If there is one constant in the automotive world it is that the Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volaré are the biggest pieces of junk ever foisted on the American public. However, to every rule there is an exception and today it is this, a 2-door coupe from the second year of Volaré production that somehow didn’t enter the pearly gates of the junkyard until the middle of this year, some 42 years after rolling onto a transport train from the factory.
Resplendent in what appears to be the Light Mocha Tan color option, this example used to sport the optional Landau vinyl top. People aren’t kidding when they say vinyl tops just hide the rust underneath, this car doesn’t have much visible rust except for where the top was.
Was the public already aware how much worse these were than the Valiant that it replaced by the 1977 model year? Likely not as 1977 was the Volaré’s best sales year with over 325,000 leaving showrooms and it was Canada’s top selling car. Curiously (to me anyway) the Volaré outsold the Aspen its entire run, I always thought Dodge was the volume marque. It doesn’t look all that terrible from here, certainly the styling isn’t objectively worse than the Nova or Maverick, although once the Fairmont 2-door and Futura rolled into the showroom that may have changed the calculus a bit.
That hood’s almost as curvy as one on a Jaguar XJ6 but somehow the effect isn’t the same. Shall we see what’s under the hood?
Well, that’s not the Slant-Six that Jason Shafer’s family had in their 1978 Coupe, so it’s either the 318 or the 360 V8. this looks like an otherwise low spec car so I’ll guess the 318. Of course I could be mistaken as I’m no ’70’s Mopar engine spotter. The fuel filter looks pretty new, I wonder if someone tried to get this going again if it was sitting for a while. Or just had a thorough service regimen in place the whole time.
Let’s crack the door and take a peek inside…ooh, white vinyl, so classy, gotta match the shoes and belt I suppose. Does it really go with the Light Mocha Tan exterior? I dunno, I suppose if the top was white, that looks like the whipped cream on your Venti Mocha from Starbucks and maybe the white inside represents all the sugar in the drink.
Well, someone sucked most of the sugar out of this one’s interior already, but they left the carpet underlayment and some of the dash. Bummer about that but let’s take a closer look.
A little wood-tone on the wheel and then silver bits on the dashboard. I wonder which trim level this car was? Supposedly there were three main ones available – Standard (which isn’t really called out as such in the brochure), Custom, and Premier. In addition there were a few sub-packages available such as the Road Runner and other option combinations. The Premier had a hood ornament as standard which this doesn’t have and it seems too lightly equipped to be a Custom so I think that makes this one a Standard.
The odometer is a typical 5-digit with a current reading of 30,160 so I’m assuming we need to add a 1 to that. Were the Canadian market ones 5-digits as well? How does one tell how many times it’s really been around the dial if that’s so? With miles at least usually an extra 100,000 of them are fairly noticeable but kilometers?
Pretty plain back here without the applique between the lights. Also, beyond the seats, not much demand for any of these parts.
Ah, the air cleaner in the trunk. The Fram-looking filter looks pretty clean from here so maybe this one was in fact maintained well enough to last this long.
There’s the roof seam that the Landau top covered so elegantly. The fiberglass filler panels for the rear windows to make them “Opera” style is the weirdest American affectation to my eyes. How did people think that looked good? And what is the point of taking out so much of the rear side visibility?
The other side has a whole bunch of factory body filler in the roof panel seam. It looks completely different than the passenger side.
Still, not ugly from this angle either but far, far better without the vinyl roof and would be even better without the window inserts.
Looking up the VIN shows that this salvage yard purchased this car back in July for the princely sum of $201 at an auction, possibly they were the first and only bid. It was built in Hamtramck, Michigan back in June of 1977.
No rust here. This is the back part of the front fender. However looking at the front end of the fender (see first and fourth pictures) shows massive corrosion right around the mounting points for the fender lights, in fact it’s actually rusted all the way through. I suppose the back part was better shielded than the front part.
Yeah…I don’t think it worked out quite that way for most people.
Related Reading:
Jason Shafer explores a 1978 Dodge Aspen Wagon
PN chronicles the Deadly Sin that was the 1976 Aspen and Volaré
Robert Kim annotates a vintage review of a Volaré Station Wagon
The styling was fine, it was the quality that made this the last Mopar vehicle my family ever purchased. My dad bought an Aspen coupe and a Wagon together and they were both absolutely the worst cars we ever owned. They rusted within months, had parts barely bolted on (the wiper motor of one came loose the first time it was turned on). He complained loudly to the regional service director and threatened a lawsuit. They bought back both cars. He bought an AMC Matador that gave nearly 20 years of faithful service, and and a Celica that began our long Toyota tradition. Deadly sin indeed.
My dad bought the aspen special edition 2 door with the landau top
Yes it rusted on the fender tops and also rusted in the hood vents
Dad kept it 9 years then gave it to me
I liked it , big car ride ice cold a c, bullet proof engine and transmission
They just rushed it into production before the bugs were worked out
Basically this same car would become the gran fury / diplomat that so many police / taxi drivers would depend on .
I thought about buying one until I heard it rusting while sitting in the showroom.
My brothers and I were big Valiant fans. So when these cars first came out, we were very excited. My older brother bought a new Aspen wagon. It was junk that needed to be replaced within the first year. We were all heartbroken. So I can’t look at these cars without remembering how diseased and rotted they were.
