posted at the Cohort by runningonfumes
(first posted 6/28/2013. Updated 5/19/2019) Watching Dodge (and Plymouth) claw their way back to normalcy after their departure into a brave new world in 1962. Yes, that’s more normal; you’re almost there. Just a little more… The first step was of course in 1963, when the bodies were squared off some and the sides cleaned up, but the Dodge front end still had a healthy dollop of Exneritis.
It’s important to note that these 1963 cars, along with all of the ’63 Chryslers, were done under Exner’s watch (with a firm boot in his rear by Lynn Townsend, who was not a fan). And that they were finished and production-ready when Elwood Engel showed up after Townsend fired Exner in November of 1961. Engel is quoted as saying “These are good-looking cars. What’s the big deal?” The only known change to these cars were an extra trim piece to be added at the outside edge of the Dodge grille, but production problems nixed them in the end anyway. It showed that Exner was quite capable of doing conventional cars, when forced to.
The ’63’s revised body from the cowl back would be used with little change through 1965, as a Coronet in that final year. But the front end wouldn’t be Engelized until 1964, making it look way to normal, as in rather dull.
Unlike the ’63 Plymouth, the ’63 Dodge got a 3″ wheelbase stretch, from 116″ to 119″, presumably to give it a wee bit of more gravitas. That stretch is very evident in the area between the rear of the door and the front of the wheel opening. In 1965, the wheelbase was reduced by 4″ to give the Coronet and Plymouth Belvedere 115″ a wheelbase. As if it really mattered.
I think all of us Boomers played the” name the car,. name the year game” The Dodges and Plymouths were so easy.
My grandfather, who worked at Chrysler, had a ’64 Polara 4dr in medium blue. It was his last car, before he got cancer in ’65 and died in ’66.
My grandmother didn’t drive so my dad inherited the car and drive it until he got his first company car in 1972 ( a black over green 2dr Impala).
Unlike the hood on the car shown, grandpa’s Polara had a long piece of chromeed cast trim running from the front to Bach and tapering as it did so. (In ’71 dad rear-ended a car on the Lodge Fwy on his daily commute into Detroit. When it came back from the body shop, all the front sheet metal was new. Only part they couldn’t get, not even from a junk yard, was the hood trim strip.
As a small boy I noted that he brakes groaned when the car was allowed to creep forward, the belt buckles had springs that made an audible noise like creaking when the release was manipulated, and the little star wheel that was integral to the drivers door door check was defective, cracking in half and falling off the car.
The coolest thing about this car besides the hood, front and rear lighting treatments, was the push button transmission. Which I managed to take out of park such that my dad had to chase me down.
The good old FRATZOG one of the little tricks Dodge used to overcome the bad bed that the medium sized car market was disappearing.
Nice looker from the sides but that’s a face only a mother could love!Had the toilet seat been discarded by 63?
Always liked these from the cowl back- but the face, blech! Is that a Hoffmeister kink in the corner of the rear side window? or perhaps an Englemeister kink?
Beautiful lead shot in this Outtake.
I love the 63 Dodges, although my fave remains the 62 Plymouth. Such gloriously ugly cars, I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in the meeting where production was approved:
“Oh yes, this is much more restrained. Proceed…”
Exnuberance — heh!
I came tantalizingly close to buying one of these in the early 90s. There was a big tent sale put on by the East Indianapolis car dealers. I went there to look at an 86 Marquis wagon that I had seen advertised in the Wheels & Deals newspaper (the Craigslist of the 1990s). While there, at about 8 pm, stumbled on a beige 63 sedan just like this. I cannot recall if it was a 440 or a 330 trim. It was a fairly low mile car with a slant 6 and 3 speed column stick.
It drove out really nicely, but they had it priced car-dealer crazy. I made them an offer at the low end of reasonable, but they didn’t want to dicker. Collector’s item, you see. I have always wondered how long it took them to sell it, and what they finally took to move it off the lot. I seriously would have bought it had they been reasonable. In the end, I bought the Marquis after one of the longest price negotiations I have ever undergone with a dealer.
As to its looks, I agree with everyone else. Nice looking car everywhere but the front. I would still drive one of those today, though. This is one Mopar platform that has eluded me through all these years.
