A while ago, I made a new rule: I wouldn’t photograph cars in undercover parking lots anymore. The photos never turned out all that great, rarely meeting my standards for Curbside Classic or for my Instagram. This beautiful, blue ’65 Chrysler Valiant wagon, however, defied all photographic odds.
This is an AP6-series Valiant. For the first few months of production, the AP6 Valiant wagon used the same rear pressings as the US/Canadian Plymouth Valiant wagon. Shortly thereafter, Chrysler Australia made some changes: vertical taillights, revised side windows, and new rear quarter panels and a new rear bumper, among other modifications.
For comparison’s sake, here’s a ’66 Valiant wagon. Personally, I think the original rear end looked better.
From 1963 until 1971, Valiant wagons used the Safari nameplate. The AP6-series Safari was available in regular Valiant and fancier Valiant Regal and Valiant V8 trims and with either the Slant Six or the 180-hp 273 cubic-inch V8. This was the first series of Aussie Valiant to have a V8 option, as well as the first to be available in ute form. The utes are hard to come by nowadays, well-maintained or restored wagons being the most common 60s Valiants on the roads. The metallic blue paint may or may not be stock as the AP6 series also heralded the introduction of metallic paint as an option.
Here’s another AP6-series Safari I spotted in the wild. The AP6-series was an evolution of the AP5, the first Valiant to be manufactured in Australia instead of just assembled. The AP5 also saw some meaningful differentiation from its US cousin, including a different trunk and rear window on the sedan.
The big three Aussies of the 1960s – the Holden, the Ford Falcon, and the Chrysler Valiant – were all handsome cars but the Valiant has a special kind of swagger. Remember, Americans and Canadians, that these were considered to be standard or full-size cars in Australia and not compacts. Chrysler did offer some larger vehicles like the Dodge Phoenix but the Valiant was their bread-and-butter. It also beat the Falcon to the punch in offering a V8, if only by a few months; Holden’s V8 option was still a couple of years off.
By the AP6, Virgil Exner’s excesses had been mostly toned down but there were still some creative flourishes. Kudos to Exner for designing a wagon that didn’t simply look like a sedan with a box on the back. Coupled with the glimmering paint of this example, the AP6 Valiant Safari is worth breaking a rule for.
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What a fantastic car! While often maligned, I have always admired Exner designs of this era simply because of their stretching of the envelope to the furthest possible point! Also, your title was great. You could have just posted the photos underneath it and the resulting piece would still inspire a feeling of defiance and creativity within us.
Perfect positioning and lighting! Nice shot and a beautiful find!
Ah you gotta take ‘em when you find ‘em, no matter where. They won’t be around otherwise…
Beautiful wagon in a great color, it wouldn’t be as striking in a nicer setting, here it stands out even more. Good find!
Buy why does Will never venture out from underground? 🙂
Have you seen how hot it’s been in Australia this summer?
I’d stay underground too. 🙁
Tell me about it 🔥. I’ve lived in Sydney all my life and December and January are almost always unbearable, and this year even more so.
I think I’ll migrate to Switzerland…
Beautiful colour on that Valiant.
It’s so hard, J.P., to walk through underground parking lots now. I have to just be eyes ahead and hope I don’t notice anything cool!
“Stopford” is a well-known Hobbit surname, Counsellor Cavanaugh, and I am surprised and appalled that someone of your education would make such a prejudiced comment.
What a beauty. I like the way the wagon roof flows on these.
Count me as another fan of these Valiant wagons. I don’t know about Australia but that color looks very period correct for US models. And I agree with you on preferring the look of the older style.
That’s two wagons with Venetian blinds in the back! I assume that’s a semi-common thing on older untinted cars in Australia to beat the heat?
I noticed that too – glad you asked.
They were very common on wagons here back in the late fifties and sixties, and in the rear window of sedans too.
What a great car with a fantastic colour. The 1965 styling works really well as a wagon. Nice find.
A terrific find; the color only accentuates its goodness.
Wow, this was full-size for that period? I’m impressed only because of the fluidity of what constituted full-sized in Australia at that time. Given the Ford those of us in the US would know as the ’59 Ford was sold down under for several years (and on a, what, 119″ wheelbase?) then along comes a full-sizer of a size not full-sized only a few years prior, it is entertaining to learn about!
Don’t worry about the environment where you find these, the important thing is you have found it!
