1964 Dodge 880 (bottom) remodeled into 1959 Dodge Custom Royal (top)
For me, CC has been a vehicle for self-education, to bust long-held myths that seemed ripe for doing so, and to solve some longstanding mysteries. It never fails to surprise me how many of these myths and mysteries have been perpetuated so vociferously, since they simply don’t stand up to logic or evidence. One of the bigger myths that I’ve had the pleasure to pop is the “garden party” story about why Chrysler downsized the 1962 Dodge and Plymouth.
A related mystery is the one about the conversion of Chrysler’s full-size 1960 cars to unibody construction. It’s a subject that has been debated in the comments here at CC since its earliest days: Were these 1960s “all new” that just happened by coincidence to look a lot like their predecessors, or were they extensively “remodeled” 1957-1959 cars? Thanks to a commenter, we now have the story and pictures of how one person remodeled a unibody 1964 Dodge 880 convertible into a 1959 Dodge Custom Royal. It solves the mystery quite compellingly.
The irony is that I knew the truth a very long time ago, as a kid. It was all too obvious to me that this 1961 Chrysler 300 (bottom) was anything but an “all new” car in relation to its 1957 predecessor (top). Nobody in their right mind decides to start designing an all new car from scratch and ends up making it look so much like its predecessor, right down to so many details. Sure, there were external sheet metal differences, but those were easy to change. What was obvious to me then as an eight year old was that key hard points, that define the critical overall shape, as well as key elements, like the shape of the windshield, how the doors relate to the body (and windshield), the wheel openings, how the “greenhouse relates to the lower body, etc.”.
Before we plunge in let’s first define the semantics:
An “all-new” car (or body) is one that’s started with a clean sheet, meaning nothing is based on the predecessor. This is driven by the desire to have new basic proportions and design, as well as significant changes to the underlying technology, such as new suspension systems, frames/body structure, and other key elements. Some examples of that are the 1955 and 1965 Chevrolet (and related GM A/B/C Bodies), the 1965 Ford and the 1957 Chrysler Corp cars, with their drastically new body proportions and new torsion bar front suspensions.
A “remodeled” car, like a remodeled house, means that the predecessor car is taken as the starting point, and changes are made as required (but only as required) to attain a specific goal. This invariably means that certain key hard points and proportions will be maintained, as well as whatever other chassis, suspension and other components that can be. This is obviously a significantly lower cost process than a clean sheet approach, as some/many components and much tooling can be modified and/or reused, as it’s cheaper to modify them to the degree necessary than to create all-new ones.
There are articles out there that cover the transition to the 1960 unibodies, but they do not describe either the initial scope of the project or the process itself. The fact that the resulting unibodies look so obviously similar (except for surface styling changes) would suggest that some consideration of the process might be worth some research or at least even logical speculation, but I’ve yet to find any.
It’s always best to start from the beginning, to ascertain why a certain project was undertaken in the first place. In the case of the 1960 Chrysler unibodies, it starts with the frame underneath their predecessors. That 1957 frame (top), is essentially the same in its basic design and configuration as its predecessors (1956 and earlier, bottom), which actually dates right back to 1949 in its basic design and configuration. It’s an old school design, with the main frame rails running straight under the passenger compartment. It’s a clear indication of the kind of cost pressures Chrysler was under in developing these 1957s.
There was a significant problem with reusing that old frame design: the 1957 Chryslers were a good ten inches lower than the 1949s, and six inches lower than the 1956s. The result was a serious loss of leg room and head room.
It’s not as good as climbing into one, but this picture does show the issue: the floor is high up on the frame, level with the sill. And out of necessity, the seats are quite low in relation to the floor. Front seat passengers were able to stretch out their legs out horizontally, but rear seat passengers were short-changed. Headroom was compromised all-round. This was the bitter price to pay for longer, lower, wider. Suddenly 1960 didn’t look so hot, especially if you had to sit in the back.
Ford and GM had addressed this issue with their new lower 1957-1958 cars more progressively. Ford’s “cowbelly” frame bulged out at the sides, making room for footwells for the rear seat passengers. Not as good as a genuine perimeter frame—which replaced it in 1965—but it was better than Chrysler’s old school frame.
GM’s new X-Frame addressed the issue in a different way: By strengthening the sills and adding lateral ribs to the floor pans, it was able to eliminate the side rails altogether, opening space for foot wells.In essence, the X-Frame was something of a half-step towards a unibody, by making the body a much more critical part of the combined structure, in terms of its overall strenght and rigidity.
