Driveway Outtake: Suddenly It’s 1980!
– Posted on February 19, 2021
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Could even be ’67 if you ignore the taillights. The Valiant was mostly unchanged from then and the Wagoneer was unchanged from ’63. The only thing in the picture that might have been unfamiliar in ’67 is the diamond fence in the middle. That was more or less an ’80s thing.
Actually the Plymouth Valiant sedan was substantially changed in 1974 when its boxy rear end…which styling I prefer…was swapped for the longer-wheelbase, swept-style rear body of the Dodge Dart. I have not seen anyone mention why but I’m speculating that it may have been done to avoid engineering two different energy-absorbing rear bumpers. The 1973 models still had the large rubber bumper guards but they would not have met the later requirements.
Or Chrysler may have decided to simplify its product for overall cost savings; and the two-door hardtop Dart Swinger could then be offered as the Plymouth Scamp to accompany the popular Duster coupe. Prior to the Duster, introduced for 1970, Valiant’s two-door was a true sedan.
The other rumor was that the 108″ wb Valiant sedan body dies had worn out.
The Scamp had been out since 1971, C-P dealers’ consolation prize for the Dodge dealers’ successful lobby for the Demon (later Dart Sport) as their version of the wildly popular Duster.
The question I always wondered is why the 111″ coupe was bothered with until the end. The Scamp/Swinger was ever so slightly upmarket of the 108″ Duster/Demon being a true hardtop, offset by more dated styling, but surely there were cost savings to be made by putting roll-down rear quarter windows into the Duster shell for the fancier trim levels since it was already structurally a hardtop.
Because people kept buying them, is my guess.
I suspect if that had been feasibly practical, they’d’ve done it.
It was probably both the bumper thing, and a consolidation of the A-bodies living on borrowed time. But even worse was 1974 seemed to be the year when Chrysler was well on the way to making Plymouth and Dodge models virtually identical. Which, as everyone knows, would eventually lead to the termination of Plymouth.
Not to mention that if not for the big bunch of non-recoupable money Chrysler blew on the E-body ponycar, the Valiant/Dart’s replacement (the F-body Volare/Aspen), might have been ready for production a couple of years sooner and killed-off the A-body in a more timely manner.
I was going to mention this too – it wasn’t just the Valiant and Dart; by the late 1970s Chrysler was no longer willing to differentiate Dodges and Plymouths with much more than grille and taillight inserts, and some side molding differences on higher-end models.
I do not think it was bumper engineering costs or efforts that prompted them to make the Valiant into a rebadged Dart for ’74. Looking at the ’73 and ’74 factory parts cattledogs, it’s apparent they had a library of parts (impact energy absorbers/”bumper shocks”, guards, etc) that were applied as necessary with minor customisations to bracket configurations and such to fit whatever model and bodystyle was at hand. Also, Chrysler were apparently building domestic-market ’74 Valiants, Darts, and Dusters both with and without bumper shocks, well into the 1974 model year and possibly beyond (I don’t have ready access to ’75 or ’76 FPCs). The no-shocks bumpers and reinforcements were different to the with-shocks bumpers and reinforcements.
I think your second guess is likely the correct one: overall cost savings by commonising the Dart and Valiant to the maximum possible degree: different fenders, hood, and front bumper; different taillight lenses and trim bits and nameplates. But the Scamp, right from its start in ’71, was already a rebadged and retrimmed Dart Swinger—111″ wheelbase and all, so no change there for ’74.
One sad casualty of the Valiant’s 1974 Dartification was that its trunk capacity was cut just about in half; the pre-’74 Valiant trunk was enormous, around 30 cubic feet. The ’70-up Dart and ’74-up Valiant had somewhere between 15 and 16, if I recall correctly.
One sad casualty of the Valiant’s 1974 Dartification was that its trunk capacity was cut just about in half;
When I hear statements like that, my BS meter instantly jumps into the red zone. They’re essentially the same car! How could the trunk capacity be cut in half? It’s absurdly non-logical.
Below are trunks from a ’72 Valiant and ’74 Dart. They look identical, at least to me, but presumably I’m blind.
My dad had a ’67 valiant . I believe the only change to the trunk was the later dart had a higher lift over the valiants trunk lid went down to the bumper
Looks like you’re right; I had my dates wrong.
Here’s a ’72 Dart brochure (111″ wheelbase, that is ’70-’76 Dart and ’74-’76 Valiant body) listing 14.3 cubic feet for the 4-door sedan.
here’s a ’70 Valiant (108″ wheelbase, ’67-’73 body) citing 14.5 cubic feet.
