posted at the Cohort by robadr
This would be a very fine original specimen of a 1962 Chrysler, but it’s even more fascinating by being a Saratoga, a model that was last sold in the US in 1960. With the arrival of the entry-level Newport in 1961, the Windsor was pushed up a notch, bumping off the Saratoga. And in 1962, the 300 line was expanded, and in turn the Windsor was eliminated. But in Canada, the old model structure continued. And even in subsequent years, the Saratoga name soldiered on. In 1964, it was called the 300 Saratoga.
Yes, they did things a bit different up there.
The Saratoga shared a 122″ wheelbase with the Windsor, while the New Yorker got the 126″ version.
The engine lineup was also hierarchical, with the Windsor getting the 361, with 9.0:1 compression, a two barrel carb and 265 hp, while the Saratoga got a 10.0:1 compression 383 with still a two barrel, rated at 305 hp. The New Yorker was treated to a 350 hp four barrel 413. Torque-flite was standard on all three models. The Chrysler steering column did not support a manual shifter, and the floor-shifted three-speed was reserved for the Dodge 880 version in the US.
But the standard steering was manual for the Windsor and Saratoga, with power assist optional, and highly desirable.
This is of course a four door hardtop, as this fine shot by rodabr makes quite clear.
There was no 300 model in Canada, at least according to the brochure. Was it available as a US import?
The brochure does not specify if the factory exhaust on the Saratoga was single or dual; I’m guessing the former, but I could well be wrong.
This was of course the last year for this body style, which was looking rather dated by 1962. The cleaver redesign for 1963 looked quite different, even if it still used certain hard points and elements of this body.
Chrysler got their money’s worth out of that windscreen & A pillars, they used them for how many years? I never understood the logic of a dash mounted mirror either.
Good looking survivor too.
Other than never coming unglued from the windshield, my left brain can’t think of rational justification for the dash mounted mirror. It does look cool, however, which is all the justification my right brain needs.
Never-come-unglued wouldn’t’ve been a factor; at that time rearview mirrors were not cemented to the windshield, but screwed to the windshield header.
The dash-mount rearview mirrors were useless even if nobody were sitting in a middle seat; their low angle prevented them giving a long view, and they shook-rattled-and-rolled a lot more with engine, drivetrain, and road vibration.
1947-51 Studebakers had a low rear view mirror also. When the windshield became unsplit the mirror changed to being on a stalk on the dashboard. Chrysler products went to a dash mounted rear view mirror with the Forward Look 1957 models.
In the days of front bench seats the low mirror mounting made even less sense.
That windshield and A pillar design (strictly speaking) lasted from 1960 through 1964. The 1957-59 version looked very similar but is not quite the same. As much as I like the design, it definitely dated the car by the early 1960s.
That wraparound windshield also meant the outside rearview mirror had to go on the fender as opposed to the front door. I suspect that was a big factor in that the further the rear view mirror was ahead of the driver, maybe it offered a better rearward view.
With the advent of universal electrically powered outside mirrors, you’d think someone would bring back the fender mounted mirrors but in a much further forward location. Of course, I think they’ve never really left some markets (i.e., Japan).
Those fender mounted mirrors actually had a terrible field of view – very small, being so far away from the driver. On the plus side, they had (at least optionally) a cable control mechanism that allowed you to adjust them via a little joystick in the dash. My 59 Fury had the remotely adjustable one – until an automated car wash pulled it off the fender and left my car with three think cables waving around as they stuck out of the hole on top of the fender.
” … maybe it offered a better rearward view”.
Just the opposite. Dads ’63 Olds Dynamic 88 had the optional remote control outside mirror. As the control was on the dash (not the door) it was mounted down the fender. Rearward visibility was quite poor. The irony is that the non-remote mirror was mounted on the door and had much better visibility. So for paying extra you got a useless mirror, but it was remote controlled.