As to styling, the Valiant/Dart looked fine, but dated. The new Volare/Aspen looked like mild updates. Nothing radical. A radical Volare/Aspen would have been less attractive to the Valiant/Dart buyer. It would have flagged the new car as something different from what they loved.
I wished Chrysler put big pink flags on every one of these cars with a yellow triangle painted on the hoods with the script, “Don’t buy this piece of garbage!”
In closing, no one wins when one of America’s car companies put out garbage. Millions of Americans started buying cars shipped from the other side of the world, gutting our economy and wrecking our auto-based Midwestern cities. We still struggle with our own people refusing to drive our own brands, because of cars like these. So Ford didn’t win when Chrysler put these mistakes on the road, and neither did GM or AMC. Everyone got hit through our interconnected nation.
Canadian issue cars did have five digit odometers for KMS.
However this particular car would have spoken the same language in either country.
1978 was the first year metric speedos and odometers were mandatory.
There were three levels: standard, Custom, and Premier. Road Runner was a trim and suspension option package for V8 Volares. Sun Runner and Front Runner were advertising nicknames for selecting combinations of options.
Thank you for that, I’ve amended the text. The brochure wasn’t particularly clear at the time of writing…
Cunningly designed to move the buyer up to a more profitable trim level.
This appears to have the midlevel Custom trim based on the inner door panel having the rectangular woodgrain applique and chrome strips. The base doors were very plain and just covered with pleated vinyl (below), although even that was an upgrade from the Valiant which had painted metal at the top. Base seats were also nearly featureless. The steering wheel shown here was standard and offered the only wood trim found in a base Volare (the same wheel was used on late-’70s Dodge trucks and full-size vans, as were other bits from the Aspen/Volare like HVAC controls and vent ducts). Outside, I recall you had to go to the top-level Premier to get the taillight insert and standard side moldings, although the vinyl roof with opera window was available on lesser Volares.
Great find Jim! As has been said with past articles on the Aspen/Volaré, the earlier rust, carburetor, and drivability issues with these had largely been worked out by 1978. But by then, the damage had been done. The later ones proved to be generally long lived and well built. Especially damaging for Chrysler, and later GM with the X-Cars, was the huge popularity of these corresponding with the high volume of recalls. Lots of people got burned.
Given that brand engineering in Detroit was becoming quite blatant by the mid 70s, I was always surprised that Chrysler helped distinguish the ’76 & ’77 Aspen/Volaré by having bumper located turn signals on the Aspen. And turn signals adjacent to the headlights on the Volaré. Made them easy to identify at a distance.
Even though the company was in dire economic straits by the late 70s, I thought Chrysler did do a good job of freshening these through their model run with some creative trim packages. In 1979, various Chrysler models started offering quite attractive two tone paint options. With the break line consistently along the upper belt line. This paint option was popular on the Omni/Horizon, and the St.Regis/Newport. I saw a lot of those. But somewhat rare on the Aspen/Volaré. And unfortunately, not so attractive on the Cordoba. Emphasizing the upper belt line with this paint scheme gave the Aspen/Volaré more of a LeBaron/Diplomat and Granada/Monarch appearance.
I also liked the final year styling tweaks Chrysler gave these. Including the Fairmont-like front clip, with square headlights. As well as squaring off the lower rear of the half vinyl roof. Giving them an overall more modern (and GM-like) appearance.
Though somewhat popular on the Aspen/Volaré coupes, this new for ’79 two tone package was rather rare on the sedans, and quite rare on the wagons. The bright rocker panel trim, and wheel arch trim should have been mandatory with the paint package IMO.
I’ve often wondered, but never seen, exactly what lies beneath vinyl roofs that create those small opera windows. Now that’s definitely a fad I’m glad has run its course!
+1. As a foreigner, opera windows seemed weird at the time.
My theory on this one is that it was stored for a lot of the last several years. Then someone attempted to bring it back to life, with a few meagre attempts.
I believe that the reason, aside from the quality problems, for poor sales of these models, was that the public was so pissed off at Chrysler for discontinuing their favourite car, ie. the Darts and Dusters, that they turned away completely. It was as if these cars were seen as mild restyles, and were viewed as poor imitations.
I love those cup holders in the glove compartment door! My Dart had some similar to those, but in metal, not molded plastic.
Had I been in the market for a car back then, I believe I would have looked elsewhere.
I remember there being a lot of excitement as these were introduced. The Dart/Valiant/Duster were beloved but really old by 1976 (by the standards of the time). These looked like you got all the good stuff we were used to but in a pretty new package with a nicer interior.
Chrysler had been well known for their ability to turn out crap, but the A body had been a pretty safe bet for a lot of folks, and really the only car by then that they could claim any kind of market leadership in. They had a good sized customer base when these came out – and they pissed off a whole lot of buyers, many for the last time.
Seeing that image of the Volare next to the Duster….
oy. The Volare loses, and loses big, in styling.
Amen. Like, what are the right drugs to think the Volaré wins it?
My had a ‘78 Aspen 4 door with the 225ci 6. It was a damn good car. Bought in IL and followed us down to FL when we moved. Traded it in on a Horizon in ‘93ish.
The shot of the Volare next to the Duster…. oy, the Volare really loses in the styling department.
I am with you. The sedan was OK but bland, the wagon was really attactive, but the coupe was just off. They tried to make a curvy beltline (sort of a copy of the 75 Nova) but it just didn’t work for me.
