(first posted 11/4/2012) One of my unfulfilled ambitions is to find a 1961-1962 Dodge Lancer on the street. Twin to the ’60-’62 Valiant, in some ways it was even odder yet; just not this odd. Casey at artandcolour recently revisited the Lancer, with a hardtop coupe (after the jump). He also posted this older chop of a sedan, which I find remarkably plausible, since it uses the wagon’s rear side window, but with a wrap-around rear pane. I bet if I told some younger readers that this was the Lancer, some might not bat an eyelash. The suicide rear door is a bit of a give-away, though. On to the coupe:
The Lancer’s hardtop roof was forced to use the same stamping as the sedan, resulting in an awkward compromise, even wen embellished with this unusual sunroof.
Casey has given the Lancer a very plausible new roof, and one that hints at the 1964 Barracuda as well as other Mopars of the time. Undoubtedly, it would have been a more effective competitor to the Falcon Futura and Corvair Monza. Hyper-Pak slant six, four speed on the floor….
I want one! Now!
The Lancer Cuda looks better than Chrysler’s strange attempt at a two-door hardtop. One could even argue that it looks better than any of the 1962 Lean Breeds. But it’s still strikes me as too much of an odd duck to have set the world afire. Particularly if it had one of those toilet seat trunk lids.
IIRC, the Lancers omitted the toilet seat found on Valiants of this generation.
Did the Lancers go for the urinal look instead?
Depends.
The last image is what I’d imagine an Avanti to look like if it’s creator was sober.
That wrap-around rear glass has a striking similarity to the one on the 75-81 Camaro/Firebird.
I, too, have always had a thing for the Lancer. I always thought it was better looking than the Valiant – I mainly liked that reverse curve at the back of the front fender trim. When I was in college and owned my 59 Fury, there was another guy in the dorm with a dove gray 61 Lancer sedan with red interior. We were the only guys in the dorm (in 1979) driving cars with pushbutton automatics.
I will be the dissenter here – the reworked coupe makes the car look too fat and roly-poly. The stock design with thinner pillars and larger windows makes for a slimmer look. While I will agree that the greenhouse treatment on the hardtop was unusual, I think that the alternate design smacks too much of 1953-55 Studebaker, which by 1961 would have been quite old fashioned.
Second the dissent. I’m a sworn enemy of any design that replaces glass with metal (I’m looking’ at YOU, second-gen Scion xB!!), and while our host here finds all that open area on the stock hardtop awkward, I just see really good 360-degree visibility. I also think its forms are prettier than the proposed change.
I do agree however that the Lancer’s plain butt is much nicer than that sad attempt to fake a spare cover on the Valiant. On the other hand, the wagon was spared that, and of the few examples I’ve been able to drive the wagon was the one I’d look for. Stick shift, please!
I agree, of the 1st generation Valiant or Lancer, I’d go for a Lancer wagon. Though I wouldn’t turn down a nice Lancer 2 door but it would have to be equipped with the Hyper-Pak and a 4 speed on the floor.
Toilet seats belong in bathrooms, not on the trunk lid of a car.
What really helps the stock design is the contrasting colour panels under the side windows. They successfully break up what otherwise look like deep sheetmetal sides and avoid the high-waisted look of the proposal. Casey’s sedan design looks cool though.
Suicide doors and put that gas filler cap behind the tail light what you think
Ooooh! Found one!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1962-Dodge-Lancer-GT-ALL-ORIGINAL-California-/290803220693?pt=US_Cars_Trucks&hash=item43b53900d5
That sedan is cool. I like the old house too!
When my mom was in her teens, a local delivery place, Chicken Delight, used white ’60-’62 Valiants as their delivery vehicles through (I think) the early ’70s at least. Their motto was “Don’t cook tonight, call Chicken Delight!”
That Chicken Delight jingle was heard all over San Francisco AM radio when I was growing up. Now, it’s running through my head as though on an endless loop…for an hour or two at least! And it’s YOUR fault, Tom!!!!!
“Don’t cook tonight…”
Dad drove his ’66 Beetle in 1968 as a delivery driver for Chicken Delight. The jingle was painted right on the sign. 12 year old me used to ride along, got all the free food you could eat. And it was good! I remember the owner always used to worry about us in the Beetle, her son was recently killed in a Karmann Ghia wreck.
The house…
I can almost hear Lurch playing the harpsichord.
Stretch the wheelbase and front and rear overhangs, and it could have been a junior Imperial. Maybe an Imperial Tiara, to slot below the Crown!
Not to be confused with the Toyota Tiara of the period.
That would be Toyopet Tiara, right ? We had one – briefly – when we lived on Guam.
Dang, how hard would it be to build a suicide door Lancer like that for real. It looks good.
Hardest part would be finding a suitably sized rear glass.
The sunroof looks like a Webasto type that was common on British cars in the 1950’s-60’s
At http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=29648&start=51 there is a post from a guy nicknamed 57burb who posted some scans for a old Motor Trend issue (June 1960) who forecasted what Chrysler planned for 1961 with the Lancer. http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=29648&start=51
Also, I scanned these proposed Valiant/Lancer hardtops designs and clay models from the August 2004 issue of Collectible Automobile.
