(first posted 7/29/2013) While the human Seven Deadly Sins – lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride – clearly play a part in any automaker’s fall from grace, Detroit cultivated its own favorite deadly transgressions. Chrysler’s recurring dirty little habit was premature ejection: spurting cars out of the factory door before they were ready. The shoddily built 1957s devastated the company’s hard earned rep for solid, well-engineered cars. Chrysler only barely absolved itself through the penance of hard work along with the blessing of the sacred A-Body. But in 1976, Chrysler fell from grace again, and this time it took the intercession of the Great White Father in Washington to keep it from eternal damnation. And not for the last time, either.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the A-Bodies to Chrysler’s survival during its difficult years. The Valiant and Dart, along with their Swinging Duster off-shoots, developed a well-earned reputation for rugged simplicity. And they sold like stink. In fact, contrary to usual Detroit-think, they sold better the older they got. In 1974, in their fifteenth year, some 720k new A-Bodies found homes. And I’ll bet that the percentage of them still on the road today is the highest of any American car sold that year. There are dozens of them still plying the streets of Eugene.
Chrysler must have known that replacing the A-team successfully would be a mission-critical task. Boy, did they ever flub it. Their compacts went from being the most durable to the most-recalled in history, up to that time; GM’s X-bodies soon stole that title. It was 1957 all over again, but worse. At least Chrysler had the foresight to call them “F-Bodies”. From an A to an F, without any intermediate stops; what a fail.
Beta-testing new cars on a mass scale is just not a good idea. Build quality was all-round crappy, at best. It went downhill from there: five mandatory recalls covering a variety of ills with suspension, ignition, fuel system, brakes, steering and body. The one that had the highest visibility (literally) was pre-mature rusting of the front fenders. All Aspares had fenders inspected, removed, replaced and/or galvanized, and repainted to the tune of $109 million. That was serious bucks to Chrysler then, especially since the whole mothership was rusting away.
Lee Iacocca had this to say: “The Dart and Valiant ran forever, and they should never have been dropped. Instead they were replaced by cars that often started to come apart after only a year or two. When these cars first came out, they were still in the development phase. Looking back over the past twenty years or so, I can’t think of any cars that caused more disappointment among customers than the Aspen and the Volare”. Honest, but easy for him to say, since he wasn’t responsible.
There was a big difference this time from 1957. Back then, unhappy Chryslerites might have drifted reluctantly to Ford or GM, only to soon be back in the fold. But by the late seventies, it was more likely that they ended up in a Toyota, and stayed there. By 1980, the delayed but full impact of the pre-mature twins was obvious; sales were down to under 200k. And sales of the Volens’ direct replacement, the Reliant and Aries K-cars, never topped 300k. The A-car franchise was now a distant and painful memory, and materially contributed to the Pentastar’s collapse.
Chrysler barely avoided bankruptcy in 1979 thanks to federal loan guarantees, and went on to fly high again. But it wasn’t the last time its pet sin was committed (think Neon). Meanwhile Volare and Aspen soldiered on a few more years, before they morphed into the dull M-Bodies: Diplomat, LeBaron, Grand Fury, New Yorker, and that final supreme devolution, the Fifth Avenue, which doddered along until 1989. Does it only seem like that was yesterday?
Can we find something a little positive to say here? Sure; the original incarnations were the best looking, before all the neo-classic grilles and half-vinyl tops. The Volare and Aspen were an attempt to redefine the intermediate size car, since the abominations that had once been called that swelled to ridiculous proportions in the mid seventies.
The station wagon in particular exemplified the best qualities of that effort: clean, practical, handsome, almost Volvo-esque.
The coupe: much less so. Ignoring the driveability/smog control/Lean Burn issues that were common to the era, Chrysler’s engines and transmissions were a highly known quantity: pretty much bulletproof. You could even order a Super Six, a two-barrel version of the slant six which put out as much power as some of the Chevy small blocks of that illustrious lo-po era. With a floor-shifted four speed to back it up, it was about as euro as Detroit got back then.
Ride and handling were decidedly anti-euro: softer. The A-Bodies were generally the best handling domestic compacts, at the expense of refinement in ride and quietness. The Volare and Aspen introduced a new transverse torsion-bar front suspension, with greater isolation, and the result was just that. Chrysler was trying to imitate Ford’s popular soft-rider Granada, and it succeeded spectacularly.
Just as the impact of the Volare and Aspen’s fall from grace hit, along came the Ford Fairmont and pretty much did it all better. The original Fox body was lighter, cleaner, crisper and more efficient; the closest Detroit ever got to the old Falcon/Volvo formula. But of course soon it too morphed into padded vinyl-topped mini-Lincolns.as well as the real thing.
Probably the best thing Chrysler did with the Volare and Aspen was their names. By changing their body designation from “A” to “F”, and by not naming them Valiant and Dart, they at least avoided dragging those names through the mud. Now that sin would have been unforgivable.
I know the F-bodys were a POS when first introduced. I would love to have tried one out with the 360 V8 before those were dropped from the options sheet.
Just like GM and the often maligned W-body, Chrysler had to be making pretty good profit on each M-body (as the Fifth Avenue, Dodge Diplomat, and Plymouth Gran Fury were called) by the time the production lines fell silent.
One local family still has a Gran Fury (severely in need of a tuneup) that I see plying around here. And let it be said that NM roads are not exactly kind to automobiles.
A friend of mine in the mid 1990s had a 1980 Aspen coupe as a daily driver and it never had a problem. It was a bullet proof slant six and torqueflite. It did have some rust, being from Ohio, but it did not have a 2X4 for a bumper as I was accustomed to with late 70s and early 80s cars in good old Toledo.
The F-body might be deadly sin #2, #1 is the launching of restyled C-bodies for 1974 but no one predicted the arrival of the 1st oil crisis. Maybe some little updates to the A-body (who was a big seller for 1974 but sell fell off when a redesigned Nova and a all-new Granada hit the showrooms for 1975) might had helped. Now in which position the following deadly sins could be: Chrysler Corboda (a deadly sin for Plymouth as it was originally planned to be a Plymouth) and the 1962 “plucked chicken”?
Ironically, Chrysler decided to continue the Dart name in Mexico for the F-body Aspen, the Mexican “Dippy” and for the K-car. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ifhp97/4669737150/
Deadly Sins are numbered not chronologically, but as I do them.
I wouldn’t call the ’74 C-bodies a Deadly Sin. In your words “no one predicted the arrival of the 1st oil crisis”. That was the biggest problem with the ’74 C-bodies, nothing Chrysler had any influence over. Sure build quality was subpar, but so was it on the preceding fuselage models.
