“Let me take a long last look/Before we say goodbye”- Don Henley
Even if you listened with only half an ear, there was an audible ticking of the clock evident in the years1972-1973. Vietnam was beginning to wind down, as were the Nixon years. And (saddest of all) , the Muscle Car era was expiring with a whimper. It had been on life support since late 1970,when the data from 5 years (give or take) of accident reports had caused alarm in the august halls of America’s largest auto insurers. Young ,target market drivers + high powered cars + Substandard Brakes and Suspension = Low profits. Add to that the hi-po chariots tendency to guzzle gas and emit lots of smog, and it didn’t take a Lee Iacocca and his cohorts in Detroit to see that the muscle car’s days were numbered.
This brings us to our subject matter for today: The 1972 Dodge Charger. In the twilight of the go-fast days preceding the first gas crisis, the Charger was in its third generation and frankly, showing its age. The MoPar B body had morphed from a tough, brawny beast with lots of street cred into a NASCAR queen with more swoopy curves than Joey Heatherton. Richard Petty liked the ’72/’73 so much that he would drive one for another 4 years of racing glory (an eternity in those days for one body style) and notch 6 super speedway wins that year. “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” is an article of faith among car executives,and the ’72/’73 Charger proved that in spades.
The nameplate reached its sales zenith in ’73,with over 108,000 copies sold. But when the sales numbers were totted up at the end of the year, the sales graph showed a distressing and prolonged plunge after the September Yom Kippur War that triggered an OPEC boycott of sales to the U.S. It was the perfect storm: The EPA had mandated that manufacturers reduce emissions, (this is when we began the phaseout of leaded gas,which presented its own challenges) the price of oil doubled (when it was available), and the country began the malarial fever/chills of inflation and recession.The fun was over. The frivolity and wastefulness of cars designed to be frivolous and wasteful was over, never to return.
When the muscle car died, something in America changed. Hard to put your finger on it,but the cynicism , superficiality and plain ol’ avarice that we battle today seems (to me) to have begun when we lost our real Chargers, Mustangs and Camaros and had to get by with Omnirizons, Mustang II’s and 4 cylinder Camaro poseurs.
The Charger returned with the same body in ’73,( but with dorky slant “opera” windows on the options list as another warning of the bad times to come), but after that, the “Charger” became just another badge job that hinted at what used to be. The donor cars were workaday Cordobas ,Coronets and (gasp !) OmniRizon derivatives that Carroll Shelby rented his name to in order to help you forget that they were…OmniRizon derivatives. They went a little faster than the donor car, but not enough.
This fine old Charger was spotted in southeast Tennessee on a brutally hot July day. A buddy that knows says that the dual exhausts signify a 400 four barrel under the hood.The possum squashers front and rear are mounted on non stock wheels,but the exterior is otherwise very presentable with no rust visible. It seems like there’s been at least one careful respray. I hope that it finds a good home before the Tennessee winter takes its toll on this last burst of enthusiasm before we lost a lot of our innocence.
[Jeff Nelson is also known as Banzai at CC]
American Muscle cars were great then suddenly it was over Thankfully out here on gods green island our neigbours on the left have a muscle car industry so we never had your problem Ozzie doesnt do FWD cars and a sedan race series kept factory hotrods coming year after year Valiant E49s GTHO Falcons GTS Monaro and GTR Xu1 Holden Toranas these ruled the race tracks in the 70s in showroom racing and of course we peasants had a supply of parts to hot up the more ordinary models.All these owed their DNA to detroit or European brands In the 80s GM found a way to make their V8s handle they wrapped a 4anger Opel body around it and it sold like cold beer, we got the J car but that wasnt funny at all ,it was shit on wheels, We got the Chevette in several flavours, boy racers like em to repower and rice up but mostly the automotive disasters missed us. Ford in Melbourne outside the factory used to have a lemon yard people would have a huge lemon painted on their cars and park them there as a protest Ford Australia was threatened with closure over the EA falcon it was so bad and the Oz Capri the pool on wheels Fords shit quality was ledgendary Henry rushed the 32 V8 on to the market and got away with it but Ford OZ has been caught out several times gambling on the warranty claims Dearborn sent Tauruses /Tauri out to show us the top selling US Ford ,christ what a shit heap nobody wanted a shitbox like that and Ford cleaned up its act and is now building them good again NZ can get Chryslers again not sure about OZ
I have told this story before, but in about 1978 or 79 my best friend’s dad bought a bright red 74 Charger from the original owner. 10,000 miles. The car had never even been washed. What made the car stand out was that it was a complete strippo – slant 6, 3 on the tree, rubber flooring, and no radio. Black tires, wheels and those Mopar dog dish hubcaps. It had a dash straight out of a Coronet. And for Zackman, the rear windows did not roll down (this was unique to the base model). The guy had owned a big Buick and bought the Charger for fuel economy, but hardly ever drove it.
