(first posted 7/30/2013) The redesigned 1971 Dodge Charger was introduced right at the knife’s edge of the muscle car’s salad days. Within a year, the party would be over, as insurance, new tastes (Landau roofs, velour and a quiet ride) and Boomers entering early adulthood would change everything. Chrysler Corporation would have to do what would have been unthinkable 2-3 years earlier–turn their vaunted muscle car into a personal-luxury Brougham. With SIX opera windows, yet!
While the 1968-70 Charger had its own unique body, the 1971 “Charger” was essentially a two-door Coronet, as the 1968-70 Coronet two-door disappeared with the new model year. Thus, the Charger R/T and Super Bee became simple badge-engineered brothers, instead of separate models. High-Impact colors, burbly 440- and 426-CID V8 power, Rallye wheels, pistol grip shifters, and other must-have items turned your basic Charger into something special–in 1971.
But then a funny thing happened. Insurance went through the roof, regulations started catching up, and suddenly these Hemi- and 440-powered superstars were rudely pushed out of the picture. But the Charger had just been redesigned in 1971. What to do before the formal-roofed, neoclassical ’75 Charger and sister Cordoba took the reins to battle against the personal-lux Monte Carlo?
Answer: Improvise. The smooth, Coke-bottle flanks of the 1971-72 Charger were subjected to every tacked-on “luxury” cue known to man: canopy vinyl roof, whitewalls, wire wheel covers, stand-up hood ornament, hi-back bench seating, pinstripes and lots of chrome gingerbread. The only thing I can’t figure is why they didn’t include the optional hidden headlights of the 1971-72 model. They would have fit right in…
But the piece de resistance of the Charger SE (the SE, of course, came onto the scene in 1970, but without all the Broughamy stuff on the outside) was that, ahem, “unique” vinyl roof with a half-dozen opera windows (soundly beating the Ford Elite’s “Twindows” by two) and wreath-bedecked “SE” medallions.
Beyond the vinyl toupee and hood ornament, SEs came with an electric clock, inside hood release (such luxury!), bench seat with folding armrest, deluxe wheel covers (the wires shown further up were extra), Rallye gauges, and other fillips.
In 1974, the cheapest Charger was a no-frills coupe with Slant Six power for $3212. The V8-only SE started at $3742, and of course many went out the door with plenty of optional extras. The standard engine was a 150-hp 318 with a two barrel carb; 360 and 400 V8s were available for $222 and 188, respectively. Just shy of 31K SEs were built for the year.
I spotted this SE at the Galesburg car show in Standish Park last June, looking quite nice in its olive metallic paint and cream-colored Landau top. The only thing that was amiss was the car’s rake, fat tires and Crager S/Ss. To get the full SE effect, you really must have the wire wheel covers and whitewalls. Don’t you agree?
the Cragars and stance give it a late 70s period look, I like it. Those Chargers (any muscle-era Charger actually) look dorky on skinny tires.
And weren’t the early Monte Carlos and Grand Prix’ just broughamy musclecars?
Eh, not really, they were specially made for the personal luxury segment, if they would have taken a Chevelle or a GTO and brougam-ed it up, kinda of like the Challenger, that would be closer, the Luxury LeMans with fender skirts is probably the closest to this within the GM line up
I agree — you could get a Monte Carlo SS 454 or a Grand Prix SJ with the 428 and even a four-speed, but not many people actually did. (The Monte Carlo SS might have done better sales-wise if it had been available with smaller engines rather than just the 454.) With their longer wheelbases, extra sound insulation and so forth, a Monte or GP was about 200 lb heavier than a Chevelle or Le Mans/GTO coupe with the same engine, so the A-Special cars weren’t going to be the hot ticket in that regard. They were also more expensive than the regular A-body Supercars, so they were really out of reach for a lot of muscle car fans — even more so than the GTO and Chevelle SS 396/454, which were already pricing themselves out of the market in both initial cost and insurance.
The SS looked almost exactly like the other MCs, and the only unique feature was the engine. Unless a buyer wanted the badge and the engine, there was no reason to buy an SS instead of optioning a standard MC to his/her pleasure.
One could equip a 1969-72 GP or MC with hi-po motors. But they were marketed as ‘personal luxury’ cars. And Boomers gobbled them up.
Chevelle didn’t get a luxo trim level until the ’74 Malibu Classic, with corduroy seats, hood ornament and opera windows. The ’73 Laguna as a top trim flopped.
agree on all the above
Chrysler needed a stop-gap personal luxury car until the ’75 Chardoba so lets throw some opera windows at the one-time Hemi-powered Charger and there you have it-Instabrougham
A muscle look with a bit of luxury. . . What’s not to like?
Yeah Nar lets not
I completely agree with Tom.
Watching the market shift from muscle to brougham, leaving these bloated sportmobiles flopping and flipping like gasping fish was cringeworthy.
