Note: None of the pictures in this post are of the actual car. They were pulled from the Internet.
Upon demise of the Vega, I needed to obtain a new transportation solution. I used the city bus to get the college for a while, but I had been accepted into a co-op program and needed to have a car.
First, a little retrospective. In 1967, my grandmother was driving a 1951 Ford Fordor with a stick shift. It was only driven to church and the store, so it obviously didn’t have a lot of miles. One day coming home from the market, the single circuit master cylinder gave out. She didn’t drive fast and managed to get the car home without incident. Well, except for the back wall of the garage she nudged to get the car to stop. Dad took a look at the car and decided that it was done. No car damage from the garage wall contact, but he apparently never liked the car so no love lost. Plus, he wanted Grandma to get a smaller car with an automatic transmission. After much discussion (in Polish), she agreed to go shopping with him. It had to be a Ford since my Grandfather had worked at the Ford Engine Plant at the Rouge complex. It also had to be black like the old car.
They found a two door Ford Falcon at the nearby dealer. The only option on the car was an automatic transmission, but the car wasn’t black. It was tan. Again, after what seemed to me to be a heated discussion in Polish, she agreed to get the car. However, the salesman then decided to play pricing games, with the price of the car going up with each iteration. This car was not going to be financed, so the salesman needed to make a decent commission on a stripper model car. After all of this drama, Dad and Grandma got up and walked out without a car. Dad took her to the Chrysler-Plymouth dealer next door to look at a Valiant. They had a stripper model in the Sunday newspaper ad for $1700. The dealer had one in stock, probably the only one in the state, and would honor the newspaper price. Plus it was BLACK! Sold!!
The car she bought was a 1967 Plymouth Valiant 100, which was the base trim level. However, due to some sort of sales promotion by Chrysler, it came with full wheel covers in place of the standard dog dish caps and also came with an aluminum trim strip down the middle of the side. It had an automatic transmission and a sizzling 170 CID slant six (115 HP). No power brakes, steering, radio, or carpeting that that price level. The interior was red vinyl bench seat and the car had good visibility. The 1967 model had been redesigned to be more boxier than the 1966 model and it had a huge trunk. The spare tire had been moved under the trunk floor to make that possible.
To cut a long story short, Grandma used the car on Saturday and Sunday to go to the store or to church. After six years, the car only had 2000 miles. Many times she would walk to church, which was a mile and a half away. Probably the main factor in why she lived to be 98. One Sunday, however, she was feeling drowsy and hit a parked car near her house. She apologized to the owner and said she would come back after church. The car only had minor damage at this point, so she drove away. Another block later, however, she hit another car. This time, the Valiant’s radiator was damaged so she came back home and parked the car. Dad brought the car to our house and got a new hood, grille, and radiator. Good enough to drive, so back it went to Grandma’s house. Grandma was hesitant to drive though, since she had seen a recent accident where someone got hurt. Thus, she called up Dad and told him that she didn’t want to drive anymore. One of the grandchildren could have the car. I put in my bid for it and was told it was mine.
Of course, I couldn’t leave well enough alone once I got the car. No radio? I went and got a factory AM radio at a local junkyard and installed it. Hate AM radio? Installed an FM radio converter. Rubber floor? Went and got a red carpet remnant and installed it. . The tires were 6 years old and in need of replacement due to age, so I went to Sears and bought a set of their “Made in France” (Michelin) radials. Life was grand.
Right after I got the car, my brother borrowed it to do some errands. About an hour after he left, I got a call from him that he’d had an accident. No one was hurt, but the new to me Valiant was the worse for wear. He’d been t-boned in the right side. Dad and I went to work to repair the damage, which didn’t look too bad at first inspection, but was worse than we thought. Six months later, the car was back on the road.
another proud ’67 black Valiant owner
Black paint on a car sure looks good when it is cleaned and waxed, but it is also a high maintenance mistress. The partial repaint after the accident left a lot to be desired, so I decided that the $39.95 paint special at Earl Scheib was a good deal and got the car repainted black. Yes, said the salesman, we wet sand the entire car before paint. Right. Whatever I hadn’t sanded before I took it in wasn’t sanded during the process. Plus, they had opened the doors to paint the door jambs. When you moved the seat belts on the front seat, you could see the outline of the overspray. Many hours of rubbing the paint job down got it to an acceptable level.
