Valiant V200 wagon photos from the Cohort, by Hyperpack.
I’ve been meaning to feature this Valiant V200 wagon for some time but never got around to it until now. As I mentioned in a post from last year, count me in as a fan of the provocative ideas Exner was pursuing with Chrysler’s Valiant compact line. Lots of surface treatment and innovative packaging for a public not quite ready for it. Of course, the model’s Ex-ccentric detailing didn’t help matters in the sales department. And as we know, such Ex-travagant flourishes became Exner’s undoing in the end.
So, even if I’ve developed a liking for these early Valiants, I don’t blame buyers for serving themselves a good helping of Ford’s vanilla-plain Falcons instead. Still, this wagon find will aid in covering additional thoughts on the styling of these early Valiants.
Before we get into matters, I’ll deal with this wagon’s provenance first. These images were uploaded to the Cohort by Hyperpack at the end of 2023, featuring a large family collection consisting of mostly Mopar goods.
At the time, some of the collection was being sold, some scrapped, some moved, and a few were to remain in the family. The Valiant wagon appeared numerous times in those shots, often lovingly featured. As such, I’m pretty certain the vehicle is a ‘keeper.’
Back to styling matters. As I said in my previous piece, most agree that Exner’s goods spoke mostly to a designer’s soul. In the case of the Valiant, the model carried modern and dynamic proportions, all quite hard to appreciate under the car’s sculpted surfaces and intersecting lines. There’s hardly a part of the car without some kind of surface treatment. And as busy as all those elements seem, there’s much thinking behind them. Stuff that a designer can admire, but overwhelming and off-putting to the general public.
Yet, busy ‘surface treatment’ has become the norm for quite a while in the auto industry. Funnily, some of that can be appreciated in this image from my ’61 Valiant entry of last year. If squinting, one could almost extend some of the black Hyundai’s surface treatment lines to the Valiant’s.
As time proved, Exner’s artistic approach often felt the urge to take the public to places they weren’t willing to go. If it took 50 years or so for buyers to embrace what the artist offered, so what? In time, your artistic ego would feel vindicated.
So, after GM and Ford caught on with Exner’s fintastic 1957 jet-age offerings, the artist went through a period of exploration in search of a new groundbreaking statement. And that statement appeared in the form of the Valiant; the fuselage body, the long-hood short deck proportions, and his favored aviation motifs featured as pronounced side wings. Many of these novel concepts, mixed in with some of the prewar styling cues he enjoyed.
As busy as this all looks, much cerebral thinking is at play between the seemingly disjointed elements. Particularly if seen in profile. Stuff I went into some detail before:
If we forget about its three-dimensional reality (just try, please) the intersecting lines of the Valiant clearly show the ideas behind this ‘design for designers.’ Specially in profile. The front fender wing connects to the rear one, adding movement and continuity. A subdued character line below the windows’ edge connects with the rear fender flare. The whole cabin was visually pushed almost 1/3 into the body (an effect achieved by moving the windshield back, close to the dashboard’s edge), resulting in a more dynamic profile. Finally, the rear sculpted fender ‘adds’ volume to the compact vehicle, breaking up the shape in what would be an otherwise plain rear quarter.
Still, for all that’s ‘right’ –from a designer’s cerebral approach– the car’s rear is the busiest and least coherent.
The wagon’s body removes those controversial and less accomplished bits. First, the odd-looking droopy trunk is gone. Plus, no place to add Exner’s favorite and most incongruous fixation; the ‘toilet seat’ (gone in the sedan as well for ’62). Cleaning the design some for ’62, is the tail lights’ new location. The angry-looking countenance of the ’60-’61 ones gone for good, while the new round units complement some minor detailing, like the Valiant’s circular logo and gas cap.
The wagon also adds some interesting complementary design elements to its rear section, like the 2 protruding roof winglets paired with the extruding rear wheel/fender side wings. The whole thing is a play of straights, curves and diagonals; in three dimensions.
With the wagon’s greenhouse incorporated fuselage-like with the rest of the body, the vehicle’s overall shape is more integrated and modern than Ford’s and Chevy’s offerings at the time.
So the Valiant’s jet-age styling, against the far more conventional two-box bodies of Ford and Chevrolet. Nice looking, and sober offerings in comparison; the kind of image that comes to mind when the words ‘station wagon’ are mentioned.
