This 1975 Plymouth Fury Sport Suburban is still at it, making the run to a suburban shopping center 50 years after it made its first. These were pretty uncommon in their day, but to find one in such nice original condition as CC Cohort poster Saint Sacrilegious did is a minor miracle. It looks like it’s five years old. It unleashes a minor flood of memories in me, as my mom drove a similar Dodge Coronet wagon for quite a few years.
So how often does this wagon still get to the shopping center? It does this fairly regularly. And we have proof of it.
Here it is way back in 2015, when CC Cohort Actually Mike shot it at another shopping center. We wrote it up then, asking if anyone knew how to tell if it was a ’75 or ’76. CC commenter Jeff wrote:
It’s a 1975; you can tell by the headrests (unless they were switched). The ’75 headrests did not cover the whole top of the seat but the ’76 headrests were widened and covered the full width of the seat back.
He was the only one of many who commented that figured it out.
Sure enough, the ’76s (above) had a wider head rest. It’s one of those rather rare occurrences when it’s almost impossible to tell the year of an old-school American car. Well done, Jeff!
And then it appeared at the Cohort again, in 2022, shot this time by Sam B. And like an idiot, I once again asked if anyone knew what year it was. This time, no one knew. Obviously it had lost a front tooth, but fortunately that’s been fixed since then.
Just to clarify a potentially confusing point: the featured Fury Sport Suburban is not a full-size car, even though the Fury name had always been used on Plymouth’s big cars. In a rather questionable move, in 1975 Plymouth moved the Fury name from its big cars to the mid-size line, previously called Satellite. Obviously it was a way to stimulate sales of the smaller line at a time when the really big cars were suddenly very out of fashion due to the 1973-1974 energy crisis.
Meanwhile, the previous Fury line was upgraded to Gran Fury, like this behemoth of a wagon. No, these were not what American families were buying at the time, having been scared into something smaller, like even a Pinto wagon. Those that did that usually soon regretted it.
A somewhat more pragmatic choice in 1975 for the dedicated Plymouth buyer was to go down one step, to the midsize not-so-gran Fury.
But by 1976, the even better choice was the new Volare, which was a bit smaller but more space efficient than the bulbous fuselage-style Fury wagon. No wonder Plymouth only sold some 5,000 Fury Sport Suburbans in 1976. Of course the Fury would have been vastly more trouble free than a first-year Volare, which set a new record for recalls up to that time.
One major downside of the Volare is that it did not come in a three-row version, so if that’s what you needed, the Fury was still the way to go. That’s what my father selected in 1973, a three-row Dodge Coronet wagon to replace the ’65 Coronet Niedermeyer-mobile. Not that it was really necessary, as I left home two years earlier, so there were only two kids left. But by then it had become a Niedermeyer rite of passage to sit facing backwards in a Coronet wagon; a mild version of hazing.
The built-in deflector was there to offset the inherent low pressure area behind the wagon, to reduce the chance of exhaust fumes being sucked in if the rear window was open.
Our ’65 had deflectors too, those chrome thing mounted to the rearmost pillars. They had handles built in; my younger brother is holding on to one of them. These came standard wit the three-row wagon as the issue of exhaust being sucked in was already a known thing.
These Sport Suburbans came pretty well equipped in terms of their power trains and otherwise. The standard engine was the 170 hp 360 V8; also standard was the TorqueFlite automatic.
The slant six and the 318 V8 were standard on the lower-tier Furys, as well as an three-speed manual, although by this time it’s really hard to imagine anyone demanding that. Maybe a few sixes were ordered that way by some old Norwegian bachelor farmers in upper Minnesota, but…
My mom’s Coronet had the more common 318 V8, and the first time I came home for a visit after it appeared I did make up an excuse to take it out for a spin. It felt quite a bit more planted than the old ’65, but then it was brand new. And the LA 318 pulled pretty decently; it actually felt a bit quicker than the old poly 318 despite the emission controls. I did touch 100 on that outing, and it still felt stable and pretty quiet inside. That fuselage styling was probably a bit more aerodynamic than the old brick.
So we’ve seen this car in 2015, 2022, and now again in 2025. Can we make a date for 2035? At the rate it’s aging, that should be a breeze.
Related CC Reading
Cohort Outtake: 1975 or 1976 Plymouth Sport Suburban – Can Anyone Tell Which Year It Is? by me
Curbside Classic: 1975 Plymouth Fury Sport – Suddenly It’s 1962 by me
Curbside Classic: 1974-77 Plymouth Gran Fury – Struck By Oil by W. Stopford
Chrysler-Plymouth reported to Automotive News that they built 1,698 ’75 Furys with the three-speed manual (1.3 percent of production) and 7,314 with the Slant Six (5.6 percent of production). It doesn’t indicate how many had both, although a wagon with the six and three-on-the-tree would be pretty unicorn-like.
I noticed this typo?