The 1971 redesign wasn’t awesome. It was a slicker “me-too” bloating of the intermediate line of cars that Ford with the Torino did the year before. If you look at the Torino from the 1970s, you see a similar proportioning, but luckily for Ford, their bloated Torinos were designed with both a fastback and with a notch. By 1973, Ford got lucky in that their notchback intermediate design could credibly evolve into broughamification. The Montegos, Cougars, Gran Torinos and Elites were broughamified bloated Torinos. Remember the four door Ford intermediates? They weren’t pretty. They had that same dated late 1960s intermediate look. Ford lucked out with their coupes, however. Also, the 1974 Ford redesign dumped the original fish-mouthed Torino design in the front for a dowdy frumpy park bench bumper with a giant formal grille. Ugly – but it worked for the market!
Chrysler didn’t get lucky. They didn’t do a notchback design. Instead they did a slicker combo fast/notch design that split the difference. It is a nice look! Unfortunately it was not a look that could be credibly broughamified. Hence, these cringeworthy 1974 examples.
And it wasn’t just the two doors that didn’t work. The four door Chrysler intermediates carried into the early 1970s the coke-bottle streamlined roof look from the late 1960s. The Plymouth Fury, four door Satellites, and Coronets could have been lookers in 1966, but not 1976 when they were finally euthanized. Boughamifying these sedans was as pathetic as broughamifying the coupes.
Chrysler was in bad shape by 1974 with car designs that failed to reflect the style and taste of the 1970s. Their engines were too big and thirsty, their cars were too big and dated, and their sales suffered. You wonder why the A-body Valiants and Darts sold so well? It was because they were cheaper than the intermediates, as roomy as the intermediates and had the formal sedan stylings that handled broughamification and the retro sedan look that carried into the 1980s big time. Chrysler got lucky with their A-bodies. Although they were 1966 designs, they caught the right wave at the right time in the market during the early 1970s. Remember, the A-bodies sold better at the end of this generation, than they had when their redesign was new, which is a 180 from what is typical in the Industry.
Seeing buyers shun the bloated intermediate redesigned Chrysler products for the old A-bodies was as cringeworthy as watching Chrysler try to broughamify these quite attractive coupes into something they were not designed to be.
Worse of all however, was what AMC did to the Matador coupe. Not only did they launch a fastback intermediate in 19-freaking-74 when broughamification was fully underway, the Matador coupe was incapable of being updated. Its long hood, big round sporty tail lights, beautiful slanted rear window and big round head bezels did so-not belong in the 1970s. It was pitiful to see poor AMC spend millions launching a car that fit the 1960s in the 1970s. AMC was last in the game, in with the wrong design, and down to their last few dollars. So sad!
This is an interesting argument, and it’s certainly true that Chrysler got formal-roof coupes onto the market as quickly as it could, both the Charger/Cordoba and the revised-for-1975 Dodge and Plymouth intermediate coupes. They sold, too; I remember seeing lots of them. (The full 1975 intermediate line including sedans and wagons lasted through 1978, not ’76; at the end they were all called Monacos or Furys.)
The Valiant Special Edition vinyl-roofed bechromed sedans were such a success exactly because the Valiant/Dart was such an old design, so they offered the style of the moment combined with a relatively low price. (Also, the Valiant sedan was given the Dart’s somewhat more luxurious wheelbase and overall length after the first several years, starting in the early 1970s.)
Funny that this is the car that represents the last time Chrysler got lucky. It was one of the oldest passenger car designs then being offered by a domestic manufacturer, unless you count Checker and Avanti. (The AMC Matador was much the same car as the ’67 Rebel, therefore as old as the Dart/Valiant, but I can’t think of another example.)
The interesting thing is that the Valiant was replaced in Australia by a new generation in mid-1971. The new car was bigger than both the old car and the contemporary Ford and GM competitors, although it was not as big as US mid-size cars of the time.
However the long-wheelbase “Chrysler by Chrysler” at 115″ wheelbase, 197″ overall and 74.2″ wide might not have been such a bad option for the post fuel crisis era. It came with the 318/360 or the 265ci Hemi 6-cyl. There was also a hardtop coupe on the same wheelbase.
Poor sales saw the lwb car dropped in 1976, reflecting both a product that was not fully competitive which was amplified by the fuel crisis. The Ford and GM competitors continued, while within 4 years the Valiant was being produced by Mitsubishi (for a short time after they purchased Chrysler Aus before they killed the Valiant in 1981).
The problem would have been the styling. They didn’t age well and looked quite obsolete by 1975 standards.
The four-door Satellites and Coronets actually lasted until 1978, with a name change for ’77 when they took on full-size monikers in response to the new GM B-Bodies and Ford’s LTD II.
Sheriff Roscoe loved those 77-78 Monaco/Furys!!