By 1961, GM started moving to the perimeter frames (at Olds), the ultimate solution to BOF construction. Perimeter frames require the body to play an even greater role in the overall rigidity of the combined structure, as the rather small frame members provide limited amount of strength and rigidity by itself. Significantly, it allows a lower floor at both the front and rear.
Meanwhile, the increasingly popular unibody Ramblers had none of these issues, resulting in the best interior space utilization.
Ford and GM’s new frames and Rambler’s unibody resulting in improved interior room left Chrysler at a decided disadvantage. This is precisely what led them to the key element of the 1960 program: to rid the underbody of that massive frame.
That’s a key issue of this program (eliminating the frame under the body), because in reality, these are not true or full unibodies, because the whole front one-third of the car is essentially the same as before, retaining a shortened frame (subframe), which was bolted to the back two-thirds of the body. The most crucial changes were to the sills, the cowl structure, which provides critical torsional rigidity, and the door pillars.
This picture shows how the unibodys (bottom) had a much thicker and less curved A-pillar structure to provide critical strength to the roof. This did result in a somewhat smaller door opening, but that was partially offset by the doors having a wider swing.
Here’s a cross section that purports to show the improvements in interior space utilization. The seats could now be mounted a bit lower, improving headroom. And leg room is significantly improved in the rear seat, thanks to a lower floor height.
What Chrysler did with the large cars in 1960, “remodeling” the back two-thirds into unibodies but retaining the front frame and clip is a key distinction from the true unibody that Chrysler was developing for the 1960 Valiant (top) and a similar structure it would use for the new downsized 1962 Dodge and Plymouth (bottom). In these cars, the front inner fender structure that supports the suspension, steering and the engine are a critical integral element of their bodies as there’s no subframe.
The whole front third (from the cowl/firewall forward) of the large 1960 Chryslers was essentially unchanged. That’s a huge savings, and a key aspect of this whole program, whose primary purpose was to increase interior space, along with the potential for a more rigid body structure to improve handling and reduce squeaks and such.
This is where the featured cars come in, from an article at mystarcollector.com. The owner/builder, Scott Steers, had long wanted a car that he developed a crush for when he was five years old: a brand new pink 1959 Dodge convertible. Since he had motorless 1959 Dodge sedan and some other sedan parts, and was able to pick up a ’64 Dodge 880 convertible for a good price, he decided to build his own, a clone of the real thing (note: the pictured 1964 880 is not the actual car used in the conversion)
Scott: “The two cars wound up being parked next to each other by chance where I store some cars and it was only looking at them side by side, I started to realize how similar they were. I started using a tape measure and made paper patterns of various curves and came to realize that they were practically twins”.
Let’s start at the front end, since this was such a key element: would the front clip of the ’59 fit the unibody ’64? Why yes, it did! Although it took a bit of doing, in terms of changing to the hinges mounting and various other mounting tabs and such. This was because the cowl, the single most important structural element on a unibody, had to be modified and strengthened considerably. But the basic dimensions and shape were similar enough for the ’59 front clip to mate to the ’64 body without any serious surgery.
Surprisingly, the front bumper bolted up in the correct position without any modifications”.
This confirms that the front subframe was essentially the same as the front portion of the old frame.
“With the upper fenders in position I welded the lower part of the 64 fenders into place. I had to do a little hammer and Dolly work on the front edge to get the contours to match up but nothing too bad”.
Here’s the rear end under reconstruction:
“Taking measurements off of my ‘59 Coupe, I put the quarter panels in the proper position holding them in place with sheet metal screws and when I was happy with the location, I modified the 880 trunk hinges to hold the ‘59 deck lid to where it matched up with the rear quarters”.
“I butt welded the vertical seams and used panel bond on the horizontal seam with a one-inch overlap held together with sheet metal screws while it cured. This seam would lay under the stainless-steel body molding and would not be visible. I had to modify the rear bumper brackets to put the bumper in the correct position”.
“Lower rear quarter panel contours were the same on both cars and matched up nicely where I butt welded them together. The spot weld flange on the bottom matched up to the 1964 trunk extensions perfectly. Inside on the lower edge of the trunk floor everything matched up as well. The panels all fit like they were made for the car. They certainly did not change very much when they went to unibody in 1960!” True that! Certainly in places where structural strength was not critical, like the rear/trunk portions of the body other than the new stiffer floor panels.