Back when I was in college I had the Plymouth Belvedere cousin to this car. If anything the 1963 Plymouth front end was even weirder, with the huge, oval turn signals outboard of the headlights. My Plymouth had the 361 V8 with the biggest 2 bbl carburetor I have ever seen. As you might imagine it was easy to light up the back tires with all that torque in that lightweight body. I drove the Plymouth right at two years and put around 40,000 miles on thte odometer, nearly all of it just driving around my hometown or going to a bigger town across the river in southern Indiana. The car was in perfect shape when I got it; the dealer swore that it had belonged to an older couple who basically just drove it to church. This was possible, it looked like no one had ever been in the back seat. By the time I got rid of the Plymouth many of the minor controls had stopped to function, the worst was the heater fan quitting. The motor was still strong however, even with 95k miles.
Actually, I was wrong in saying the ’64 and ’65 were basically the same from the cowl back. That weird, pinched windshield from the ’62 (and 63) also had to go.
The grille always reminded me of what a hammerhead shark would look like after colliding with a phone pole…..
A 4th grade teacher at my elementary school drove an EXACT copy of this car! My first car, given to me by my dad in ’72 was a ’62 Dodge Dart 440, 4 door hardtop. I repaired it after T-boning a drunk who turned in front of me (my first accident!). When I bought a one owner ’70 Dodge Charger in 1974, I passed it down to my younger brother. He drove it for a number of years, it was repaired after a reversing MARTA bus T-boned him. He passed it along to my oldest sister, who didn’t want it to leave the family. Currently, my oldest nephew owns it/ w plans to restore it. 🙂
Wasn’t this the car that the ill-fated detective drove in It’s a Mad Mad World?
If I remember correctly, Spencer Tracy drove a 4 door black 1962 Dodge.
Most of the Mopars in that movie were ’62’s, except for the ’59 taxi cabs. I think the chief’s car was a ’62 Dart. The lifeguard drove the red 440 convertible. The Imperial convert and Plymouth wagon were also ’62’s.
Tracy drove a Dart.
http://pics.imcdb.org/0is827/playlist020110719180058.6809.jpg
The Dart, the even weirder and uglier version of this car…got it.
While the front end of the ’63 won’t win any beauty contests, it’s ten times better than the reverse trapezoid, warthog snout of the ’62 Dodge. Supposedly, the ’62 grille was done at the insistence of Dodge general manager M.C. Patterson. I can only surmise that the only way he kept his job after that was because the styling of the rest of the ’62 Dodge was as bad (if not worse) than the front.
I’m sorry…color me crazy, but I actually LIKE the 1962 Warthog.
The 1963 is “transitional” – a good thing if you wanted to see the Warthog nailed to the floor of the coffin; not so much if you actually suffered from the same mental illness as Exner.
Apparently I do. They’re weird, the 1962s; but they’re likable.
cabs in beverly hillbillies were often low level but sporty dodge sedans
i dontr remember anyone having one anytime that i can remember. i loved the squared taillights on the 64 2 for lessor models, 3 for 500’s
a la impala vs. bel air.
Cuts a nice profile, much improved over the wacky ’62. Only good thing I can say about the front end is I admire the creativity of doing something with the quad headlights other than putting them side by side. The bezels around the outer ones made me think they actually were larger when I was a kid. Which reminds me, I’ve often wondered what 60’s cars would look like if those big euro-style flush “Cibie” style lights were allowed then.
To me, diagonal quad headlights were one of the worst styling fads of the late ’50’s and early ’60’s. I think Lincoln started it and Chrysler finished. It only worked at all on the ’59 Buick.
Im a Mopar fan but it wouldn’t be until the 1967 A-Bodies and the 1968 B-Bodies before Chrysler had some great looking cars for their legendary drivetrains.
Aw c’mon Dan… 🙂
I wouldn’t throw it out of my garage 🙂
I had this car in 1993. It was a slant 6 and a three on the tree. Manual steering and brakes, fun car to drive that /6 had tons of torque. I bought it for $20 and sold it for $400 6 months later. The previous owner was hit on the RF door, but it still ran well. The thermostat stuck one day and I ran it till I got home, (would not go past 20mph). I replaced the stat and it ran fine after that, the slant 6 was an amazing engine. Lots of fun winding out the /6, fun car.
It was so ugly, but had lots of character.
Jeez, I got both sides of that one. My first new car was a ’62 Plymouth, the cheapest two door with 318 and 3-speed on the tree. It was homely but ran nicely with that combo. I followed that up with a new ’64 Dodge 440 (much, much better looking than the ’63) with the 383 and a huge two-barrel. Both were good cars.
I see where they got the grille for the new Cherokee. I don’t like the “wrap over the hood” look of either one.