They were once universal in Japan because of a regulation requiring the sideview mirrors to be visible to the driver through the wiper-wiped area of the windshield. Most cars in Japan no longer have the fender-mount sideview mirrors, but the brand-new Toyota JPN Taxi has electric remote fender-mount sideview mirrors. The official explanation from Toyota is that they give the driver an optimal view of the car’s position in traffic. If that sounds like a vague statement of the sideview mirrors’ job description, it’s probably because the unofficial reason is that a taxi driver turning his head to look at the passenger-side mirror, if it were door-mounted, could be perceived as trying to get a glimpse of his passenger, which would be disrespectful and rude. I have no way of knowing how true that is, but based on observations in and out of taxicabs during my recent trip to Tokyo, I give it high odds of being substantially true.
As to the fender-mount mirrors on cars like this ’62 Chrysler, in my experience they’re essentially useless: far too small to be practically useful to the driver, especially on such a big car, and extraspecially when equipped—as they all were—with flat glass. Hell, the similarly-sized round flat-glass sideview mirrors on an enormous number of ’64-’76 Mopars were barely useless for the same reason, even when made effectively larger by mounting them on the door. Larger fender mirrors with convex or aspherical glass would start to be useful, but mirrors with this kind of glass would be even better still; too bad it never got commercialised. 🙁
The reason I’d heard for Japan’s holding on to fender mirrors longer than anywhere else was tight spaces. They don’t add as much extra width to the car as door-mounts do.
Although a feature on Chrysler Corp. cars for years (’57 through ’64), other automobiles featured the dash mounted mirror. Some Studebakers in the ’50 to ’52 era had them. So did the ’53 and ’54 Chevy Bel Air hardtops. Gluing mirrors onto the windshield glass began (I believe) with the ’61 Ford Thunderbird.
Can’t say I was ever much of a fan of the rear view mirror base being glued to the windshield (which is pretty much the standard today). Occasionally, the glue would let go and the base plate had to be re-glued but I think that’s mostly a thing of the past.
Much more preferred the base attached to the top of the windshield frame. Of course, the screws holding the base on this style would loosen with time and had to be periodically re-tightened.
Plus, if the windshield needed to be replaced, seems like it would be more of a hassle to replace the windshield mirror plate in the exact proper location.
It was even worse if you had electrical wires feeding anything in the mirror. I had a windshield replaced in my 89 Cadillac. There was a special little plastic piece that hid the wires from the top of the windshield to the top of the mirror mount. The windshield guy didn’t really care about the placement of the mount so that thereafter my wires were exposed.
I thought I was the only one!
When they glued the tab on the new windshield for my 1994 Cadillac Fleetwood they put it about 1/2″ too low where the wire cover is now ineffective. It annoys me all the time…
Interesting. I would be concerned that if I was driving, what if there was a passenger sitting in the front middle seat. Wouldn’t they be blocking my rear view entirely? I guess people made it work somehow.
“Wouldn’t they be blocking my rear view entirely? ”
Yes, a center passenger would absolutely block your view entirely. Between the dash mounted inside mirror and the fender mounted outside mirror it was a wonder anyone could ever see anything out the back of one of those cars. Ask me how I know.
Some fascinating thoughts on the dash-mounted rearview mirror. Does anyone know if there was an actual stated reason for the logic behind it? I can only surmise that it gave a wider unobstructed field of view through the windshield than the traditional location in the upper-center of the windshield.
Maybe it had something to do with improving the ability to see traffic lights while waiting at an intersection. Seems like this might have been the time when traffic lights were more frequently strung on wires over intersections as opposed to much lower on street corner poles. I only guess this because of that prismatic lens thing some vehicles of the period had on the dash.
My Citroen DS20 also had a dash-mounted mirror. In that case it was because the roofline dropped so much to the rear that a normal mirror would only have given you a view of the road behind.
I should have read father before commenting. You are right. The glued on mirror quickly migrated to other Ford products and then elsewhere. If your car gets old enough in my experience they will fall off. Common enough that car stuff stores have mirror reglue kits.
The glued on mirror in my ’73 Nova kept coming loose and I kept trying to get it to stick where it belonged. It finally came loose and took a chunk of the windshield with it, fortunately this did not impact the outer layer of the glass so it didn’t leak. I gave up trying to get the mirror to stick after this and just relied on the outside mirrors. If I thought something was in my blind spot I just accelerated until I had put enough distance between me and the other car; this technique worked well enough for me:-)
The Saratoga in the US had sort of been Chrysler’s version of the Olds 88 with the big 8 cylinder engine in the shorter wheelbase car. It was lighter than the New Yorker and thus a better performer. Until 1955 the Windsor had been a six.
