In our quest to eventually cover all of the many generations of Chrysler’s Australian Valiants, Bryce has shot and posted a VG model four door sedan, looking like it’s still very much a “runner,” in the true sense of the word. Oversize wheels and fat tires, a slightly lowered stance, and of course that parallel-universe front and rear end; the Valiant you would encounter in your dreams, right down to the rather odd little slotted turn signal lights.
The big news with the VG Valiant, which appeared in the fall of 1969, was the all-new “Hemi-6” engine. Originally designed in Detroit to replace the slant six in trucks, that project was shelved and the new six was sent to Australia, where it was developed into a formidable and durable performer. This one has the two-barrel 245 CID version, which was rated at either 185 or 195 hp. Option E34 brought a four-barrel carb and other goodies for 235 hp. Later 265 CID versions were rated as 302 hp.
It was a hemi in name only, as it did not have true hemispheric combustion chambers. Our full story on the Hemi-6 is here.
Now about those rear tail lights…
I am going to be shouted down with howls of derision, but here goes. The VG hardtop is better looking than the donor Dart. Thanks PN and KB.
No complaints here, but it’s hard to say from the profile view.
Dan’s example appears to be well-loved.
I would agree the ‘aussie’ front end treatment is nicer looking….
..speaking of Darts..
..who can say this isn’t just .. .. .. B E A U T I F U L ? ? ?
The one I remember locally was badged a Phoenix but I had an earlier Dart badged Pioneer
It was surprising how nicely they ‘drove’ on the road (am thinking here specifically of the right hand drive ’63 Belvedere 318 Poly that we got here in NZ) ..the either side ‘raised edge’ of the bonnet line from the driver’s (and front passenger’s) perspective gave the driver the distinct impression of a much narrower car than it was (a great psychological aid to peace of mind cruising actually) ..very clever of Mopar .. .. .. 🙂
Actually, the pic I posted of the ’62 Dart is of a two door (‘two post’?) version …DAMN …what a handsome brute it is !#@!@!#@!#@!
(why can’t i have one ..pleeeeeze……) sob sniff 🙁
Did it have an engine similar to this by any chance?
This is what is sitting inside of that ’62 Dart (I will post a couple more pics of it.. .. ..
🙂
Unfortunately no it had a 318 swapped in the original had died due to high miles and the rest of wasnt far behind a gravel road farmers car driven hard put away wet and it showed.
..aren’t they amazing ..could Michelangelo have done better than this??
..will there ever be another machine that looks like this.. .. .. the ultimate cool of total bad arse in rubber glass steel and black paint
bumshot
Well they were good days when what we chose to own and drive were really individualistic choices indicating to some good degree the whimpishness or non-whimpishness of the general character
I mean who would want to own a Morris Oxford or an Austin Cambridge when you could have a Mk2 or an AP5 or a Belvedere??? haha
These days there are some times when I can’t tell the seeming insignificant differences between a housewife’s Mazda or Toyota or Honda shopping trundler
And quite frankly don’t care what they are
Boring borinng borinnnng modern soapbox ricemobiles ..all of ’em seems
(..i must be getting too old for this planet) lol
It is extremely rare to find a post ’67 Valiant/Dart four door that ‘looks’ even semi-badass. The engine sounds very respectable in a Valiant. The ‘Hemi 2-barrel’ badge is funny. Maybe if they said ‘Double Barrel’, it would have sounded better.
I usually don’t like these grafted grilles and headlights. But the combination doesn’t look half bad here.
Even the ‘charred’ paint effect at the fuel filler adds to the effect.
That car is being prepped for painting the black is a guide coat it must have had some damage in that area,
Those wheels are the narrow versions 6inch standard on later Chargers & inch rims were optional my 73 Regal had 7s, its definitely a runner its parked at Napier beach nobody lives there
Nice shots! Good looking car. I like the way it’s angled and posed with the front wheels turned. The ocean backdrop looks great too.
I like the grille/headlight treatment as much as the North American version.
The VF model that preceded it is a far prettier vehicle (in my humble opinion) ..here is a front end shot
The previous VF model had ‘cathedral’ rear lights that looked more balanced somehow.. I was never a fan of the VG for some reason even tho’ my father bought one brand new in July of ’70 with the 230hp ‘Fireball’ 318 (black ‘crinkle’ finish rocker covers over a red block) ..the rectangular front lights looked to me as if they’d been borrowed from the Vauxhall Viva of the same era (GM’s cheapest offering in NZ at the time)
I agree on the rear lights, but I like the rectangles on the front of the VG. Ahhhh HQ metallics…
The base model had a single barrel carb of course.
