Welcome to the third and final installment of my search for full-sized American cars from model year 1970 and later with a three-on-the-three manual transmission. For this installment, we will look at Mopar products. Once again, we have some interesting finds and a few surprises along the way.
Plymouth
For 1970, you could get your Plymouth Fury with a 3-speed transmission with the 225 Slant Six, 318, and 383 2-bbl. engines. This meant that the manual transmission was available on all Furys except for the Sport Fury GT, which came standard with the 440 V8 and TorqueFlite transmission.
1970 Plymouth Fury II
For our first survivor, may I present this well-patinaed 1970 Fury II 2-door sedan, photographed back in 2014.
1970 Plymouth Fury II
While there are no pictures of the engine compartment or interior, the original post assures us that it has a slant 6 engine and a three on the tree.
1970 Plymouth Sport Fury
Next up, we have this triple-green 1970 Sport Fury from an online ad back in April of 2013. According to the seller, it has 318 V8 engine and (of course) a 3-speed transmission.
Sure enough, you can just make out the clutch pedal in the interior shot above, as well as the gear shifter at the 3:00 position. List price in 1970? About $3,500. Asking price in 2013? $3,500. How’s that for a hedge against inflation?
For 1971, the 3-speed transmission was dropped part way through model year, with the TorqueFlite becoming standard in late 1971 (and thereafter).
1971 Plymouth Fury I
Representing the 1971 model year, we have this wonderfully original, low-option 1971 Fury I.
1971 Plymouth Fury I
Per the original seller, this car has no power steering, power brakes, or automatic transmission. Not even carpeting or an AM radio. The fact that it sports only 37,000 miles should surprise no one, as driving a full-sized, slant 6-powered Fury with no power options or even a radio had to be a truly miserable experience.
1971 Plymouth Fury I
Only the accessory bumper guards on the rear bumper keep it from being a true zero-option car. If you want to see what really basic transportation looked like in 1971, I highly suggest clicking through to the original post, where there are far more photos than I can reproduce here.
1971 Plymouth Fury Custom
Our final Plymouth is this 1971 Fury Custom found on Craigslist in 2018, with a 318 and a 3-speed transmission. While the original ad is long gone, it was kindly preserved by our friends over at forcbodiesonly.com, a Chrysler C-body forum. Here is a saved excerpt of the original CL ad:
1971 Plymouth Fury – $9500
Classic Plymouth Fury. This is a police interceptor clone used in the movie American Gangster for interior and exterior filming. The actor Josh Brolin was featured using this vehicle. This vehicle was also used in an independent film “Love and Lots of It” showcased at the Tribeca Film Festival. All Movie Documents are available and are included with the vehicle. This vehicle was Professionally Appraised at $13,500 Documents available and included. Interior is clean, 318ci V8.
Factory cut sheet (included) shows the 3 speed manual transmission from the factory, which is not common in a sedan. Always gets attention at the local car shows and cruise nights.
Yes, we have another movie car! What is it with manual transmissions and movie cars, anyways? Is it because they able to take more abuse? Maybe it is easier for stunt drivers to perform stunts like burnouts and power slides? Or maybe it is simply because no one else wants them.
American Gangster, from IMCDB.org
According to the original post, this Plymouth was used in the filming of American Gangster, where it appeared as a police interceptor. I went to IMCDB.org, and sure enough, I found the car in the screen grab above, engaged in a chase (presumably low-speed, given the slant six).
Movie poster for Love, Lots of It
Most interestingly, it appeared as the “hero” car in Love, Lots of It, a 2011 indie short film that I guarantee you’ve never seen or heard of.
Rather than attempting to describe the film, I’ll just include the whole thing here for your viewing pleasure – it is only 10 minutes long. That’s the funny thing about internet rabbit holes – you never know what you will find on the other end.
Dodge
Officially (well, according to OldCarBrochures.com), the full-sized Dodges of 1970 were only available with V8 power (318 standard in the Polara, and a 383 standard in the Monaco), leaving the six-cylinder full-size cars to the skinflints over at Plymouth. Unofficially (according to American Cars 1960-1972) there was a fleet-only 1970 Polara Special model that came with a 225 slant 6 and a three-speed that was introduced late in the model year. In any case, the 318 and 383 were also available with three pedals in 1970.
For 1971, at least according to American Cars, no slant 6 was on offer, although Jason Shafer found evidence to the contrary. Also for 1971, the 360 was added to fill the gap between the 318 and 383 engines, all of which could still be had with a column shift manual. Like Plymouth, the three-on-the-tree was gone at Dodge for 1972.
Back to the unicorn hunt. Once again, the sleuths over at forcbodiesonly.com came through for me with this surviving example of a Dodge with a three-on-the tree.