Many good years of use followed, with only normal maintenance items. Of note, replacing the points and condenser on a Slant Six engine was troublesome due to the location of the distributor at the bottom of the engine. More than once, the distributor had to be pulled out because I dropped the screw into it. Brake adjustment was frequent because the self-adjusters didn’t work very well. Both the windshield and the back window leaked water due to the design of the glass gaskets. The windshield leak eventually causes the headlights to fail as the water leaked onto a connector in the A pillar kick panel. The trunk leak accumulated in the spare tire well. Removing a plug at the bottom created a permanent drain.
After college, the car continued its yeoman service moving me to my first job in Iowa, then to a subsequent transfer in Maryland. The 170 /6 was no power house, but it did get me to where I needed to be when I needed to be there. In 1976, the Valiant was getting up in mileage so I decided to look for a new car. Once again, like the Vega, I fell victim to the pre-introduction hype manufactured by the American auto companies. I gave the Valiant to my brother, who drove the car for three more years before selling it to someone else. With only 2000 miles in its first three years of life, the car must have thought retirement was grand. Then, after I got it, it received another 120,000+ miles before it was finally retired. Truly a Valiant car!
Great story !!!. Every Valiant that I had, leaked through the windscreen seals. 1967 was the last year for those horrible plastic chrome seals. From 1968 they used a proper stainless trimmed seal in the US anyway.
In Australia we had to endure the “plastic chrome until it turned brown” rubbish until about 1977.
I love these base model 2 door Valiants, just make mine a 68 or 69.
just a FYI it wasn’t the widnscreen seals, it was the windshield wiper seals, the Floorboards are rusted on my barracuda because of this very common problem.
A great Valiant/Dart/Duster story – as I mentioned in an earlier post – everyone who learned to drive in the 70’s has one…and yes, I also dropped screws down the distributor when changing the points…
Dad bought a brand new 67 signet 4,door top of the line 225/6 a m radio power steering manual drum brakes His came with dog dish hub caps
Windshield and rear window never leaked however 1967 dodge/Plymouth used those plastic mouldings with stainless corners that were always falling off
Dad gave up replacing them
Great story. Mine was a 71 with 245/6 then a 64 with 225/6 so I haven’t felt the 170, but that bend in the dash brings back so many memories. If you have to do yeoman, you do it like this.
Y’sure? No such engine as a 245 \6. The Slant Sixes were 170, 198, and 225. There was a 245 “Hemi-6” in Australian Valiants, but it was upright, not slanted, and not exported.
He didn’t say “slant six”. He wrote 245/6, which can rightfully be interpreted as exactly what it is: a 245 inch 6. Not everyone uses the “/6” in reference to the slant six. There’s no higher authority that says the slash is the exclusive domain of the slant six.
I assume that Don, who as you presumably know is quite the historian, is well aware of the difference between a slant six and the Australian “hemi” six, both of which he had in his cars. Maybe you could extend that bit of, ah, professional courtesy to him before you presume him to be ignorant or incorrect?
Even though “Mine was a ’71” and “225/6” and “I haven’t felt the 170”, all in context of the Valiant subject of this post, strongly suggest that he’s talking about Slant-6s, I fervently beg a thousand pardons; five hundred from you, Paul, and five hundred from Don.
Also, may I please borrow a falling-sword? I’ll give it right back.
It was a VG with the 245. Knew it wasn’t slant, also know its not really a hemi. Don’t know much else about cars under the skin. I used the slash wrongly, and this is CC so I stand corrected.
In 1976 I bought a Valiant to drive while my Audi Fox was sidelined. Mine was a 69 Signet with slant 6 and automatic transmission. Mine was “bottle green with a white interior, in my experience a black late 60s Valiant was a very rare car. I couldn’t say if mine had the leaking seals, the only mechanical problem I ever encountered was due to a clogged air filter. Silly me, I didn’t know enough about cars to connect my “bouncing” water temperature gauge needle as I drove up steep hills with an engine desperately trying to inhale through a dirty air filter. Other than the air filter, that car never skipped a beat.
