If there is one constant in the automotive world it is that the Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volaré are the biggest pieces of junk ever foisted on the American public. However, to every rule there is an exception and today it is this, a 2-door coupe from the second year of Volaré production that somehow didn’t enter the pearly gates of the junkyard until the middle of this year, some 42 years after rolling onto a transport train from the factory.
Resplendent in what appears to be the Light Mocha Tan color option, this example used to sport the optional Landau vinyl top. People aren’t kidding when they say vinyl tops just hide the rust underneath, this car doesn’t have much visible rust except for where the top was.
Was the public already aware how much worse these were than the Valiant that it replaced by the 1977 model year? Likely not as 1977 was the Volaré’s best sales year with over 325,000 leaving showrooms and it was Canada’s top selling car. Curiously (to me anyway) the Volaré outsold the Aspen its entire run, I always thought Dodge was the volume marque. It doesn’t look all that terrible from here, certainly the styling isn’t objectively worse than the Nova or Maverick, although once the Fairmont 2-door and Futura rolled into the showroom that may have changed the calculus a bit.
That hood’s almost as curvy as one on a Jaguar XJ6 but somehow the effect isn’t the same. Shall we see what’s under the hood?
Well, that’s not the Slant-Six that Jason Shafer’s family had in their 1978 Coupe, so it’s either the 318 or the 360 V8. this looks like an otherwise low spec car so I’ll guess the 318. Of course I could be mistaken as I’m no ’70’s Mopar engine spotter. The fuel filter looks pretty new, I wonder if someone tried to get this going again if it was sitting for a while. Or just had a thorough service regimen in place the whole time.
Let’s crack the door and take a peek inside…ooh, white vinyl, so classy, gotta match the shoes and belt I suppose. Does it really go with the Light Mocha Tan exterior? I dunno, I suppose if the top was white, that looks like the whipped cream on your Venti Mocha from Starbucks and maybe the white inside represents all the sugar in the drink.
Well, someone sucked most of the sugar out of this one’s interior already, but they left the carpet underlayment and some of the dash. Bummer about that but let’s take a closer look.
A little wood-tone on the wheel and then silver bits on the dashboard. I wonder which trim level this car was? Supposedly there were three main ones available – Standard (which isn’t really called out as such in the brochure), Custom, and Premier. In addition there were a few sub-packages available such as the Road Runner and other option combinations. The Premier had a hood ornament as standard which this doesn’t have and it seems too lightly equipped to be a Custom so I think that makes this one a Standard.
The odometer is a typical 5-digit with a current reading of 30,160 so I’m assuming we need to add a 1 to that. Were the Canadian market ones 5-digits as well? How does one tell how many times it’s really been around the dial if that’s so? With miles at least usually an extra 100,000 of them are fairly noticeable but kilometers?
Pretty plain back here without the applique between the lights. Also, beyond the seats, not much demand for any of these parts.
Ah, the air cleaner in the trunk. The Fram-looking filter looks pretty clean from here so maybe this one was in fact maintained well enough to last this long.
There’s the roof seam that the Landau top covered so elegantly. The fiberglass filler panels for the rear windows to make them “Opera” style is the weirdest American affectation to my eyes. How did people think that looked good? And what is the point of taking out so much of the rear side visibility?
The other side has a whole bunch of factory body filler in the roof panel seam. It looks completely different than the passenger side.
Still, not ugly from this angle either but far, far better without the vinyl roof and would be even better without the window inserts.
Looking up the VIN shows that this salvage yard purchased this car back in July for the princely sum of $201 at an auction, possibly they were the first and only bid. It was built in Hamtramck, Michigan back in June of 1977.
No rust here. This is the back part of the front fender. However looking at the front end of the fender (see first and fourth pictures) shows massive corrosion right around the mounting points for the fender lights, in fact it’s actually rusted all the way through. I suppose the back part was better shielded than the front part.
Yeah…I don’t think it worked out quite that way for most people.
note: an updated version of an older post
Related Reading:
Jason Shafer explores a 1978 Dodge Aspen Wagon
PN chronicles the Deadly Sin that was the 1976 Aspen and Volaré
Robert Kim annotates a vintage review of a Volaré Station Wagon
I have lately become smitten with these, for reasons I cannot understand. There are a couple of decently preserved originals that have come up for sale on FBM in my area, and I have read the ads and looked at the pictures more than I should have.
None of them, however, is this awful pure-70’s fleshy, butterscotchy tan. That would be a deal breaker, right there, no matter now nice the car is. Well OK, maybe if it’s a wagon.
It would look good with woodgrain.
Similarly I think this one’s top was a darker tan, the color remembered by the window surrounds.
A few years back Country Classics (now closed) in Illinois had a Volare 2-door with a 225/4-speed combo. It had plenty of flaws but enough quirky cachet to be oddly desirable, but not to me at the asking price. Still, I checked on it from time to time.
Sad but inevitable I guess .
-Nate
The Mopar Paradox: while their reputation for indifferent build quality is deserved, about one out of every twenty or so was utterly indestructible.
I call it the Chrysler Quality Lottery.