Astute observation. It will be interesting to see if the similarly polarizing styling of the 2014 Cherokee will be better received than the ’63 Dodge…
Turned out, yes!
I had one of these, bought in the middle seventies at a swap meet for $100 .
318, TF car with 60,000 miles that only needed a broken rear leaf spring replaced..
Among the many Chryco cars I have owned that made a believer out of me back then.
They just keep running and running .
Found it in the Safeway lot. For some reason, I LOVE that face.
Although not as weird looking as Ward Cleaver’s earlier version of the same car, I wonder how this 440 would have fared had Wally tried to take it over the Camelback Pass…
This car was the only car my Dad bought new off the showroom floor…ever. Same color scheme as pictured. White with the red stripe the length of the car with the chrome border. 318 V-8 with push button auto transmission. He bought it new when we lived in Nebraska and it finally bit the dust in the mid 80’s in Wichita Ks some time after all four of us kids used it. In the mid 70’s Mom had an accident so Dad got a red right front fender to repair it and that’s how it stayed until it’s demise.
One of my earliest memories of being in a Chrysler product (aside from my Grandma’s 55 DeSoto that I did not know was a Chrysler product until years later) was in one of these.
My father had a 63 Chevy Bel Air wagon as a company car. One of the engineers where he worked needed the wagon and Dad came home in a beige 63 Dodge sedan – I remember those wheelcovers distinctly. I was maybe 5 at the time. Dad needed to run an errand early on a summer evening and I got a front seat ride-along. I remember the starter sound, the pushbuttons and the weird dash. It was all intoxicating to me because it was like nothing I had ever experienced.
When you get exposed to the Mopar gear reduction “Highland Park Hummingbird” starter sound; all other cars sound dull and blahhhhhh when they crank over.
They didn’t have to make the front look like that. Raise the inboard headlights, make them smaller and add a classic grill and you got an early 60’s Cordoba.
There’s actual truth in that, I think the Cordoba was this car under that beautiful body.
We got these new badged as a Dodge Phoenix one local identity in my home burg had one it was a unique looking car thats for sure.
Brings to mind how Exner-esque the 1961 Dodge pickup trucks were, and how over their long production run the styling gradually was de-Exnerized. I remember reading somewhere that Dodge had wanted all new sheetmetal for their light truck for ’67 or ’68 but had to wait until 1972.
There’s no way I would have bought this car when GM, Ford and AMC made much better looking cars for the same price and quality.
It is still too ugly.
C’mon – get real
You’d actually consider buying this over other 1963 vehicles in the same price range?
No brainer on the surface, but then I think X frame vs unibody, GM coils vs torsion bars, torqueflite vs roto hydramatic. How does a 383 stack up against the 389?
Some new fangled mag wheels will fix any styling deficiency of the Dodge.
Or this?
Face it
We might appreciate what the Dodge in 1963 looks like now – but in 1963 you’d probably not want to drive a car that looks like a fish with tumors.
Taste is subjective, VD. What you find beautiful perhaps does nothing for me, and vice versa.
1963 (or late 1962, when this came out on the showroom floor) was during a very interesting period, as far as style and fashion are concerned. The post WWII design ethos was being shown the door, and Exner was one of those leading the way. Modern art was overtaking Norman Rockwell, mini skirts replaced poodle skirts, and different was good, at least to a lot of folks. Now, these are polarizing, stylistically, but then, so was the 1961 Continental. You can have two different styles happening at the same time, and both can be popular. Rock and roll AND jazz. Dave Brubeck and Mick Jagger both happened during this period.
Just because you don’t find it appealing does not mean others did not.
It’s not the best looking car for 1963 but discounting Pontiac, Chevrolet, and Ford(in that order) I’d probably rank this right behind them(I’d put it ahead of Ford if not for the midyear addition of the fastback roof though). The weakest styled standard size player in 1963 was Dodge’s own Custom 880, but Olds, Buick and Mercury weren’t anything to write home about design wise.
My first car memories are of my dad’s light blue ’63 Plymouth sedan, which he drove until he got his first company car, a Fury III 4 door hardtop, in 1970. Like you, I was five when that happened, but We usually took my mom’s ’68 Sport Suburban station wagon when we went out, so I have better memories of the exterior than the interior.
That ’63 Plymouth was a cleaner, but still somewhat weird design. I’ve seen a design sketch which shows it was originally meant to grace the 1962 body shell. These Dodges feel more cohesive, and like the ’62, I’ve come to appreciate them.