While those Valiants were dead reliable, the driving dynamics were bordering on poor. Or was it just the tall skinny tires these rode on?
There is no such thing as a reliable Chrysler.
yes there is
Huh? Just sold my Chrysler 300C, owned from 30k miles to 96000 miles, and only needed an electric fan, a thermostat gasket and a few lightbulbs. Pretty reliable if you ask me.
That was a first year model to boot, 2005, with all the supposed teething problems.
The Darts and Valiants had a reputation for sturdiness and running forever, particularly those with the Slant Six. Their only real weak point was rust. Writer PJ O’Rourke once wrote in Car and Driver that Darts and Valiants were the sort of cars that refused to die, no matter how badly their owners wanted them to.
The Toyota Hilux of cars – cue Top Gear…..
Please, trolling is not needed here.
In the dashboard picture, I noticed that the speedometer says “Valiant Effort.” I’m guessing that’s not stock! Also, seems more appropriate for a tachometer…
Our family had a bought-new spring-green 1968 Valiant but ours was the Signet model! Hah! So we had the 225 slant six and an AM radio. Air Conditioning wasn’t even considered, although with the black vinyl upholstery it should have been. I always thought it a pretty nice car, but then we were stepping up from almost a decade of his n’ hers 2-stroke SAABs which were my father’s fetish and my mother’s burden. I remember we test-drove a SAAB in 1968 with the English 4 cylinder, and it would accelerate going uphill!…but my father chose the Plymouth instead.
For us, the Valiant was an excellent car. Room for two adults in the front and two teens in the back, that huge trunk, and that smooth, torquey slant six. Combined with a Torque-flite automatic, it was easy to drive albeit with no power steering or power brakes. I remember the lack of power brakes distinctly because I darn near put the instructor through the windshield of our Driver’s Training car, which did have them, and touchy ones at that.
The only quirk I recall was the occasional need to spray some WD-40 in the distributor cap in damp weather. No leaks or noticeable quality glitches in ours, and it went an amazing-in-those-days 140,000 miles before succumbing to the rust monster. It did the last 80,000 of those in the hands of my sister and her husband, so it did them with zero maintenance too.
It was, of course, followed by a 74 Plymouth which was our last Chrysler product (and the shortest time my dad ever owned a car) because
a. My mother, a school nurse, had a bad experience with the seatbelt-ignition interlock when the car wouldn’t start because the kid who’d cut his thumb off in shop-class didn’t put on his seatbelt.
b. The front fenders rusted through in two years.
But we still talk fondly of that 68 Valiant.
What great cars. Yes, I dropped a screw into the distributor too. After taking it out the first time I changed points that way ever after. And oh how I miss those fabulous fresh air vents accessed by opening the little doors under the dash.
It sounds like someone got a really sweet 51 Ford.
Those vents were great. I remember the little doors on Dad’s ’62 Falcon. My ’74 Cortina had the foot-level vents, but they were opened by a knob on the dash – they certainly made long trips on 40C days more bearable.
Great cars. I had a 1970, a 72 and a 73 Duster. The 70 was given to me by a lady that I worked with because she wanted it to be appreciated. It had no reverse so parking had to be selective. The speedometer broke at 180,000 miles so I don’t know what the final mileage was. I paid $350 for the 72 and it was still a good runner when I retired it, but rust forced it’s retirement at 150,000 miles. The 73 Duster also had a broken speedometer but the mileage was known to be over 200,000. It had a three speed on the column that used to jam in 2ND gear often so I used to over Rev 1St gear and then throw it into 3Rd. I swapped a case of beer to acquire that car. My cousin had a 69 Valiant that went 390,000 miles. It was a death trap toward the end but the original slant 6 was still running, though it was slurping oil heavily.