My wife and I had a 1980 Volare Duster. They started running them through the e-coat process for the last year of production so the bodies were much more durable than in prior years. The only real scare we had with it was when the 225 six developed a constant dead miss at about 170k miles. A vacuum test suggested a valve train problem and when I pulled the valve cover it was quickly obvious what was going. An adjuster screw had decided to back itself out of a rocker arm. I found the screw in a valley of the head and a little Loctite and a valve lash adjustment was all it took to put it right again. Pretty cute car in eggshell white, red striping, red Mopar wagon wheels, red interior and a red vinyl top the original owner had added and very reliable which was a godsend for a couple of broke newlyweds.
“Prosthesis Beige” …ugh.
The last year or 2 were actually quite good, much better rust-proofed. At least the engine and trans were uniformly durable. I drove an ’80 Volare as a daily for a while and once it had the lockup trans de-locked it was a very good and trouble free commuter car.
Where is this yard? we get to Denver 3 or so times a year and will be moving there, would like to check this place out, is it a “Pick ‘n Pull? I love walking around “auto-recycling centers”!
An older, retired woman neighbor still drives a 1980 model, also in that prosthetic limb hue. It is garaged, so I only occasionally see it when she makes her rare jaunts out. I know it’s a 1980 because of the square headlights, but have no idea whether it’s an Aspen or Volare (whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa).
My 1976 Dodge Aspen Custom lasted for me until 1998 when I drove it to a car show as a spectator and was offered some silly money for it. I said “for me” because it shows up at car shows even now, still looking like new the way I kept it, and it’s driven there.
Yes, Canadian odometers only went up to 100,000 km. It made buying a used car, ahem, rather a crapshoot because you never really knew the true mileage,
By 1978, the Volare was as good as anything else. My buddy had a Volare Brougham. The quality of the materials was superior to anything else coming from Detroit. It was green vinyl and it looked great!
Yeah, while the Mopar F-body wasn’t exactly stellar with some severe early teething problems, “biggest pieces of junk ever foisted on the American public” seems a tad harsh, particularly given this was at the height of the Malaise Era and that the later, rebodied M-body version lasted all the way to 1987 virtually unaltered underneath.
I mean, typical Chrysler craptacular, sure, but were they really worse than, say, the Vega or Citation?
Same here and clocking cars due for a cambelt change was common, quick flip and onto the next.
Having owned a 77 Volare coupe in the early 90’s, it’s a pleasure seeing this even if it is sadly dead and awaiting burial (and long gone now since the article is old). I had good experiences with mine, so I’ve never signed onto the hate these generate.
Mine was definitely a Standard trim. I’m thinking this is a Custom because of the bit of filigree on the door panel ahead of the window crank. Mine didn’t have that. The upholstery would probably tell for sure what trim it is, but obviously that’s not present. Mine did have the woodgrain decal on the steering wheel, which was partly rubbed off when I got it. I rubbed the rest of it off so it was all metallic trim that sort of matched the dash panels. Looked a lot better. The “wood” steering wheel with no other “wood” anywhere was really dumb anyway.
I had the Slant 6/auto, which was adequate for most driving. I liked the way it drove, which was a bit truck-like compared to a modern car. I was attracted to the Slant 6 as something different than I’d had before, which was all V8’s. My biggest complaint was that it wasn’t really powerful enough to run the AC. It got real sluggish with that on, which is why I wasn’t too crushed when it quit working. I never got it fixed, not that I really had the money to, anyway.
Thankfully, mine didn’t have the vinyl roof or opera windows. With the full rear quarters, it was a pretty good looking car until you got to the front end. That was pretty homely, I think.
My parents bought a ’76 Volare wagon in the fall of 1975 – white with fake woodgrain siding and a crimson/maroon interior. 318/904 powertrain and no A/C. IIRC the Volare/Aspen was once (maybe still is?) the most recalled car in history and they received their fair share of correspondence from ChryCo.
I was driving it home from work on Thanksgiving Night, 1980 when the transmission died. It was taken to Foltz Transmission in Rockford, IL and a day or 2 later my dad got a call from the owner.
“Your kid’s been doing reverse drops with this car, hasn’t he.” Yes, it was a rhetorical question. And I was *SO* busted.
My Boy Scoutmaster purchased a new sedan in silver one, a burgundy top with matching extensions at the side window bases. It think it was a 76. It replaced his huge green Dodge Monaco. Looked pretty sharp to my 13 year old eyes.
“If there is one constant in the automotive world it is that the Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volaré are the biggest pieces of junk ever foisted on the American public.”
The Chevrolet Vega, GM X Cars, and GM J Cars have entered the chat. 💬
AHEM! We owned a new 1978 Aspen wagon with the fake woodgrain and loaded with all options save the deluxe sound insulation package. I ran it for 185,000 miles before selling it to someone. If had the slant six. I found it a good car to drive. In 1992, we bought a 1980 Aspen four-door sedan with 62,000 miles on it. It was for our daughter. She used it, then our two sons used it. I regret selling it. It was a plain jane with A/C, automatic, and AM/FM Stereo radio. It always ran, slow, but it ran. I never worried about anyone stealing it. When we bought the car, I had the seats reupholstered and for the front seat I ordered extra foam padding. I found these cars nice to drive. The rust problems of the ’76 and ’77 models are infamous. I did not have one of those.
Hardly seen any of these Volare but the switch gear speedo and gearshift are very familiar, it cant be too bad, theres a Valiant in there somewhere and they were ok, yeah they rusted so did everything.