I had forgotten (if I ever knew) that the Saratoga continued that long in Canada. I could be very happy in this car.
My mother’s Aunt Clara lived on a Minnesota dairy farm and was a Chrysler girl. She traded in a 1960 model on a 63 and received no end of grief from her husband for splurging on power steering. There cannot have been many of these from the early 60s that came without it.
Interesting find! Chrysler’s approach to its various models in Canada during this time is fascinating, especially with the several “Plodges”. I understand they were trying to sell what they thought was better targeted for the Canadian market, but I can’t help but feel it wasn’t the most cost effective strategy.
Given the Ford and Dodge/Plymouth variations sold in Canada in the 50’s – 60’s (I grew up in Buffalo NY) I always thought that there must have been a Canadian law about cars made or sold there being unique Canadian models. Or something.
Just to provide some additional history, here’s something from an appraisal report I did on a 1960 Windsor;
The Canadian Windsor and Saratoga used the LB engines instead of the RB version, with Windsors again using the 361 V8 and the Saratoga having the 383 V8.
New Yorkers were again imported from the USA, so therefore were identical on both sides of the border and carried the 413 V8 engine.
The Canadian Windsor, while being identical to the US version on the exterior, carried upholstery and door panels that were Identical to the Canadian built Dodge Polara/US Dodge Matador for 1960, while using the fantastically styled Astra-Dome Dash Board as in the US models. The Saratoga however used identical upholstery to that supplied in the US built versions. Swivel seats were again optional on Canadian and US models. As before, all station wagons and convertibles were imported from the USA, as was the 300-F high performance series, and all 300 letter cars in previous years.
Body tags were different on Canadian models and were usually attached to the left side of the firewall just past the cowl.
I remember seeing a few Saratogas on the streets as a kid so they were plentiful up here. I’ve attached a pic of an original Canadian Windsor, a base model with the 361 V8.
Anyone know what the toggle switch under the left taillight is for?
It looks like that is where the back-up lights are but I don’t know what is sticking out of there. Looks like the lens is missing.
I don’t really know these cars all that well, but isn’t there something missing from the front grille? It sure looks kind of plain.
My other thought was that this design looks like a more “rational” iteration of the 59 Mercury.
I wonder if that switch in the left backup light is an alarm switch? Or maybe a switch that opens the trunk? It looks like the trunk keyhole is “empty” .
On the subject of visibility through fender-mounted rearview mirrors, my grandfather took delivery of a 1964 Elwood Engel-designed Imperial Crown four-door hardtop on Nov. 22, 1963, a date we all remember well. It had the aforementioned fender-mounted mirrors, but I digress. My grandfather bought the car from a small-town CP dealer and, on one occasion, the dealer’s owner and his wife drove a loaner over to my grandfather, and took the Imperial back for service. The loaner was a 1959 New Yorker four-door sedan with swivel seats and those fender-mounted mirrors. I had my learner’s permit and took the car out with my grandfather one day. Looking into the outside rearview mirror, all I could see was the tailfin, which looked much like a cathedral spire. Could it be that they used those mirrors so that the fins would look a bit smaller (“Warning: objects in mirror may be larger than they appear.”)? I guess we’ll never know. Fred Infantino
That is an amazingly preserved car. Even the finish still has luster.
The thing on the backup lens looks more like a piece of loose plastic weatherstrip gasket.
What a pretty car! Favourite features include the instrument panel, the canted quad headlamps, the rear quarter styling—sort of a 50/50 mix of tailfins from before and slab sides from after—and a long list of other details. Surely wouldn’t want to try to pilot one with nonpower steering, though!
Foregoing power steering would be idiotic. The Chrysler PS was integrated into the steering box (unlike on pre-65 Fords and maybe Chevys) and also unlike them starting in 1957 (I think) was 3.5 turns lock to lock. So were Thunderbirds, from ’58 or maybe ’61 on. A lot of early 60’s cars with PS still had slower ratios as to not shock people driving PS cars for the first time.