The standard-size car in Australia after the war was the Holden, with over 50% of the market at one point – that’s with one brand name, one model, one engine, four body styles and two of them commercial. On the top of that you add sales of British Vauxhalls and the Chevrolet and Pontiac (one model each) – GM must’ve loved Holden! Ford had the British Zephyr to sell in that size and thrived, while Chrysler had only the bigger US-based cars until the Valiant came along, and struggled.
With Australia’s high fuel costs, and strong ties to Britain before WW2, big American cars were reasonably common but not the ‘standard’. Many people ran British cars, mostly from the 10-16hp classes. Plentiful parts and service, cheaper to run, smaller to park – why buy more car than you needed? The pioneering mindset remained strong in Australia in those days. Plus the effects of the Depression lingered in Australia throughout the thirties; some would argue we didn’t recover fully from it until the late fifties. And once American cars blew out in size in the late fifties, their market share diminished; they were simply too big for local conditions, and too thirsty as well. Over-the top styling may have had something to do with it too, as we were basically a conservative lot back then. Come to think of it, given the ‘success’ of the AU Falcon 20 years ago, perhaps we still are.
The ’59 Ford you mention was nice, but huge, and came to be known as the Tank Fairlane, because to us it was as big as a tank. Just too big for local conditions. All that extra bulk and not much more usable space to show for it. The ’56 Customline had been a great car, about at the limit of practical size, and a good balance between size and interior space. A great package. The ’59 was just too much. Most Ford sales were the Zephyr/Consul, until the Falcon appeared. They were the ‘right’ size.
Canada of this era was much the same. The gigantic bloatmobiles of the 1958-1960 were never that popular. The basic Chevrolet, Pontiac, Ford or Plymouth was far more common and just as often as not equipped with a straight six engine. Having a V-8 and Powerglide was practically status.
Thank you.
The Customline crossed my mind as I typed the original comment but I went with the bigger ’59 type Ford as it contrasted so much more.
Somehow I knew about the predominance of Holden after the war and while I had not known of them being in the 10-16 hp range, it doesn’t surprise me.
I agree about the Customline; it’s sort of the equivalent of the ’55 Chevrolet that hit a sweet spot here.
Yeah, the Customline was sort of the iconic fifties American car here. I always saw more Fords than Chevrolets here as I was growing up – possibly because the Ford came with the V8 only and brought in the automatic in the mid fifties while locally-assembled Chevs stuck with the six and manual until the 1960 model. The tri-five Chevy popularity didn’t really take off here until the Fifties Retro thing became cool – now we’re following the US with Chevs everywhere, but the Fords were more popular back in the day.
The biggest competition for the first Holden (a 2.2 litre) was the 2.1 litre Standard Vanguard and to a lesser extent the Austin Hampshire A70, which used the old Sixteen’s 2.2 litre long-stroke four. Both British cars were built the old way on a full chassis, while the Holden had this newfangled ‘Monobilt Body’ as they called it – and faced quite a bit of opposition from folk who thought unitary construction wouldn’t hold up to Australian conditions. Although the British horsepower tax wasn’t an issue (though Victoria still used it to calculate registration charges based on power/weight units) the Holden kinda fitted into that size/capacity class by default.
Roughly speaking the next step down was the Austin A40/Morris Oxford (which would have been Tens and Twelves before the war) and the Peugeot 203, with the Morris Minor/Ford Prefect (Eight and Ten respectively) and the Renault 4cv below that.
Correction – Holden called it an ‘Aerobilt’ body. Monobilt was Hudson.
William- get yourself a small tripod you can squirrel away in your trunk for such occasions. Attach the camera and set it for a long shutter (experiment a bit- I’d say start with 5 seconds and go north from there) and shutter delay so you don’t get a blur. If you have trouble getting focus, keep a small flashlight to train on the car, and snap it right off. Low-light static-subject photography can yield magical and beautiful results.
A good idea but most of my photos are taken in passing. I already feel nervous enough photographing cars in public sometimes — sometimes I pretend I’m using the internal camera to see if I have anything in my teeth — so setting up a tripod in a busy parking lot wouldn’t work.
I love getting this feedback on my photography, though. It’s an interest I may pursue more down the line.
Great car. Great pics, too!