I agree with you on the Cordoba and ’62s though. Chrysler has committed many deadly sins.
I’d include the 1974 C-bodies on the list of Deadly Sins for two reasons. One, there was virtually no differentiation between the Dodge and Plymouth versions. Two, the Dodge and Plymouth versions looked like warmed-over 1971-72 Buick LeSabres. If you wanted a Buick LeSabre, you were better off either buying a brand-new one, and getting a more prestigious car, or saving money and buying a used 1972 model.
It’s telling that, when the economy began recovering in late 1975 and early 1976, and sales of most big cars recovered with it, sales of the Dodge and Plymouth full-size cars didn’t share in the good times.
Agreed. Very much a DS.
The only one I’ve seen was a hearing aid beige wagon.It looked to be in very good order but I still wouldn’t risk it
It’s my driver’s ed car!!!
A freshman college dorm-mate had a 1979 Aspen coupe that I rode in often. Driving on the horribly-potholed roads of mid-1980s Flint, MI roads literally caused screws to loosen and fall out of the dash and other interior parts (I think I actually had my hand out one time and managed to catch one from the dashboard).
My Grandparents owned a ’79 Volare with a slant six for 20 years. In those 20 years, I think they managed to put only 45,000 miles on that car. I don’t remember it as being a particularly bad car. But then again they obviously didn’t drive it that much and I was a young punk. In the end, it rusted away and the front suspension fell apart. The Volare made way for an ho-hum unreliable ’99 Contour and eventually I talked them into buying my ’06 Corolla.
I did think the Volare/Aspen was an okay looking midsize for the era. Of course I liked the Aspen wagon, and I think it could be equipped with a manual transmission.
As a kid, I was amused by the HVAC controls being located on the left side of the steering column and the totally shitty radio with one speaker in the center of the dash. And I seem to remember something about a huge jack that hooked into slots on the bumper?
No F or M body ever had the HVAC on the left, it was always on the right, above the radio.
See?
If the F-bodies never did, maybe Aristo is thinking of the L-bodies (Omni/Horizon and variants). My ’85 Plymouth Turismo had the heater/ventilation controls over on the left.
Yeah, sorry bad memory. My uncle did have a Horizon in the same time period that had the left side HVAC. Oops.
‘Shitty radio with one speaker in the center of the dash’. Most cars of the era had that. In the era of body-on-frame, bumper jacks were the norm.
There was a great car magazine in the 70s called Road Test that I read as a kid at the supermarket. It didn’t last long but was thorough on the details, I’m sure many of you remember it.
Anyway they had an article on the Aspen/Volare twins with pics of overlapping exterior trim and IIRC the wrong emblem on the dash. It was an honest, negative review and I’m sure things like that didn’t help Road Test with the OEs.
The Granada and Monarch were much more polished but I have to say it’s hard to beat the name Volare.
I love Road Test Magazine! It did offer very honest assessments, and was pretty ad free. I’m sure that hastened its demise. To me, it was written by and for car guys, but without the fluff and posturing of the mainline Buff Books and not as stodgy and appliance-oriented as Consumer Reports. One of my best finds ever was a trove of these in a used bookstore, where I was able to get most of the old issues.
Speaking of Road Test magazine, I spotted a vintage cover posted at http://www.roadrunnernest.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&p=32389#p32388
and there some old issues of Road Test available on Ebay.
There was also “Car Life”, who got its last issue published in October 1970. Next month, it was combined with Motor Trend from what I read at Answers.com.
Stephane many thanks for the link, lots of good stuff there. A quick skim shows that the ’71 Road Runner was nearly three inches wider than the ’70. Compression ratios and horsepower were down. Still 6.5 seconds 0-60 is not too shabby.
Also, I get the feeling that Road Test‘s figures were probably a lot more real-world representative than most of their competitors’; I don’t think RT indulged in the same degree of, er, creative enthusiasm when it came to dragstrip testing.
I don’t know exactly when Car Life started (the earliest I have is from about 1957), but from at least 1960 until its demise, it was done by the same editorial group as Road & Track — it’s pretty clear from the editorial style and the production design. I assume the purpose of Car Life was to deal mostly with domestic cars of a kind that Road & Track in those days largely ignored (except to occasionally sniff derisively at them).
Road Test started around 1964 and lasted at least into 1977.
I remember reading articles in Road Test on the 1980 GM X-cars and second-generation, 1980 Honda Civic. I believe that the magazine ceased publication around 1980 or 1981. Patrick Bedard of Car and Driver wrote a column lamenting its closure.
I loved reading the full-page sales chart at the back of each issue. It listed the monthly and year-to-date sales of each domestic brand and model, along with monthly and year-to-date sales of each import brand.
Rusting fenders? Yes sir!
My buddy up the street’s dad bought his wife a brand-new silver Aspen. Within six months, visible rust streaks down the front fender just behind the wheel well appeared.
Rusted-out fenders WITHIN a year!
We were all appalled at this, as you can imagine. I mean, not too long before that, in the mid-60’s you got maybe two years out of a car before you saw signs of rust, unbelievable…
The car got fixed, along with other issues, I think, and they kept it out of spite for a few years.
Chrysler finally got it right – or better, at least – by the time we were given a 1980 Chrysler LeBaron coupe in 1988, which went on to become known as the “Batmobile” due to a Bat sticker I smacked on the rear left of the trunk lid shortly after the movie “Batman” came out in 1989. I wish I could find a photo, I would include it. That was a pretty good car, which we kept until we bought our 1990 Acclaim.
Interestingly, after dad died and mom’s old 1970 Duster was rusting away before our eyes, she needed a car and decided to buy her first brand-new car. We looked at a 1979 Dodge Aspen. It was a stripper, but the Dodge Boys around the corner from us wanted ‘way too much, so down the road to the AMC dealer. Mom bought a brand-new, loaded 1979 AMC Concord for the same money. She drove that car until she stopped driving in 1990.
Even though I was in Chrysler’s camp since 1980 and driving K-Cars and their cousins, I was surprised how little Dodge was willing to bargain on that Aspen.
In that case, it was probably the best thing to happen!
You guys would have liked Aussie Valiants no really you would have the updated models of the 70s were an improvement on these, Ride handling power all improved on, reliability was good build quality not so much they still rusted but the Hemi6 was lovely.
Speaking of these Aussie Valiants, too bad then Chrysler didn’t bring them up here in Canada and the United States, they wouldn’t had probably need for the Aspen/Volare. These Aussie Valiants also made it to South Africa but due to local contents regulations, they got the slant six instead of the Aussie Hemi-6.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hartog/7288962288/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hartog/7617402328/in/set-72157629924846492
It was actually parts backup that put NO Hemis in S.A. and UK Valiants but UK got V8s.
