 mini RHD. THE GLH embarrased many "better" cars. Many.
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