Here’s the final product, although Scott may make some more changes to the interior. As to driving it, and comparing the unibody to a BOF ’59 Dodge, here’s what he had to say:
“The ‘57 and up frame Mopars were pretty good to begin with, probably the best handling of the full framed American cars. I would say that the unibody cars feel a little lighter and you sit a little lower. Definitely a little bit of a more modern feel in the steering, but they are still big American land yachts”.
This was obviously not just a simple bolt-on job; a fair bit of body work was involved. But it’s also quite clear that the changes Chrysler made were functional (except for exterior styling sheet metal changes), and not as extensive as might be expected, which made this conversion feasible.
The question as to why Chrysler undertook this “remodeling” instead of creating all-new unibody cars for 1960 is easy to answer. The collapse of its sales in 1958 and resulting losses created an existential crisis for Chrysler. It had been operating under the assumption as if it was still #2 in the market, or could be again. The 1957 program was a huge investment to make that happen, and it failed miserably, due to the change in the market away from large cars in 1958 and the poor quality of the ’57s.
Chrysler began a series of massive staff cutbacks in 1958, affecting the ranks of its white collar staff across all departments. At the same time, it committed to building the compact Valiant for 1960, a very demanding project. Funding an all-new big car program for 1960 was out of the question. And as put forth in my article on the downsized 1962 cars, Chrysler’s response to the failure of the ’57s was to give the engineers more power over the designers.
The same factors that were at work in the limited 1960 full size program were precisely what also led to the cancellation of the very ambitious new full-sized program envisioned for 1962, resulting in the downsized Plymouth and Dodge and a restyle for the large Chryslers.
The conversion of the large cars to partial unibodies was clearly very much an engineering-driven decision, as the styling for 1960 was then by necessity not much more than a refresh, as the basic proportions and many hard points had to be kept.
The marketing emphasis for 1960 was on the solidity of the new unibody cars and not on their styling, which certainly didn’t look all that dramatically different from 1957. Suddenly it’s 1960…again.
In summation, I realize that much of this debate boils down to semantics. Are there any parts in the 1960 bodies that are the same as in a ’59? I don’t know if we’ll ever have a definitive answer. I’ve read anecdotal reports that say yes, but they might well be quite minor ones, especially in non key structural areas. There was obviously every incentive to reuse anything that could be.
But the key issue was the process, which involved starting with a ’59 body and making the structural changes as required. The result is evidenced in Scott’s conversion of a ’64 into a ’59 clone: It was not that difficult, and a surprising number of parts fit readily enough.
In any case, the rear two-thirds of a body hardly make “a new car”. What’s indisputable is that the front one-third is essentially the same, except for exterior sheet metal changes for styling purposes. In addition to some likely inner body parts or assemblies, most critically, this allowed reuse of a significant portion of chassis/suspension components as well as the drive train.
Related reading:
1962 Dodge and Plymouth: The Real Reason They Were Downsized
mystarcollector.com: A ’64 Dodge 880 Transformed Into A ’59 Dodge Royal
This is an always interesting discussion. I have hoped to run into a couple of versions of one of these at a show or in some other place to take lots of photos of seldom-seen places like B pillars, inside of trunks, and the shape of rear doors and such.
The timeline both questions and affirms your theory. This project would have gotten moving in late 1956 (3 years before intro) and sales were fabulous in 1957. The financial storm clouds would have appeared about halfway into the 1960 model’s design cycle. However, it is also known that there were big plans for new 1962 models (with lots of design photos from 1959), so I can also imagine that there was a sense within both styling and engineering that the 1960-61 cars would be an interim model. Which also makes some sense given how little attention historians seem to have given this car.
The big mystery is how many changes there were for so little effect. Look at your 2 red Chrysler hardtops – every single detail of the greenhouse is different, but in a really minor way. Notice the way the place where the front and rear side windows meet – it is almost perfectly vertical on the 59 but has a distinct backward slant on the 60. And the ever so slightly less “kink” in the 1960 A pillar. These are two small details, but the whole car seems like that – a thousand small differences in a package that looks so similar. I am not sure I can think of another example of 2 cars that are so similar but so different.
I suspect there was a lot going on here, like Chrysler’s engineering conservatism using the existing body as a pattern for the transition to the unibody, a shortcut almost no engineer could resist given the unchanged major dimensions of the car, and the knowledge that the S series would soon be making serious demands on resources.
