When I started at CC I would not have argued that this car was a Chrysler Deadly Sin. But I have gotten to the place where I believe (much as it pains me to say it) that it was. There will be time for throwing of bricks and rotten fruit in a little bit. For the moment, just hear me out on why the Chrysler of the fuselage years was a Chrysler Deadly Sin.
An Automotive Deadly Sin does not have to be a bad car, as our founder was required to say over and over when the Wronged Fans Of General Motors (c) would respond in high dudgeon when one of that company’s products was tagged with the CC DS moniker. No, to be a DS requires only that the vehicle did something to hasten the demise of the company.
In Chrysler’s case, of course, we are actually talking about “near-demise” (1979-80 edition), as it survived under new management after the federal government agreed to guarantee some fresh loans. And unlike some later motor city bailouts, Chrysler’s 1980 near-death experience did not actually cost the taxpayers any money. However, but-for Uncle Sam’s willingness to co-sign on the note, Chrysler Corporation might have displaced Studebaker as the last big U.S. auto industry failure of the twentieth century.
So, how could the fusey, introduced in late 1968, possibly be implicated in the rolling wreck that was Chrysler in 1980? Just sit down with a cup of coffee and allow me to explain.
The Chrysler brand had gone through tough times before. After decades as a top choice of the moneyed traditionalist, the nameplate never really advanced beyond its showing in 1953, even at the height of the Forward Look. Although the rest of the company’s lines exploded in popularity with the dramatic 1957 Forward Look models, Chrysler actually saw a drop from 1956 before imploding in 1958.
The production figure chart (gleaned from Allpar data) shows that the brand began working its way back into customers’ good graces in the early 1960s, though probably not nearly as quickly as it should have given the demise of DeSoto and the low priced Newport model that pirated sales from Plymouth and Dodge.
New management and new products would eventually save the day. A new push for quality (relatively speaking, anyway) and a brand new vehicle for 1965 would send the Chrysler to some of the best years ever. Just look at the numbers for 1965-68. And think, the 1968 model was a terribly un-stylish four year old car doing battle against some mighty pretty jobs from GM and Ford. So the table was set for the new follow-up model: The Fuselage.
At the start, the fusey was a compelling design – and 1969 production numbers showed it. Elwood Engel’s styling was startlingly modern, though it set a course not necessarily in tune with the more baroque trends starting to come from the competition. But Chrysler had been counter-cyclical in its styling before, and had learned that there is always someone out there who will appreciate something different.
The first problem was badly fumbled execution. Initially, the car was plagued by one of the worst product launches since 1957, with disastrous quality lapses that soon gave the car a bit of a reputation. But the problem ran deeper.
The 1965 models had been expensive cars – expensive to build, and using expensive parts to build them. Lynn Townsend had been on a winning streak since taking over at the company’s modern trough in 1961-62. Sales increases, even dramatic ones, had been easy to rack up, and that was what the big Chrysler did.
In 1967-68 those production numbers remained good, but those came at a cost. The company was having to work harder and harder for slimmer margins as dealers pushed back, arguing that they were having trouble moving the metal in an economy that had been steadily softening after the record breaking year of 1965.
Whatever their styling merits, the ’69s had one big problem in the showroom and on the sales lot. They felt cheap. Chrysler Corporation’s unibodies had always struggled a bit in terms of road isolation when compared with the competition. So long as they could boast better handling (“A Chrysler is a Road Car!”) it kind of worked. By 1969 the cars had lost much of their handling edge, particularly as against GM that was making big strides in suspension design.
Road noise, hollow-sounding doors, chintzy looking door panels and dashboards, all of it came together into the serious headwinds these cars would face for their entire duration. When you can’t find a car with straight upholstery seams for the brochure, there is a problem. In the kingdom of Lynn Townsend, volume was king and volume became the child of reduced costs, so the very last thing Townsend would allow was to put more money into trim and sound deadening. The fact that the company had a minor financial crisis in 1970 continued the spiral.
As one who was around then, here was what I knew: After 1969 nobody ever bought one of these cars who was not already a Chrysler customer. OK, this is overstating things a bit, because surely the company made a few conquest sales. But what the 1965-68 cars did almost every year the 1969-73 cars largely failed to do: appeal to people who had never owned a Chrysler before.
Things did not become a real problem until 1971. That year both Ford and GM introduced either all-new designs or designs so heavily revised that they appeared all new. How many people could tell a ’71 Chrysler from a ’70? I couldn’t, and I was a dedicated car nut. They were never seen in big enough numbers to make the job reasonably easy to the casual observer. Buick built nearly 340,000 of its big cars (Excluding Riviera) that year and was up to 425,000 by the improved market of 1972.
And the styling that had been so current and modern in 1969 was becoming dated by 1971. The Continental Mark III and the Monte Carlo (not to mention the Ford LTD) were selling conservative, increasingly angular designs with opulent interior touches, or that at least looked opulent. Chrysler refused to put significant money into the restyling and even the final 1972-73 model was changed very little.