The Valiant of that era is probably a car that I would love to get as a daily driver today, Slant Six and all. It was great to read about your Babchie. I too remember many “heated arguments in Polish” between my parents back in the day, some involving me ?
Those Valiants (and Darts), I REALLY liked them back in the day, even though I preferred the hardtop over the post. My father-in-law had a 1974 ( I think) Dart two door hardtop, bright lime green with a dark green vinyl top and dark green interior! 318 torqueflite.
He owned that car for around 4 or 5 years and traded it on a 1978 Hertz brown Ford Fairmont!
While the Fairmont was nice enough, he had to replace the tranny. Perhaps he should have kept the Dodge a little longer.
In the early 80s, Chrysler received some criticism for their Reliant/Aries dashboards looking dated. When it appeared they were hoping to recapture some of that Valiant/Dart ‘mystique’.
I live that story! Wouldn’t it be nice to have an audio of the heated discussions in Polish?
Shortly after arriving here I developed a thing for the Valiant/ Dart and the slant six. It’s still an itch that needs scratching.
The Valiant (and its Dart cousin) were one of those rare cars that seemed to get a little bit better every year. The ’67 refresh made it more pleasant in all respects. As solid and reliable as anything from Detroit at that time. Handling wasn’t much, but no worse than others of the day. What is totally perplexing it how Chrysler could have so totally botched the Volare/Aspen replacements for these rock solid basic cars.
One curiosity about the Valiant-Dart is I never ever saw one with a factory clock. Was one even offered?
No factory clock was ever offered. In the 1970s, the clock in my daily driver 1974 was a cheap LCD digital watch stick to the instrument cluster over the inactivated seat belt warning light, which never worked after the Federally-mandated* seat belt interlock was bypassed by undoing a Molex connector under the front seat. That was done on a lot of 1974s on Day Two of ownership.
* “I’m from the Government. I’m here to HELP you.”
My ’75 Duster 360 that I bought in late 1978 must have been built quite early in the model year because it still had the (unconnected) seat belt interlock. The seat belt law was overturned in October 1974, a few months after 1975 model year production began. Instructions and warnings about the interlock were prominently posted on the driver’s sun visor.
As I recall, it was illegal uner Federal law for the dealer or manufacturer to unplug that connector to bypass the seat belt interlock, but not to hint to the owner about how to do it!
The Molex connector could be tight and hard to access under the front seat. Probably it was best done from the rear. I’ve seen ’74s with the wires cut and taped, instead.
In November 1974, GM released Dealer Information Bulletins to disable the starter interlock and warning buzzer on 1974 and 1975 cars. The bulletins instructed to cut the ground wire on the interlock circuit and either remove the buzzer or cut the seat belt wire (some cars used the buzzer for other functions).
As I understand it, one reason why the Valiant/Dart was so good and the Volare/Aspen not so good is that when folks who design and/or build a “good” car they would often get promoted up to the next “better” car. In other words, if they did a good job with the Valiant they got promoted to the Belvedere/Satelitte(sp?).
When lifetime employment was still “the thing” in Japan, folks would often stick with the car they started at the company with. Start at Toyota on the Corolla team? You stood a good chance of retiring with that team. That went hand in hand with the idea of continuous refinement.
Aside from no factory clock ever being available in the A-body, the Valiant’s basic instrument cluster was a model of simple, practical efficiency which lasted nearly unchanged from 1967 to 1976.
There were variations, though. The basic Dart had a ‘strip’ speedometer through 1971, while the A-body Barracuda and Dart GTS got a couple of large, round binnacles with an available ‘performance indicator’ in a smaller center binnacle. Additionally, the Barracuda/Dart GTS cluster got an oil pressure gauge instead of a warning light.
In 1970, Duster and Swinger 340 cars continued with the previous Barracuda dash and the center gauge tachometer had lost its ‘economy’ marking the previous year. Strangely, a clock was never offered for that same center binnacle.
By 1972, all the other variants were gone with the only gauge cluster for any A-body, regardless of engine, was the 1967 Valiant dash with a woodgrain finish it had acquired in 1970. The only other subsequent changes were the addition of the aforementioned seatbelt warning light and, in 1975, an optional round ‘Fuel Pacer’ light next to it.