“Flopping and flipping like gasping fish…”. Perfect! Those ridiculous opera windows have always looked like fish gills to me. Dear friend of ours had a lovely ’69 Charger that we traveled many miles in. He thought it was the best car he had ever driven, and this was a guy who in his (too-short) lifetime drove and owned hundreds of cars (he bought, refurbished and sold for a living). He always regretted selling the Charger, and wouldn’t have touched one of those Fishmobiles with a twenty-foot rod. I personally recoil at any design that includes opera windows–shape and number doesn’t matter.
Mopar styling took a step back for 71,these Chargers and the Roadrunners look tired and bloated compared to the sleek 70 models.The vinyl roof doesn’t help it looks like a bad toupee.They took a muscle car and a brougham and made a muscle car with not enough muscle and a brougham with not enough brougham which didn’t appeal to muscle car fans or brougham fans.A Coronet brougham would have made more sense.
For ’75, the Coronet 2 door returned, but it looked plain as cardboard. Was a clone of the new ‘small Fury’ that year. .
Then, for 1976, Dodge flipped back and renamed Coronet coupes as ‘Chargers’. Still had the SE. Then one more flip for ’77, the base Charger coupes were renamed ‘Monaco’. Not to mention the new Magnum coupe taking Charger SE’s place.
Confused buyers headed to Olds dealers for Cutlasses!
Chrysler’s problem was that, by 1975, there weren’t that many potential buyers of Dodge intermediates to be “confused” in the first place!
By 1975, except for the Chrysler Cordoba, Chrysler’s intermediate offerings were non-entities in the market. They were ignored by intermediate buyers, with the majority buying one of the GM Colonnades, and most of the remainder buying a Ford Torino.
The 1978-79 Dodge Magnum was sharp, and what the 1975 Charger should have been in the first place, but by then it was too late.
I always thought of these as a 1968 GM-A body badly described over the phone, though it does fit in to the “whatever GM is doing just 2 years later” theme that Chrysler was running through the 60’s and 70’s. They even had a body colored nose like the GTO’s Endura option.
Is it me, or does the engine sit unusually far back in the engine bay? It looks like there’s about a foot at the front of the car that is literally empty. Were they really concerned about weight distribution in a car like this?
No they weren’t concerned about weight distribution they were concerned with style so they extended the nose vs the “non-sporty” versions of the car that this was based on.
I noticed that too, in fact, I was going to originally do this car as an Outtake on what car has the longest space between the nose and the front of the engine. Just off of the top of my head, I think this car and the ’73-’77 Monte Carlo are the worst offenders.
Pretty sure I can beat that, but on a car with a much longer hood! Either way, room to keep a case of brews cold on a winter drive.
Before you decide, look under the hood of a second-generation AMC Javelin…
But the Monte put the core support and radiator at a reasonable distance from the front of the car and put in a really really deep fan shroud.
I will say that it had a very nice steering wheel.
These Opera windowed 73-74 SE’s sold well around here, and were popular with rich teens, young adults. Plain Chargers were rare.
The fuselage cars were designed in go-go 1968-69, and the future looked like 500 hp beasts.
At the 1971 Chicago Auto Show, while Mopar was still in the ‘swinging 60’s’ with muscle cars. GM and Ford were promoting ‘comfort’ and ‘tuned for no-lead gas’. Guess who won sales race?
Boomers decry the end of muscle mania, but it was mostly business decision. Buyers got high insurance quotes and said “I’ll get a used GTO/Charger”. So bye bye “Total Performace”.
Many of the boomers were getting married and starting families around this time. Quite a few wives weren’t about to pay high insurance rates for a Super Bee when a Charger SE had the same body, and a nicer interior.
Buyers increasingly wanted comfort and style, and would rather pay extra for air conditioning and AM/FM stereo as opposed to paying extra for a rumbling, hard-to-tune engine and spoilers. And the muscle cars had a “juvenile” image by the early 1970s…a Monte Carlo, Cutlass Supreme or Grand Prix seemed more “grown up” and “sophisticated.”
I agree, to some Boomers, 60’s muscle cars were just a ‘fad’. Many bought GTO’s since they were ‘in style’ in 1964-69 and didnt care about drag times. By 73-77, they traded into Grand Prixs.
Same with Mopar owners. But, the Cordoba name fit the 1975 bodyshell better, and stole former Charger owners.
My folks got married in 1974, but they did not have any Broughams! Dad had a ’74 Capri V6, Mom had a ’73 Volvo 1800ES, and there was also the ’51 Porsche 356 Cabriolet that Dad fooled with on the weekends–better known as “that piece of crap” by my mother.
The Charger in the fourth photo is the exact twin of the car owned by our neighbor in the 1970s. She was a retired teacher, and her husband had owned an insurance agency.
