Curtis Perry has uploaded some more great photos of his at the Cohort, including these of a 1973 Chrysler Newport he found by the side of the road near Petrolia, CA. I’ve been to Petrolia a few times, and it’s one of my favorite places in California, out on the Lost Coast area, which is very remote and sparsely populated, although that’s changed some in recent years with the cannabis boom.
The official authorities in this area have put a sticker on this car, which can be seen in the next shot. Not that it seems to have had much impact on the car. Who knows, it might still be there.
A Sheriff’s deputy or such put on this sticker, warning that “the Vehicle Code provides for removal of a vehicle when …reasonable grounds to believe it is abandoned”. I’d say that there are reasonable grounds.
Or more like unreasonable grounds. This poor old Chrysler is a rolling dumpster now.
Looks like a transmission on the windshield, or what’s left of it. Bonus points for identifying it, which undoubtedly some of you will.
I wonder what finally stopped the Chrysler here in its tracks? Something major? Or just a bad ballast resistor?
Not much sign of an exhaust anywhere in the rear. Maybe it had shorty pipes. Maybe it was used as the cannabis version of a moonshine runner, and it got pulled over here and the driver arrested.
The trunk certainly would have accommodated quite a haul.
Sure looks a lot like a Chevy from this angle. That badge even looks like a bowtie.
The colors on it are stunning. Maybe it’s actually a roadside art installation.
Looks like sometging you might find behind Sunnvale Trailer Park
*something *Sunnyvale
+1 on this assessment, Paul: “Sure looks a lot like a Chevy from this angle. That badge even looks like a bowtie.”
From the time I was a kid, I could identify all of the Impalas (my Dad taught me), but when these were roaming the Earth, I always thought they resembled a ’71 or ’74 Chevy. To the untrained eye, many of these old Chrysler products could be confused with the Impala. This Newport from the front end, for sure, but how about these Polaras from the back view? ……
Come to think of it, that Newport’s taillights kind of have an Oldsmobile vibe.
Through the much of the 60’s and 70’s Chrysler styling was heavily “influenced” by GM brands. Sometimes it is Chevy cues, other times Buick or Olds. It is weird that they used the “low price” Chevy for inspiration for a Chrysler this go around. Other cases we see Dodges aping Buick styling cues.
Yeah, I seem to recall a post a little while ago here comparing a full size Plymouth (Fury maybe?) to a Buick LeSabre or something like that. I can picture the two cars in my head, but I am not sure of the years… perhaps ’72 for the Buick and ’74-ish for the Plymouth or Dodge? Sounds about right, timing-wise. Oh, and in this case, the picture I have in my head is from the front end of both of those cars.
After he fired Virgil Exner, Lynn Townsend hired Elwood Engel as his replacement, with specific marching orders to “get Chrysler styling back into the mainstream.”
Which basically meant copying GM whenever possible.
That fourth picture down is so sad… and kinda weird, too.
A transmission, a radio, and a rock… in the windshield. How did those items get there and why?
Also, couldn’t the police run that plate and figure out who owns it and find them?
From the year tag on the right, it appears the police could run the tags and identify the registered owner from 1997. I’m not sure how old the picture is, but it seems that information is a bit out of date…
I missed that detail. I don’t know how long the car has been there, but it’s possible the registered owner isn’t even alive anymore.
These pictures are older. Shot in 2007, actually.
I had the same two thoughts.
For the first, maybe local teenagers with nothing better to do out creating mischief? “I know, lets go beat on that old car out by the highway.” “Hey, I’ve got this busted transmission and a hoist in my truck. Let’s drop it on the car!”
For the second, I imagine they could, but I’m not sure what they can really do other than send the owner a letter saying “Please remove your car or else it will be impounded”. If the owner doesn’t actually want the car that probably won’t have much effect.
My bet is that it ended up in this state because the 440 and 727 were worth more out of the car than as a running driving car. It sat beside the garage for several years and in that time the person who bought it for the engine had lost all the paper work. So they decided to have a little fun breaking out the windows and lights then hauled it down to the spot in the road with the turn off late one night.