As I continue to ponder this, I think the ambitious plans for the 1962 S series cars answers a lot of these questions. This kind of hybrid between new and not-new is explained by this being seen as an interim generation that eased the transition into the Unibody. What cost pressures there were at the outset were surely due to the car’s short anticipated lifespan. I don’t think anyone at Chrysler expected this body to be in production as long as it was.
You’re assuming that the S-Series cars were to be full unibodies. I don’t think there’s any evidence to tell us for certain one way or another, but I assume that they were going to use the same approach as the 1960 cars. It was a much easier and cheaper solution, and a quite effective one. Chrysler never did go to full unibodies for their big C Body cars; they kept the same basic 1960 structural approach as the 1960s all the way through 1976.
This project would have gotten moving in late 1956 (3 years before intro)
I strongly disagree with that. First off, the pat assumption that it takes three years to develop a new car has been busted (by me, among others) numerous times. The most glaring example is Chrysler’s own 1960 Valiant, which was started from scratch 18 months before it rolled off the lines. And there’s the downsized 1962 Dodge and Plymouth; as I showed in my post on them, there’s no doubt that the decision to downsize them (and create all-new unibodies for them) happened around 18-20 months prior to their introduction.
Both of those cars (A and B Bodies) were true “all new” clean-sheet cars, although the B Body did benefit from the Valiant’s engineering to some degree.
Given that the ’60 full size cars were just “remodels”, I assume it was 18 months maximum and likely less than that prior to their intro.
The timeline of starting these in 1956 makes zero sense to me. How would it possibly take 36 months to make these structural changes to an existing car? More like 6 months, and then the tooling.
I want to be clear, you are winning me around to your view on this car – and I think that the planned S car helps make your point.
I am not just assuming the timeline, but there are lots of dated styling photos for the S vehicles that go from fairly wild in early 1959 to either actually or almost approved for production in late summer of 1959 (many found at Australia’s Shannon’s Magazine) – which is pretty much 2 years from the planned start of assembly.
There are also clays of 61 models dated from 1958 and some clay proposals for 59 models dated May of 1956. I don’t think it’s a stretch to extrapolate that the styling of the proposed 60 models was put to bed by the summer or fall of 1957. How long it took the 60’s styling to go from concept to something akin to reality I can’t say. It is true that the Valiant was a crash program, as was the 1957 line. But I have never read anything that suggests that the 1960 big car line was in that category. The engineering would have, of course, been on its own track, and I have no idea how long that work took.
My point (and the reason that it proves your point) is that for the S lineup (5 brands’ worth, no less) to have been so fully developed by mid 1959, advance, big-picture product plans simply had to be for the 1960 line to be a 2 year product, which would have dictated something less than a clean sheet design.
And you have clearly described the result: A new-ish body and a new-ish sub-structure (taking into account the older stuff ahead of the firewall) that puts this car in a muddy area that is either an incredibly ambitious facelift or a cheap and lazy way to be able to use “all new” in the advertising.
I appreciate the research you have gone to here. This is a really obscure period of Mopar history and good information is not at all easy to find.
The styling cycle varied substantially. They could spend up to two years dicking around with that before it had to be locked up for tooling.
Even if there were some early styling exercises in 1956 for the 1960 (which I doubt) it has no relevance to the change to the unibody, as from a styling point of view, the issues were largely superficial. From the time the styling was locked in, it wouldn’t have taken long to make this remodel into a unibody. The key structural elements wouldn’t have been affected by the mostly superficial exterior changes.
But yes, we may never know exactly when the decision to go unibody happened. My guess is that in late 1957 or early 1958, when both the strong recession and the weak sales of the ’58s were obvious, any thoughts of a more ambitious truly new car for 1960 was scotched, and the remodel of the ’57s commenced.
I would have to assume that in 1956 Chrysler was planning for a truly new big car line for 1960, as three years was a pretty long run back then.
don’t forget Exner had a heart attack around this time as well and styling was in a power struggle
There would certainly be a large difference in the moment of inertia of the center of the “beam” which is the passenger compartment which results in better beam and torsional stiffness. Chrysler did it right IMO, they kept what worked and only changed what they needed to. Ford (with the T-Bird and Lincoln) and GM (Corvair) made these fully integrated monocoques which were a bear to do accident repair on. The Ford unibodies were heavier than if they did BOF. I know Chrysler did have FEA capabilities in the late 50s, not sure about GM and Ford, although I know Ford added a ton of structure to make the unibodies work.