He drove a 1972 Ford LTD hardtop coupe, which was then traded for a 1977 Buick Regal coupe. She drove the Charger for a few years, and it was gone by 1980. I can’t remember what car replaced it, but her Charger would have been a nice used car purchase, as even the white vinyl roof still looked new after 4-5 years.
One other reason for the Fuselage cars in 1971 was NASCAR competition. This was when stock cars were ‘stock’! Designed for the track, during height of ‘aero wars’ that brought the Charger Daytona to market.
Richard Petty’s 73-74 Charger was a huge winner, and they let him keep running it until 77, long after restyle. When he tried racing ’78 Magnums, they flopped, and he switched to GM.
A friend had one of these – well, practically the same thing, a Plymouth Sebring Plus. When I parked my second-generation Firebird beside it I was surprised at how similar the cars were in size and general concept – both low, swoopy coupes with bucket seats and consoles, nearly identical length and height – but how the Firebird absolutely blew away the Sebring in styling.
Yes, the Firebirds (especially the 1970-73 with the original front-end design) were beauties, but they had uninhabitable rear seats. Those of the Charger and Satellite Sebring coupes were usable – they had 115″ wheelbases, versus the GM intermediate coupes’ 112″ and the Firebird’s 108″. (Also the Sebring was a full foot longer than the Firebird, even though they may have looked closer in length.)
191.6 204.6
I always thought the Plymouth’s looked much better than the Dodges in these years. I know the styling of this era was a little bloated and over the top, but I always thought it suited the persona of these vehicles. 1973 killed the looks for most with the new bumpers, but at least Dodge kept most of it’s pre-1973 looks.
The feature car is not my taste, I’d prefer the sporty Chargers, but I can appreciate the pure 70’s style of it, especially in that colour.
My dad looked an F-body (Camaro) in 1972, but had to get an intermediate because the back seat was too useless.
“The redesigned 1971 Dodge Charger was introduced right at the knife’s edge of the muscle car’s salad days. Within a year, the party would be over…”
I keep telling everybody that the world we baby-boomers grew up to love, ended in 1972, with the advent of the 1973 MY! (No, Syke, I’m not just speaking of fixed glass, either!)
My only experience with one of these was my wife’s girlfriend owned one. Hers was that metallic medium golden-brown with the white vinyl roof. I may have been a passenger in the back seat once, but don’t quite recall.
Funny – her friend still misses and talks about that car, much as Wifey and I still talk about our Goldwood yellow 1964 Chevy convertibles.
If nothing else, whether a particular car floated your boat or not, if a certain model touched your fancy, that’s what you grew to love and fondly remember.
Again, these didn’t impress me, but I gave the reasons in another post. Still, these cars did have their appeal. As for the “six opera windows”, LOUVERS would be more accurate, as there was only a single piece of FIXED (ugh!) glass behind the vertical blinds.
You know, I make various comments about cars I never liked when new, and my remarks reflect those feelings, however, I’m going to try to look at things from both perspectives – yesterday AND today. Having said that, seeing a nice example of one of these cars now does have a certain appeal to me of what we have lost in the last 30 and many more years ago.
Seeing an old car with a white interior is a beautiful thing! My 1976 Dart Lite had white seats and door panels, as did our 1992 LeBaron convertible.
I still hate the faux-luxury of those times…
“Uneasy? Queasy? Take a Brougham-O”!
Ah, but Zackman, you could still get a Charger hardtop in 1974.
That’s right, the most expensive model had the fixed glass, not the cheapskate special. The ’70s were weird…
Actually, the cheapest one had fixed rear side Windows too.
So only the mid-range Charger had roll-down quarter windows? Interesting.
It would have been kind of neat (although totally crazy) if the six opera windows rolled down, each with a miniature lever. Or six little power buttons on SEs with the optional power windows 🙂
When Wifey went back to work in 1983, two years after our second child was born, I needed a car, so I looked into buying a 1974/5 Chrysler whatever that was for sale across the street. The back glass LOOKED like it should roll down, but it was held in place by clips because all the guts were removed. The cheap way instead of fixed glass! Typical Chrysler…
I suppose if I bought it I could get the guts from an earlier model and swap them out, but I bought our 1976 Dart Lite instead. Wifey got the 1981 Reliant.
I didn’t know until now that some of these cars had rear quarter windows that rolled down, and others didn’t. A little research at Old Car Brochures shows that from 1971 to 1974, the cheapest Chargers and Satellites were available as either “coupes” (with fixed rear quarter windows) or structurally identical “hardtops”; evidently the cheaper cars were analogous to the 1968-70 pillared coupes with swing-out quarter windows. Also, apparently the Road Runner was offered only as a “hardtop” in 1971-72 and only as a “coupe” in 1973-74.