If my reading of the 1973 Chrysler Color Selector is correct, then this Newport was finished in Golden Haze–how appropriate for California Cannabis Country.
Ha! So it is!
These pictures are so sad.
By the way Paul, I’d never heard of the Lost Coast area. It really does look secluded on Google Maps. Wow, California is just full of intriguing places!
Indeed it is. So called “Northern” California is still about a six hour drive from Oregon. Basically north of Sacramento is this vast, sparsely populated region that most people don’t know much about, except maybe Mt. Shasta, and that Humboldt County is famous for weed. Which is why most of it’s labeled “idek, stuff I guess” and “Basically Oregon already” on this joke map: https://burritojustice.com/2013/02/01/california-for-beginners/
That front end must have been the inspiration for the 1974 Chevy trucks.
+1
(More great pictures from Curtis!)
Looking at the first photo, is it any wonder why Chrysler almost went belly-up in the 1970s?
The greenhouse looks absolutely tiny and cramped compared to the gargantuan overhangs front and rear! A friend had one of these – a Polara, I believe, in a two-door hardtop, and it looked just as silly.
Speaking of abandoned cars, a buddy once had an old 1953 Chrysler-something with a 392 hemi in it. He dumped the car off hwy 109 just outside Ellisville, MO, about halfway between there and Eureka in 1974. We rolled boulders down on it. Lots of fun, too! Thing is, years later, a friend knew about the car and wanted the engine! He actually went to look for it, but by then, 20 or so years ago, it was gone and the area was developed.
On a sports car rally in the early 80’s we were going over roads that looked undriven for years, then in a strait stretch, sitting along the road were a sparkling black ’59 Chrysler Saratoga 2 door hardtop and a black and white ’55 New Yorker ST Regis coupe. They had expired tags. My friend wrote down the plates and since no one was around, checked vin #’s (they were unlocked!). He contacted DMV. The license plates were stolen, but no reports on either car by make and vin was reported. He tracked down the farmer whose land they were on, and eventually a lien sale was conducted, he got both cars. The keys were in the ash trays. They ran perfectly, nothing was wrong with them, we never could figure the circumstances for them being there. The only reason we could figure they weren’t vandalized was a comment from the farmer when asked how often the road was used. He said, “Well, last car I saw on this road was that sports car thing” (three months before).
I’ve been waiting for a Chrysler story to make a proposal for the Chrysler Corporation and see what the Curbside Commentators think. What if Chrysler came out with a new Chrysler ‘cuda as a corporate twin of the Dodge Challenger? I’m also curious if auto enthusiasts like me have never liked Dodge Chargers having four doors, and in their heart only really like two doors on most cars. The Chrysler Newport above sure looks like it’s been through the ringer, but that 70s gold shines on!
I saw this on my lunch hour one day over at the Columbia Mall in Howard County Maryland…
Here’s the less impressive aft view. It appears to be an aftermarket conversion like a Firebird/TransAm made out of a Camaro or a Rousch or Saleen Mustang…
He wanted a “Cuda.
Chrysler’s name is on the building, and the sign and the company stationary, but it has been allowed to wither down to two models to sell. Any decent additional models are much needed.
Umm…
Any bodies in that trunk?
Is that radio out of a Buick? It looks like it has the B-U-I-C-K station buttons, at least on my little 5” phone screen.
No. 1 on Your Hit Parade: “I Got those Low Down, Dirty Old, Dead Ballast Resistor Blues”, by Mopar Newport and the Golden Haze.
Since I can remember as a young kid that could walk and form some sort of opinion of things and the world in general, I’ve been fascinated with junked and derelict cars. My Mom used to take me to a local junkyard, where I’d go in and look at the cars, and we always had to be careful because of broken glass and sharp edges and such. I was even more fascinated by the older cars, since I didn’t otherwise see them around. I’ve always found it strange that nobody would want these wonderful pieces of machinery, and to this day, whenever a car gets left in a field or a barn, or just outright abandoned, I feel the same way: what did the car do to deserve this fate? To me, as a kid, cars always just did what you told them to do–you drove them, made them move, and they did it, and there should be no reason why they wouldn’t continue to do so.