I’m certain dad’s Valiant had a non hemi upright 6.It was a 66 Australian RHD 4 door sedan.
I think ’66 would have been too early for the Hemi Six.
Yes, the hemi 6 came out in with the VG model Valiant 1970, the last update before the new generation VH.
These looked so good, all of us Valiant/Duster fans were eager to own one – but then we discovered they were poorly built cars from a beloved company that suddenly couldn’t do anything right.
It took the K car for Chrysler to demonstrate to all of us old A body fans that they remembered how to build a solid dependable car, but by the time the K car was on the market, all we could talk about was how far Chrysler had fallen and wondered how long they would still be in business. AMC was failing, Ford was on the verge of bankruptsy, and the economy was malaise-tastic under President Carter. It wasn’t too hard to imagine Chrysler disappearing under the weight of it’s own incompetence.
These cars symbolized how far American cars had fallen during this era. The Fox body vehicles were a bright spot in an otherwise bleak time for American manufacturing.
The US economy was pretty bad under Nixon/Ford, from 1973-75, slight rebound in 1976-78, then big slide in 1979 with Hostage Crisis.
So, all the bloggers throwing ‘malaise’ around and simply blaming Carter, need to read history books, blogs, etc.
True. Car sales were very strong in 77-78.
And most folks have forgotten that it was Carter who hired Paul Volcker at the Fed knowing he was going to drive up interest rates to kill inflation. Which prez typically gets credit for that?
“Ford’s got new the new Granada coming out, get those new F compacts on the road ASAP!” Was word on high at Mopar HQ in mid 70s, never mind quality.
But, they got last laugh, keeping M body til 1989, so they got some amortization. Just as GM kept the FWD A body to 1996, long after X cars were scrapped.
Yeah. What, really, was the difference – substantially – between the F and the M? I know front clips were interchangeable – I’d seen a Volare clip put on a later Diplomat.
Was it just an effort to bury the F and pretend the M was a new chassis?
In the mid-90s I bought a one-owner 1976 Aspen coupe (360, sunroof, bucket seats, 70,000 miles) for $1,200 from an estate in Arizona. Perfect condition. I lived in Los Angeles, so never any rust issues. Definitely had over-the-top 70s style — triple white with dark red carpeting, dashboard and seat belts. Ran it reliably and cheaply ($1/gallon gas) for a few years and then sold it for more than I paid.
My first TV station had two of these for news vehicles. They spent most of the time on the backs of tow trucks. Pathetic machines.
There was a book on the startup days of CNN – I can’t remember the title – in which the author recalls Ted Turner and Lee Iaccocca personally making a cars-for-ad-time swap. Chrysler got rid of a bunch of the outgoing RWD models and expanded the launch platform for the K-Car while then-nascent CNN got the prestige of a Big Three automaker’s ads running on their channel as well as a motor pool for correspondents to use.
Chrysler did work out a lot of the problems by 1979-80. Unfortunately, by that point the company’s perilous financial condition made buyers reluctant to consider ANY Chrysler product, and the cars themselves were old hat when compared to the Fairmont/Zephyr, GM’s downsized intermediates and the new GM X-cars.
In the 90’s, I needed a car for college. For $600, I had a 1979 Volare. Super-6 with the Torquflight. Ran relatively reliably, with minimal rust on the quarter panels and under the high beam switch – i miss those switches on the floor. It was a 15 year old car by that time. It was a favorite for going to bars – it sat 6 and it would still be there the next day when we went to pick it up. I never had the problems with it that others complain about. The worse thing that happened is that I had to replace the alternator.
A friend of mine bought a new Volare circa 1977. It was his first new car and he quickly became disenchanted with it; bad enough that hardly a month went by without the car needing dealer attention but to make things worse the dealer’s service department were incompetent (and dishonest). Mike tried to trade the Volare for something else but its trade-in value was pretty much non existent. I want to say that he just quit making the payments and let the bank repo the car but I lost track of him about that time and don’t know for sure.
What a sorry story it should have been so easy to build an improved next generation Valiant and Dart,talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!
Umm, they did build an “improved” version of the Dart and Valiant; the whole reason of this article….
My sister had one of the early ones, but did not keep it long enough for it to disintegrate.
However, she and her husband were friends with the owner of the local Chrysler dealer, who recounted horror stories about having to fix these cars before customer deliveries. My favourite was the liberal application of sledgehammers and 2×4’s to realign the B-pillars, to ensure the doors would open and close properly.
It was not long after this that both my sister and the Chrysler dealer moved to Toyota.
I too, knew of the rubber mallet (not sledgehammer) “fix” of Mopars, but it was from a distant cousin who worked at the Belvidere, Illinois plant and usually consisted of fenders on the front clips not aligning up properly. Drinking beer on the job all day was the norm; most guys had their coolers right there on the line.
In fairness to Chrysler and the dealer…I’ve watched bodymen at work. While they know what they’re doing, most of them (that’s why they have a business or are hired by a business) what they do seems brutal to the un-initiated. Hammers, chain pulls, pry-bars…On one of my beater Pintos, some klutz had hooked the driver’s door with his bumper while I was getting out. Pulled the door way, way beyond the stop; and then it wouldn’t latch tightly.
I watched the body guy (he was a family friend) go to work with a pry bar and other tools of violence…I thought that door was gonna come off. Nope…he bent everything back mostly to where it belonged.
Good insight, even if using PE as a paradigm is a bit graphic to the point of grody. I’m not sure the F-bodies really qualify as a Deadly Sin – Chrysler was in a free-fall from that point, with all of Lynn Townsend’s transgressions piling up. Chrysler was in the totality of moral peril: It could choose to ignore reality, and did – the Sales Bank, the emphasis on stock performance, dealer alienation; but what it could NOT ignore was the consequences of ignoring reality. And in the mid-1970s, the consequences came a-knockin’.
IIRC, the corporation was already losing money, albeit at a slower pace, when the Fs were rolled out – Chrysler was hoping they would be a shot of Viagra. Instead, they were a parody of everything assumed to be wrong at Chrysler: Poorly developed in engineering; ultraconservative in styling. Highly touted technology, such as Lean Burn, that just didn’t WORK. And then the fenders start rotting off…1970s ChryCo cars rusted fast, but not as fast as these.
Point I’m making is, Chrysler was already in mortal peril. This just speeded up the Day of Judgment.