On the last Road Runners, it seems like whether the rear quarter glass would lower or not was dependent on whether the car had power windows. I would guess that the Chargers were the same way.
It was a foreshadowing of things to come when the Neon would show up twenty years later and power windows were only available for the fronts – rear windows rolled down, but only manually, regardless.
A-ha! I was pretty sure there would have been just one piece of glass behind all that triple-slot dressing. I’d expect the same piece of glass lived in all the versions (except when there wasn’t a window at all!), including more angled version on some of the cars – it just makes sense.
Ah, this was the clue. I was off by a year. Sean Cornelis wins! His reward is some vinyl roof cleaner and a spare ballast resistor to throw in the glove box. 🙂
He can put the ballast resistor next to his spare “orange box”. 😉
http://media.tumblr.com/cbfbc9ad100ba8959336a33321dbc343/tumblr_inline_mh3l7s8uKt1qlvbqs.gif
OMFG ballast resistors!!!!!
I believe the same “SE” badge was still being used on Diplomat sedans 10 years later.
I smile when I see a 70s vinyl roofed Monte Carlo image chasing car done up with Cragar (or other mag wheels) and raised white letter tires. It is just the right amount of wrong…
This car was the polar opposite of the 74 Charger that my college roommate drove. I have shared before that it was a total strippo with slant 6, 3 speed, rubber mats, no radio. A bright red car with black interior (with those industrial looking silver vinyl inserts) that wore like iron. That thing must have had a really tall axle, because standing starts were a total pain even with that torquey old six. Nasty, nasty manual steering.
My buddy’s Dad (my car-mentor Howard) bought it in 1978 with 10K miles on it (probably because it was so unpleasant to drive). For awhile, it had a CB radio. Dan’s handle was “Coke can” because it fit the car – same color, same shape and same thickness of the sheetmetal.
I liked the 73-74 roofline better than the 71-72, but never cared for the vinyl roof treatment on the SE.
I always loved Dodge’s approach to meeting the 5mph bumper standards with these; Move the preregulated bumpers outward some and stick on a pair thick black guards. CryCo did that with the E-bodies too and I equally applaud that approach. Cheapest, best looking concession imaginable to that stupid regulation.
I find the 71 Chargers much more attractive than most here apparently. I think it’s a much improved integration of the loop bumper design compared to the 1970 (which looks dimwitted with that giant open maw) and the bodystyle in it’s original roofline configuration is very attractive. It didn’t look like a blatant copy of a GM for once.
If anything the 71-74 best represent how tastes devolved through the 70s. Here you start out with this beautiful sweepy late 60s design, then immediately tone it down, yet with tackier adornments, and finally rebody as that HIDEOUS neoclassical 75 Cordoba clone. Blech!
While quite a lot of car guys see 1972 model year as “the end”, most averager Boomers saw muscle cars as a ‘fad’ or ‘style’. That group bought Personal Lux cars by the truckload in 1973-79. Cutlass was #1 in 1976, for example. Sure, imports got younger buyers, too, but not with 400 horsepower V8’s.
Example, my uncle born in ’55 loved 1969 cars, but called 73’s ‘plastic fantastics’, and hated the then new SAE net HP ratings. OTOH, older brother born in ’56 loved the opera windowed/velour tanks. Dream car was Cordoba, but settled for Malibu Classic.
I can recall seeing one of these ’74 Chargers with that vinyl top in white over lime green, with a very pretty young blond standing by it about a block from my house. I was probably about 13, and the driveway also had a ’76-’78 brown over bronze New Yorker Brougham 4 dr ht with the road wheels. The girl and the cars were all driveway candy.
Funny, but I’ve basically have always hated the “St. Regis” vinyl top on the C-bodys, but I’ve liked the SE vinyl top on these cars – almost more then the hardtops. Maybe I still associate the pretty girl……. Chrysler’s “oh sh*t, GM’s got those colonnades and we need some fiberglass filler panels to fake our own,” was generally not my favorite way to watch true two-door hardtops die.
The ’74 Charger should have been able to give the Pontiac Grand Prix a run, but I always thought some of the really cheap interior bits in these cars, especially a solid runner up for the worst fake wood dash trim ever, probably left buyers in showrooms cold.
One of the strangest model year changes was the ’72 to ’73 Chrysler B-body coupes. They look like the only things changed were the grilles and taillights but not one body panel interchanges. The Plymouths do look a bit more different between the model years but the Charger, aside from the C-pillar, look identical, when they’re actually not. Seems like yet another colossal waste of Chrysler’s scant funds.
I’m pretty sure the doors and fenders are the same from 71-74. Why add the rubber filler between the fenders and bumper otherwise? Quarters are definitely different, although they greatly resemble the 71-72 Satellite.