Here’s a ’63 Dart (111″ wheelbase, ’63-’66 body) brochure stating 30.2 cubic feet, and here’s a ’63 Valiant (106″ wheelbase, ’63-’66 body) brochure stating 23.6 cubic feet.
The missing link is a factory citation for trunk space in the ’67-’69 Darts. I think it was almost identical to the ’63-’66 Dart’s 30.2-cubic-foot trunk, but I’d like to see it in print somewhere.
I don’t have the time to get pictures of all of these, but I’m 99% certain that any variation between the new ’67 models and any subsequent ones was a matter of methodology, not actual dimensions.
Here’s a picture of a ’67 Valiant trunk. Except for the two braces for a roll cage, it looks essentially identical to the later ones. There’s no way Chrysler would have substantially changed the body; that’s the whole point of keeping the same body in production all those years.
Here’s a ’63 Valiant trunk. Looks extremely familiar, eh? Same basic thing.
Are you sure the 30.2-cubic-feet isn’t the 63-66 Dart wagon figure? That seems crazy big for a sedan trunk
Daniel,
It’s as I assumed: a change of methodology, not actual dimensions.
1963 Dart trunk is listed as “30.2 c.f.”
1966 Dart (essentially the very same car )trunk is listed as “17.3 cubic feet usable luggage capacity”. Note the addition of “usable”. Makes all the difference in the world in such a trunk with many narrow/shallow portions.
All the later Darts/Valiants have “usable” in their specs, and all the ’67 and up versions have about the same usable capacity, as might be expected.
The image below is a composite; the ’63 Dart (top), and ’66 Dart (below).
aHA! Good sleuthing, Paul. I never paid much thought to how the capacities were measured, beyond thinking 30.2 seemed like a very large number. This plus-minus three cubes over the different body styles makes a lot more sense. And I found a site listing the Brazilian ’70 Dart (US ’67-’69 Dart body) as having 411 litres of trunk space, which equates to…14.5 cubic feet. So I stand/sit corrected, thanks.
All that said, usability still depends on just what we’re trying to put in there. The ’63-’69 Darts and ’67-’73 Valiants had the most boxlike trunk because of their quarter panel and deck lid shapes, and those cars’ trunks opened right down to the bumper; the ’63-’66 Valiants (and ’60-’62 Valiant-Lancer even more so) had greater slope to the deck lid, making the rearmost part of the trunk much shallower. And they and the ’70-up Darts and ’74-up Valiants opened to leave a transom above the bumper—overlength loads were more difficult.
Thanks for the clarification Paul; I was wondering about that all afternoon yesterday. Daniel is generally correct with facts, but that one had me puzzled. If I recall correctly, even the Panther Fords had a trunk capacity of 25 cubic feet (with the deep-well trunk and gas tank located closer to the rear axle), so 30 cu. ft. seems way too large.
See my comment right above yours.
There’s “facts” and there’s “facts”. It depends on how they’re defined. It’s one thing to say you could pour so many ping pong balls into a trunk and from that calculate the capacity; it’s quite another to define the “usable” capacity.
Frankly, logic would have made it obvious that there was absolutely no way a Dart/valiant trunk lost half of its capacity at some point. They were always largely the same car.
They could probably have picked up body dies from Australia. We only used that 108″ shell from 1967-71 before we got the Australia-only fuselage Valiant – which for 1980 (as in the photo above) would have looked like this.
And whether the original or the Oz adaptation, a really, really stupid boot the depth of an ambitious sandwich.
Modern advertising regs would require either to be advertised as “sedan, with enclosed rear shelf”, I reckon.
I owned seven Dart/Valiant sedans and didn’t find myself cursing the trunk for being too shallow. They were fine.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
At first glance I thought that this was Walter White’s house but the roof slopes the wrong way to catch a pizza.
Walter would approve of a Valiant.
Growing up, we had a 1974 Valiant Brougham hardtop in a rich brown metallic paint that I believe was called “Sienna”. It was a true Brougham down to white vinyl roof and mohair seats! The Valiant in the picture is probably a 1974 also unless it had the Plymouth logo in the grille, in which case it is either a 1975 or 1976.
The Wagoneer is just about timeless for me – they were already plentiful when I was born, and I’ve seen two of them in the last few weeks. There’s never been a time when I hadn’t seen these with some frequency. OTOH I haven’t seen a Dart or Valiant in quite some time, which never used to happen.
Those are some pretty aggressive wheels if that Valiant’s only packing a slant six. I wonder if it’s been upgraded to an LA 318 or 340.