The Chrysler PS was also famously feel-free. I never really saw the problem with that.
Why do I think of The Martian Chronicles .
…matter of fact, I believe this what’s pictured is one of the first interesting cars I ever saw in BC. It was in an underground parkade across from the—we didn’t have AirBnB at that time; we had VRBO—we were staying in. It was dusty in that seldom-touched-or-moved way, but looked straight and basically sound. That was 12 years ago or so. Nice to see it spruced up and with current licence plates!
I’ve been seeing several of these cars featured on Barn Finds, here, and even in Hot Rod magazine. The styling, which I initially thought was strange, now really looks good to me. The canted headlight and trapezoidal grille work on this car. It may have been referred to as a “plucked chicken” but I really like the rear quarter panels and bumper. four door hardtop is also a favorite. Sometimes there were sealing problems but Cadillac was able to build a bunch of very successful models.
I think Exner’s “plucked chicken” remark was towards the down-sized 1962 Mopars, and not the Chryslers.
Regardless, I find the ’62 Chrysler interesting, mainly due to the similarity to the ’61 Desoto, followed by the dismal reception of the downsized Plymouth and Dodge.
Chrysler terminated Desoto in 1961, only to find they needed something to shore-up all the lost sales due to the downsized cars the very next year. They hastily threw a 1961 Dodge front end onto the 1962 Newport/non-300 cars and called it the Custom 880. It’s the car I always think of whenever I see the rear view of any 1962 Chrysler. I can’t say as I much like the styling of ‘any’ 1962 Chrysler product, whatever the brand.
Desoto might actually have lived longer if Chrysler had foreseen how badly the downsized ’62 cars would sell. The Newport is widely regarded as the car that drove the final nail into the Desoto coffin, and it’s quite ironic how upset Chrysler dealers were when the Custom 880 came out. The dealers were afraid the Custom 880 would do the exact same thing to Newport sales, that Newport sales had done to Desoto. In effect, the Dodge Custom 880 became the de facto Desoto.
I believe I once traced the timing on the Dodge 880 to Dodge Division president threatening to quit if he was not given a full-sized car to sell. The Chrysler Newport had been conceived and priced so as to replace the DeSoto. But the Newport was no solution to Dodge dealers who no longer had a large car to offer.
Was that Dodge president M.C. Patterson? If so, there was a comment on a website discussing the 1962 downsizing (Ate Up With Motor maybe?) that had a mention of Patterson being directly responsible for the upturned ‘warthog’ nose tacked onto the 1962 Dodge, which made the bad styling (Exner’s “plucked chicken”) even worse.
If correct, it calls into question M.C. Patterson’s decision making ability and maybe they should have let him quit, since the Custom 880 surely cut into Newport sales (and Chrysler profits). At times, the Dodge Division has been so powerful, it seems like they were calling the shots at Chrysler.
OTOH, maybe all the 1962 screw-ups at Dodge were the reason they didn’t get a version of the A-body Barracuda and got the Dodge Charger two years later, instead.
It’s also poetic justice in how the Dodge execs declined a version of the 1968 Road Runner, only to find the car was a hit and had to scramble to get their own mid-year version, the Super Bee, which never sold as well as the bird.
Finally, there was the E-body Challenger. Dodge finally got the ponycar they had been crying about since 1964 but, by 1970, it was way too big, fat, poorly built, and late to the game.
The company seemed to do better when they had a CEO like Lynn Townsend or, better still, Lee Iacocca, that was more adept at putting Dodge in its place. There’s a famous story of Bob Lutz once having a physical confrontation with Dodge head of production Dick Dausch. After the heated meeting, Dausch actually blocked Lutz. Dausch was a big guy who had played football. Lutz told him, “Look, you’ve played football. But I’m an ex-Marine trained to kill. Don’t ever get in front of me, again”. Needless to say, Dausch left Chrysler not long after..
Chrysler Corporation as a whole was a mess in the early 1960s.
The 1960 Dodge Dart was a re-bodied Plymouth given to Dodge dealers to placate them over the loss of their Plymouth franchises. (Prior to 1960, Plymouth had been sold through each division’s dealer body).