If I recall, it was 1976 that Chrysler was one of the first car manufacturers to issue rebates. I used to watch the NBC game of the week on Saturdays and Chrysler sponsored them. Joe Gargiola telling viewers, “buy a car – get a check.” The only Mopars of the day that this kid wanted was an Aspen R/T or Volare Road Runner, but being California, that meant only the slant six or 318 two-pot; Manuals and 360s’ were n/a in CA.
Yup. That was a John Riccardo innovation – he kept the chair warm after Townsend was asked to fire himself. The Sales Bank had created a routine end-of-month-panic setting, as cars made without orders tended to not be what dealers wanted to buy. So they cut deals with dealers, refusing them cars they wanted until they bought hard-to-move combinations and models.
So…that put them in the mood to transmit that Let’s-Make-A-Deal approach to the general public. What better way to move unsaleable iron, and meet sales projections, than to PAY people to BUY the stuff? What the hey…we pay to advertise, let’s just cut the middleman out of some of the cost! Buy a car, get a check!
Logical, right? Except that was the point where Chrysler’s health stopped being written in black – and went red. And stayed there, a long, long time.
I don’t think it was Riccardo who was responsible for the rebates, but sales and marketing VP Bob McCurry who deserves the credit.
And the first time was during the 1975 Super Bowl halftime when Joe Garagiola offered, “Buy a car, get a check!” for $200 off of leftover 1974 Darts and Dusters.
It usually takes more than one Deadly Sin to cause a giant car company to go belly up. See how many it took to fell GM.
To answer your question in another way: if the new F-Bodies had arrived with great workmanship and become a success right off the bat, they might well have prevented their needing a bail out. As it was, they weren’t the only one, but certainly were one of Chrysler’s biggest Deadly Sins.
Fair enough, on the surface. But – let’s examine this: How could they POSSIBLY have arrived in good order?
The company was in chaos. Townsend had been ordered to commit seppuku; his alleged replacement was another bookkeeper, not even with the gift of bullspit. The dealers, the front-line troops, were viewed by the marketing/distribution types as foils – jerked hither and yon with the Sales Bank and by boiler-room sales types trying to off-load unwanted and unsaleable cars.
The plants themselves were, as Hal Sperling recounted it, in bad order. Morale on the line was in worse order, with drinking and drugs rampant. Morale in the offices was as bad or worse – Sperling asked Gene Cafiero who was responsible for product quality.
“Everybody” responded Cafiero.
Sperling pressed. Who is it who answers, when there are problems with product quality?
“Nobody,” said Cafiero, after a pause.
That was the problem – lights were on but nobody was home. People where just going through the motions, watching the slo-mo train wreck unfold, polishing up their resumes and wondering who would live and who would go down with the rubble.
In such an environment, there was simply no way the car could have been anything but problematic.
That was purely a hypothetical. You’re the one that said they weren’t a DS. I’m still waiting for you to explain why they weren’t, when they most directly led to the crash. My point was if they had been good, the crash wouldn’t have/might not have happened, hence they were a/the key event that cause Chrysler’s crash. Hence the DS designation. See the logic?
I can’t prove it wasn’t a killer.
I’m just of the opine that other things actually created the death spiral; and those other things also forced the F to a failure.
It damn sure didn’t help things. But I’d call it a symptom, not the root cause.
The other problem with Chrysler in this period was that when Lynn Townsend beat his retreat, he set things up so that his successor was actually two “co-chairmen” – John Riccardo was the finance guy, and Gene Cafiero was the operations guy. It turned out that the two men simply despised each other, and had a very difficult time getting along. Management became highly dysfunctional to a degree not well understood.
In an interview with Iacocca, Riccardo came off better since he at least knew that someone else had to come in. Cafiero tried to blame all of the problems on Riccardo, but as Iacocca saw it, most of the problems (at least as of 1979) were operational and not financial, and more or less under Cafiero’s responsibility.
While Riccardo and Cafiero get the blame for Chrysler’s seventies’ demise, it was reaaly Townsend. After Townsend took over from Tex Colbert, his playing it safe strategy kept Chrysler relatively solvent during the sixties. But those times weren’t really that tough.
Things got a lot harder in the seventies, and Townsend really screwed up when he furloughed Chrysler’s engineers when they were working on the F-bodies.
It’s really saying something to be considered Chrysler’s #1 DS when you remember such boners as the Airflow, ’57 ‘Forward Look’ cars, the 1970 E-body, and the ’62 downsizing debacle.
No argument here. Townsend had been an accountant working for an outside CPA firm when he got brought in to replace Newburgh who was fired after a kickback scandal. Townsend cleaned up some messes early, and things seemed well early on. His big thing was volume. Fixing the weird styling and some bad quality of the 1960-62 period (plus a rising economy) made for some rapid growth. Unfortunately, when things got tougher in 1966-68, everything got sacrificed on the altar of volume.
I often bust on Chevrolet in this era for having very little feel for emerging new market niches, but Chrysler was much worse in this area. By 1972-74, Chrysler was making almost no conquest sales at all (other than maybe A bodies) but only selling to that pool of confirmed Mopar buyers, and alienating them one at a time with occasional really bad cars.
That actually explains some things I hadn’t linked together – the operations guy was a clueless moron who knew how to blame others with the greatest of ease. It also explains Sperling’s contempt for Cafiero and why things were self-destructing while on autopilot.
Riccardo did in fact seem reasonable, if incompetent – according to David Halberstam, Riccardo knew full well that hiring Iacocca meant the end of his own career. In an industry where egos are bigger than waistlines, even, that was a remarkable sacrifice for the business he was entrusted with.
Out of that Peter Principle laboratory, came the F-Body cars.
In his first book, Iaccoca actually said exactly that, that Riccardo had sacrificed his career to save the company. Iacocca was a better auto exec than Riccardo, and he knew it. When Riccardo was explaining the company’s problems to Iacocca during the transition, he pulled no punches, and it included his own failings. Iacocca didn’t jusrt happen to be able to address those areas that needed the most attention. Riccardo was instrumental in laying out a template for him.
In retrospect, Townsend should have been stepped aside around 1968. He did a good job of undoing the damage caused by lousy quality control and/or weird styling between 1957 and 1962. His slashing of corporate staff in 1961 was brutal, but it needed to be done, as Chrysler was staffed for a 20 percent market share, but it hadn’t acheived that level of market penetration in years.
Chrysler assembly quality really began improving in 1962, and, if the feedback from Owners Reports in Popular Mechanics was any indication, was BETTER than that of GM and Ford from about 1963 through 1965. He also seemed to understand that there needed to be more differentiation between Dodge and Plymouth (his initial refusal, for example, to give Dodge a version of the first- and second-generation Barracuda). He championed Chrysler’s participation in racing, and the revival of the Hemi, which really did improve the image of Dodge and Plymouth.