The older version of me can now rectify many of these instances with the harsh reality of an aging vehicle: once it costs more to fix than it’s actually worth, many people bail out on it. I’ve never been fully okay with it, but I do still love seeing cars in their last known place where they had made it to. All of them have a story, and I love knowing the stories.
My grandparents were the sort of people who would drive a car until it developed some sort of fatal problem, which in Wisconsin usually meant extensive rust, and then park it somewhere on their farm. When we went to visit them in the summer I would spend much of my time exploring the fields around their farm looking at all the old cars they’d abandoned there. My favorites were a pair of late 1940s Pontiacs that I think were the oldest cars there. I actually took the hood ornament from one of them as a keepsake — a plastic Indian head. Then there were various Plymouths, Mercuries, and Chevys from the 1950s, an Edsel, a Ford Galaxie, and various trucks, including a 1950s Dodge flatbed that for some reason had a Studebaker key in the ignition. I took that key, too.
As a big body Chrysler fan and a Canadian all I can do is look at that body and think “D#$@! No rust!”
Me sad ?
Agreed – Jeez guys, why not find a rusty one to destroy!
This makes me sad. And I love that color. The fuselage Mopars kind of jumped the shark for me when they lost the loop bumper, but I still have some love even for the ’73’s. I hate to see this one like this.
It looks like the automotive version of a dead,beached whale. Like the 65 footer that washed ashore on Coney Island beach in the mid `70s after it`s tail got caught in a ship`s propellor. Sad sights, both of them
Maybe it’s because I grew up in Arkansas, but how come there aren’t any bullet holes? You go to any illegal err unofficial dump in the woods there and if there’s an appliance or a car that’s seen better days, then it’ll look like a B-17 that barely made it back from Schweinfurt.
The Chrysler Newport was the most beautiful affordable sedan of the 70’s. But I am always amused at how tiny the passenger compartment is relative to the size of the car. At the time, imports were brilliant at maximizing interior room. E.G. VW Rabbit, Subaru Justy and Honda Civic. I can remember riding in a Newport and marveling at the far off burbling exhaust and the upward tilt of the prow as it mounted a speed bump and blocked out everything short of the moon. I could imagine I was in an aircraft carrier plowing through a storm in the North Atlantic. It was glorious rolling oblivion.
With some piling on this…..piled on Chrysler, I’m here with a little love and respect.
I find the car instantly recognizable as a Chrysler Newport, and a ’73 at that thanks to the one year front end that was for Federal bumper compliance purposes.
The front may look a bit like a Chevy – a ’73 or ’74, more coincidence than copying. Federal bumper compliance did that to a lot of cars.
While Chrysler did sometimes follow GM styling in its more conservative moments, Chrysler’s ’69 – ’73 “Fuselage” look was initially a style leader. Fuselage was primarily a more pronounced tumblehome. The result was a fairly wide car that had passable three across seating. The Fuselage also introduced thin sedan door window frames with a thin band of inner edge chrome trim. In 1971, GM’s large cars follow suit on both of these styling / architecture features.
And, the 1973 Chrysler actually sold very well in terms of annual Chrysler sales. They moved 250,958 cars, the second best sales year for the fuselage Chrysler after 1969’s 260,771 sales. These numbers are on track with the best sales years for Chrysler in the 1960s – 1968 was higher by all of about 4,000 cars. This was very respectable performance for a 5 year old design.