I “now” prefer the older front end, but only because it has more charm or appears more detailed without seeming at all excessive, but at the time I think I would have preferred the more modern one (Progress!). But where the Valiant coupe loses it for me is the C-pillar, I never warmed up to just how huge and sweeping it is. I much prefer the larger rear side window in the pictured ad car with the slim C-pillar (but just as much detest the opera window in the featured car).
For a lot of years, every time someone would apply adjectives like “attractive” or “handsome” to the F-body wagon, I would try—really try— to see what they saw. It’s been quite awhile since I gave up. I can’t see those “Star-e-o” things, either, where you’re supposed to be able to see a sailboat or whatever out of a mess of random squiggles and dots. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> the coupe was just off. They tried to make a curvy beltline (sort of a copy of the 75 Nova) but it just didn’t work for me.
I think they were trying to replace two body styles, the Duster/Dart Sport and the Scamp/Swinger with a single design, hoping the opera window option would make it look like two different rooflines like before. It didn’t work….
Amen. Like, what are the right drugs to think the Volaré wins it…?
Ugh, that butterscotch pudding color – I think that every car that got past the green sprayers in the paint booth got tagged with this stuff. Ack.
I am going to guess that that was not the actual white interior, but the really light beige one that they offered then. The white was really rare but that parchment beige was quite common.
I wanted to love these so much. I knew more than one person who traded a non-Mopar in for one. The Granada was a smashing success for Ford and this car seemed like Chrysler’s immediate response. They lacked the styling home-run (for the era, anyway) that the Granada hit, but they brought back the wagon. The higher trim models were really nicely done inside. But the fender rust and the horrid drivability problems killed them.
I still think a Granada wagon could have been cool, if done properly. Mercedes had wagons, right?
Ford Australia could have filled in the blank.
Were these real Ford styling studies or after-the-fact renderings?
https://testdrivejunkie.com/1975-granada-and-monarch-wagons/
Oh, the memories from seeing this…..
Having no experience with any of these prior to my parent’s ’78 model I cannot speak to those, but that ’78 Volare was fairly solid. For whatever reason the catalytic converter was removed early on (a preventative measure? No emissions checks in that area) and that was about it mechanically. There was some rust on the vertical corners of the trunk lid but that was about it.
It was traded off at 105,000 miles and still ran great.
Regular leaded gas was still widely available then, and was always two or three cents a gallon cheaper than unleaded. I knew many people who replaced the converter with a “test pipe” (just checking to make sure the converter is not plugged, then kind of forgetting to put it all back together as it should have been) and then making the hole in the fill tube bigger so the regular nozzle would fit.
For their time, I’ve actually always found these handsome vehicles, particularly in higher trim levels with their vinyl roofs, deluxe wheels, and thicker bodyside moldings.
It’s hard to believe it but it wasn’t until 1979 that Dodge outsold Plymouth for the first time, largely a result of Chrysler depriving Plymouth of the M-body and R-body in the U.S. until 1980 and 1982, respectively. The “compact” Volare was in fact Plymouth’s largest car in the U.S. for 1979.
Brendan, I agree with you.
When these were new I thought they were meh looking.
To my 2019 eyes, they are quite handsomely styled. There’s something to be said about the 1970’s and early 1980’s styling – the manufacturers put a lot of thought into details, a practice that got wiped away by the aero era.
‘Light Mocha Tan’ was a popular color across the Chrysler line at the time. From the compacts to the full-sized lineup. And on the D-series pickups. Perhaps from all the rust issues Chrysler had at the time, it was a touch-up spray can color I remember seeing often at parts stores for years into the mid 80s.
Ah, Light Mocha Tan! Our 1977 Volare Premier wagon was that color, with brown/orange/tan plaid cloth seats and woodgrain sides. It was OK, I don’t recall a lot of issues with it but I was only 7 when my parents bought it. It had a slant six so I remember it being slow.
I wondered at the time why my my parents bought it instead of a GM B wagon, which is what every last driveway in our neigborhood had. But it was a manageable size and big enough for two adults and two kids, and I’m sure it was cheaper.
It was such a big deal, then my grandparents bought a base Volare wagon, and my dad’s boss bought an Aspen top-of-the-line wagon, with a V8. Those two were complete lemons, which caused my dad embarassment with the boss. I remember we loaned our wagon to the boss’s family, during one of their wagon’s more lengthy stays in the shop.
The boss traded his Aspen in on a new 300SD. My grandparents traded their Volare on a new Bonneville. My parents bought a new 1979 240D to replace our Volare.
BUT, my stepgrandfather bought the Volare. And he used it mostly as a truck, until he died in the mid-1990’s. After retirement, he handmade furniture in his backyard shop. He used the Volare to haul raw lumber, and then the finished goods. I saw it often dragging the ground, loaded inside AND pulling a trailer of wood or dressers or whatever. It wouldn’t die, in the end, despite all the bad rap.
Maybe we just got a good one? Oddly enough I don’t recall ANY rust, peeling woodgrain, etc. by the end.
Owned an ’80 slant six powered sedan in the late 90’s. Wrecked by a friend after I sold it to him.
Was a great car for me and would gladly buy another.
The example you show is a 318 powered example according to the VIN.
The VIN also denotes a standard model, so the vinyl top was a standalone option.