Very interesting discovery. I view it as Chrysler took baby steps and then came out with the great B bodies in ’62 which were still basically used as cop car Dodge Diplomats in the 80s.
The Diplomat was an M-body (reskinned F-body Aspen/Volaré), unrelated to the B-body. The last instantiation of the B-body was the ’79-’81 R-body: Dodge St. Regis, Plymouth Gran Fury, Chrysler New Yorker.
you are a master level Mopar platform guru. I defer.
Can’t beat a real physical experiment to prove a point!
Another unibody myth is that the unibody prevented AMC from restyling. When you look at Nashes and Ramblers from 1950 to 1969, you can see that the *outer* sheetmetal changed at the same pace as the Big Three. AMC could restyle easily, but they COULDN’T create an entirely new body and platform every 3 years. The problem was lack of money, not the restrictions of the unibody.
Very interesting. I’m glad you pointed out that the 880 wasn’t the one he started this, and to do this major cosmetic surgery in mere months is most impressive!
Heck, it took me almost 10 years to put my VW back together after I had it painted.
Turning a 64 into a 59 is pretty cool. And it shows you how willing the automakers were to “stretch” the truth back then.
Just the thought of perhaps turning a 64 into a 59 is way out there. To actually do it, finish the job, and have it all work out is just off the charts. The things people do…
Tom McCahill, writing in the Jan. 1960 Mechanix Illustrated about the new Plymouth and its surprising similarity to ’59. (See photo)
A side issue: After the 55-56 Packards and the ’57 Mopars demonstrated the ride and handling superiority of torsion bar suspension, you wonder why GM didn’t adopt it for ’58. Instead they countered with their disastrous air suspension, which was quickly dropped. I guess that was part of the GM mindset–“We don’t follow THEM, they follow US!” But it would have been great to have ’58 Buicks and Cadillacs that handled like Chryslers and Imperials.
P.S.: I don’t think anyone would do the opposite of what Steers did–convert a dazzling ’59 Custom Royal into a dull ’64 880!
It’s important to keep this fact in mind when talking about torsion bar suspensions: there is absolutely nothing intrinsically superior to a torsion bar compared to a coil spring. In fact a coil spring is a torsion bar, just wound up in a coil.
Any perceived superiority of Chrysler’s torsion bar suspension came not from the bar, but from the geometry and tuning of the suspension. Chrysler simply made better road handling a greater priority than GM and Ford, and the downside was that the Chryslers rode firmer. Essentially, they were set up as a HD or “handling package” suspension.
That was seen as a liability as time went on, as most Americans wanted that jet-smooth (soft) ride. In 1966, Chrysler softened the torsion bars on their full size cars, and as a consequence, any handling advantage they might have had disappeared.
This 1966 Pop Science comparison makes that very clear:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/the-best-big-car-of-1966-the-perpetual-debate-gets-some-additional-ammo/
As to Packard, their system was essentially an early “active” one, and goes beyond the scope of just a regular torsion bar suspension.
This confirms what I too suspected and was told was so by a body shop man familiar with Mopars of those years. If there is an unfortunate aspect, it’s that a ’64 Dodge Custom 880 convertible (1,058) lost its identity to create a unibody ’59 Dodge Custom Royal convertible (984). Neither car has much of a survival rate, so perhaps it’s a wash.
A sub-frame attached to a unit-body were how the 1936-’37 Cord 810/812 were engineered. Doubtful that bit of history played any part here, just worth noting.
I’d long noticed the similarity of the station wagons which even carries into the ’62s and by extension the ’65 intermediates. Quite often in the postwar period you can tell when an “all-new” car was really just reskinned or remodeled by how much of the wagon body shape is carried over.
Any similarities with the ’62 – ’65 B Body wagons are superficial, as they shared nothing structurally with the large cars.
I’m impressed they could make a hardtop with such low doorsills. My main memory of sitting in a 450SEL was how high the sills and center hump were.
I remember the mechanic who did a lot of work on my ’57 DeSoto saying that for ’60, the bodies were all-new, but that the front and rear sub-frames were simply the ’57-59 frame with the middle section cut out, and then the subframes were welded to the body, rather than being bolt-on as with the full-frame ’57-59 cars.