A closer look at those lackluster 1971 production figures gets uglier. A bit into the model year the Newport Royal was added as a new model below the existing Newport and Newport Custom. The figures from the Classic Car Database show that the only popular Chrysler was a cheap Chrysler. Looking at 4 door sedans, the Royal made all the volume with 44,496 units, while the Newport only hit 24,834, and the Newport Custom a mere 11,254 cars. The Royal was even the most popular among the four door hardtops of the three series.
It has been convincingly argued on these pages that the big American car had jumped the shark by the early 1970s, and one could argue that the Fuselage Chrysler did as well as could have been expected. Wouldn’t any added sales have just come out of the numbers of other manufacturers? Of course they would have – after all, other manufacturers had been gaining share at Chrysler’s expense since about 1950 so it would be natural to expect that Chrysler could have won some of those buyers back. Like there was not some dissatisfaction with GM and Ford’s offerings after 1970? Yet the fusey failed to gain any ground at all.
A wider look at the other lines using the fuselage C body show that the picture for them was even less rosy than it was for the Chrysler during these years. At least Chrysler had been on a sustained upsweep. Line-wide it took an all-time record sales year in 1973 to get back to where they had been in what had been a slightly off year for the industry in 1966. And while 1965-68 had been great years for the Chrysler label, that good fortune was not really shared with the downmarket big Plymouth and (especially) Dodge.
Chrysler’s trouble in 1979 was that there were too few Chrysler owners who were inclined to trade for another, never mind those willing to take a chance for the first time. Quality had remained iffy in the fuselage years, with some cars being excellently built while others suffered one problem after another until the angry owner traded at somebody else’s dealership. After the successes of 1965-68 all forward momentum stopped. Or maybe 1963 if you count Plymouth and Dodge. Like a string of roller coaster cars that didn’t quuiiiiiite have enough oomph to get over that last hill, the big Chrysler shed valuable momentum after 1968, momentum that it desperately needed (but didn’t have) in 1979-80.
Let’s be clear – I love these cars. At least I like them, because the ones I really love are the 1965-68 versions. But these make a good second choice, and I would be delighted to drive this car every day. One that has made it this long is clearly one of the good ones and it could be my trusty daily companion under the right circumstances. I have been waiting to find and write up a Mopar C body from the fuselage era for pretty much the entire time I have been writing for CC. Little did I anticipate that I would feel compelled to say unkind things about it.
This car had a job to do. Its job was to build on the success of its predecessor, and thereby provide a better foundation for designs to come later. Leave things better than you found them is an old bit of advice offered by many of our wisest elders. Offer a car that appeals to everyone, not just to those who would buy your cars no matter what. The fuselage C body failed to do this. A record year for the industry in 1973 couldn’t top 1966 for Chrysler, and production in 1974 was back down to the level of 1964, only this time with a brand new design that was as in tune with current styles as anything from the company in years.
It is, of course, true that the fusey performed a whole lot better than the following generation, during which C body sales collapsed. But the fuselage Chrysler was like the underachieving kid who inherits a business and is content to do what has always been done, just not as well, before handing things off to the drug-addled grandson who never came to the office. The fusey could have (and should have) been so much better than it was. In some respects it was an excellent car. In most others, however, it was a Deadly Sin.
Note: a rerun of an older post.
Got a soft spot for the Fuselage. My best friend’s Mom had a ’69 Newport Custom. Large enough to fit a Little League baseball team. It drank gas, but at 29¢ a gallon, no problem. His step-dad would drive Highway 90 with a cigarette in his left hand and a a rum & coke in his right. It was the late 60’s, you had to be there to understand!
My friend kept the car when he got his license. Not sure what happen afterwards.
My parents had a friend who was a dentist, and somewhat of a cheapskate. He had a ’68 Newport low option sedan.
His oldest daughter married an American who worked for Kodak in Rochester, NY. On a visit there in the spring of ’71, he was miffed at the price difference between cars in the US and Canada. In those days, the importation law was, that he could purchase a car in the US and bring it in with minimal duty after one year. So he purchased a stripped, hideous apple green Royal 4-door hardtop identical to pic number 18. He left it with his daughter in NY for one year, then had her and the son-in-law drive it back to Saskatoon. He did keep the 68 for a number of years past that, however. 2 stripped green Chryslers in the driveway
was his idea of having arrived, I guess. His last car was an ’82 Monte Carlo he purchased before passing away , a week after his wife in the Spring of 83. He hated the Monte so much he left it in the garage and kept driving that lime-green bomb.
I look at it, I think what a crying shame it was that the C-bodies weren’t made to shine on in their 1968 form while the new fuselage look was applied to the A-body or even a brand new, first-in-the-industry domestic subcompact. That fuselage shape would’ve looked SO much better on a smaller car, especially an actually-small one.
Speaking of, in one of those Newport Royal ads they were still clinging to the “no jr editions” marketing that started with the ’61 Newport a full decade later when what the Chrysler brand really needed was a Cutlass-fighter no later than 1967 or ’68.