These were probably Chrysler’s deadliest sin. I could never understand how Chrysler Corp could wrap their bullet-proof engines and transmissions around such shabbily, flimsily constructed vehicles, so prone to rust and various pieces that involuntarily just detach themselves and fall off. The fact that this particular turd managed to dodder its way far into the 21st century is evidence of God–only a miracle could keep this going for that long!
The 1976 Dodge Aspen Custom sedan (318 2-bbl) I owned since new is still “on the road,” so to speak. I was offered really silly money for it, ten years ago when I drove it to a Mopar collector show. It was a daily driver in like-new cosmetic condition when I sold it. The rear main seal of the 318 was seeping oil and the otherwise bulletproof Torqueflite had its torque converter replaced. The rear suspension had a police-spec sway bar on it, from a Dodge Diplomat.
I say “on the road” because in the hands of a collector, it may not get driven all that much. Still, it is getting the required smog inspections, and passing them (in California, you can look these up by license plate or VIN).
If you got a good one in the first couple of years, or if you fixed what wasn’t screwed together properly; or if you got a 1978 or later, these were solid, durable cars that far outlived their “pop culture” reputation. Chrysler called the same car by the “M-Body” moniker, and in that form they survived to 1989…thirteen years, which is an eternity for today’s car designs.
Now, how do you keep WordPress from kicking you out of “signed-in” status????
And I am NOT posting comments too fast!!!!
“Oh, only the early ones sucked, by ’78 they were fine” is a bit of feel-good make-believe popular amongst the aptly-designated F-bodies’ inexplicably existent fans and apologists. It’s much like the one about the imaginary great big wonderful farm where well-meaning but thoughtless parents tell little kids the doggy went.
Even after Chrysler, uh, “remembered” that stamped steel parts have to be, um, like, y’know, rustproofed and replaced the front fenders and started taking a lackadaisical sweep with a paint gun at the back of the metal parts before they were drunkenly thrown onto the cars coming down the line, build quality was all over the map. If you happened to get a good one—relatively speaking; even the best of them was not near the benchmark in American-car build quality of that time—then it stood a chance of staying mostly together and reasonably functional for a long time. There are a few such F-bodies still soldiering around even in car-hostile Windsor, Ontario (approximately 100% of them being in their remarkable condition due to the tireless efforts of their owner, one particular man, to push the water up the hill about it). And yeah, occasionally we run across an inexplicable survivor, like the sky-blue 225/3tree yard car I wrote about. But mostly these cars were inexcusable junk that fell apart if you so much as stared hard in their direction.
It wasn’t just build quality, either. Large chunks of the engineering in these cars was basically unsound. They were intended to have coil springs, which are kind of difficult to mess up, but then some loser of a little Napoleon in a big chair had a temper tantrum at the suspension group: “Chrysler cars have torsion bars! You’re going to put torsion bars in this car, and I don’t care how, just do it!”. The resultant transverse torsion bar suspension setup was pathetic from the start, and stayed that way no matter how many slapdash upgrades and slipshod fixes Chrysler attempted.
And that’s just one example of a great many. Want another one? Okeh: porous manual transmission housings that leaked lube through the metal onto the garage floor or driveway.
And a long, long, long list of other equally-stupid crap. Just no excuse for any of it. Plenty of explanations, but no valid excuse.
“Okeh: porous manual transmission housings that leaked lube through the metal onto the garage floor or driveway”
I personally like it when my metal doesn’t leak. How the hell does someone make a transmission housing that badly? Sure, it might/will leak where the gasket is, the 3 speed manual transmission on my ’68 Chevy leaked oil and ran dry that way, but through the metal??
Merrily right on through the metal of the A833 4-speed overdrive transmission. And Chrysler had to do yet another expensive fix.
Okay, I’ve been trained in biochemistry so I get selectively-permeable membranes and such, but ever since I read that I’ve been trying to get my head around just how you get a porous metal – it seems like one of those weird things that happens off the back end of the periodic table.
Reputedly happened on a bunch of early Magna engines, about the 90K mark, though possibly water coming through poor/too thin castings. Or through the gap marked “myths, urban”, I simply don’t know.
Thinking of the 6 different phase transitions of plutonium? You can’t get much weirder than metal that is denser in the liquid state than in the solid state that preceded it.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/pu-phase.htm
If you recall or recollect, early Porsche Boxsters had their engines replaced due to porous crankcase castings.
Yeah, it is not much of an overstatement to say that by the end of the Lynn Townsend era Chrysler had pretty much lost the ability to engineer/design/assemble a competent car. There is a lot of shade thrown at Iacocca, but if not for him Chrysler would have been gone by 1983.
‘Sup, Daniel,
I just read your “Junk Yard Tales” and it is one of the most entertaining things I’ve read in awhile.
Count me as one of those who thinks the Volare wagon is nice looking. I made an attempt to describe why with words like ‘proportion’ and such, but it ended up sounding like BS, because it pretty much is. It strikes a similar chord with older Mercedes wagons for me, but with an American style.
Well, old American style. Not the “Grrrrr!!!/Coal-burning/Monster®sticker/giant-light-bar/subwoofer’d/stagecoach-rimmed/V-Tec,yo!/aggressive/aggressivier/aggressiviest/stabby/Aarrggghhhh!!!!/NOS,brah/Kill!Kill!Kill!” modern styles.