This body/platform was renamed ‘C’ for 1965 and lasted until the 1978 full size Chryslers. Final big Dodge/Plymouths and wagons were 1977. [not 1976]
Who writes these “histories” for Consumer Reports and other publications anyway? It is just regurgitated text with slightly different photos. It seems like someone decades ago wrote this stuff down, and everyone else has just plagiarized it since then?
“Those photos are so pretty…. – who reads that text anyway?”
Niedermeyer don’t play that game.
Problem is, once you get educated on this, you get angry with those pretty books filled with bad information. Paul, you’ve ruined me for fluffy pretty car books!
Consumer Reports doesn’t do these histories.
Consumer Guide/Collectible Automobile generally uses subject experts for long articles. Brief captions usually are by staff, not subject experts.
Sometimes, received knowledge is just wrong. That’s the value of working from primary sources.
From a marketing stand point the term “all new” really meant that it looks different than the previous model. Cars were really just fashion consumer goods at this time, buyers had been trained to expect something that looked different every year and would be traded in for a new model after two to three years. Antique, and even Classic cars were considered by the average American to just be old junk, they had no value at this time.
My Dad had a true unibody car, a ’63 Lincoln, and like it’s sibling the Thunderbird, had a very tight engine compartment. Access to things like spark plugs, starters, alternators, belts, exhaust manifolds, and lower radiator hoses meant that DIY mechanics did not like working on these models. My Dad didn’t, and I think that this has formed my prejudice against these cars. I mentioned that I admired the Mark III but never got one, same for the Thunderbird. A Cadillac had a lot more room around the motor, so I could see how the use of a front subframe could be an advantage.
Very impressive research and work! Beautifull end product…”I will do it because I can”. I wish I had the chops to turn my 87 Eagle wagon into a 72 Wagoneer!
Worth mentioning regarding the seeming styling stasis of Mopar ’60:
Exner arguably came up with the next big thing in 1957, and he seemed to struggle with how to top himself without going off the deep end. Even the modifications to the 1957 design to the 1960 Plymouth lost the plot to no small degree. Holding the line while making decisions for the next big thing was easier than the risk of big change.
While automotive styling lurched all over from 1957 through 1961, undoubtedly the manufacturers still recognized there is value in styling continuity and creating brand identity. The makers had to know all new every year was unsustainable on a number of fronts, and of course detrimental to quality control.
“Suddenly, It’s 1960” was a marketing dead end. Logically, why would the 1960 cars look much different if everyone else is just catching up to you. The styling of the 1960 Cadillac seemed to legitimize this to a degree. It’s a ’57 Imperial clone.
And, those fins. Marketed as stabilizers at freeway speeds. Another marketing dead end; why would you pluck them if this would result in degrading the product? I couldn’t find the most egregious claims Mopar made on this issue (20% reduction in crosswind instability), but here is at least an example of what I’m getting at in the yellow box……
I always figured this was probably the case, a new floor and strategic strengthening in the body structure is theoretically all that’s needed to convert a “body” into a unibody. I don’t find it any less laudable though, I still find the 60s pretty remarkable for going with unibody, even though the front structure technically isn’t, in a time when the prevailing wisdom of the time was BOF isolation.
The custom 880 conversion is really cool
Scott at Coldwar Motors took the floor pan of a 1960 Dodge and subframe and married it to a 1960 Fury body because understructure was totally rotten. The result is very impressive although not quite finished. It is the most amazing thing I have seen in body work. Scott is a master fabricator.
This was a fascinating read this morning (and again this evening), Paul. The Black-Gray-Gray illustration (just below the Rambler) especially new and fascinating to me.
At the time I was old enough and car-crazy enough to be noticing year-to-year styling changes, but not in the least thinking about what was/wasn’t new under the skin….
This 1961 DeSoto unibody ad which, unlike your 1960 ad, includes the whole exterior front end rather than just showing the subframe. Does that *mean* anything?
Nope, other than the usual marketing hype.
Interesting read, but still not sure why anybody would do this.
What talent! After seeing this 64 Dodge transformed into a 59 Dodge, I’ve decided to pick out the tools from my toolbox that might be good for cracking cocoanuts, and throw the rest of them in the lake.