Once that happened, Dodge dealers sold many more low-price Darts than medium-price Dodges. Sales of the old-line, medium-price Dodges withered on the vine. From that point, Dodge and Plymouth competed with each other as much as with the GM and Ford competition.
I’m guessing the demand for something like the Custom 880 in 1962 had more to do with the dealers’ desire to sell a traditional-sized, full-size car, as opposed to a medium-price one.
As for Dodge not immediately getting a version of the Plymouth Barracuda – from what I’ve read, Townsend specifically denied Dodge a version of the fastback A-body to avoid intramural competition. Dodge was instead given the intermediate-size Charger. When Townsend took over Chrysler, he initially tried to maintain space between Plymouth and Dodge. This, of course, didn’t last very long.
I had always thought the 880 was primarily developed to keep the CHP fleet contract, as a long wheelbase car was written into the spec. The Chrysler Enforcer was not a permanent solution.
I think Exner’s “plucked chicken” remark was towards the down-sized 1962 Mopars, and not the Chryslers.
Researching my ’62 Dodge and Plymouth piece, I ran into that quote in several contexts. I’m now convinced he actually said it in reference to the fins being removed across all of the lines of big cars, in the ’61 and ’62 model years. He had specifically referred to the fins as “chicken tails”, and when you think about it, that’s the best analogy.
The ’62 cars were going to not have fins regardless of them being downsized. The quote really doesn’t make sense in terms of that decision. But these kind of quotes have a way of being remembered in different circumstances.
I was always rather mystified by the “plucked chicken” remark as to how it applied to the downsized cars. The problem is they were completely new and the only products they resembled in the Chrysler line-up were not their actual predecessors (which had effectively lost their fins the year before) but the A-body. It was kind of a stretch to refer to the lack of the little A-body’s finlets on the big cars as “plucked”.
So, yeah, it’s quite likely that some industry reporter (probably from the Detroit Free Press) had asked Exner early on for his take on the 1962 Chryslers and that’s where the quote originated. Then, when it later became apparent that the downsized 1962 Plymouths and Dodges would be terrible bombs approaching Edsel depths, the comment became mis-applied to those cars.
The 1962 full-size Dodge and Plymouth, as originally envisioned by Exner, featured curved side glass, semi-fastback rooflines on the hardtop coupes, and larger, more sculptured front and rear bumpers.
The 1962 cars, as produced, did not have those features. Their smaller size meant that they had less “presence,” and the features that were retained from Exner’s original models – the staggered headlights and prominent body-side sculpturing – no longer really worked.
Whether that is what Exner was referring to when he talked about “plucked chickens,” I don’t know. He could very well have instead been talking about the de-finned 1961 and 1962 cars.
It’s a tough call. Exner could have been talking about how nearly all of the styling features of his original ideas for the full-size 1962 cars had been ‘plucked’ for the downsized cars that went into production. But who knew what those original cars looked like and had a frame of reference for the quote?
OTOH, the 1962 Chryslers ‘did’ look almost identical to the 1961 cars with their tail fins ‘plucked’. As further evidence, notice how high the quarter panels rise and the curve of the 1962 taillights. I can envision Exner thinking they look like the rump of a plucked chicken. Based on that, alone, I’d go with the notion that Exner was talking about the Chryslers, and not the Dodges/Plymouths.
Yup. But that never stopped people making creative guesses as to what he meant, and it’s not about to start stoppin’ ’em now!
During the time period when a Chrysler was a viable (if not superior) alternative to GM’s B-O-P models.
This car is not original. It has been repainted. The original generator was removed and replaced with a alternator.the 383 in the car did not come with a 2 barrel carb it came stock with a 4 barrel. Because the car was equipped with the tow package. Plus the car has had other modifications. I know this cause I sold the car and am the one that did the modifications
This is my car!!! Didn’t even know that this article was out there. The previous owner found the article and contacted me. Glad to see everyone’s enjoying it as much as I do!
Hey Amanda – just noticed your post!
Hoping you are still enjoying the car. I happened on it on my way back from shopping on Main to home off Fraser. It’s a beaut! 🙂
I know the owners of this car. I just drove it a few weeks ago. In Vancouver. Perhaps a credit would be nice as they love their car and would appreciate your interest in it.