It just looks friendly from when it was okay for that to be a thing.
The Aspen/Volare comedy team came around when I was still a kid, so I’m always entertained by all the stories of their terribleness.
I think you were on the right track, proportions matter. The shape is basically the same as the Fairmont wagon but the overhangs look way less egregious and the round wheel openings look better.
The Aspen Sport wagon looks awesome to me, better than the R/T coupe.
Thanks kindly for the compliment on the junkyard piece.
The Mercedes wagon comparison is an interesting one, and I can certainly see a fair amount of similarity there. I really think the Merc 123 wagon’s design tromps the Mopar F-body’s design, but it’s really not a fair versus given the price differential. I do find stuff to dislike about the Merc’s design—taillights too dumpy, too small, too dim, but at least they don’t look thrown on and melted like the F-body ones. And on both wagons (and the late Chev Blazer and a variety of others) I don’t like the forward-slanted upper half of the tailgate, which sharply reduces usable space in the car.
It’s also difficult for me to separate out distaste for the design of the F-body from distaste for its lazy engineering and slack build quality from distaste for its era’s overcooked notions of style.
Daniel, I resent your implication. My dog is now 32 and loving life on the farm.
(PS thanks for all your great comments)
»bows, doffs cap« Y’welcome!
Well, if our ’78 LeBaron was any indication, quality control issues had NOT been licked by ’78, at least at the St. Louis plant.
My folks decided it was time for a new car in ’78 when their ’70 Dart (which had replaced a ’62 Plymouth) was getting long in the tooth. They went back to the Dodge dealer and test-drove an Aspen. Things got off to a terrific start when the door handle came off in dad’s hand and the salesman apologized. A variety of other stuff didn’t work or came apart on the test drive and the salesman kept apologizing. They bought a ’78 Caprice.
We had a 1980 Aspen wagon that we’d bought in 1982, and I can tell you that it was a well built car. Nothing fell off, the car wasn’t rusting through…..and this was odd, since we live in the middle of Canada with aggressive road salt at that time. The only problem that we had it was with the famed regulator (my dad always had a few spares around), but that thing always got us around reliably, especially since it was a Slant Six. So I can relate our experience in that a 1980 version was very reliable, at least in this case.
Quite interesting to peek beneath the vinyl top. Truly one of the malaise-era’s odder styling trends. They slapped those broughamtastic “landau” roofs on nearly everything back then. I saw a similar Dodge Aspen about a year and a half ago, in actual running condition.
Owned the black Aspen in the background while stationed in Korea in ’88. Korea was a 1 year tour, so this Aspen passed from owner to owner annually. I was owner #8 or something like that. When you’ll only have a car for one year, the maintenance rules were simple. Don’t spend any money. Avoid getting KIAMASTER or HINO embossed on any of the sheet metal. This one must have been a later model. I don’t remember any problems.
With American cars, the best bet was the last year of a long-running series like the A body. They never, ever get the first and second years of a new model right in terms of reliability and factory defects. If I’d been in the market in 1976 when they announced that the Volare was coming, my first thought would have been to go to the lot and look hard at a leftover Valiant for paint, driveability and body fit issues and make an offer if it passed my examination.
Except by ’76 the A-bodies were pale shadows of what they had been even just five years earlier, by any measure except curb weight and artificial “luxury”. Much poorer performance, much poorer fuel efficiency, much poorer build quality, etc.
Incredible find, Jim, and great words as usual. I have a soft spot for the ’77s, as my family had owned one, and we liked it, rust though it did. Sharp looking car.
It’s a shame this one is being junked after having lasted so long. There can’t be many examples left.
(What was in your McDonald’s cup, BTW? 🙂 )
That was not my cup, and I very gingerly removed it towards the van on the left as it was going to ruin my shots. The hood open was how I found it and took the first shot with attendant cup in place. How one finds and documents the subject as first found is vitally important 🙂 After that first shot it’s all about posing the carcass correctly for the remainder while being ever vigilant for wasp nests. These aren’t just snapshots, people. Any Tom, Dick, or Ansel can take pictures of a big rock. But a Volaré? Don’t disturb me, I’m working here!
funny!
“Curiously (to me anyway) the Volaré outsold the Aspen its entire run, I always thought Dodge was the volume marque.”
As Brendan alluded to earlier, Plymouth historically sold in greater volume than Dodge, at least in the U.S. This was especially pronounced before 1960, when Plymouth served as Chrysler’s low-priced brand (equivalent to GM’s Chevrolet) while Dodge was aimed at the lower end of the middle-priced market (more-or-less the equivalent to GM’s Pontiac). In those days, Plymouth typically outsold Dodge by a wide margin.
Prior to 1960, all three of Chrysler Corporation’s U.S. dealer networks (Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler) also sold Plymouths. In 1960, Chrysler ended the practice of having Dodge dealers sell Plymouths, forcing Dodge dealers to survive on sales of Dodges alone. To compensate for the loss of Plymouth at its dealerships, Dodge was allowed to move the lower end of its range down into low-priced territory, competing in the same market space as Plymouth. (The subsequent decision to discontinue DeSoto left Plymouth sharing a dealer network solely with the Chrysler brand.) After that, through the ’60s and ’70s, the gap between Plymouth and Dodge narrowed, but Plymouth still almost always came out ahead.