1970 Dodge Monaco
While I was unable to find any 1971 models, here is a 1970 Monaco the crew found for sale in Poland in 2022. Note that the exterior color and interior materials are both custom, and not original to the car.
1970 Dodge Monaco
The clutch pedal and blanked-out PRNDL are clearly visible in the shot above. This one is also parked with the shift lever in the upper quadrant, in either reverse or second gear. I’m guessing this is muscle memory by the driver from years of driving automatics.
Chrysler
Yes, believe it or not, you could get a 3-speed manual transmission on a Chrysler up until mid-1971, just like Plymouth and Dodge. Granted, a manual transmission was only available on the Newport: The 300, New Yorker, and Town & Country wagon all came standard with a TorqueFlite automatic. Surely Chrysler didn’t actually build and sell 3-speed equipped Newports, did they?
1970 Chrysler Newport
Hold on to your hat, because the C-body fanatics at forcbodiesonly.com have delivered yet again. Behold this 1970 Chrysler Newport, bearing only the standard equipment included in its base price, last seen for sale in 2016 in Oregon (naturally) with an asking price of $3,000.
A base Newport in 1970 meant a vinyl interior, no A/C, no power windows (you can just see the window crank in the picture above), and absolutely no TorqueFlite automatic transmission. Interestingly, the shifter is also in a phantom “park” position, either in second gear or reverse (another reformed automatic driver, perhaps?).
You also got unassisted steering and brakes. You do get a 383 V8, but only because it is the standard powerplant in the Newport. If this is truly the no-option Newport it appears to be, it would have stickered at $3,589 ($29,200 in 2023), making it the second cheapest Chrysler you could buy in 1970 (second only to the Newport 4-door sedan, at $3,514). Truly a small price to pay for driving a car from a “prestige” brand like Chrysler.
Your article reminds me of a company car my dad had in 1967. It was a 67 Plymouth Fury with a /6 and 3 speed stick. Supposedly, they were a part of an order from a company in Saudi Arabia to be used as taxis. However, the 67 Arab-Israeli war intervened and the order was cancelled. Thus the transition to company car status.
In the “Three-on-the-Tree” era, it was considered a good practice to put the shifter in reverse after parking. This tied the car to the engine through the lowest gear ratio (highest numerically) and reduced the risk of rollaway. In those days it was common for the e-brake not to work well.
While in college in the early 1970’s, I remember a fellow student who drove a 69 or 70 full-sized Chrysler wagon with a stick shift. At the time it struck me as pretty rare. While I preferred driving a manual transmission, the combination of the steering column lock and wrap-around dash made for an awkward combination.
It has always struck me as odd that Chrysler persisted in offering manual transmissions in the C-Bodies for as long as they did. The company had been “automatic-biased” since the introduction of the Torque-flite.
Interesting article.
WW
I will add to your memory that parking a 3 speed in reverse was considered to be best practice. In addition to being the lowest gear ratio, it got the lever up and out of the way where leaving it in first risked someone bumping the lever into neutral with a knee when getting in or out (or sliding across as used to be more common).
Agreed. When I had that three-speed ’63 Galaxie, it was always parked in Reverse. Similar was the case with my three-speed ’55 Chevrolet and three-speed ’62 Galaxie.
Parking any of them in neutral never seemed like the wisest idea.
That was the conventional wisdom as I understood it.
However, Consumer Research Bulletin ran an article decrying the practice in its February, 1950 issue.
“A broken rear axle ring gear or pinion will often be the result of parking a car in low gear or reverse. A slight endwise bump from another car, trying to squeeze into a parking space, for instance, is all that is necessary to cause the damage….With the transmission in low gear…the stresses on the rear axle gears are increased some 15 to 20 times compared to the conditions that would occur if the car were in high. The gear is, therefore, severely overloaded on one or two teeth….Sometimes the strain will produce a partial or incipient fracture which thereafter develops gradually as the car is used, then, at some later time, there will be a complete failure of one, sometimes two, teeth of the ring gear or pinion.”
They recommended turning the wheels sharply towards the curb if it was necessary to park on a downgrade, and if the parking brake was insufficient to hold the car, using high gear or “under conditions of exceptional need” second gear.
As far as i know, this advice never caught on!
Remember a neighbors “60 Galaxie”, ((3 on tree))always had the gearshift pointing straght up. ((darn close to straight up anyway))
They trade that car in “69” for a brand spanking new “Mustang”. (automatic)
I always park the Honda Fit in reverse. Parking brake is extremely weak.
There is a video on YouTube of a green 1973 Plymouth Valiant with the Slant/6 and 3 speed manual.
The owner did a cold start and stated that the shift lever had to be placed in the reverse position to remove the key.
I had a 1971 Duster with a 3 speed manual floor shift. To get the key out, one had to roll a metal collar on the steering column down to lock the steering. The car did not need to be in any particular gear; the key could be taken out with the shifter in neutral.