Unfortunately, after the successes between 1963 and 1965, which basically brought Chrysler back to where it had been around 1955-56, he didn’t seem to know where to go next. Chrysler needed to start innovating, and more aggressively pursuing new market niches.
He also chose to pour more money into Chrysler’s money-losing European operations. I remember reading the account of one Chrysler insider, who claimed that the corporation’s troubles really started in 1968. Chrysler’s market share hit a post-1957 high (18.9 percent, if I recall correctly) that year, and the Plymouth Road Runner and Dodge Charger were huge hits.
But Chrysler chose to pour more money into its European operations, instead of products and plants back home. It meant that the engineering department was short-changed, and there was pressure to cut corners and reuse components as much as possible. As the insider put it, “The trunk on the E-body leaked because the trunk on the C-body leaked.” Plants were also neglected, and they were in horrible shape by the early 1970s.
I remember that, aside from the Valiant/Duster and Dart, it seemed as though everyone I knew who bought a Chrysler product bought one…and then defected to GM because of constant, niggling troubles and sloppy build quality. The engines and transmissions, which had been designed years before, were solid (as long as they were properly built, which was a big “if” in those days), but the rest of the car was terrible. Couple that with cheap interior materials and dowdy styling, and it’s no wonder that Chrysler hit the skids in 1974-75.
To be fair, while Chrysler’s British endeavors were all expensive disasters, France’s Simca would at least eventually lead to the successful Omni/Horizon. The stake in Mitsubishi didn’t turn out too badly, either.
But, yeah, Townsend mostly squandered Chrysler’s resources by the time he had gotten the ship upright in the mid sixties. Airtemp and Chrysler Marine didn’t exactly pan out, either. Chrysler just couldn’t afford these kinds of mistakes and it all culminated with the poorly engineered F-body.
In grade school a friend’s mom had an Aspen wagon, same red as in the pictures above. IIRC it was a manual shift and I think it was on the column……I always thought it was weird that it wasn’t an automatic transmission, especially a station wagon! I got rides home very often in that car – and the biggest thing I remember about it were the rattles that came from the back cargo area. It sounded like it was going to come apart with every bump. Their front fenders had rust/rot for as long as I can remember, too. I guess they didn’t take advantage of the recall! It was finally replaced with a light blue early 80’s Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser Brougham wagon. (big improvement)
This is a sad car. If it had been reasonably well built, I think it would have done respectably well. Sure it was rife with faults, but I think the design was pretty good for the era. I had a Great Aunt who bought a new Volare in 1976 (she had been very loyal to Chrysler over the years–dating back to their glory years for engineering and durability) but the car was terrible, rusted prematurely and was her last Chrysler product. In college, I knew a number of kids who had these as hand-me-downs in the 80s, and all of them were badly rusted (I went to school in Connecticut, so lots of road salt, but still…). The only person I know who had a reasonable F body experience was my Father-in-law. He had a ’77 Aspen wagon, liked it well enough, and doesn’t recall any major issues. It was replaced with a 1980 Citation, which he hated. He went back to the Pentastar for an Aries wagon in 1984, so he wasn’t entirely burned by Chrysler. GM though, that was another story…
I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen an Aspen with an unbroken grille.
Mine included! Until I rear ended someone. I had a friend who had an old aspen wagon that died – that’s how I got a plodge.
I absolutely agree 100%; the F-Bodys were a direct hit-to-the-jugular deadly sin. Shame on Chrysler! If they had just waited one more year for R&D to work the bugs out, they could have been heroes instead of zeros…it wasn’t like they weren’t profiting on the A-Bodys. If theres one car that destroyed Chryslers reputation for good solid dependable cars, it was the Fs.
I do, however disagree with your statement that the Neon is a deadly sin but I will save my comments about that when that article runs. Look forward to it!
Its a shame really about the Volares/Aspens. They were genuinely good looking, decent handling cars, and with a 318, they would move along pretty good by late 1970s standards. By 78-79, they got it together in terms of build quality but the damage had been done. My Aunt bought a brand new, loaded 1978 Volare wagon that was great looking in black with woodgrain trim, a red plaid interior, ice cold AC, and an 8 track player stereo that sounded pretty good. I don’t know how many miles it had on it when she traded it in for a new Taurus in 1988 or 89 but I know she wouldn’t have kept it that long if it wasn’t a good car.
I,ve owned about 4 of thiem the last I built the slant 6 it wound up sticking 6 down draft webbers on it toped it out one night at 165 left a vet standing still hears a pic of it wish I had it back
My friend Willie bought a brand new 1976 Aspen and his problems started immediately. He got the new fenders, but then the choke was never right and the flywheel was screwed up. He was not the least bit mechanically inclined but he learned to change starters because he had to change one every few months until it was determined that the flywheel was misaligned.
My family owned a service station. I had to tell Willie to take the car somewhere else for repairs simply to save our friendship. THAT is how horrible that car was.
the wagon also reminds me of first generation Toyota Cressida wagons.
In 1974, in their fifteenth year, some 720k new A-Bodies found homes. And I’ll bet that the percentage of them still on the road today is the highest of any American car sold that year. There are dozens of them still plying the streets of Eugene.
Still tons of them here as well, they’re noticeably more common than any other early-mid 70s American car that actually lives on the streets. Everything from lifelong beaters to mild restorations, largely all of them daily drivers. I can’t remember seeing Mopar F-bodies regularly since my grandmother traded in her Volare in the late 80s and I haven’t seen one actually being driven on the road in years.
’70 Dart Swinger in the picture below (not an Instagram filter, just a shitty cell phone)
A tale of two Chrysler Corporation products… One was a 1976 Volare Road Runner, a car that a very popular girl in my high school was given by her parents. The second was a 1980 Volare Coupe owned by a college buddy of mine.
For some reason, Tina took a liking to me and asked me to go out with her (this was very odd even by the late ’70’s). I was in heaven, but… I owned no car at the time. I was too embarrassed to drive my parents Mercury Montego, and neither one of my brothers would lend me their cars. I guess they were afraid of what the 16 year-old me would have done with (or in) them…
I related this to Tina, and she gracefully offered up her own steed, the 76 Road Runner. It looked like the ones in the ads from the times (see below0; but by 1978 it was pretty darned rusty. I was enthralled with both of them, but even as big as a motorhead as I was back then, I collected virtually no information on the car itself. I was way too busy trying to entertain Tina. She let me drive her car to the movies and a fast food dinner after. Unfortunately, there was no spark there, I guess she decided I wasn’t “it”. It turns out that wasn’t the first time that would happen to me. It’s funny how life turns out, we’re friends on Facebook now, and we “speak” frequently. But I’m pretty sure after my 27 year marriage and her two marriages, I’m still not “it”. (LOL!)