Towards the end of the ’70s, Dodge finally caught Plymouth. As Brendan noted, however, this was facilitated by Chrysler’s decision to not sell Plymouth versions of the designs used for its larger cars. That was done to avoid excessive competition between the Plymouth and Chrysler brands, which shared the same showroom floor. By 1979, Plymouth had no equivalent to the LeBaron, Cordoba, or Newport. Dodge did, and it was the sales of these extra models with no Plymouth equivalent that allowed Dodge to pass Plymouth. For those models where Dodge and Plymouth both sold a version, Plymouth still usually came out ahead, and that would continue to remain true even further into the future.
Yup Plymouth was traditionally the 3rd leg of the “low priced 3” and hence the volume brand. Being the “compact” would probably tend to push even more in the favor of the “low priced” brand. Of course by this time and on the compact you didn’t get any extra length on the Dodge and their prices were overlapping more than ever.
I looked up the ’77 Volare and Aspen in the Encyclopedia of American Cars. It shows each Aspen model as having a base price exactly $12 higher than its Volare equivalent. I don’t know if Dodge offered some small item standard that Plymouth didn’t, or if the Dodge was still (theoretically) slightly better-trimmed than the Plymouth.
I also flipped over to ’89, which was the last year for both the M-body and the K-cars, and compared production of the two brands. This is what I found:
–the Sundance and Acclaim were produced in greater numbers than their Dodge equivalents (the Shadow and Spirit).
–the Horizon/Omni and Reliant/Aries were produced in roughly equal numbers (in both cases, the Dodge was produced in slightly greater numbers, but the difference was less than 1,000 units, among models with production levels in the 30Ks or 40Ks)
–the Diplomat outsold the Gran Fury by about 1,500 units. Both brands’ sales were well below 10K, though, so the advantage wasn’t all that significant.
So, even as late as 1989, when Plymouth and Dodge both sold the equivalent car, the Plymouth still generally had sales which at least roughly equaled, and sometimes exceeded, the Dodge. Across all of the models named above, collectively, Plymouth production was slightly higher than Dodge production, 268K to 257K.
Of course, those were the only passenger car models Plymouth sold, while Dodge also had the Dynasty, Daytona and Lancer. Including those models (mostly the first two) brought Dodge’s passenger car production to 481K, beating Plymouth by a wide margin.
I think don’t think Chrysler was worried about the C-body Fury competing with the big Chrysler. Chrysler would have been pleased as punch to keep selling 300K Furys and 200K big Chryslers like 1973. The retail market spoke in 1974 and kept saying it: We don’t want more Furys.
So if I were to find, say, a 1989 Fifth Avenue and purchase it, that very car I would be getting…it’d be nothing more than a glorified Aspen/Volare, is that correct?
More or less, but by that time they really had worked all the bugs out. They were well out of date, carbed until the very end (while even the cheap Omnirizon had EFI from ’88), but well-built and strong enough that the more basic versions held up something close to Mopar’s traditional share of the cops-and-cabs market to the end.
In June 1977 when this car was built, I was still happily driving what I guess must be the second biggest piece of junk foisted off on the American public, a Vega. Thanks for demoting Lordstown’s finest. Love those round indents in the glove box door. That’s what passed for cupholders in the 1970’s. Why even bother, unless the stiffness of those indents allowed them to save 1/2 a cent by using a thinner glovebox door liner material.
Those ‘cupholders’ were in ’60s Ford Falcon glovebox lids too.
These go back to the drive in restaurant days. So the car was parked and drinks were taken from the tray on the window and place on the glovebox door. They were really not cupholders per se. Many cars back then, and my Corvair as well, had those indentations.
Bob
This!!! I used to use them at them at the A+W Drive In. It made more sense back then.?
IMO, the Vega is indisputably the biggest POS foisted on the American car buyer.
By a big margin.
The fact that it was made by GM, arguably the best US carmaker, by a big margin, simply adds insult to injury.
The Vega and Citation were worse in SO many ways.
However, Jim is entitled to his incorrect opinion since he runs the website now.
Oh, if I’m wrong, I’m wrong, I’m not afraid to admit it whether I run this site or not. The Volare/Aspen, Vega, and Citation really seem more like the trifecta of doom, at least as far as general reputations are concerned. The shock was probably greater with the Volare/Aspen since it replaced something considered so good and robust.
No doubt there were good ones in the batch for all three of them, just like there is a commenter here who somehow got a horrible Honda Accord as the inverse and obviously there are others too. As I told someone else earlier offline that I was discussing this with, my family had zero firsthand experience with any of these three, we went for multiple oh so reliable early ’70’s Audi 100’s instead. 🙂
My response was meant to be tongue in cheek, that doesn’t always come across well.
No doubt these were a huge let down from what they replaced, but one doesn’t have to look far to see worse examples of what the domestic automakers did to their customers.
Next time you’re down in Denver beers are on me. 🙂
Now you’re talking, something we can agree on! 😀
I’m curious about the top – was it removed by someone at the junkyard?(if so WHY!!!) or was it removed by the previous owner beforehand? Also, were the fiberglass fillers really painted body color like this? I would have thought they’d just be the material color since it’s covered by the vinyl top anyway.
Unpopular opinion, the Coupe looked as good aesthetically as late Dusters/Dart Sports. If not for the dismal quality, low survival rate, unconventional suspension, and the lack of nostalgia for the times they represent, they’d have a much stronger following. There are worse looking mopars than these that are way more popular with gearheads.
