posted by canadiancatgreen
All this talk about the ’61 Plymouth and station wagons, and what should appear at the Cohort today? A 1960 Suburban DeLuxe Wagon. But don’t let the name t fool you; nothing deluxe here; it’s the stripper of the family. As such, it may well have the brand new “30-D Economy Six” (225 CID slant six), which might well be teamed up with the new TorqueFlite 6 three-speed automatic. In both cases, it was a big improvement over the venerable flathead six and two-speed PowerFlite automatic in 1959. And of course its sporting its new unibody construction, which resulted in more head and legroom, as well as a decidedly tighter structure. Good bones for a big wagon; just the thing for a big family in 1960. If you can overlook the big fins, which are easy to forgive once one slips behind that wild squarer steering wheel and dash.
There was one of these in my neighborhood in Iowa City, the family of a schoolmate. They lived near school, so they had no use for it during the week, as the dad walked to the university. It just sat under its carport, but I never failed to look at it and inside it through the windows, just like I do new, with my camera. How could I not; this had one of the wildest dashes and steering wheel ever, for a low end car.
It’s almost surreal. The height of Googie design. It was pushing it in 1960, by 1962 or so, it was already hopelessly out of date.
One time the back was open, and I gazed in on the rear-facing third seat. Why couldn’t we have something like this, instead of all having to squeeze into the cramped Fairlane?
I’m not too sure about the optional swivel front seats; I’m afraid my father might have had issues with them. He didn’t take to new-fangled mechanical things well, like electric can openers.
I did get to ride in a similar one, a new ’64 Dodge 880 wagon bought new by some friends of us. It was essentially the same under the skin, minus the fins and wild dash. I’ll never forget the first time I got in, and saw the floor-shifted three speed stick. That just blew me away. A standard three speed floor shifter for a giant station wagon? So 1930s; but it reappeared for a few years on the ’61-64 Chryslers and the 880.
The bottom line is: these were big, inside and out. I don’t have time to dig up all the interior dimensions, but I would guess these were bigger inside than the comparable Chevy and Ford wagons. Their unibodies certainly gave them better seating/leg room than the other two, with their awkward frames in the way.
Not a great shot of the front, but then it’s not its best end, something it shared with the ’61. But for hauling a big family in 1960, it was undoubtedly the objectively best choice. Unfortunately for Chrysler, buyers were not nearly objective enough.
I felt bad for Craig Stevens, in Peter Gunn. He started out with a beautiful 1958 Desoto convertible, then a ’59 Plymouth Fury, then a ’60, and finally a ’61. No wonder Virgil Exner retired.
Virgil Exner was the greatest.
MoPar Or No Car!!!
1960 was a big year over at Mopar, with the new unibodies, the soon-to-be-legendary Slant Six, an upgraded TorqueFlite (now with parking lock), plus the new Valiant.
The unibody did open up foot space, something I noticed when riding in GM or Ford big sedans of the day. The footwells my family’s 1966 Dodge Polara wagon stretched from left door to right door, with no intrusion from a perimeter frame. The transmission hump was smaller too. The frame intrusion became even more obvious on the late-70s downsized B/C and Panther platforms, whereas the Chrysler R body felt much roomier. My family later had a 1977 Bonneville with split-bench front seats, and when I rode in back I barely had room for my feet between the left and right front seat rails, squashed between the frame rail and center hump. I never noticed the underseat frame rails riding in the back of the Polara.
…an upgraded TorqueFlite (now with parking lock)
Where is the parking lock on this wagon? I see RND21 (I think) but no “P”. Is there another control that I’m not seeing?
There was a separate lever for Park during some of the pushbutton years, though I can’t see it here either.
Driveshaft brake instead of parking pawl in transmission. From a Mopar forum:
For 1963 models switched to Bendix brakes with the parking brake on the rear wheels. And the A727 now had a park lever along with the buttons.
For Plymouth, Dodge, Chrysler and Imperial cars –
a. Bendix brakes no driveshaft brake Torqueflite with a park position
b. Lockheed brakes driveshaft brake Torqueflite with no park position or Powerflite
1960-1961 Dodge and Plymouth were b. above, while the 1962 models went to a. The 1960-61 models with a slant six engine used the new A904 Torqueflite, but with no parking position.
You where to put it in N and then apply the parking brake that’s the real reason they are called that , back in the day cars didn’t have P. In the trans
Cop: I caught you doing 70 in a 30 zone.
Plymouth driver: No, I wasn’t doing 70. I was doing O miles per hour. It’s right there on the speedometer.
The 1960 Plymouth in about any configuration is on my dream car list. I’d love a wagon like this for hauling my paintings to shows. Slant Six would be fine, a 318 would be better. In car form, a 2 or 4 door Savoy, Belvedere or Fury would be the ticket with a 318 2 barrel and a Torqueflite. It could be pillared or a hardtop, I’d love driving it just the same.
Fantastic find! I love the dash! The front is ugly, though, and got worse in 61.