As a young kid, I learned early on the three things that made Chryslers stand out among the domestics: unibody, torsion bars, and pushbutton transmissions. Oh, and in-line sixes that slanted, and V8’s with hemispherical combustion chambers. Everybody, not just car people knew about the first three, just like later generations knew Subaru’s were all-wheel-drive and Tesla’s were electric. Even if they really didn’t know what any of that meant.
I might challenge the comment that a torsion bar is simply and un-coiled coil spring. Which it certainly might be, except for the diameter of the bar stock to build each one. After reading that orientation back in the middle 1960s, I knew that our ’66 Chrysler Newport rode nicer than some relatives’ similar GM cars did. Yet the UniBody Chryslers were considered to ride harsher than the BOF GM cars, which I later determined to be noise-transfer-related rather than not.
Our service station operative had a shop truck that was a 1962 Chevy C-10 shortbed stepside. I rode with him in it one day and a asked what kind of shock absorbers it had under it. He laughed and said they were nothing special. I asked, “Then why does it feel different than other Chevy pickups I’d been in?” That’s when he looked at me and said “It’s got torsion bars under it”. I said “That’s why it feels so much like our Chrysler, then!” As it turns out, Chevy put torsion bars under their full line of light-duty and medium-duty trucks in only 1962 and 1963. Plus later 4WD models into the 1980s. The main difference was that they slid the front of the bar into the lower control arm about 4″ outboard of the LCA inner pivot point, whereas Chrysler inserted them at the LCA inner pivot point. So, yes, torsion bars have a better ride than coil springs do, IF you know what to key on to notice it.
Suspension geometry certainly played a role in the handling, too. I believe that the basic geometry was in the 1955 cars, from what I’ve determined, which were coil spring front suspensions. Simply adding HD shocks to those cars did not fully “do it” for handling, though. Enter the new torsion bar 1957s, with obviously stiffer spring rates and shock valving to match. This made the Chrysler front end geometry really work better. The cars did not really lean in cornering, as the prior models tended to. Certainly less than similar Ford and GM cars, too! Chrysler’s suspension engineers really did some great work, as evidenced by “On The Test Track with the 1957 Chryslers” (on YouTube), plus another one which included comparisons of Chrysler and Mercury.
Here’s the next thing to ponder . . . how many MORE welds were in the body structure of the UniBody Chryslers than the prior model year’s “non-UniBody” structure?
Thanks for the highly-interesting article!
The reason for the diameter is because torsion bars are in the LCA pivot or just outboard like on the GM trucks you mentioned is the spring has to counter the leverage of the full length, or near full length of the lower control arm. Coil springs typically are mounted more outboard on control arm or in the case of Macpherson strut suspensions all the way outboard directly over the spindle. Spring rate gets progressively lower the more outboard the spring is given an otherwise similar vehicle.
I really do think it amounts mostly to suspension design and geometry, and I’m not sure the geometry is the same as the 55-56 cars because beyond the torsion bars the 57+ chryslers switched to straight arms with tension struts from the A arms on the prior cars, and those intrinsically give a better ride. 65+ big Fords used a similar layout, so they may be more comparable from a ride quality standpoint than Chevy when judging coils vs. torsion bars
“Plus later 4WD models into the 1980s.” All the way to 2000, as in my 2000 2500HD 4×4. It does ride surprisingly well empty, yet has a payload capacity of 3500lbs.
As you know, I’ve long been in your camp on this. But I’d never considered the front-subframe-is-the-old-frame angle. It makes so much sense, and the bumper fitting perfectly ices it.
I’m still searching for proof the ’55 Plymouths and Dodges were a clever rework of the ’53-4 bodies. The Chrysler, DeSoto, and Imperial were definitely all new bodies at least, but there are a couple of oddities in the Plymouth and Dodge which suggests that’s what happened.
First, and unlike Ford since ’52 and Chevy in ’55, they retained a relatively high crown on the hood and rear deck line, with a decent curve. Very similar to the ’53 bodies. They also look very stretched, especially at the rear where the trunk is noticeably inset, with an apron at the bottom. The Plymouth’s thrusting front fenders also project noticeably from the hood line.
Need to cross-check the interior specs.I’ll put that on my weekend list.
Great article, confirms many suspicions I had about the 1960 ‘UniBody’ Chryslers.
In my best Johnny Carson voice: “That’s fascinating stuff!”….
Reading this a little late. Fantastic article,. Analysis like this is indeed one of the best things about CC.
Wow, brilliant work Paul. An absolutely fascinating read, thank you.
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