I saw a similar ‘driver’ Valiant Pacer a week ago but didnt have a camera handy. Pretty rare to see one in traffic these days. I can understand why too since none had power brakes or more than 3 speeds.
All the base model Aussie Vals had twin choke carbs from the VE model onwards (1968) and the VG had power front discs by 1970..
..they are very easy to drive in traffic with the ‘umbrella’ handbrake and ‘three on the tree’ and the torqueflite ones would have to be even easier
..although there is no power assistance to the brakes on the VF for example the brakes still feel powerful and progressive and stopping quickly at city speeds is no problem whatsoever (I am unsure how they would perform at 160kph in an emergency stop, but it is more on prolonged downhill under heavy load braking that drum brakes may start under-performing from heat build-up, and that is not much fun)
..on the positive fun side ..having ‘no power anything’ ..means all that engine power is going straight to the WHEELS… YAHOOOO ! !
NZ cars from OZ all had disc brakes drums were not available on NZ assembly, something to do with our steep twisty roads, Ironicly or otherwise there is a VF parked at the other end of Marine Parade for sale its quite mint with only the crap Chrysler pressings letting it down cosmetically I shot it months ago its on the cohort somewhere, quite rare cars here though the guy I bought my Minx from has 34 Valiants of various models stashed away.
Well my October ’69 Todd Park assembled VF Valiant sedan does NOT have disc brakes….. it has four drums! (I can absolutely guarantee this is accurate information because I personally fitted four brand new replacement (ex-Sterling Clutch & Brake of Onehunga) wheel cylinders to the brakes about 18 months ago, along with new linings all around).
On the other hand my old man’s 1970 VG 318 (an Australian assembled Safari Wagon) did come from Australia fitted with power front discs…
So it would be safe to say ALL the Todd Park locally assembled NZ new VF and earlier basic 225 slant six Valiants would have been drum braked. Neither did they have power steering, power windows, or air-conditioning.
Now the CH and CJ 360 Chrysler (Valiant) long wheelbase limo’s ex Australia had ALL of the above extras fitted. My father’s 1973 CJ360 even had power adjustable front seats fitted. As a result of all of this power robbing stuff it was a bit of a slug compared to the 318 VG Safari, which could honk if you floored it…lol! It would lay a straight 50 metres of twin black rubber on the road from both rears from a standing start (admittedly it was only shod with the factory 775/14 crossplies). The 360 could lay rubber for only about 15 to 20 metres by comparison… and the handling of the over-sized Australian designed body shell was NOT up to the standard of the VG with it’s much smaller and lighter ‘Dart body’.. the 318 in the smaller body was the way to go in those days and there was nothing around that could touch them during 1969 and 1970. The 1969 VF 318 was slightly detuned to 210hp for some reason, however with the VG this was normalised back to 230hp.
My VE had power discs and worked well. My VF hardtop was drums all round and stopped eventually with much praying. Must have been an option from new.
Thanks for the correction on the carb. I agree they are driveable – until you compare them to a modern car, they are a lot more work as any car of the era is really. No power brakes is more of an adjustment thing until you get used to it and something to be wary of if you let someone else drive your car.
It is true to say that the 245 and 265 Hemi’s so-called did not in fact have true hemispherical combustion chambers at all… they were basically designed to be truck engines (just as the ubiquitous muscle car era progenitor Chevy 409’s were) ..funny that
but ..but ..the 225 was one of America’s engineering master pieces n’est-ce pas??
..I have heard senior and experienced A-grade mechanics saying the 225 was one of the best designed six cylinder engines they had ever come across ..there was even an all alloy version prototyped ..and a diesel variant on the books
..the 225 was one of the first production engines to have a tuned intake .. 🙂 someone took a lot of time and love designing the Mopar slant six engine .. 🙂
I am intimately familiar with the front-end sheetmetal on the US version, and this is a really strange re-style. Not a simple trim job on US stampings, nor a fresh start. The front fender stamping looks identical, except for a lenthened front end that curves downward to make the headlight/grille opening lower than on a US car. Hood is lengthened as well. What is interesting is that the cheap way would have been to add end-caps to the fenders, but this looks like they actually revised the dies at the front end. Fascinating.
I have always found it interesting the way Aussie cars are always identified by a two letter designation for a series, like this “VG” or like a Falcon XA. That seemed to go across many companies, was there some regulatory reason for this?
No, just popular usage. Holden started it first with the early-mid fifties FJ, and the others followed. When Holden started it, the alphabetic code stood for the year of (planned) release, but later it just became random. Falcons used an X-something code until the late eighties. Chrysler’s Valiants started the V-something code with the ’67 VC, and kept in into the late seventies, They eventually replaced it with a C- code, but by then nobody was paying attention. 🙂
Holdens system was used until the last Aussie designed HOLDEN the EH of 63 Later the H prefix series denotes Opel redesigns and the letter/year/month code does not match up.