Geeze, what a honey of an example! Glad you broke your no-more-parkade-pics rule for it. I’ve long thought this the finest-looking of the four interchangeable variants of this Valiant grille—US ’64 Valiant, US ’65 Valiant, US ’64-’65 Baccaruda, and Australian AP6 (and my opinion is even stronger that the Australian ’63-’64 AP5 grille and grille accessories are a vastly better design than the US ’63 Valiant arrangement, which has always looked cheap and halfaѕѕed to me). Same applies inside the car, where the AP6 instrument cluster is easily the nicest variant of what was also used, with different finishes and details, in the US ’63-’64 Valiants.
But speaking of component interchangeability:
As the Fecebook relationship status option says: “It’s complicated”. Valiant Safari (wagon) bodies for Australia were sourced from North America through partway into AP6 production. The ’63-’64 AP5 model’s Safari initially had horizontal taillights the same size and shape as the US ’63 Valiant wagon, with an amber turn signal lens instead of the US colourless reversing lamp lens. The later-production AP5 Safari wagon had the vertical taillamps of the US (but not Canadian) ’64 Valiant wagon, again with an amber rather than colourless lens. The initial-production AP6 Safari wagon used US + Canadian round-outboard/square-inboard taillights, again with amber substituted for clear. Then as Australian local-content laws grew stronger, Safari wagon production was localised and that’s when things get weird. The later AP6 wagons reverted to the late-production AP5, US ’64-style vertical taillamps with amber instead of clear. Then the subsequent ’66 VC model didn’t adopt the new US ’66 Valiant vertical taillights, it used the US ’64-style units, except with US-style clear lenses (which might or might not have been functional) as the amber rear turn signals were moved down to the chunky new bumper. Whew!
All of that, plus the quarter glass. The glass is the same as on US/Canada wagons through to the localisation of the AP6, then it’s different. Not a lot different, just enough to prevent interchange and cause a whole lot of headache for restorers down under and up over alike. Down under because you have to know which kind of car you’re hunting parts for; up over because if you try to take advantage of the much richer Valiant reproduction parts market, you can easily wind up with expensive parts that don’t fit your car. Is the gasket the same? Maybe or not; the factory parts books are ambiguous on that point, just for more fun.
(For Americans who might not know: Australia was one of the first countries to require amber rear turn signals. For many years a legal and common setup was to flash them as turn signals, and light them steadily as reversing lamps. Just like the US-type combination brake/turn signal light, but with a different grouping of functions. I used to have a truck I set up this way; see ’em working with the truck in Reverse and signalling for a turn here.)
Next time you comment, Mr Stern, don’t generalise. Include some detail.
Like your headlamp comment the other day, wonderful stuff.
[point] »grunt!«
;^)
Personally, William, I’m glad you loiter in underground carparks a lot, (and I’m not judging, and won’t ask why you do, live and let live and all that, except for asking this, why DO you hang around them thus, but don’t feel compelled to answer, remember, I’m not judging) your weird habits). You’ve found much goodness buried under Brisbane (and I won’t go on to make the Melbourne-ites joke that that’s a good thing because there’s f-k all above ground there, boom boom).
One thing I would add to your typical excellent commentary for the benefit of the majority USnadians here is that the ’60’s Val was always priced a bit above the Hol-ford competition, partly a necessity because initially as they were assembled only (as opposed to full manufacture) and then later, it seems, a bit of a marketing decision as the slant 6/Torqueflite combo was miles in front of the locals for sheer go, even after the “Red Six” brand new Holden engine of ’63-on. (I believe the price differentiation lasted till the all-Aussie giganto-Val of 1971-on). As a result, a Val was once seen as a bit of a “cut above” purchase, both in the sense of the purchase price and the fact that in fuel-costly Aus, it used more juice, or was perceived to do so.
I’d argue that the ’60’s Val actually WAS a cut-above purchase, simply being a better car than the the other two. I love ’em.
The colour of this magnificent beast is almost certain to be factory, or thereabouts, as I have seen too many AP6’s in it for it to be custom.
Keep loitering for us. Buy a hoodie and take up running, you’ll be right.
made a long-ish comment, it went west, could someone try and find it, signed, A Rather Weary Commenter
Love those visors for the windshield! Fiberglass? Don’t remember ever seeing a Valiant with one. Here in New York the front visors were pretty much gone by the middle of the 50’s. I think because they tended to block the traffic lights. Remember that being an issue on my brother’s ’47 Stylemaster.
No they were steel, I remember some in expanded mesh as well, the visors were popular over here back in the day, they don’t do anything for a cars looks though.
Great pics, story and comments. I’ve learnt something new about the tail lights too.