In Australia the top of the range 1970 VG VIP had a clock, because our Valiants had to start with base models and go all the way up to top of the line luxury with the same basic car.
Not sure what the chrome knob above the clock is though.
Very nice. Was there a block-off plate for those vehicles without a clock?
Considering the dashboard similarity, if the US Valiant had an optional clock, that’s likely where they would have put it. I thought they might have stuck it in the blank space below the gauges in the instrument cluster. But, for a strictly low-line vehicle, I’m sure it wasn’t worth changing the metal dash stamping to create the opening. Then, when the uplevel Valiant Brougham and Dart SE arrived, it was just too late in the game to make the changes.
As to the mystery knob, I’m going to guess for front/rear speaker balance. Also interesting that the ‘barn door’ air vents are replaced with more conventional knob controls.
No block off plate,they would have created a special hole just for that model,as you say volume would have been low,.
Also this was the first Australian car to have air conditioning as standard, so Chrysler were serious about the luxury market, they had to be, Fords Fairlane was very successful.
Looking at that picture, I can imagine exactly how it would feel to slide into that seat, pump the pedal a couple of times, put the key into the ignition, maybe have to jiggle it a bit to turn to start, hear that famous starter burst into life, feel the car move on its springs slightly as the engine caught, the loose steering at straight ahead…. good memories.
It was a long time ago, but I think the key went in upside down, another lovable Chrysler “thing”
;Edit, I think the vent doors still had the same barn doors, that knob you mentioned is the hood release.
“I think the key went in upside down”
Or maybe everyone elses keys were upside down and Chrysler’s were right side up. 🙂
As I think about it, virtually every lock I have encountered in a home or office has been oriented for a key to go in teeth-up, so maybe there is some truth to the joking comment I just made.
For some bizarre reason, each of the Big 3 used a different key orientation. Chrysler’s went into the lock with the ridges down, GM’s were up, and Ford used a double ridged key which could go in either way. I’m sure each one had their own justification for doing it their particular way but, other than Ford’s idiot-proof system where there was no ‘up’ or ‘down’, I’ll be damned if I know the reason.
On the homepage, I find the juxtaposition of the 1967 Plymouth Valiant directly over the Lincoln Versailles to be ironic, between the ageless, chaste simplicity of the Valiant and the overdone fake luxury of the junked-up Falcon (okay, Granada).
My mother’s last car was a white ’71 Valiant, the only time she ever treated herself to a new car. Radio, power steering, Torqueflite, but rubber floor mats. She said the salesman had tried to talk her into carpets, and she’d said, “I’ll get where I’m going, with carpets or without them.”
I didn’t go home much in the 6 years she had the car, and I never had occasion to drive it, but I gather it was reliable and she was happy with it. However, at some point a year or two after buying it, she said she could have had a Toyota with a/c for the same money.
When I went back for her funeral in 1977, my cousin drove it from Newport, Rhode Island, to NYC, with me riding shotgun. It was my longest sustained exposure to the car. It seemed OK for what it was, but the brakes were grabby. On that point, I didn’t think I should generalize about Valiant brakes from one car.
My brother was executor of my mother’s will, and at one point he sent me a check for $750, saying he was keeping the Valiant, and that was to even things up. At first I misunderstood. I thought he’d sold the car and we were splitting the proceeds, and I thought, “What sucker paid him $1500 for that?”
The only bad A-body story I ever heard was from a guy who had one built in the mid-seventies. I guess the Rube Goldberg emission controls really took its toll on the slant-six.
There were other issues with the earlier, pre-emission cars, though. There were the brakes, the distributor location, a one-barrel carburetor that tended to develop a bog and, of course, the typical disintegrating Chrysler body. Keeping a spare ballast resistor in the glove compartment was a wise move, as well.
But has been often said, those slant-six/Torqueflite drivelines had a deserved reputation for being virtually indestructible, even with the most lax maintenance. Nova and Falcon bodies would last longer, but when it came to six-cylinder engines and automatic transmissions, Chrysler was, far and away, the class leader. The 426 Hemi gets all the love as Chrysler’s crowning engine achievement but, for my money, the Slant-Six really deserves that honor.