I think that production/sales of the 73 Chrysler deserves an asterisk. 1973 was a record-breaking sales year, so Chrysler should have done well. However, a look at production figures for the big Plymouth and Dodge (from Allpar – I could not find sales figures) show very, very small increases, on the order of 3K units or less for each of them. By this time the big Chrysler was selling to nobody but dedicated Mopar people and the strength of Chrysler’s sales came mostly at the expense of the Fury/Polara/Monaco lines which were starting to flatline despite the booming economy. Where the Plymouth jumped maybe 1000 cars to 280K and Dodge was up about 3K to 153K (its best fuselage year ever, btw), the standard Ford jumped by over 100K units to 941K in 1973.
Another thing that makes the 73 look good was the absolutely awful sales of the new 74 Chryslers, which suffered the biggest year to year drop in the industry, notwithstanding that they had a brand new model to sell.
I agree with you that Chrysler did a nice job of updating the 73 on a body structure that really was past its sell-by date in terms of its basic styling. I like the 73 a lot.
Yabut, yabut… 🙂
Ford did have the advantage of an all new full-size car in ’73. In the very good sales year that was 1973, the full-size Chevy actually lost about 70,000 sales from 1,010,100 in 1972 to 941,104 in 1973. Ford came very close to stealing the sales crown with 941,054. I’ll bet both Ford and Chevy were counting crash test cars trying to find a way to top the other guy’s numbers! For Plymouth to hold its own in 1973 seems to have been a pretty good performance.
Overall, “low price three” big car sales were flat in 1973 over 1972, reflecting market trends for large cars, especially in the lower price ranges. Buick, Olds and Cadillac absolutely killed it with their C body ranges selling in record numbers in 1973. Big car buyers wanted luxury, and the Chrysler brand seemed to catch a little of that trend.
Our block went from a single full-size Mopar in 1973 to two (!) when one family traded their gorgeous 1967 Pontiac Bonneville coupe for a gorgeous black over dark blue 1973 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham four door hardtop. That car was absolutely striking cruising past our house with all four windows down.
My father carpooled with the father of one of my friends, and that father drove a 1973 Newport four-door sedan in light tan with a dark green vinyl roof. I rode in it a few times, and I remember thinking that the back seat seemed bigger than the back seat of our 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 Holiday sedan.
That Newport was later replaced by a 1978 Ford Thunderbird loaded with almost every option in the book.
As for sales of the full-size Mopars in 1973, the Plymouths did reasonably well, but a fair percentage of production went to police forces and taxi cab companies, if I recall correctly.
The real sales dud was the big Dodge, which never really regained much traction after the downsizing debacle of 1962. Which was interesting, as the Fury was sold in the same dealerships as full-size Chryslers. But both sold better than the full-size Dodge, which had the showroom all to itself.
“Which was interesting, as the Fury was sold in the same dealerships as full-size Chryslers. But both sold better than the full-size Dodge, which had the showroom all to itself.”
I’ve found that a bit remarkable myself. But, as far as I recall, Dodge liked to consider themselves in the same market space as Pontiac, and Pontiac’s large car business languished in the ’70s as well. All the folks that wanted a sporty biggish car seemed to transition to the personal luxury coupe in droves.
The big Dodge did so poorly for so many years it is sort of remarkable that the brand survived the years when a full-size car was typically a brand’s bread and butter. It may have been sort of depressing to for Dodge salesmen pushing Darts and Coronets to watch the guys at the Chrysler stores selling Furys, Newports and New Yorkers.
That poor Newport would make a hell of a derby car, that’s about all it’s good for anymore.
Chrysler was preparing for the 74-78 era cars to come, 73 was a lead in.
Ford’s 73 luxo look big cars took Suburbia by storm, at least for a year. Chevy Impala had new MOnte Carlos to compete with, for same price. Fury was treading water, and then imploded for good, a year later.
Buick/Olds were on a roll also in suburbs and some urban areas, with 98 and “Deuce and 1/4”.
The Oldsmobile Delta 88 and Buick LeSabre also sold well during this time. The Delta 88, in particular, sold really well during most of the 1970s.
It seemed as though an increasing number of people felt that, if they were going to buy a full-size car, they might as well buy a more prestigious one.
I want the blue plates!