Well’ the doghouse is definitely different, but it might be limited to minor things like the cowl vents on the hood and side marker lights on the fenders. Whether that required entirely new (and expensive) changes to the stamping machines, I don’t know. Seems like the door sills were different, too, with the early cars being more rounded and the later cars having a sharper beltline crease
From certain angles, the difference seems more apparent.
But, these swoopy coupes were planned during the height of muscle car era. The ’73 was most likely locked in by 71? Mopar thinking they’d would continue to be popular.
Ford also had fastback ’72 Gran Torinos and GM’s Collonade fastbasks were in the pipeline. So, Mopar was going along. Even GM didn’t expect notchback Cutlass Supreme to dominate market, they expected Chevelle Laguna/Malibu to be volume leaders.
Stock these cars do look too big and bloated. But they did a Plymouth Satellite on an episode of Wrecks to Riches and I was blown away by how cool looking it is with bigger wheels and better stance. I know usually everyone hates classic cars with modern wheels but with the later “oversized” cars I think it works well, and since the later models aren’t as desirable you are not messing up a nice classic.
http://www.supermusclecar.com/cars/gtx/gtx.html
Those opera windows make the back seat mighty claustrophobic!
I’m struck reading this by how long it took Chrysler to figure out the personal luxury market — really not until the Cordoba in ’75. I’ve criticized GM before for watching an awful lot of Thunderbirds roll out before coming up with anything comparable, but it took Chrysler even longer and there were a lot of half-efforts like the 1965-66 Dodge Monaco. (Which I kind of like in its own right, but clearly didn’t lure anybody out of a Grand Prix or a Flair Bird.)
In regard to the SE, I suppose it bears mentioning that in 1970, there was also a Challenger SE that had the woodgrain dash trim and so forth. It didn’t have opera windows, but it did have a padded top with a smaller backlight for that formal look, so they were already thinking in that direction.
Did you possibly mean the 1966-67 Charger (rather than the 1965-66 Monaco)?
Well, that, too. The Monaco was was positioned as Dodge’s answer to the Grand Prix, although looking at the sales figures tells you how well that worked out. It wasn’t a bad car if you liked big Mopars, but it wasn’t particularly special.
The 1966 Charger was originally conceived because Dodge desperately wanted their own Mustang-fighter and Townsend wouldn’t let them have a Barracuda clone, fearing, probably rightly, that it would only hurt Barracuda sales. So, they put a new roofline, a new grille and a fancier interior on the Coronet in hopes that they could somehow straddle both the sporty car and luxury specialty car markets at the same time. Again, from the sales figures, Dodge didn’t really manage to make much impression on either; the Charger was too overtly sporty for Thunderbird fanciers and too big and too expensive for Mustang buyers.
In all these cases, the basic issues were pretty similar: reactionary rather than forward-looking product planning, trying to do too many things at once and also trying to do it on the cheap.
I’d agree that Chrysler could be reactionary. For example, by 1966 it should have been obvious that investing in a premium-priced personal coupe could be a much better investment than keeping alive a separate brand of luxury cars (particularly if they were only marginally different than the competition).
Recall the turbine coupe concept? That would have been a plausible T-Bird competitor if they had plopped in a normal engine and given it a less gaudy tail. Sales might have been particularly strong if Chrysler had priced it a notch below the T-Bird.
I don’t know if Chrysler needed a Grand Prix competitor per se; the company wasn’t ever big enough to compete model per model against the Big Two. That became more and more true as the model proliferation wars raged hottest in the 1970s.
Chrysler’s strategy with the original Barracuda and Charger wasn’t all that bad in theory; the key problem was weak styling. Long decks and full fastbacks didn’t work nearly as well as, say, the AMC Javelin’s short-decked semi-fastback.
In general, Chrysler didn’t do brougham all that well, particularly before the Cordoba — which deserves the “me-too” design of the decade award.
I was actually thinking just that after I posted this: “Y’know, if Chrysler had done a production Turbine Car with Charger-type interior and a conventional engine, they might have had something …”
As for the Monaco, Pontiac was Dodge’s most direct rival (other than Plymouth, but we’ve talked about that …), so it was not illogical for Dodge to want a GP-type car. It’s just that the Monaco looked pretty ordinary. It’s like a working-class guy who wants to dress up, but only has the one suit.
I agree Ma Mopar was very slow to react to Personal Lux market. The Cordoba is a carbon copy of ’73 Monte Carlo. But, having Chrysler badge and ‘Riccardo Montalban’ help sell it.
The Monaco and Sport Fury were 62-68 GP competition, but didn’t have the mystique.
Funny how things as simple as wheels, colour or rake can make all the difference to a car. I don’t like any of these on the olive Charger, yet the blue one on the beach looks fantastic – I could happily drive one.
After the drop-dead gorgeous 1968-70 Charger, the ’71 model should be considered a capital offense for killing what was probably the best-looking Mopar evar and slapping the vaunted Charger nameplate on this hideous beast. Brougham-ing it up only made it uglier.