Fast forward to 1984, one of my pal-around buddies from college inherits his grandmother’s 1980 Volare Coupe (with the leaning tower of power). We would pack three other guys in that car every Friday or Saturday night for different events, it never groaned. It was not quick, but it was stout! Other than some minor rust issues and the usual maintenance items, he drives the car for at least six more years with very few problems. I lost track of Jimmy in 1990 or so, but at that time, he still had that Volare and it was running well.
It seems to me that by the end of actual F-body production, Chrysler had fixed all of the issues. But it was far too late. The K-cars were the inheritors of the A body mantle, for better or worse.
As a side note: just yesterday, on my way out to dinner with my wife and younger daughter, I saw a 1978 “Super Coupe” pulling out of a local business. Oh man, I wanted one of those so badly back then…
There were so many flashy option packages on these cars – Road Runner, Super Coupe, Super Pak, R/T (Allpar.com has a good rundown somewhere) – and unlike virtually all of their competitors in the late 70s, they still had some straight-line giddyup with the right boxes checked. Or you could get the Slant/6 and overdrive transmission on the other end, a combo that the EPA rated at 20city/28hwy for 1978 (old style ratings), which was excellent for a car this size. Definitely a lot to like about them on paper, and I think it’s a shame that they turned out to be such turds.
I’ve always preferred the look of the low-key sedans and wagons much better, but I like the coupes too. I probably would’ve thought all the tape stripes, louvers and spoilers were cheesy back then, but looking backwards from 35 years into the future, they now look pretty groovy to me… maybe still a little too bold for my own tastes, but I like that they existed. One of the few honest 70s takes on building a late 60s “muscle car”.
A scant six years from the height of the musclecar era, the Volare Road Runner/Aspen R/T (along with the Chevy Monza Spyder and Mustang II Cobra II) would be forever viewed as the very bottom of the performance car barrel and would epitomize the term ‘mylar GT’, i.e., cars that were all show and no go.
At least the Monza Spyder didn’t sully a once proud musclecar name like the other two.
Like many here, I was excited about these. The early ones had some fairly luxurious interiors and the wagons were really attractive (the sedans and especially the coupes, not so much).
Not mentioned is that these cars were in their development phase in 1974-75. The economy was in a nasty recession and Chrysler was hemorrhaging money. There were heavy layoffs that affected the engineering department, and when things were at their worst, the only people working were those required for projects related to government mandated safety and emissions issues. These things just came out of the oven too soon, given the resources available.
The 1980 models were really very good cars, but by then, any pretense of luxury was gone. By then, they were strippo cars whose job was to hold the fort until the K cars showed up. 1980 was a grim year in Chry-Ply showrooms, and the Horizon/Omni was really the only thing that was selling.
Good gawd, I’d forgotten that as well. Chrysler, in the hands of bookkeepers, tried to control their cash flow…by laying off engineers working on new projects!! The automotive equivalent of eating your seed-corn. At the time, writers predicted that would be the end of Chrysler as the House of Engineering…and were they ever right.
Engineered by the second string, rushed out the door, leaderless company, morale in the negatives…a Perfect Storm. Failure was practically guaranteed.
It wasn’t just the U.S divisions of Chrysler that were problematic- the “fuselage” styled Au market Valiants were a bit of a drug on the market and the excellent Hemi Six probably never made back the money invested in it. The body mix of Valiants was all wrong with two different coupes (Charger and Regal) that shared little and were launched into a market rapidly abandoning such cars. Then there was the lwb “Chrysler by Chrysler” which demanded a premium over the standard Valiants for no real visual difference.The sedans were generally felt to be too big on the outside and too small inside, particulary after the efficently packaged previous model. .Then there was the Hemi Six- a wonderful motor! However it was engineered with the understanding it would be exported to the U.S for a small truck project, so it was tooled up to be produced in the hundreds of thousands. Then with the restraint on engineering the truck project was canned…God knows how much money Chrysler Australia ended burning up on the C-series Valiants. On the plus side at least they were solid, long lived cars, and I at least thought them stylish!
Speaking of the C-series Aussie Valiants, I scanned from the 2003 February issue of Collectible Automobile showing photos of mock-ups clays of proposed C-series Valiants. Pictures #2 and #3 showed some proposed mock-ups of proposed post-1981 Valiants when Mitsubishi acquired Chrysler Australia operations. #7 and #8, a more squared car, codenamed CM-41, looked like a shrunked R-body or growed K-car. What might have been…. Also imagine what if Chrysler had decided to replace the Slant Six for the Aussie Hemi-6 for the Dart/Valiant. Imagine a “Duster Hemi 6-pack”. 😉
Thanks for those pics, Stephane! I’ve always wondered what might have been if the money had been in it.
One analysis I’ve read described the VH Valiant as looking bigger than it actually was, while at the same time the HQ Holden looked smaller than it was (that is not praise btw). The Valiant was dragging its heels in some areas, eg not having any flow-through ventilation. I think most 70’s cars rusted more than their predecessors, plus these Valiants are known for stress cracks in the chassis rail where the steering box mounts.
Stephane, by the late 70’s any performance version of the hemi-6 was long gone, emissions regs were in full force with the usual result. I have read they investigated both a 5- and 4-cyl version of the engine (eg for use in the Centura), but I don’t think there was any money to pay for development.
Thanks for posting the scan Stephane, very interesting! I’ve seen image 2 before – I’m pretty sure it was on a link you posted a while ago. It’s actually quite a nice update on the CM shape.
John H, I’ve read that about the VH/HQ styling too – I believe Wheels made comments along those lines several times, also mentioning that the XA Falcon was in the middle.
Funny thing is that you still find quite a lot of these in France, mostly Volares with the Slant Six w/ automatic and, for a few of them, with the 318 ci.
They were officially imported by Chrysler France and it seems that they dire reputation had not follow them here.
There are three of them currently for sale on the local Craiglist (http://www.leboncoin.fr/voitures/offres/ile_de_france/occasions/?f=a&th=1&pe=22&rs=1965&re=1995&gb=2&q=plymouth+volare)
I hope to buy one someday because it’s one of the only true ‘murican cars from the late 70’s/early 80’s you can find in France, along with Sevilles and B-body Delta 88s.
And, yes, I’d rather buy an Volare than a Delta 88 because every Delta 88 imported here had the (insert curse word here) diesel 350.