In this shot, the Valiant’s integrated greenhouse is clearer, and one can sense that the whole compartment has the feel of a fighter plane cabin. However, the multiple door pillars ruin the illusion to some degree.
Talking about those pillars, they do disrupt the intended ‘lightness’ behind the roof’s overall silhouette. Yet, under the right lighting, the desired illusion can be seen; with the roof appearing to float in the air. An effect aided by the window openings and back-slanted C-pillar, the latter arranged in a cantilever manner.
It’s a feel of ‘lightness’ rather popular with some mid-century architecture. Do you see it?
Ah yes, there it is. That intended ‘lightness’. Concrete and metal soaring into the heights, apparently sustained by air. In the mid-20th century, glass and airy openness were your friends.
Or so was the idea being sold, before we eventually reverted to our current caves.
One can say that the Valiant was Exner offering the Jet-Age to the general public; again. And by the early ’60s that whole fad had run its course. An era of tasteful restrained styling was coming, to cleanse everyone’s palette after such excess.
As for the Valiant, after a mildly successful first year, the model’s sales diminished in ’61 and ’62. For 1962, the V200 wagon managed just about 8K sales; numbers that paled against its Falcon counterpart. By ’63 Elwood Engel would arrive to clean up Exner’s work and offer a cleaner interpretation of the Valiant line.
But sales aside, what counts is that this Valiant wagon seems to have found a faithful owner that will keep it running for some time to come. A remnant of a Jet-Age that didn’t quite come to be, and yet, slivers of it managed to find their way to our present.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1961 Plymouth Valiant — Follow The Leader? The Dilemmas Of Art Vs. Commerce
Automotive Design & History: 1962 Plymouth & Dodge – The Real Reason They Were Downsized
Car Show Classic: 1960 Plymouth Valiant V-200 – No, It’s Not A Plymouth, Not Yet
Curbside Classic: 1960-62 Plymouth Valiant – No One’s Kid Brother
What a fantastic styling study! Thanks! CC has greatly enlightened me over the years to the styling stretch Mopar and Exner tried to take us. In looking at the Falcon and Chevy II, at least the Falcon has some styling dynamic with the rear end. Even as a kid I thought the Chevy II taillights were a “phone it in” design.
If you didn’t like the Valiant front end, you could get the exact same body design in the Dodge Lancer with perhaps a “plainer” face….
Credit to Allpar for the image….
I’ll take the truck please =8-) .
Exner’s works fairly shouted ” HEY ! LOOK AT ME !” and this isn’t a bad thing .
I appreciate the diagram with the blue lines .
IMO these were better cars than Fords Falcon GM’s Nova but yes, they looked off putting to most Americans at the time .
-Nate
Hello Nate, More of the Truck can be seen here!
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmGtHiKD
I still have it and use it for stuff. That photo was taken the day I brought the little Valiant wagon home in January 2022. I avoided most of the salt bath that day 🙂
Nice, Thank you for the feature Rich. As I get older, I have grown more fond of the “First Generation MoPar A Body Platform.
This is a keeper as I bought it just over 2 years ago in January 2022. We never had any of these come throuhg Dad’s car lot in western PA from the 90’s-early 2000’s So I did not have a proper appreciation for them until I bought one. even in bone stock form they do well except for the stopping department.
I am in the midst of a semi-resto modification phase on this wagon after I found that the engine was a smoky mess. Everything snowballed, new rear axle, with detailing, clean and paint everything whilst it is apart too!
When I bought it The car ran, drove and stopped fine, but the cylinders were toast from sitting and massive cylinder wall glazing. It used maybe a quart of oil every 100 miles and the oil was always picth black no matter how often I filled or changed it. – nasty stuff.
I have acquired 4 of these little Valiants since 2020 – 2 are parts cars, of those 2, one got turned into a trailer and Then I have the sedan which has major cosmetic issues, but good bones, and this awesome little wagon.
Here is some more documentation if anyone wants to dive down the ’62 valiant Rabbit hole a bit more with me!
Video Documentation:
https://youtu.be/iQohQYHVT_k?si=zTswRaq3Q_LTjYta
And official Restoration blog on the ’62 Wagon:
https://www.slantsix.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=67103
And my other ’62 Sedan:
https://youtu.be/4KiOJ2GjqSU?si=jbUbmPTzuq7ZDQIz
It seems we left out the XNR?