After my 1970 Charger was totaled in 1978, I was looking for a replacement. A Dodge salesman tried to steer me toward a two door Lebaron. I told him that it looked like an old man’s car (I was all of 25 years old)! I almost bought an Aspen, but not being able to find one that matched the triple bronze beauty on the front of the brochure, and various lies from salesmen killed that. I ended up purchasing a one owner ’74 Challenger w/ only 29k miles, which is STILL in my garage 35 years later, w/ an odometer reading of 69k! I’m toying with the idea of selling it, as I don’t drive it much, and also since I bought a one owner “replacement” 70 Charger a few years ago! I’m really gonna have to master posting pictures on this site! 🙂
“While the 1968-70 Charger had its own unique body, the 1971 “Charger” was essentially a two-door Coronet, as the 1968-70 Coronet two-door disappeared with the new model year. Thus, the Charger R/T and Super Bee became simple badge-engineered brothers, instead of separate models.”
I’m not sure that I entirely agree with this. IINM, the 1971-74 2-doors had some distinct styling touches. They also used a shorter wheelbase than the sedans, although I think that would continue beyond 1974. To be more succinct, I think Chrysler wanted to avoid building two separate 2-door versions of the B-body (one that was essentially a 2-door version of the 4-door, carrying the same model name, and one that was a “special” coupe-only model with distinct styling, i.e., the Charger), so it tried to come up with a single coupe that fell somewhere in between, and could serve both purposes. From this angle, the lower-line 1971-74 Chargers were the successors to the ’70 Coronet coupes, and the upper-line 1971-74 Chargers were the successors to the ’70 Charger.
The “budget muscle car” Super Bee became a Charger because the Charger had effectively absorbed the lower-line Coronet coupes. IIRC, there had been both a Coronet R/T and a Charger R/T in past years. Now there was only a Charger-badged R/T, since there was only one coupe.
This all makes less sense when applied to Plymouth, because Plymouth had never had a “special” B-body coupe like the Charger. Plymouth got the same ’71 coupe and sedan bodies as Dodge, though, and simply applied the same model name to both in spite of their differences (aside from the muscle car versions of the coupes, which Plymouth had always marketed as distinct models).
As already detailed earlier in the comments, for 1975 things went back to the way they had been in 1966-70, with two different coupe bodies, one essentially a two-door version of the 4-door sedan, carrying the same model name, and one a “special” (now clearly personal luxury) coupe with its own somewhat distinct styling. The two coupe bodies were certainly more similar to one another than they had been in 1966-70, though. So there were now once again separate Coronet and Charger coupes. As in 1966-70, Plymouth didn’t get the “special” coupe at all, but Chrysler now did.
For 1976, at least at Dodge, things got really weird. The ’75 Coronet coupes were now badged as Chargers, although they continued to carry the same styling as the Coronet 4-doors. The result was a model lineup that looked like the 1971-74 arrangement in terms of badging, but was more like 1966-70 or 1975 in terms of what the cars actually looked like. This didn’t affect Plymouth and Chrysler, which each had only version of the B-body coupe, and didn’t make any changes to their model names from 1975 to 1976.
For ’77, Dodge went back to the way things had been done in ’75, with the coupes that were essentially two-door versions of the sedans carrying the same model name as the sedans (now Monaco, with that name having been moved down from the C-bodies) and the Charger name reserved only for the “special” coupes.
Imagine Dodge going from 2007 ‘Stratus’ to ’08 Avenger’, and then ‘2009-10 Monaco’, then yet another rename to “2011 St. Regis”?
If a car company changed names of its mid sized car 3-4 years in a row, they’d be out of business!
Oh yeah, I forgot that Motor Trend nominated the B body Monaco for 1977 COTY. Since it had a new name and square headlights!
And, the Cordoba didn’t get a nom in 1975!
The color was avocado green and the 318 engine was rated @ 170BHP. Not intended to bust stones, this was the closest I’ve ever seen to my first car – color and all. My God do I miss it!
I looked up the color,Avacodo Gold Metallic. I’m having my done as we speak. Just got my 74′ SE back after 32+ years, from the same guy I sold it to. Last inspection on it was 1985, was hid away in an old garage. Had it in high school.It was like time had stopped, nothing was changed on it from when I had it, still wearing my same fog lights, same spare in trunk, and best part, nothing was chopped inside, for aftermarket radio or speakers being cut into door panels I bought it in Nov 1976, sold it Nov 1981 and now got it back April 2014. Feel very fortunate to have gotten it back…wife feels the same, she drove it some her senior year…she was my high school sweetheart. This is will be our ride to both of our class reunions.