Aussie cars in general and Holdens in particular were not released at year end but in September so model codes are more use than year designations
According to John Wright in ‘Heart of a Lion’, the HD styling was prepped by the US after Detroit freaked out at the Oz EF proposal. Leo Pruneau’s account is as follows (Hegland was GM-H MD);
“David Hegland was in Detroit at GMOO (Overseas Operations) and came out to look at the cars. Bill Mitchell was the Vice-President in charge of design. He was amused at GM-H terminology in giving Holdens model codes. He couldn’t relate to it. Mitchell said, ‘We’ll probably call that the HD for David Hegland backwards.’ David was right there smoking his little cheroot. I was standing five feet from him.”
After that, I think the choice of letters was pretty arbitrary. It is an interesting coincidence that the Oz 3 all used two letters, though.
Aha! More from ‘Heart of the Lion’
‘The FJ was the first Holden to use the GM-H secret code of model identification. Like every car company, GM-H had a long term planning calendar and the initials given to the various models through the 1950s and into the first half of the 1960s reflected this.
‘Holden’s secret code related letters of the alphabet to numbers but in reverse order. K stood for 1, J for 2, I was omitted because it was too close to the numeral 1, H was 3, G-4, F-5, E-6, D-7, C-8 and B-9. The first letter in each two-letter model code referred to the decade, the second to the year. Thus FJ stood for 1952, the year the car was intended to come to market. By extension it is easy to see that the EK was the 1961 Holden and the FE was the ‘all new’ FE Holden of 1956. The FB model had been planned for a 1959 launch but was actually released in January 1960.
‘The 48-215 was never given any such code but during the 1950s car dealers dubbed it the FX to distinguish it from the FJ, with the ‘X’ representing ‘unknown’. (In 1965 the code was abandoned because it was felt that too many people had ‘cracked’ it but for many baby boomers mad about cars it remained an enduring mystery.)’
The truth will out.
Thanks Don, I never knew why the Holden model designations jumped around so much
The tooling on these were made locally so there was not really any reason to keep things too close to NA market styling, but I agree they could have done it differently, J.P. Perhaps some structural reason? Aus roads were pretty hard on early unit bodies.
John H. explained when I asked the same question that the original reason the two-letter designations were commonly used was that what would be essentially a single model year in the U.S. would run anywhere from 15 to 30 months instead of 10 to 12. Therefore, saying “XA Falcon” is comparable to “’71 Fairlane” in the States. (He pointed out also that while Australian cars do have model years, it’s based on the original registration date, so the model code is more revealing of what you’re talking about.)
Except the XY was the 71 Falcon and the XA was released in 72 with its new aussie designed body shell
Very close but the year the car is identified by is its manufacture date not registration date. Bryce I think Aaron was just using an example saying 71 Fairlane.
“I have always found it interesting the way Aussie cars are always identified by a two letter designation for a series, like this “VG” or like a Falcon XA. That seemed to go across many companies, was there some regulatory reason for this?”
I’m pretty much sure it’s regulatory. Can’t remember the exact reason.
GMH parts manual shows cars with their internal coding and the Aussie one for later models. Even Opels are designated with 2 letters there.
Valiant had AP5 and AP6 (Australian Production) designation after the R and S series, then they had two letters with VC onwards. If it was regulatory it would have started around 1966. I think it was just a familiarity thing; once Holden had established it, and the person on the street had started using it, it became the convention. That’s just a guess though.
Whoops. Just like Old Peter said above.
vauxhall did it in the UK also
I like it,we had an earlier Australian Valiant (66) 4 door with a non hemi upright 6.I see a bit of Hillman Hunter in places,especially the roof from that first photo.If it had a cassette player and some Bon Scott era AC/DC and Rose Tattoo tapes it would be just right for a Saturday night cruiser
…the ’66 Aussie Valiant was known as the VC model ..essentially an AP6 with modified front and rear treatment but AP6 doors front and rear screens and roof line and with the same 145hp single throat carb 225cid drivetrain
..it was the VE of ’68 that introduced the 160hp 225cid drivetrain (using a different camshaft and a downsized twin choke Carter taken from the 318 V8)
..it was from the VE that the VF and VG models evolved with tweaked styling changes ..essentially the Dodge Dart provided the platform for all three (whereas unless I am mistaken it was the Plymouth Valiant that provided the earlier series’ platform.. ie: the R, S, AP5, and AP6)
‘Back in Black’ is a great album as well, although Brian Johnson sounds like a strangled chipmunk during live shows these days. And the Thunderstruck single was their only other good non-Bon song. Rose Tattoo? Stylin, Gem.