See for yourself : 9 Delta 88s are currently for sale. All of them are diesels : http://www.leboncoin.fr/voitures/offres/ile_de_france/occasions/?f=a&th=1&rs=1977&re=1985&q=oldsmobile+delta
I another thread recently, I had spoken of a trip to France I took in 1988, in which I had kept track of the American cars I saw there:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/road-trip/the-curbside-classics-of-paris/
I distinctly remember seeing a Volare or Aspen. Given these cars’ poor reputation in the U.S., I was a bit surprised to see one in France, but maybe they were more common there than I realized.
I want to say that another one of the cars I saw was an early ’80s bustleback Seville. I’ll have to dig out my journal from that trip one of these days….
Wow, I was just scrolling through a website on obscure cars (reading about the Stutz Diplomatica of all things), when I found the ultimate Plymouth Volare variant. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the Volare-based Monteverdi Sierra. I’ve heard of Monteverdi, but not the Sierra, but it was available in sedan, wagon and convertible form. Was this the ultimate expression of making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?
Not bad, not bad at all !
Reminds me of the Fiat 130 sedan from the seventies.
I like the way that the featured Volare has the grill badge attached by a couple of loops of wire!
A shame the execution was so bad, as these cars were much better looking than the competition, and with the wagon had a body style the others couldn’t match.
The maroon Volare in the pictures is an exact duplicate (visually, at least) of one that belonged to a high school friend’s parents. We used to drive around in it on Friday nights, not really going anywhere, just to be doing something and just because we could.
+1 on the DS designation. I owned several Aspens/Volares and agree that they were junk. As far as the school of thought goes that the old Darts/Valiants would run “forever,” I disagree. I’ve also owned many of those. The slant sixes, yes forever. The rest of the car, no. Windshield leaks and body rot were the prime killers. When the frame where the torsion bar anchor was welded to would rust out and the side of the car would collapse, that was the end of the line.
I still miss my Aspen wagon. Best space utilization of any car.
My grandmother in New Jersey had a 1977 Chrysler LeBaron. Basically a broughamed out Dodge Aspen with a formal front end with square headlights below the front turn signals. It introduced a dashboard that was used until 1989 on the Chrysler 5th Avenue. It was red with a landau vinyl top. I bet it also had the 318 V8 and TorqueFlite tranny. I remember the distinctive sound of the Mopar gear reduction starter that car also had. Not only that. When the TorqueFlite transmission was shifted from park to reverse to drive, it made a distinctive knock sound.
What were the scrolly things on the Aspen? It looks like random scribbling on the back!
When the Aspen/Volare first came out, several of us from college went to the Chrysler dealer on a Sunday (closed) to take a look. On a sedan, the left front fender has the Aspen badge and the right front fender had the Volare badge. It made me wonder what else was wrong….
I owned a 1976 Volare Premier coupe, Jamaican Blue, for eight years. I must have gotten a good one because I had absolutely no trouble with it, it would get up and go, and when I traded it because I just wanted to, the salesman bought it!!
It’s the official family car on ‘Bob’s Burgers’!
http://jalopnik.com/the-family-car-on-bobs-burgers-has-now-been-absolutely-1690242755#
I had a 75 Valiant. Bought it in 76. Crappiest car I ever owned. I was quite ticked that the front fenders rusted through when 3 years old. It has some hard to diagnose engine issues too and the mileage was horrific. I expected better than 15 MPG from it. Got rid of it in 81. That was least time I have ever owned a car that was still running when I got rid of it.
I bought a new Aspen station wagon in 1976, with the 318 engine and torqueflite. Rust was a terrible problem over the years I owned it; thank goodness I was pretty good with Bondo. The paint was terrible as it came out of the factory, with specks of what appeared to be dirt embedded on two of the fenders. The engine block had to be replaced at 10,000 miles due to a persistent lifter noise that the dealer said was due to egg shaped lifter holes. The emissions oriented carburetor was set so lean it caused surging at anything but full throttle, a condition I cured by raising the metering rods about 0.060″. The passenger side door panel pulled loose from the upper trim, leaving a gap. Even with all that, I loved that car and it held together well mechanically until I sold it at 155,000 miles.
My son bought a Volare SuperCoupe while in college. What an interesting car! It had a 360 4 bbl, heavy suspension, 8″ wide rims with wide tires, attractive graphics and only a couple of paint options available. The interesting thing about the motor was that even though it had the same power as any other 360 (170HP, I believe), it was considerably tougher, having a double roller timing chain, forged crank, and windage tray. In short, it was the police version, built for heavy duty use.
We just picked up a 1980 Volare as a first car for my Mopar-addicted son. The car has 90k miles on it and is in amazing shape for its unrestored age.
Body is all original steel with little to no bondo that we can find….rockers, floors, fenders, frame….all solid. One small hole in the trunk center pan.
Mind you, this is a car that lived its whole 36 year life in Pennsylvania.
Interior , aside from a cracked dash, is like new.
The slant 6 hums along happily and is simply COOL.
It drives nice…..comfortable and solid feeling, even with the ridiculous 295 50 15 tires on 15×10″ rims a previous owner slapped on it along with air shocks.
In short, it was CARED for and loved, so it survived well.
And the way my son looks at it sitting in the drive, it will go on that way, even though it will see its share of winter driving.
And it has a certain Mopar look that I love too.
Its easy to look back at any make or model and condemn it for its sins.
But I grew up in the 70s and 80s and as I recall, ALL cars had issues and rotted out quickly etc.
These days the cars last longer physically. The bodies last much longer even if neglected. But the engines still break…..and try working on a 200 and up car on your own. Wiring, computers and sensors…PAINFUL!
My son and I will be working on this classic together and I am grinning ear to ear about our choice!
What a completely wonderful thing to hear! I am happy for you and jealous. I tried desperately to get my kids involved in the old car hobby to no avail. Best of luck to you, your son and your new Mopar!
No disagreement. Walking away from the A bodies was a huuge mistake. If they could have done anything, the should have improved or downsized on the A body platform to something a bit more trim, perhaps a few inches shorter wheelbase. A bit lighter body and a 225 cu in or 318 in there would have sold well – if it had been accompanied with good quality build and components. I guess they had to wait for the Reliant in 1980. Good thing they killed the Volpen and Aspare names. I hope permanently.
Given the decent reputation the Valiant and Dart had developed by the 1975, why Chrysler didn’t simply mask the platform with new styling, stick on new names, load them with the pseudo-luxury features and peddle the heck out of them. Any survivors now have either been unusually well kept or those few cars which were Wednesday builds.