For ease of access and safekeeping, I’m providing those Motor Trend guesswork images here—cleaned up as well as I could. Here’s № 1:
№ 2:
№ 3:
…and № 4:
I’ve suggested this before but to my eye this era Valiant/Lancer looks like it inspired the design of the current Nissan Juke. (Maybe it’s just me.)
Yeah, it’s just you. The Nissan Juke was inspired by Fisher-Price.
We had Chicken Delight in California – IIRC they used Beetles for delivery (in the ’60’s). I’ll never forget their motto.
The revised coupe is stunning. I like the original, too (and always preferred the Lancer grille) but this is really jaw-dropping. The sedan looks great in that setting too, excellent work on these!
Was the lead picture taken at 1313 Mockingbird Lane? Perfect car for a perfect old mansion! 🙂
Ro me, the revised roof anticipates Studebaker’s Avanti.
Road & Track, January 1960 wrote (speaking of the Valiant) that this body shell was “certainly unique, if not downright odd…requires some getting used to…and tends to grow on you”. When the Lancer was tested, one year later, they opined that it seemed an attractive package when approaching from the front or rear, but not from the side “due to excessive sculpting”. I am one of those odd ducks who “got” the look of this car right from the start, and who can’t really grasp the idea that these early “A Bodies” might be seen as ugly, even though there are things I, too would do to tweak them. I attached my makeover of the hardtop, restricted to just simplifying the body sides by filling in the depressed “collar” under the greenhouse and smoothing over the rub strip crease. Maybe falling for the car as a 10-year-old that my Dad, a traveling salesman, brought home–a “company car” that was smaller and cooler than the leviathans he was accustomed to getting, settled the question for me. As attractive as the Corvair is, its simplicity of design might class it in the “blandly handsome” category, and the Falcon comes off as just your average Joe. Both of those cars’ designs were saddled with heavy shoulders, an element that didn’t survive into the modern era like the Valiant’s “fuselage”. I see the Valiant/Lancer styling as very anatomical, and (goodness help me) attractive, even though it sports elements of fish, mammal and bird. People tend to categorize cars by gender, but the “Lariant” comes off as somewhat androgynous. Maybe that’s the problem. the rounded derriere and low hips are decidedly female, but then there are those vestigial prewar fender side bulges resembling flexed biceps and calf muscles. Having owned a ’61 Lancer, I can say that driving it was the big seller. The car comes off as a nifty, nimble, perfectly capable every-day sedan with sporting qualities.
Nice! Cleaner is better, most of the time.
Best interpretation of the theme was done on the HAMB forum’s photoshop thread (http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/the-photoshop-thread-to-end-all-photoshop-threads.300531/)
Now that would make a nice convertible.
It’s been done; I’ve seen pics, and yes, it came out surprisingly well. Can’t locate any of them at present, though. 🙁
Man, do I love me some of those late Exner era Mopar designs. The first time I laid eyes on an early Valiant I wanted one immediately. This would have been in the late ’70’s, and I was totally smitten by the over-the-top design elements, but the overall “cleanness” of the whole package. (This was during the depths of Brougham Mania, mind you, and that old Valiant was a complete revelation to me.)
That suicide door Lancer could have been a real stunner, but frankly just about ANY change to the rear roofline of the 2-door would have to be an improvement. Casey’s rendering really does work quite nicely.
The house is fantastic, even in its decay. And the Lancer is sneaky–I almost didn’t even notice the changes at first on the sedan! I like it quite a bit. Like the coupe too, though its proportions do seem *just* a bit off. It does put one in mind of the Barracuda, 4 years too soon.
The hardtop sure has 1953 Studebaker Starliner written all over it.
These can be very cool cars,
I was on my way to a car show and stopped halfway there for a coffee, where a lot of the show cars had also stopped.
I parked near a very well restored Lancer hardtop. It had the A body Rallye? wheels, which suited the car perfectly.
I watched and listened as the guy jumped in, The door closed with a nice metallic click, the little Slant Six burst into life, and the car pulled out of there in a delightful energetic fashion.
Its burned in my memory what a nice car it was.
In about 1990 I came to the assistance of an elderly out-of-town-couple who were involved in a minor collision at a local mall. He stated he was disabled and couldn’t get out of the car. The car? It blew my mind. A ’75-ish Dodge Coronet 4-door with a suicide door on the driver’s side! Huh? I’d quit taking acid at least a decade before, unless it was a flashback. Years later, I saw an old ad posted on the net of a company that did wheelchair access conversions on sedans. There was that suicide door! End of the mystery. I lost that one, and a bunch of others, in a hard drive crash 11 years ago.
I really like Barko’s take on the Valiant design, so I figured I’d take it a step further with just a few minor modifications. I’d keep the side-body crease, drop the belt line a touch, extend the rear windshield up an inch or two into the roof, decrease the slope of the trunk lid, and clean up a couple of other details.
I always wondered I had a 61 or 62 couple others Dodge lancer I always wondered what it would look like with suicide doors always thought they’d be cool and maybe some way of splitting the hood or something like that something with the hood anyway what are y’all think
I have a Facebook version doesn’t seem too bad but can we please put that gas tank filled tube behind the tail light and put suicide doors on it there you go let me know what you think
Would love to know more about the four-door lancer with suicide back doors please