Would an E34 easily fit into our domestic Darts?
Yep very popular retro fit is Hemi into early Vals, HUGE performance improvement it takes the old dungas up to near Vauxhall 6 performance levels.
THE “Hemi” 6 is quite a bit longer than the slant 6 as the water pump is on the front of the block as well the engine having larger bore centres. Chrysler Oz changed the front sheetmetal on the VG to allow the radiator to be moved forward so it’s not a straight forward swap. The 6 also had a unique K-frame with different engine mounts to LA V8 models. These may be different than slant members?
I could look this up on the ‘webs but I’d much rather hear from the CC folks: what is an R Series Valiant? It’s prominently mentioned in a song by one of our favorite groups, The Waifs, who are Australian.
R & S series were the originals from the US R with toilet seat S without they were fitted with 225 engines and 14 inch wheels for Australian consumption very very few came to NZ we still got some US Chrysler products from Canada that Aussie missed out on NZ Valiants really began with the AP5 of 63.
THE classic Valiant! It’s the US ’61, which was imported with the 225 six. Sold against the 144 Falcon and the 138 cube Holden, it immediately established Valiant as THE performance buy. Coupled with that wild styling, it sold like hot cakes.
Yeah the Holden 138 was more than gutless based on an outdated pre WW2 Vauxhall design that was never updated in 53 when Vauxhall ditched it and the Falcon was severely underpowered when compared to the Zephyr it was meant to replace thankfully in NZ it didnt and Zephyrs continued to be Ford sedan of choice.
The Mark11 Zephyr rocks!! !! More than a match for the early Val cos it handled better… you could confidently 90 degree power drift a Mk11 Zephyr just like you could an early Cortina..
..pity I tried that on a 200 cube XP wagon and the darned thing was literally uncontrollable.. and ended up in someone’s garden at night
But don’t even try it in a Mark III/TC Cortina. My son still remembers the time 15 years ago when I ‘drifted’ off the road, up a steep bank and came to rest halfway through a barbed-wire fence!
hahahha.. no ..you are right there !! ..the Mk11 Cortina at least was an old sack of spuds.. but the Mk3 was a lot of fun with the OHC 2 litre engine it has to be said ..they could get along pretty quickly from a standing start 🙂
I know someone with a MK2 ute must shoot it one day and show how a proper Ford ute was constructed the comparism to the early Falcon is quite remarkable the Zephyr has a double skinned floor sedan and convertable laminated for extra strength
My parents had a ’70 Valiant. It was reliable but had the barge-like characteristics typical of big Oz sedans of the time — saggy uncomfortable bench seats, a wheezing noisy engine and it begrudgingly lurched around corners.
hahaaa.. it must have been a VERY sick one then …an ex-taxi maybe ..or an ex-rep’s car several times around the clock perhaps?? …when they were ‘new’ they were smooth powerful quiet and quite ‘flat handling’ family vehicles thanks to the front torsion bar suspension set-up.. the rears were no different to the Holdens’ and Falcons’ rigid axle and cart spring set-up ..the seating is quite comfortable too and I can cruise up and down from Thames to Auckland and back in one day any day of the week just as comfortably as I can in my C30 T5.. ..
Has anyone ever heard an explanation of how come we Aussies wound up with a different roofline to any US Dart or Valiant on our ’68-’71 sedans? I’ve always wondered.
Local production.
Go Ricciardi!
Well done Daniel!
I’ve heard of the Chrysler Valiant, but because I’m not from Australia, nor do I live in Australia, I’ve never seen one in person. Were they good cars, or were they poorly built crap? I’ve heard both being said about the Chrysler Valiant.
The American bodied ones were fine automobiles..
The Australian bodied ones (ie: from 1971 onwards) had a significant problem of corrosion where the ‘C’ pillars joined the lower panel ..ALL of them suffered from ferrous oxide ‘break-out’ due to welding acid salts being left in the join at this particular area where it was most noticeable.. other areas around the bodywork suffered from the same problem ….so you could say they were ‘time-bombed’ from within ..more or less ..but for five years say ..all was good
..other than that they were fine automobiles
So I’ve heard about Australian Valiants of the time. That’s unacceptable by anyone’s standards, much less Australian standards or even American standards.
i agree
…however the Valiant Charger with it’s 302hp triple dual throat carbed 265 cube inline six
was probably worth spending the time and money on to ‘correct’ and ‘save’ nevertheless ~ for automotive posterity
…would you agree
I agree. Or better yet, if you can find one that’s in good original condition to begin with, that’d be even better. I think the VG Valiant had a better looking front end styling than our American Dodge Dart.
Thats my beast, paneled and primed matt black now