I think this car has the optional ‘Tuff’ steering wheel as well as the exterior mods noted. It’s what I’d fit. I can’t see a ‘broughamified’ Charger coming with one of these. And rather than having the stance on a rake (which is nice-ish, I’ll grant), I think it’d look better really low.
While I absolutely loathe the idea of a broughammed muscle car, ESPECIALLY a Charger I gotta say the combination of that metallic avocado green and white interior sitting on Cragars makes me weak in the knees. I mean, how hard could it be to ditch the column shift and bench seat? 360…not my first choice in this, a big block would be better but with the proper go fast bits, its a good plant. I don’t even hate the vinyl roof or opera windows nearly as much as I probably should…its the color combo saving this for me.
Then again, Im a ’74 model myself….
These 73 & 74 SEs are interesting to think about. Looking back on it the 1966 Charger was in essence the first intermediate personal luxury coupe, it’s sleek fastback styling obviously flys in the face of the way we perceive PLCs, but our image of what a PLC is didn’t yet exist in 1966. The Buick Riviera was a very muscular design that year, and the Thunderbird still retained its youthful jetset touches, not to mention the pre-downsized Grand Prix with its hidden headlight doors or the the sleek Toronado. These were all traditional personal luxury coupes, before the turn of the decade would move them down a size class with the next styling trend.
The 66 Charger just so happened to emerge at the absolute zenith of the muscle car era, and arguably become *the* definitive shape in 68 to represent that entire subsegment. Without blinking we would describe the styling of the 68 Chargers as “muscular” today, but that comes with a boatload whitewashing attached. Back then it really wasn’t that out of step in details or themes you’d find in big cruisers like the Riviera or 68 Grand Prix. Hidden headlamps were used on those as much to be a luxury gimmick as they were to appear sporty, perhaps more so, the big personal luxury cars had fastbacks, they had hips, they had bucket seats and consoles… I think it’s a bit specious to assume that “muscle car styling” would have carried on through the 70s if the high performance mills weren’t phased out and neutered. If not for insurance the environment and gas embargos, they would have just been fast broughams. Neoclassical didn’t usher in low performance, the 20s-30s cars these channeled in design inspiration were supercars of their day, and it’s only natural Detroit ideally wanted performance to match their designs, they just couldn’t anymore.
So these 73-74 SEs are definitely transitional cars wearing the old shape with neoclassical elements attached, but was a Charger in spirit using these elements actually that inappropriate? Don’t forget the Grand Prix SJ 428s and Monte Carlo SS454s existed in 1970 – these were nothing more or less than R/T SE Charger equivalents, only with next generation styling. Styling is all it is, there’s no such thing as sporty styling, no such thing as luxury styling. What we define as sporty now only reflects what we collectively associate it with. Today we associate broughams with anti-sporty, we look back at the early 70s and think to ourselves that some product planner stated “we’re going to put opera windows on our cars, now tell the powertrain division to throw away all the six-pack casting dies, stat!”, when in reality it was just a coincidence. From the perspective of then, all the broughamy elements we now either laugh or cringe at were looked at much differently through the eyes of car designers. They looked at the classic cars of the 30s nostalgically the same way we do 60s cars now, desiring to incorporate lost elements into new designs.
Am I the only one experiencing problems with images in this post ?
(I’ve tired to reload the page, Ctrl+F5, etc.; everywhere else on CC everything is ok)
It seems to be a recurring issue with reposted Tom K material. Don’t know if there’s a solution but these oldies are so fun I say repost them anyway.
BTW there was one of these in my high school parking lot in the mid 80’s. I could see the nice car under all that brown paint and dreck…
I have same issue on both Firefox and Safari for Mac…
Ugh, “Malaise” really is the right word, isn’t it?
If it were me, I would have bought a Dodge Dart and nursed it along as best I could until the 70’s were dead and gone, and the better (still not very good) 80’s models started appearing.
How did people do it, trudging through the local Dealer Row, and looking out over acres and acres of scrap-iron crapmobiles? “Malaise” turns to full-blown depression…
God help me, I know I shouldn’t, but I actually like that thing. It’s so ’70s.
+1
I wouldn’t have taken one of these as a gift when they were new but now they have grown on me and I find them attractive. The cheesy vinyl top and the opera windows lend a period piece air to the Charger that just shouts “brougham”. This would be the perfect car for a relaxed weekend cruise, with the cassette deck blasting out one’s favorite jams of the early seventies. Of course today we might have to substitute sat radio for the cassettes, unless one held on to those from years past.
Mercury Cougar also took a ‘brougham/personal luxury’ direction for 1974, moving off the Mustang platform to the mid-size Torino platform with more gingerbread hanging off it to differentiate it from the Torino.
And they say there’s a large number of people who support the legalization of magic mushrooms even today.
The ’73-’74 Charger SE DID NOT, I repeat, DID NOT have “six windows”. What it had, was a molded plastic insert over a single pane of glass.