I also can’t help but wonder just how bad these were than other late 70s Chrysler products that certainly haven’t survived beyond all odds themselves. As far as I can tell the B body Fury’s and Monaco’s, Cordobas and Chargers had terminal rust issues themselves, and as Daniel mentioned above with porous transmissions, wouldn’t ALL products that shared that trans have the same problem? The issues with the transverse torsion bars seem to be the only issue specifically unique to the badness of the F body over other corporate products.
Below is the picture of the car at the auction. The top was already gone. And it had dogdish hubcaps.
I suppose the window inserts were put in on the line before the paint shop.
Wow, the grille was actually intact! That’s a feat in its own right, too bad it got destroyed sometime between that auction and the current photos.
I’m curious about the vinyl top, in and of itself. I don’t actually recall a vinyl top being available ‘without’ the landau window insert, and this would make sense on the feature car, given what appears to otherwise be a basic version.
In effect, it looks like if you wanted a vinyl top on your Volare or Aspen, you got the landau version with the insert, whether you wanted it or not.
If I’m not mistaken, GM went the same route with the colonnade cars from a few years earlier, although the colonnade’s quarter window insert looked quite a bit better. In fact, I can see a lot of the colonnade’s roof in the Mopar f-body. It would make sense, given Chrysler’s penchant for aping the styling of the last model cycle GM product.
I believe you are correct re the windows. There was also a “reverse” top available wherein vinyl only covered the A-pillars and the front part of the roof. The back part of the roof, C-pillars and rear side windows were left alone.
I’m not positive, but Chrysler may have been the first to offer those half-roof ‘canopy’ vinyl tops that covered just the part of the roof forward of the C-pillar, most likely on the Duster, where you could still get a full vinyl roof, too.
So, on the Aspen/Volare, they just eliminated the full vinyl roof treatment and replaced it with a landau top aft of the C-pillar. I don’t know if they offered a canopy vinyl roof, though. It doesn’t seem like it would look right.
It was actually kind of prescient, considering how Ford supposedly designed the 1983 Thunderbird with door frames that went so far into the roof that they eliminated the drip rails and possibility of a vinyl roof.
But the Cougar version of the same car, with its upright rear window, ‘could’ be had with a vinyl roof, albeit just the C-pillar type.
The vinyl tops seen on 83-97 Cougars weren’t actually factory options, they were all conversions done by select dealers, on rare occasion Thunderbird’s had them installed as well. Despite the fuselage doors faux convertible tops were common too, they simply added extensions to the tops of the frames and hoped no one would notice
They did offer the canopy roof, that is what I was trying to explain in my previous response.
This may be true, but I couldn’t find a single picture of an f-body with a canopy vinyl roof.
However, there ‘was’ a full vinyl roof available (at least on the Aspen). It was…odd.
Page 7 of the brochure.
https://paintref.com/cgi-bin/brochuredisplay.cgi?year=1977&manuf=Chrysler&model=Plymouth&smod=Volare&page=7&scan=7
I know most of those Cougar vinyl tops were dealer add-ons (certainly the full roof style).
But the short style that just covers the C-pillar behind the quarter window at least ‘look’ like they came from the factory, complete with a little ‘Cougar’ medallion.
Those are the best executed, but it’s all, not most, there weren’t any Aero Cougars that left the assembly line with these tops.
Found a Roadrunner with the canopy roof!
That’s a weird car. It has a non stock side molding, a front canopy vinyl roof, and the Super Pak wheel flares but not the Super Pak air dam.
Chrysler sold a traditional halo vinyl top on the couoes.
Aside from curiosity about what’s under the vinyl, the missing top might be step 1 of a 200 step plan to make a hot rod out of this car. They stopped before step 2, I guess.
Unbenownst to myself, evidently some folks still have Volarepens for sale. This one is on the block for just above $10Gs.
https://classics.autotrader.com/classic-cars/1978/plymouth/volare/101210871
I had not known the Aspare was the car the Diplomat/Caravelle was derived from, in part at least. Learn something new every single day.
If it was an all-original survivor, it might be worth $5k (particularly if it was a Road Runner).
But $10k for an old slant-six Volare with an extrovert purple/yellow flame paint job is a bit optimistic.
I thought the styling of the LeBaron/Diplomat wagons (and sedans) were a significant improvement upon the comparable Aspen/Volaré versions. Same goes for the coupes. I found they had the effect of significantly cheapening the exterior styling of the original F-Bodies. The LeBaron/Diplomat had nicer dashs too.
In school, I was told, “if you’re not sure on a test, your first guess your best guess”
I think that holds true of auto designs. I’ve seen a few mockups of Detroit cars (I some collectible magazine I can’t recall name of) and usually the later versions were already considered—and rejected at initial launch.
I always like the original 76-77 Volare/Aspen the best. 78-79 were almost as good looking. The replacements were overdone imo
My Uncle bought a final year 1980 Volare 2 door coupe with the V8, I was too young to remember which one. It was pretty basic car. No power options or air conditioning, am radio and a tweed like plaid cloth interior.He had that car until 1988 when it was replaced with a new Horizon. What I remember about that Volare was that is had really touchy strong brakes as my Uncle was a lead foot and braked at the last possible second. Nobody ever wanted to ride in the front seat of his car. It was a fairly reliable car and had little rust when he traded it in which was pretty good for a car in the Canadian Prairies.