When inserting the key and turning it to “unlock”, the metal collar snapped up and unlocked the steering column.
Keeping the car from rolling away after removing the key was the driver’s responsibility. Caveat Emptor.
The fact that ditching manuals for 1972 seems to have been a nearly universal phenomenon (at least for those who kept them around that long) I am left to wonder if tests for emissions certification of that era required a separate certification for manual transmission cars. With so few sold, I could see why the manufacturers would opt to kill the three speeds instead of to to the effort and expense to get manual versions certified for emissions. Only Chevrolet went into 1973, but then again they probably sold more of them than anyone else.
I recall reading a book about Chrysler during the late Lynn Townsend era. They recounted an example of Chrysler’s hopelessly screwed up internal systems, which resulted in a small run of stripper New Yorkers, complete with three speed transmissions. This is the only source I have ever heard this, so it might be folklore. Maybe some C body experts might know better.
I cannot imagine how awful one of these would be to drive with manual steering too. I got plenty of wheel time in a zero-option 74 Charger, and it was the most miserable car to park I think I have ever driven. It was worse because they used the normal small-diameter steering wheel used on every other B or C body Mopar. The tall gearing made first gear starts with the slant six an adventure too. At least it was great on the highway.
While not related to the realm of stripper 1970s full size Chryslers, I recall back in high school hearing about a few fully loaded 413 300Fs with a three speed floor shift that were produced in limited numbers for racing (no surprise there). One of these was listed at Barrett-Jackson in 2016 (reserve not met). The URL is provided below.
Also, a few 300Fs were produced with Pont-A-Mousson 4-Speed Manuals that were normally used in Chrysler powered Facel Vegas.
For a car-crazy high school student driving a six cylinder flat-head fluid drive Chrysler, these special 300Fs were the things of dreams.
https://www.barrett-jackson.com/Events/Event/Details/1961-CHRYSLER-300G-195268
The URL goes to a 1961 300G, not a 300F. I’ve read about the 300Fs being made with the Pont-A-Mousson 4 speed, but they could have made some with a 3 speed on the floor, I guess.
rollfast, You are right; the 3-speed 300 I referenced at the BJ auction was indeed a G.
Yes, in the locking steering column era, most if not all had to be parked in reverse to get the key out. A family friend owned a Shell service station back in the mid ’70s, and he worked on a 69-70ish Nova with three on the tree, and could not figure out how to get the the key out. Can’t blame him, locking columns and 3 speed manual were as rare as hens teeth by then.
Oh wow, I had forgotten all about the locking steering ring of the early 70s. I can barely picture it in my mind. It had a knurled part that you placed your thumb on and pushed down on. I haven’t seen one in years. My parents owned a ’69 300 4 door hardtop with a 440 in it. It was off white with dark blue vinyl top over dark blue vinyl interior. I too was in high school at the time, it was one of the cars I learned to drive it. That was one fast car and big too. Well that was until my parents bought a 1976 Lincoln Town Car. The Town Car actually made that 300 look small. But nothing could change how fast it was. It sounded fantastic too.
Just this past week, a 383/3-speed ’69 Polara convertible came up on another site, just missing the 1970 cutoff.
https://barnfinds.com/1969-dodge-polara-500-convertible-383-3-speed/
That Plymouth would look so much less austere inside, for zero extra dollars, if the original buyer had opted for a blue interior.
I expect this closes out the series since by the late ’60s AMC was advertising that automatic (and indeed A/C) were standard in their not-quite-full-size Ambassador.
I suspect the heavy use of such 3/tree cars in the movies is because it is difficult to find decent survivors in basic 4 door configurations that most people actually drove back in the day to achieve a more historically accurate picture. Most survivors or restored cars tend to be the high value sports models (2 door HT, convertibles) in high trim packages and sporting big motors and 4 speeds or autos, which were decidedly not the most common type back in the day. Plus as historic movie cars they rarely even get driven as most are parked or use blue screen or carted around on camera trailers to simulate driving so the actors don’t have to learn how to shift or concentrate on steering while saying their lines. I can’t image any driving experience more miserable that driving one of these land yachts with a 3 on the tree and no power steering, which as you point out is a likely reason so many seem to have survived with low miles.
Thanks again for this series, Tom.
Many folks have conjectured in the comments about the reason for the demise, and it seems to come down to 3 possibilities:
1) EPA testing. I’m not sure what year manufacturers were required to test and certify each individual powertrain, but if the timing is right, it could certainly be a factor.
2) Low “take rate”, combined with the streamlining of the production process. Without knowing the internal machinations of the big 3, but we were still deep in the era of “a la carte” ordering, so I’m having a hard time with this one
3) Marketing.”Hey, those other guys make you pay extra for an automatic, but ours is standard equipment!” (as nlpnt pointed out above it was something AMC said.)