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/concept-classic-1960-plymouth-xnr-exners-hot-slant-six-corvette-fighter-that-almost-got-built/
The Valiant’s styling is sheer nonsense. The Chevy II and Falcon pointed towards the future and added to sales. The Valiant’s did the opposite. Exner completely missed the boat here. Long hood, short trunk deck – why? The last thing a car needs is more weight in the front and stretched for zero engineering reasons. Exner ended up creating the Excalibur – so case closed on the long hood, short trunk deck praise. The Excalibur is not a modern car, and neither is the Valiant’s first generation.
Looks like a Hyundai? That’s not praise either.
By 1961, the Valiant’s Jet Age look was passe, and sales clearly prove that the best built car was hobbled by weird styling. When the 1963 Valiant replaced this silly looking generation 1 – Chrysler won the compact market in sales, and kept that slot for the next decade. Had Exner not touched the Valiant, it would have been number 1 or 2 in sales, right from launch.
The wagon is easier on the eyes, but it still doesn’t hold a candle to either the Ford or the Chevrolet wagons which nailed the wagon look until the market segment was replaced by the minivan in 1984.
A photoshop (mainly made it into a hardtop – 2 dr in this picture, with front roof being silver) I did a few years ago, to emphases the futuristic rear roof.
This version almost has a “Euro, vibe”. Something a bit “french”.
It’s the 1956 Plainsman, with the C pillar moved rearward.
I’d somehow never heard of this one; had to look it up to see what it was. I’m imagining an alternate history where this was produced, and Ford felt compelled to compete with it and the Chevy Nomad, and stylish two-door wagons became a major segment in the 1960s for the fashion-conscious instead of personal luxury coupes…
The Plainsman came out in ’56, one year after the Nomad, as a response to it. Ford tarted up their two-door wagon to create the Parklane, but it still shared the body with the Ranch Wagon. Chrysler wisely decided it was too small of a market.
Ironically, at least some of the long-hood/short-deck look was erased for 1963 just before the Mustang came out and designers raced to incorporate it into anything up to and including full-size sedans to the detriment of space utilization.
The 1967 refresh was locked into the 1963 hard points and while that worked to the continued detriment of the Barracuda through 1969 it paid off for the rest of the line in that they, and especially the 111″ wheelbase Dart and ’74-up Valiant sedans with the stretch given over entirely to rear leg room, inherited the mantle of “closest thing to a brand-new 1955 car” from the Big 3’s midsize offerings as they were redesigned – Mopar itself in ’71, Ford in ’72 and GM in ’73 – and got huge with most of the growth being in wasted hood length.
I like the original look. The wagon has a more balanced presentation. The sort a “too busy”, back end of the “sdn/coupe” are smoothed with the wagon.
I remember thinking these were weird when I was a kid. Our neighbors had one and I got to drive it briefly as a 16 year old before it was discarded. But your perspective, Ric, sheds some more nuanced light on its styling. Thanks! And the wagon does like quite good but I don’t remember many of those even back in the Sixties. However, some styling elements have lived on, or rather were resurrected: the wagon C pillar brings to mind 4th gen CRV.
Although no fan of Exner, these were his best designs post forward look. A bit edgy, but not overwrought like the full sizers. However, the 2 door sedan didn’t come off nearly as well as the wagon or 4 door sedan. It was if after the attractive 4 door sedan was finished, the designers thought “Oh, I guess we need a 2 door as well”, then just removed the rear door handles and called it a day.
Nice write up. A key aspect of the styling of these wagons has not been discussed though, that being the perpetual/recurring station wagon rear door dilemma.https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/the-rear-door-dilemma/
That is, it’s very difficult to utilize a rear door designed for a 4 door sedan also on a wagon without awkward consequences. And of course it’s expensive to design/tool a different rear door just for a wagon. This Valiant wagon shows this issue very clearly, especially in comparison to the Falcon and Chevy II, bot of which had unique rear doors designed and tooled for the wagon versions. That’s what allowed them to look so clean and unfussy.
Chrysler obviously didn’t have that luxury, so Exner was stuck with the Valiant’s rear door, whose window frame top element tapers down towards the rear to mirror the sedan’s roof line. He had to come up with a creative solution, which resulted in that rather odd little window just behind the rear door. It allowed that sloping line to continue and look like it was something more intentional than an afterthought.