Hindsight shows how maddeningly close Chrysler came to a big hit with these. The Granada was a home run, and it was almost exactly the same concept as these – a little bigger and a lot nicer than the cars they replaced.
But. First the styling was really uninspired. The people who brought us the 74 Imperial muffed this one with a shape that wasn’t quite there. Then they should have sold these as up-trim jobs only, as the Granada did. This would have been a perfect situation with both in production at once (as they actually were, but only for 1976).
But quality was truly awful. It is not that Granada quality was all that good either but the Ford felt solid and expensive (at first) while these never did.
I thought the styling of the 1977 Dodge Diplomat/Chrysler LeBaron was what a genuine luxury compact, and Granada competitor, should have looked like. The new M-Bodies made the Aspen/Volare, even in their highest trim levels, look almost utilitarian.
I agree. I liked the look of the M-bodies. They had crisper, cleaner lines. Did they end up being reasonably reliable, with the bugs fixed?
To be fair, “We’re incompetent to develop a new car” isn’t something a car manufacturer should say.
The A body wasn’t a proper platform for a modern luxury compact in the 70s.
Sounded like F body failed due to poor build quality. But what about the basic design when it comes to space, ride comfort, driveability? I am as to the main culprit, product spec? product design against those spec? or, execution of the product design?
This is a curious case for me as the F body shared basic drivetrain with out going model, right?
The drivetrain was carryover but Chrysler had been struggling to adapt that drivetrain to more stringent emissions targets, resulting in drivability problems. A friend of my grandma bought a new Volare wagon in 1976. It was a conquest sale. She had trouble with it starting. I watched her once grind that starter for a long time and when it caught black smoke belched out of the tailpipe. She said it was usually like that.
As the 70s wore on it seemed like there was nothing that Chrysler was incapable of fouling up. The F car structure never seemed as solid or rigid as that of the A body. And materials seemed cheaper. By 1977-78 many of the bugs had been resolved but by then Chrysler’s reputation had driven away more and more prospective customers.
Once the bugs were ironed out, I would say the F-body was no better or worse than the Ford and GM competition of the time. As evidence, I would point to the virtually identical M-body which was produced from 1977 to 1989. If the F was truly a badly engineered and designed car, I doubt the M would have lasted for 12 years.
Of course, maybe the same could said of the Vega and Citation. While the initial cars were horrible, routinely criticized as a couple of the worst cars ever built, nearly identical follow-up variants under different names and bodies lasted for many years.
The A-body Celebrity/Ciera/Century and 6000 were basically revamped lengthened and gussied up X-body cars so yes they like the M-body cars improved over their predecessors quite a bit.
Plenty of hate here for the humble Volare but by 1978, they were good cars, better than anything in the class I have driven. I much prefer a Slant Six Volare over a V-6 Malibu.
I have had two of these for short periods. One was a winter beater while I was a university. It was a Super Six and for its day it was quite fun to drive. It never felt under-powered and the 225 had great low end torque. I remember taking it up hills on the Malahat north of Victoria and it would go exactly 50 km/h. Stomping on it only made for more valve float and noise. It started and ran just fine, except one day at my parent’s house, I started it and it backfired, blowing out the rear of the muffler. I grabbed on at Crappy Tire for like $20 and bolted ‘er on. Then like an idiot I sold it to my cousin who promptly wrecked it, like has has wrecked all his cars.
The other was a very well kept brougham model from 1978 I bought from a buddy in 1997 to drive around, shortly after the death of my father. He had kept it very well and it was very comfortable. Nobody would ever autocross a Volare, okay, but they drove just fine for a 1970’s car.
Fuel consumption was nothing to write home about but at 18 MPG Imperial it was no worse than my Cutlass Ciera 3.3. This really wasn’t bad in the era when one considered in the real world a big sled got like 12 MPG in the city and 15 on the highway and that was if you were lucky. I am sure others can get 50 MPG out of a Chevy 454 but I sure as heck never could.
A ’78 Volare drove my grandfather to imports for good. He had owned a long line of Valiants and Dusters and was so excited about the new Plymouth. After many problems he traded his new Volare in on a Toyota Celica in less than a year. Followed by many more Toyotas and Nissans for the rest of his life.
One of these Volares was so bad it made my tough as nails uncle and aunt cry. They were in their late 40s and it was their first car that they ever bought new. The way their dealer treated them when they had problems left such a bad taste in my mouth, and I was used to how VW treated _my_ folks. I’ve never been able to set foot on a Dodge or Plymouth car lot since.
My high school friend inherited a 1979 white Volare sedan with the so called Super Six that used a two barrel carb instead of the 1BBL, setup and was equipped with A/C, green vinyl bench seats, HD package, an Am radio and little else. He got it with a tad under 100K miles and it never seemed to have any power whatsoever. It couldn’t peel out a rear tire if you wet the road and loaded it with banana peels. Using the A/C made it quite painful to drive and god forbid you had more than one person aboard. In comparison his 1974 Scamp coupe with a 1BBL Slant six felt like a V8. They did everything imaginable to that car but it refused to be anything other than a stop watch verified 17 second 0-60 slug.
He spoke with many old timers who claimed the Super Six was quite lively and gave near V8 power but not his. This was in the mid to late 90’s so these were getting quite scarce by then so we couldn’t at the time find another example like his to test against. He poured well over what the car was worth into carburetor rebuilds and replacements, manifold replaced, transmission and torque converter rebuilds, complete exhaust system replacement, had the brakes and emergency checked but nothing seemed to be wrong. Ironically it ran smooth enough once warmed up but couldn’t get out of it’s own way.
I even remember racing him with my 1981 105 Hp 260 Cutlass coupe and walking right by him. With a 260!!!
I would choose a A/G body Malibu or Cutlass any day of the week over one of these with their flaccid axle hopping rear ends and the torsion bean front ends but only with the superior THM 350 transmission and any of many V8 choices. These cars just never impressed me much overall. Ironically they never got a really good write up with Consumer Guide auto series either and one road test of a Super Six had it pegged at a leisurely 16.9 second 0-60 time so I wonder if there were issues with these engines.
I drove an 80 as a cab and it had the super 6. It was a great car. I drove it a couple years and only repair I had to do to it was an alternator, a t stat and a torsion bar that broke when I ran over an open man hole. Car still made it home. It had decent power and was so-so on gas. But it was reliable. It took alot of road to do a u turn. More than a normal full sized car like a Caprice would need.
I never really got the point of the f car replacing the a car. They look to be same sized and similar styling. What was the big difference. I know the drivetrain was same. I mean the difference looks minimal from the old dart .