This car rings a big bell for me, as I owned a 77 Volare coupe in the early 90’s. It was a nice creamy white (repainted), had the nice-looking full rear quarter windows, slant 6/auto, full regular hubcaps and air conditioning. I still think it was kind of handsome, especially from the front wheels back. The front end was rather stodgy.
There seems to be panoply of opinions above ranging from “Worst Car Ever” to “Actually Not That Bad”. I have never taken a strong position on that issue because my experience with it was pretty good. Issues I had with it were no worse than one could expect from a $900 15-year-old car. I liked the car, it was a good compact runabout. I delivered pizza in it and it was ideal for that. I also took it on a cross-county road trip and it was not so ideal.
My main problem with the car was a lack of power. I think it had all the power it was supposed to, that just wasn’t much in an emasculated 70’s six. If you used the AC, it went from slow to I-could-walk-faster. Didn’t really matter because the AC quit working before too long, which took the stress out of having to choose between being sort of cool and having sort of adequate power.
I have no regrets about having owned it. In fact, I think I should have kept it a bit longer. Neat to see that a similar car was still tooling around in recent years. I haven’t seen one on the road in quite a while.
These were planned to be the new Australian Valiant in 1976, but Chrysler Australia was in no financial shape to introduce a new car, it would have been interesting to see how it fared out here.
Did they have flow through ventilation? that was a big deal for the motoring press back then and the Valiant was rightly panned for not having face level vents in the dash.
So who knows, it could have been a repeat of the Falcons introduction in 1960 with its fragile front suspension. or would our local Chrysler engineering department have fixed the problems.
One thing that they got right was the styling in my opinion, they were handsome cars.
Always wondered how they compared in body construction to the outgoing Valiants and Darts, the Aspen / Volare have a more solid look in my opinion.
I don’t know about the Australian versions, but the American Valiant up through 1976 got fresh air ventilation through little doors you could open under the dash (much like those used in the early Mustang.) They were not face level, but you got all the fresh air flow you could possibly want through them.
I don’t know specifically about the Volare, but I am quite sure they did not use those doors. I suspect that they started running the fresh air ventilation through the normal heat/ac duct system like they did in about everything else built in that era. Which was a great system if you wanted your fresh air heated up via radiant heat pouring out of the heater core all year around. But what a great way to sell more cars with a/c. This wasn’t just Chrysler but the entire US industry.
They were called, “breeze boxes”.
Or “box breezers” by the uncouth.
JPC, jonco’s referring to the fact that the huge fuselage body Aussie Val of ’71 had no face-level vents (and a/c under-dash only), which was pretty poor on a new design for a warm country. The ’66-’71 US Val-based Aussie Val did indeed have those doors. (They were dumb, because almost inevitably, they leaked, and if dry, shot the local winter-resident huntsman spider on the gale up into your shorts on season’s first opening, along with every pine-needle or gumnut he’d ever met).
From faded memory, the ’71-’81 Val had vent knobs to pull, which did bring in some whoosh relief at speed, but not many folk are so bothered by sweaty feet (and don’t wish to share the pong with all on board) when it’s 100+ outside, for it is the feet only which got the blast. Possibly even dumber than the hairy-legs-sharing-your-shorts system.
Funnily enough, these big cars also rusted horribly, and had some weakness in the front suspension like it seems the Volares did. But otherwise, they were tough old barges, and mostly died of old age.
Speaking of HVAC, this example has the “Comfort Vent” option. 4 AC-like registers on the dash, but no AC as evidenced by the slider style controls vs pushbuttons. Yes, you paid extra for the vents, the base dash had none at all.
My mom a maroon premier edition
I would love to see any new vehicles from now a days in 42 years from now unless its in a heated and cooled bubble there probably won’t be anything left.
The service life of vehicles in the US has approximately doubled in the last 40 years. Presentable cars from 15 to 20 years old go to the junkyard because they can be replaced with a similar running car for the cost of a brake job and a set of tires.
A 20 year old 1999 Corolla or Camry might be a better, more reliable car than this thing was when it was new.
Hello folks” I have a 92 dodge spirit LE ES? 4 DOOR 3.0 auto. Tranny rebuilt 1 year ago $2100. I got this car 9 years ago with 32000 on it I am the 3 owner .I now have 140000 now still running great with alot of money in it of course.
Our 77 Wagon stayed in the family for 360K miles and 36 years. Damn I miss that car.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1977-dodge-aspen-wagon-the-party-wagon-for-the-whole-family/
I ended up buying a ’77 Volare in the same ugly tan for $700 in 1988. This was in my junior year in high school. Myself, my brother, and my friends loved this car. Was a completely bare bones “Standard” with the indestructible slant 6 under the hood. A far cry from my first car which was a ’78 cordoba which was luxury to the max. I put about 20k miles on it (not an exaggeration) due to us lying to each other’s parents and driving all night on the weekends in the year I had it. I couldn’t kill it and didn’t change the oil once the whole time I owned it. One of the few times I did check the stick, there was nothing on it. I promptly added a quart and went on my way. One of my friends nicknamed it “The Legend” which stuck. The best car I have ever owned (getting very nostalgic here) and had so many great times in it.