“The standard engine was the 170 hp 350 V8”
I’m assuming that should read 360?
(I’m here to help). 😉
This.
And also: “Of course the Fury would have been vastly less trouble free than a first-year Volare, which set a new record for recalls up to that time.” – I think that ether “less” should be “more” or the word “free” should be removed?
Cool article though, if I had room in my fleet for at 70’s wagon this would be in the running.
ether = either
at = a
Pot v. Kettle?
Yes, I started out to write “less problematic” and then changed it to “trouble free” without fixing the “less”. This is what happens when I bang out a post in a hurry. You guys are my copy editors; thank you!
Both typos now corrected.
Lot of needless confusion on auto names during this era. Instead of redesigning new cars, Chrysler and Ford resorted to brand switching. Old smaller cars were renamed the big car names and pitched as new. The Fury, Marquis, LTD, Monaco full size luxury names ended up on intermediate cars. (The LTD was given a “II”). This was a stop-gap measure as the market sorted itself during the 1970s.
Company Men who couldn’t accept that big car sales were history, tried to ameliorate those car’s costs by letting them linger with “Gran/Grand” prefixes along with their original names. The Satellite was now a Fury, and the Fury was now the Gran Fury. The Montego was now a Marquis, and the Marquis was now the Grand Marquis. This shuffling and reintroduction of old small cars with bigger luxury car names was odd.
Sadly the Fury still looked like a Satellite with a new front clip. So, an updated formal coupe was designed and used in advertisements as the “new Fury”. The Coke-bottle Satellite sedans just got the new clip.
This entire episode was cringy for new car fans who weren’t convinced at all. Yet, what else could Chrysler and Ford do? GM was dominating the market and by 1981 had 60% of it while both Ford and Chrysler faced bankruptcy.
“The Montego was now a Marquis…”
Not exactly, the Montego was now a Cougar and the Monarch became also a Fox-body Cougar which itself became a Fox-body Marquis. 😉
I still can’t decide whether the Mopar or the Ford version of each’s 1971-72 vintage wagons looked more out of step with 1976 styles. I remain quite lukewarm to the 76 Gran Torino wagon, but I like these more with each passing year.
A friend in Canada recently sold his ’73 Coronet wagon, 318 & 3 spd manual, a rare bird indeed. It was nice enough that it did well at shows.
These are big wagons, a 4 x 8 plywood sheet will lie flat in the rear with seats folded. Can’t imagine the big Custom Suburban wagons would carry much more than these did, though I like the bigger ones even more, and they are certainly rarer.
Leaburn sold his Coronet?
Yes, I think he found another C Body he couldn’t pass up.
I love this thing. And I’m glad its owner saw fit to treat it to a dental implant.
It is awesome to see this CC still rolling around. Here’s hoping there’s another sighting in 3-5-7 years and someone writes it up again.
Painted “Park Service Green,” a fleet of these wagons were saved for the supervisory Rangers at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, in 1976. Altho automatics, they were utter strippers, lacking even power steering.
We of the “Naturalist” crew, were given the rusting International-Harvester pick-ups, subjected to 10 years of sun & salt.
4-WD, 4-spd., and you could comfortably lean your entire humerus out the window.
I saw either a ’66 or ’67 Plymouth station wagon on the road yesterday.
At first glance, the bumper sticker in the window calling out “America First” reminded me of Charles Lindbergh and his crew lobbying to stop our entry into WWII…..
This is truly an intersection of the two fuselage B-Bodies I grew up with: My Mom’s ’72 Coronet Crestwood and my Dad’s ’76 Furry Salon sedan, with the all-vinyl version of that dark green interior. I also had B-Body exposure through my Dad’s ’63 Fury and my great-aunt’s ‘ 67 Belvedere II.
I much prefer the fake wood trim on the originals to these revised models, and one wonders what might have been if Chrysler had prioritized bringing these to market over the C-Bodies in ’74, but with updated sedan and wagon bodies along the lines of the coupes. Those would have looked competitive against the year-old Colonnades, to say nothing of the Ford products.
Very cool to see it is still earning its keep. I’m sure I posted in the original article that it was in my old stomping grounds and I have eaten at the restaurant behind it back in the day. The more recent pics are in the same general area at a Fred Meyer I used to shop at back when. In fact I bought a pair of tires at that one in the 80’s as they used to sell tires along with a selection of auto parts and not just stinky trees, “real” parts like spark plugs, filters, points, fuel pumps ect.
It does make me wonder if this car has been plying the greater Kenmore, Bothell, Kirkland area since new and if I passed it or maybe even parked next to it back when we were both much much younger.
Not sure exactly where the middle sighting was. Hopefully we’ll see it again.
Found this old sled while waiting for my Mazda’s oil change, at my mechanic next to the Fred, Kirkland WA.
It looked well cared for inside and out. A real time traveler.
What a sweetie .
A little polishing, bump out the dent and apply new DiNoc and this would be a stunner .
-Nate