I had a 71 and a friend bought a 74. Both were older when we got them. The 71 both ran better and felt stronger than the 74. I am sure that with today’s knowledge base it would have been relatively easy to wake that 74 up, but with what we knew in the mid 80s I was happy with mine.
I bought a 67 4-door 4 years ago from the original owner for $1100. Had 74,000 original miles and in great shape.
225 six with auto. Am radio. Manual drum brakes and steering.
Drove it 150 miles to and from school. Great little car, but highway driving was somewhat scary.
My Grandmother also had a 1967 Valiant. It was a Soft Yellow Signet 2-door, with 225/TorqueFlite and A/C. I don’t recall what else it had, but it was well equipped. She liked that car quite a bit, and Grandpa’s persistent washing and waxing helped to keep rust to a minimum over the years (they lived in Minnesota). About as drama-free a car one could buy back then. It was replaced in 1974 with an A/C equipped 318/TorqueFlite Valiant Scamp in Lucerne Blue. Grandma much preferred that one (I’m fairly certain that had to do with her leadfoot tendencies), and kept it until 1982.
Who says stripper cars are gone?
In 2008, when gas was $4.25/gal., I cashed my clunker in (’95 Wrangler, leaked like a seive) for a basic Prius, off the lot.
Equiped rather well, but no back-up camera; and 15-inch wheels, as opposed to the 16’s of hotter editions.
10 yrs. later, going strong, I think of her as a modern day Ford Falcon. I might even add wide whites & dog dishes …..
I just sold my ’65 Dart to another fellow who knows it will continue to serve him well. I bought it about 18 years ago as it was being towed into the drive way of a dismantling yard, with a blown engine. I found another 70s valiant with slant six, in a pick-a-part yard; it seemed to have a recently rebuild engine which I converted it two the two barrel Super Six version of the 225/6. Found the parts (linkage and manifolds) off a Canadian Aspen station wagon in another yard for parts. Fixed up the loose wiring, gave it a good paint job after fixing the rust out in the rear quarter panels. Drove this car the last two years all over the place. it was the bottom of the line rubber floor mats, three on the tree, bench seats and 13″ rims (those tires are getting hard to find) The Super Six ran remarkably well, with the exhaust opened up to 2.25 inches all the way to the back and the car had remarkable torque. The engine would fire up with just a tap on the gas pedal and turn of the key. Now, as I’m still driving its sister car, the 65 Valiant with the 273 V-8, I still miss the Dart, and have no regrets putting life back in that Mopar, and i’m sure the new owner will enjoy it for many more years.
A friend had one, a ’68 Signet 100 2 door sedan. 225 and a 904 Torque-Flite. I rebuilt the engine for him, mainly because the 35 year old (at the time) gaskets had given up and it leaked from everywhere. The engine was in great shape otherwise, but we did everything to it anyway. Added a Mopar Performance electronic ignition, a high(er) performance camshaft, a 2bbl. intake off a ’78 Dodge truck ‘Super Six’, and a 1970 Carter 2bbl. carb. from a 318. Little car ran good, and still delivered great fuel economy.
$1700 for anything new in 1967 was an amazing price I believe. Maybe some of the excellent researchers who follow CC can tell us what prices of inexpensive cars were in 1967. Thanks in advance.
It really is amazing to me how different this generation of Dodge and Plymouth compact bodies really were – same cowl, but totally different sheet metal and roofs – until 1974, at least, the Dodge still held its role, going back to the 1961 Lancer of being the senior compact in real ways – the extra wheelbase wasn’t ahead of the firewall.
Of the two, I like the Valiant better, especially the Signet models. With their upright bodies and bright metal window frames and B-pillars, they remind me a lot of my old W109s, and the dimensions aren’t far off. OTOH, that Dart convertible is quite fine.
Great story, but you should’ve kept the same color. That’s just my opinion. When I see a masterpiece, I like to renew it in its original color. It’s color is what makes it a Valiant.