It was not really a very pleasant car to drive. This car was big enough that it needed power steering, but this one did not have it. The 74 had a very small diameter steering wheel and the car was really nasty to park. The gearing was tall, so standing starts required a good clutch technique or you would stall it. Once underway, though, it was pretty smooth. And everybody else thought you were driving a real Charger.
I always preferred the roofline of the 73-74 (like on the Burn Notice show) to this one, so long as you could avoid the SE model with the opera window vinyl roof. My other memory of that car was how cheap the body felt. Slam the door and the sound was awful and the steering column would shudder. The car felt like the guage of sheetmetal was half as thick as anything else on the road. My friend and his brother took a roadtrip in the car with a cb radio (as was common then) and their handle was Coke Can because the Charger was the same color and seemed to use the same kind of metal.
@jpcavanaugh, you and everyone else are reading me like a book! That’s perfectly fine, too, as this car along with so many others signalled a sea change in the country as well as the rest of the world with the death of the pillarless hardtop. I’ll say no more on that, but the writer directly alluded to it.
This car, a later version with the opera slotted fixed (it pains me to write that!) windows a friend of my wife owned (and loved, by the way) felt like it was made out of paper. I got the same impression of a friend’s 1969 440 Charger, too – all bulk, front fenders so huge, internal braces under the hood had to be used to hold things together. Other automakers were guilty of this as well.
It’s true – closing the doors on these and many other Chrysler products including the Dusters and Darts had that same soft – can’t call it a “thunk” or anything – I have no idea how to describe it, they just seemed to close and catch on the latch with no authority at all. Cheap, cheap, cheap.
No, I don’t miss these. Of course I miss the styling and what they lost, but the cars themselves? No. In actuality, the only cars of that era (1971 – 1973) I did like were the Camaro, the Chevelle Malibu (up to 1972), the Chevy Nova, Corvette (always!), Duster and the 1973 Pontiac Grand Am – opera window and all – just something about that pointed trunk that moved me!
The jpc anthology of Mopar sounds:
Slam door – Halumpfh
Start car – NaRare Near Near Near Near Vroom
Valiant Hemi start sequence not heard enough lately, luv it I miss mine
jpC: well done! I’ve been looking for the right words forever.
Ha ha, nice! I’ll be hearing those sounds in about 15 minutes. To commemorate Collector Car Appreciation Day, I drove my convertible to work today.
This car automatically looks better once it sports that STP livery! 60s/70s NASCAR – prior to the PR blitz it has become was awesome. There’s only one King!
I once shook Richard Petty’s hand at the old Fairground Speedway in Nashville back in the early 70’s (At the Music City 420). He was then and is now the epitome of grace and courtesy. He’s too classy to be a celebrity. He drove a Charger exactly like the one in the picture above in the race.
Marvelous invocation of Joey Heatherton whose very name captures the era, and who like this Mopar was also a B lister on the downside of her career around this time.
An Angie Dickinson wanna be, around ’72 she was either selling mattresses, appearing in a movie of the week, or on a good day, cracking wise on Johnny Carson’s couch. (Her brother, Dickie Boy Heatherton was the afternoon drive time fast talking jock on oldies CBS-FM in NY)
In my neck of the woods, these were the also rans against Camaro’s, GTO’s and even the then bloated Mustang. A friends girlfriend had a ’73 and I remember marveling at the excessive hood length…and the interior faux luxury, not remotely muscle car. Must have had the “Opera” windows. (gosh I love that word and the immediate flashback it induces…like landau and brougham.)
Our retired school teacher neighbor had a 1974 SE – deep metallic blue with a white vinyl top and the slotted windows. It was Chrysler’s attempt to keep the swoopy 1971 body current with the trend to the formal, upright look, and didn’t really work. The car was trying to be something that its designers had never intended. Better to get a Grand Prix or Monte Carlo or Cutlass Supreme – they were the real deal.
I can’t quite agree with this statement – “The frivolity and wastefulness of cars designed to be frivolous and wasteful was over, never to return.” After 1973, the frivolity and wastefulness took the form of long hoods, cramped rear seats, short decks, opera windows, landau roof treatments and rich Corinthian leather.
A 1976 Lincoln Continental Mark IV, Cadillac Eldorado and Chevrolet Monte Carlo are, in their own way, as frivolous or wasteful as a Hemi Road Runner or Charger R/T with a 440 Six Pack. But, since they weren’t all that fast, insurance companies didn’t care. Opera windows, stand-up hood ornaments and Corinthian leather don’t encourage hoonery.
you’re right… they don’t encourage hoonery… they encourage bicycle riding. 🙂
I cry when I think about a MINT ’72 Charger I could’ve bought back in 1985 for $1200. White with sort of half vinyl roof thing. Slippery all vinyl blue interior. 400 2 barrel.
A young mom had it and she wanted to get rid of it because it was not practical for her. She also thought it too big and it used a lot of gas.