Or perhaps it was a combination of all 3, or another reason I’m not thinking of.
Would the additional tooling cost for a three-pedal setup be a factor, especially if there was a low take rate?
Although I guess that might be a moot point if the full-sizers shared these parts with the intermediates, or if the automakers were still using the same pedal sets they were using in the early ‘60s.
Full sized Fury with a slant 6..yikes
There were lots of them around in the mid “60’s”. That “slant 6 sound was as distinctive as was “GM’s 250 cid 6”.
Mopar’s moaned, GM’s coughed, buzzed.
We had a ’64 Valient V200 station wagon. It had the largest Slat 6 Chrysler Corporation made. I hated the sound of that engine and exhaust. Also, your right to include those mid 50s Chevy 250 60s. They were both horrible. On the the flip side there were a lot of very cool sounding engines in the late 50s and 60s that nothing quite compares to, like Chrysler’s 383s and 440s. And Ford’s 289s, 351s, 390s, and 460s, duel exhaust of course. There were even a few GM cars that had a good sound too.
I know it’s been done, and I can only imagine what the experience of driving a slant six huge barge like these Mopars would have been like, with a three of the tree no less. Drivers of these got their daily workout in for their upper arms.
I’ll say this – even with an automatic, the slant six would have seriously underpowered these things. My slant six got my Dart moving allright, with some good accelerator pedal pressure.
Manual transmissions in full size cars in the 70s was a whole ‘nother thing than what it would have been like in post WWII America, when cars were much more trim.
This is just an astonishing series. Great read.
Wow, imagine driving a slant-six Chrysler with 3-on-the tree and manual steering and brakes. The mental contortions required to actually order that combination – the extremes of wanting to display wealth and status while being a cheapskate at the same time.
Though I think this wasn’t uncommon in full-size pickups at the time. My only experience in driving a 3-on-the tree car was a full-size fleet van at a former employer, and just in the parking lot to get it out of the way, but that was an early 1980’s Chevy.
What was the last time 3+O/D was available? When did that stop being available from the different manufacturers? I think it was last available on AMC?
I own a 1966 Rambler Classic with 3 on the tree plus overdrive. The overdrive unit looks like a second emergency brake handle. You lock it in (can stay locked in all the time). You go from first to second to third, then let up on the accelerator pedal, and the overdrive kicks in and the rpm’s drop. You could also, if climbing a long grade that is to shallow for just second gear but to steep for third, go from first to second, let up on the accelerator pedal, stay in the second gear position, and you would have a gear ratio between second and third! A total of five potential ratios (gears). Overdrive kicks out automatically when your speed drops below 20 mph. A great system, works well, and I average 25 mpg in a car capable of carrying 6 people. Of course, you might only want to carry one other person due to the reclining bench seats that were a notable item in Ramblers, but I digress!!!
I only got to drive two vehicles with 3 on the tree. A 75 Ford F150 (360 FE) and a ’70 Chevy with a small block (307?) The Chevy was one I borrowed and the owner warned me of the linkage being warn. I asked him how to untangle the shift forks and he showed me. So fortunate as I couldn’t shift into 1st or 2nd at an intersection. Pissed off a lot of folks but I popped the hood, straightened out the shift forks and went on my way.
My dad’s 1st cousin ordered and bought a ’67 Dodge Polara wagon with a 383 V8, 3 on the tree and no power steering or power brakes. His wife hated that car. Eventually it got a Sears underdash A/C. Whatever efficiency or money savings he hoped to get from that car went out the window at trade in time. He practically had to give it away. It did hall ass on stop light races according to his son.
The Chevy was a C-10 pickup. Both the F150 and C-10 were barrowed from friends.
The interesting thing about Chrysler is that at some point (when they had the astrodome instrument panel) the few manuals they sold on full sized cars had a floor vs a column shift…I guess the column didn’t work with astrodome? The automatics were pushbutton on the instrument panel, or floor shift for sporty models, but at some point they went back to column shift for the manual…would that be ’63 and later, until the manual was discontinued? I saw an early 60’s Chrysler full sized for sale once, it had the floor shift and never have seen a column shift manual till the later 60’s.
My late Father’s first car was a new ’56 Plymouth Plaza, devoid of options other than maybe a heater, his had the column shift for the manual. It was his last (and only) full sized car with a manual (if Plymouth was considered full sized) since he hadn’t yet met my Mother, who greatly prefers automatics, even though she learned to drive on a ’51 Chrysler Windsor with the semi-automatic (it had a column shift). By 1961, the Plymouth was gone replaced with the first of two Rambler Classic wagons, both had automatics, and both were 6 cylinders.
i may be a sad bastard but a 383 column shift 3 speed newport sounds like the dream car i’ve been on the huntt. for. damn the torpedoes, i love zero option cars!