It was Exner’s solution to tying the front part of the wagon to the roof and wide C pillar of his 1956 Chrysler Plainsman station wagon concept. Not exactly an elegant solution, but he had his hands tied somewhat by having to reuse that rear door.
AMC did this…
Volvo sold a whole lot of wagons using sedan rear doors.
Of course they did. But they had to make compromises both times, with the 140/240 series and the 740/900 series: in the first case, they had to use a rather awkward filler panel above the sloping top window frame; in the second case, they favored the wagon and made the sedans look boxier than ideal.
That post I linked to is precisely about that subject.
Other manufacturers have dealt with it too, in different ways.
Wasn’t the restyled ’63 Valiant the work of Exner ?
It was except for a very minor detail of the rear fender peaks.
The wagon coheres much better than the sedan, which is a bit odd considering the many things busily going on on the former. It may be because it lifts the sag expressed in the slopey trunk, which was possibly an early form of the bustleback that made its risible appearance years later on the Seville.
Anyway, I always thought the toilet seat on the sedan a bit gauche, and when one considers the slope upon which it was mounted, wholly impractical if someone were to sit on it – they’d just slide right off (perhaps giving a new dimension to leaving skidmarks with a car, but I’m digressing).
I do see your architecture analogy. Things such as the Palacio de Alvorada of the Brazilian president springs to mind.
To me, the Falcon and Chevy II wagons just both look a ton better than that Chrysler concoction.
The Valiant just looks too disjointed to me. The design doesn’t flow.
Great piece.
While they may not have been eye candy for everyone, I do remember these cars being very reliable.
Too much so for a high school friend who drove a 64 V200 wagon! He never liked that car as it was a hand me down!
Does anyone but me see Nissan Armanda with the rear roof line?
It (the wagon) should have appealed to George Jetson; at least that’s how that version seemed to me!!! 🙂 And…NO toilet seat was a good thing! DFO
I don’t think at the time, the Exner design elements- fuselage body, long-hood, short deck- were really appreciated or even noticed by the public. The long trunk and two-box styling elements that were the order of the day back then, now look hopelessly antiquated. Exner’s Jet-Age look- really a more European look- has stood the test of time. This Valiant sedan is hard to date, it looks so contemporary. Unlike the Falcon, which is easily pegged as a Detroit product, circa 1960.
Never much cared for the inaugural Valiant and much preferred the 1961-62 Lancer, mainly for the cleaned up grille.
With that said, this review and comments have given me a whole new respect for the Valiant station wagon. I dare say it would be in my top five of 1962 cars (certainly the top Mopar).
But for a sedan, hardtop, or convertible A-body, well, I’d still go with a Lancer.
Count me as a fan of Exner’s Googie Swoop on the Valiant station wagon. Too bad the sedan and 2-door hardtop didn’t also have a version of this side window treatment, along with a wrap-around rear window.
(Hmmmmm. the first-generation Barracuda had a way more evolved version of what could have been on the Gen 1 Valiant/Lancer, reverse-swoop-and-wrap-around-glass-wise…..)
The wagon has become my very favorite of the gen1 Valiant – that cantilevered roof is just the coolest.
When I was younger I thought these were just odd looking. Now I can see that Chrysler under Exner was really the only US auto manufacturer who went all-in on the modern design trends of that time. Even their new dealerships at that time carried those design themes in the big signs.
I have a 1962 Plymouth Valiant Signet, 2 door
hard top. Push button automatic with a slant
6. I pay $300.00 for it. Pulled it in the barn .
Put it on blocks ,took battery out and spark plugs loose and poured some Marvel’s in the carb. And Kroll in the cylinders. Keep the engine….been there since 1992.
Just way too busy of a design. I like all of Vergil’s work. He didn’t know when to stop. Got too carried away. Was never a fan. I think the dude was “Doing Some “Trip.” Raymond Lowey was similar in his styling. But not nearly as flamboyant. Helped to kill Studebaker. Simplicity endures. Stands the test of time.
Well, let’s just say the Valient wgn TOO WEDGey, & the Nova & Falcon look like CHEEEEAP!!..BLAAGH!! looking little rectangular slabs in comparison. Dont like ANY of em.// Steve B.