A minor correction: the rear facing third seat was in use in the 57-59 bodies. This ad is from 1957. I always lamented that my family’s 58 Custom Suburban was a two seater. I thought it would be cool to have my own private space in the back away from my siblings.
I knew that, but for some reason wrote it otherwise. It was getting a bit late…
1960 was sure a miserable year for the Low Priced Three. There wasn’t a decent one among their full-sized cars, and moving up the model tier at Chrysler or Ford didn’t help, either.
For just a little bit more, you could get a really nice looking, wide-track Pontiac, and it’s easy to see how Knudson, Delorean, and Estes got a real foothold on the market that would last the rest of the entire decade.
Look at the power operated rear window! Power by Armstrong! Definitely a stripper. Pushbutton transmission, fancy insert below the steering wheel that looks like a Phillips 66 fuel station canopy only doubled. Overall, pretty cool instrumentation. Local A/C installation, too. Fun car. I miss the slant six. I drove many of them, some sluggish, some peppy, depending upon the emission controls regulations and how Chrysler managed them. My mother-in-law 1975 Dart would hardly start. I took it to a friend, a Dodge dealer, who bored out that puppy beautifully. She never had a problem again. OOPS, wait till the “gummint” finds out!
Nothing wagon-specific, but here are some numbers for a start:
From the Chrysler brochure, with the wagon data:
Chrysler typically built full size wagons for all brands off a common wheelbase. In this era, that was the 122″ used for the middle price makes. So by that measure at least, the Plymouth wagon was bigger than other full size cars from the low priced three.
It is interesting how Chrysler went from BOF to unibody and yet the styling didn’t change much at all. Looks much more like a refresh than a major redo.
We could wonder what if Chrysler had done a redo still staying on BOF instead of a refresh?
Back in the day the JoHan Company offered a dandy model of the ’60 Plymouth wagon.
That’s a lovely build, F. Here’s mine.
Wow. Somehow the relative lack of added chrome makes the basic design look almost ‘mature’. It’s hard to call it sensible, but it does look serious. It’s kind of a design outlier for 1960, which makes it even more interesting to my eye. A slightly alternate universe experience.
Chrysler’s styling voyage from the mid-1950’s through the early ’60’s really was bizarre. From the Farina-influenced mid-50’s Chryslers, to the Forward Look (that ended up looking backward), to the ‘plucked chickens’ – all in a mere 6 or 7 years.
Love it. 1960’s Mopar’s were so much more interesting compared to GM and Ford. Bizarre, yes, but stood out. I’ll take a ’60 Fury convertible with a 383 Long Ram, and enjoy the h** out of her.
I read that the Chrysler engineers referred to the tailfins as “stabilizers”. In about a decade’s time they came out with the winged Dodge Charger Daytona and the Plymouth Superbird.
There was a terrific promotional movie about the 1960 Plymouth, wherein Chrysler engineers described its merits in great detail. Quite a bit of time was devoted to arguing that the tailfins made the 1960 Plymouth unusually stable on the road and resistant to crosswinds. I saw the movie on YouTube a couple years ago; unfortunately, it’s no longer there and I haven’t found it anywhere else.
In the 1960 sales brochure, Plymouth refers to the fins as “stabilizer fins.” It also claims that the 1960 Plymouth is blessed with “Stabilizer Design.”
https://www.lov2xlr8.no/brochures/plymouth/60pl/bilder/3.jpg
The whole 1960-64 Chrysler big-car program is just so maddening. There was so much good in those cars. And every one of them had a basically nice general shape. But each was stabbed in the heart by oddball details that ruined the looks of the car.
The 1960 Plymouth? Those fins. And that flat grille that looks like a fighter’s face that’s been punched too many times. And that stupid trim line that launches over each front wheel and goes up, up and away towards the fender eyebrows.
It is evident that Exner & company had run out of ideas on these cars. Where the 57s had been fresh and groundbreaking, these were just bad rehashes that were less attractive in almost every model and at almost every angle.
I’ll vouch for the 1962 New Yorker which I find attractive – the slanted headlamps are a bit unusual but look better here than on Lincolns and Buicks, and aren’t enough to ruin the look. The ’63-64 NYers don’t have any stab-in-the-heart lines ruining them, but they also look rather dowdy for what they’re supposed to be. I’d long thought that was the result from originally being Exner designs that had been smoothed over and de-weirded by Engel at the last minute, but no those were Exner designs through and through (originally designed as Imperials; only the tacked-on gunsight taillights were dropped from original clays).
60-61-62 plymouths went after the Japanese monster movie look.. I think.62 was the worse.
That said they had excellent powertrains . The 318 engine and 727 transmission were bulletproof
…which in the 1960 Plymouth-Dodge cars was painted a metallic deep turquoise, and in Plymouths was festooned with this decal on the valve cover.
I like this behemoth .
Thanx for the engine decal Daniel .
-Nate
“If you can overlook the big fins . . .” Why should I overlook them? I happen to LIKE the big fins! And the front end may be many things, but it is not boring! It is an aggressive look of motion. Strip those things away and it becomes a dull Custom 880.