I drove it quite often and while I loved the styling, I was not, candidly, impressed with the handling (none), power (weak), braking (bad), seating postion (too low). Still, I wanted it bad and to this day lament not springing for it.
I test-drove a 73 Charger SE with a 400 off a sleazy used car lot in 1983. I got on the interstate and floored it. It used up 1/4 of a tank of gas before the next exit (3 miles away) and had a top end of maybe 125, it was at 120 & s l o w l y creeping up to 125 when I backed off for the on ramp. It felt all plasticy and cheap. The same era Torino’s felt more solid than this car.
+1 on the body integrity comments above. Working in my dad’s body shop, I had occasion to slam the doors on many cars, and the Chryslers of that era were among the worst. The slam felt mushy, as though the door pillar was giving way momentarily, and was accompanied by a muffled rustling sound within the door, which was all the hardware inside coming loose.
Oh man, I love these cars. In 1975 my brother bought a 1971 Charger with the 340/Torqueflite combo. Much like the car in the pix with the exception of gold paint and a black half landau type roof. It had been stored since late 1970, as the original owner shipped out to Viet Nam and did not return. After five years, the parents (neighbors down the street) were ready to sell the car, my brother got one hell of a deal.
The car was fairly loaded, had PS, PB, A/C, and a four speaker 8-track AM/FM radio! How quaint. But, in 1975, it was pretty cool, and way nicer than the Mercurys my dad had been purchasing.
I wasn’t old enough to drive (legally), but occasionally in small town Ohio back in the 70’s, you could get away with things. My brother knew I was in love with his car and would let me drive it on back roads and such, and my over arching memory of the car is that is was much faster than my father’s Mercury Montego. It also felt lighter, and seemed to brake more quickly and easier than the old Merc, too.
Unfortunately, the car had never been rustproofed, and after three Northeast Ohio winters, it was pretty much trashed. So much so, that before he sold it, he offered it to me, but I passed. It killed me to do so, because I really loved that car. In fact, it may have started me on my love affair with the fuselage bodied Mopars, which continues to this day.
My ’72 was white with a dark green vinyl roof over the front 2/3 of the roof (not covering the ‘c’ pillar basket handle). 400 cu.in. and calif smog (ugh). 181 net hp from all those cubes; ridiculous. But gobs of torque. The body structure felt many times more solid than my previous ride, a ’68 Coronet 500.
As for those infamous Chrysler doors; they were supposedly engineered to sound like a ripe pumpkin being dropped from about 3 to 4 feet.
In the early 80’s, a girl in a Datsun/Nissan Pulsar (now there’s a CC for you) had the unfortunate experience of crossing into my lane in an icy snowstorm. Her 5 mph bumpers were no match for the sheer physics of an early 70’s Charger. Her’s was towed, with a crushed radiator, and all sorts of bent and broken bits. I drove off with a slightly deflected front fender.
And while the car definitely looks to be a ’72 (new sidemarkers, no federal bumper guards), the taillight assembly is from a ’71.
(sorry, pic was meant to be the avatar)
Pulsar: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2009/12/curbside-classic-ca-vacation-edition-nissan-pulsar-gen2-gen1/
But we need to do a fresh one.
Sorry, but this third generation Charger was butt-ugly.
I didn’t care for the later Chargers, but DID like the 68-69, perhaps the 70 Chargers best myself and they differed in the taillight treatment and the front clip mostly with the ’68’s having the 2 round taillights on each side, whilst the 69-70 Chargers had the elongated units instead.
Speaking of Chrysler starters, go here to Wikipedia and scroll down to 2 sound clips, one being the older Bendix Folo-Thru starter, found on say, the 1960 Dodge Dart Seneca with the inline 6 and then right below it is the later reduction gear starter, this being the older units with not as many windings and I love, love, love that unique starter sound, like Honda has had for years and years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starter_motor
I had a 72 with out the vinyl roof crud. It was beautiful and could move like a rocket.
When i stepped on the gas the gas guage would go down like flushing a toilet. 4 barrel thermo quad carburator. My first car. Got lots of tickets but didnt care back then you could go to traffic school and get them removed. 400 magnum.
I wish i could have kept it.
The two door Coronet was dropped for 1971, so then plain and SE Chargers took their place. I like the looks of 71-74 and what makes them even better is the awful 1975-77 Cordoba clone Charger SE! That was a joke, and maked the 73-74 SE look like a Super Bee.
Back in 1972, I had the privilege of enjoying was I was just 17 yo., for about a couple of years, then i got a 72 mustang.
both cars, just great, could decide wich was better…)probably lots will disagree any way I dont care…
my Charger was unique, vinil roof, light blue below, later I asked to repainted on navy blue, ) im still blue of those glorious days when gas was the last thing to worry about, all my friends were more than happy to take a ride
bucket seats, map lights, and many more….
memories are made of this
miguel barba