They essentially did just that in Australia with the 1971 VH series Valiant, it’s pretty faithful fuselage style on the existing A body platform. The CH series even has a very Chrysler looking loop bumper
I was excited when I saw the opening photo, then remembered that I had seen it before. 🙂
I find that the older I get the more I like these (even though I stand by everything I said in the piece above). The remaining survivors are undoubtedly the best built of the bunch. I was recently tempted by a 69 Newport Custom 4 door hardtop that came up for sale in my area. The price was really good, but I was dissuaded by the really expensive looking rust trying to bubble through the C pillars under the vinyl roof. That, and it was a white car with a black roof and black interior, probably my least favorite color combination ever. But oh, how pleasant these things were on the road.
Great analysis, JP.
The Newport you found is such a cool car, but I never would have bought one in 1971; then again, I probably wouldn’t have been in the market for a full-size sedan anyway. I’d have been debating whether to get a Mustang, Camaro, Firebird, or Challenger probably.
I love the fuseys. Massive, Intimidating, and Beautiful.
I love that Red 71 2-Door Newport in the ad.
Was just watching CHiPs the other night.. and damn, so many big ole 70’s cars, Hardtops and all.. smashed, jumped bent, and blown up.. a Shame. Who knew that almost every single one “could Have” fetched crazy prices a few decades later, in the late 70s/early 80’s, they were disposable.
🙁
It was particularly Mopar-heavy for a show with Ford product placement partly because the real CHP had favored Dodges for so long that it would look very wrong for them to be going around in LTDs in the show, and partly because there was little demand for their old cruisers which were too thirsty to make profitable taxis.
Also, “a Chrysler priced less than a Chrysler”..?
Maybe just me, but that doesn’t seem like a great ad. Does it mean Chryslers are usually too expensive? Does it mean they are “cheap(er) now”?
Just sounds wrong to me. YMMV.
Your analysis rings true with me; at least via personal experience. My father was a Plymouth guy from before I was born and so there was nearly always something that came or went from the Chrysler-Plymouth dealer in the driveway. Although it seemed that poor quality and poor dealer service experiences had pretty much driven him to go GM when it came time to replace the Plymouth wagon in 1971. He was set on an Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, but a GM strike that year constricted inventory and the 10 year old Plymouth wagon was literally melting down…so a 1971 Chrysler Town and Country it was.
I loved that car despite being somewhat terrified by its vast size.
And my family kept that car for nearly another 20 years. They were never particularly pleased with its need for pretty much constant service and it was driven less and less. Eventually they purchased mostly European cars once it became clear (around 1980) that things weren’t going to get any better over at Chrysler. I think they kept the Chrysler mostly for sentimental reasons. Plus it was so huge that even the prospect of getting rid of it was somewhat daunting to them.
Did you do a COAL on that 71 T&C? I seem to remember an article about a long time family T&C. A 71 was one cool wagon!
Did you do a COAL on that 71 T&C? I seem to remember an article about a long time family T&C. A 71 was one cool wagon!
I did.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1971-chrysler-town-and-country-wagon-movin-on-up/
An additional fact about that wagon – which I believe I mention at the end of the COAL piece – is that despite not getting driven a lot toward the end of their ownership of if, it’s final act was saving my parents’ lives in a head on collision at highway speed. So, I suppose that fuselage Chryslers will always have a special place in my memories.
Am I imagining things or did some of these have an offset trunk lock, not centered? Wonder what kind of linkage operated that contraption.
Plymouth Fury had an offset lock
I grew up with Chrysler products because my folks bought a new Plymouth, then found that the only dealers who wanted to take Chrysler products as trade ins were Chrysler dealers. Two bad fusie Furys sent them to an Olds dealer.
My dad had a 1970 Chrysler Newport. There was over a foot of dead space between the radiator and the front grill.
The beach ad is weird. I suppose it was meant to suggest wealth and glamor. To anyone who has driven Chrysler products, it only says that the car couldn’t start in damp conditions as usual. Now it’s stuck, and it will be flooded when the tide comes in.
Funny you mention that because I was thinking the same thing, the damp conditions reputation and such. Almost each and every picture in this post triggered in me the sound of that starter working overtime trying to do its job. As a kid I would walk through the parking lot of the TG&Y or the Safeway with mom and dad while I looked for a Chrysler or a Dodge in the parking lot. If someone had just got in one ready to fire up I would get excited. My ears just wanted to hear that starter.
I remember when these were new and had friends who purchased them. No one then complained about quality issues In fact they seemed to be notable for good fuel economy for such large cars. .
Good source of Fuselage Info:
http://fuselage.de
You make a good argument. I have always loved the fuseys, however that it without having ever owned one or even driven one. Poor execution can kill even the most beautiful or well-engineered car, a lesson Chrysler should have learned well in 1957.
I think Chrysler (corp, not just brand) survived for a long time on their loyalists. There were a surprising lot of long time devotees that took a lot of abuse before finally jumping ship. The reckoning came in the late 70s/early 80s when enough of those loyalists gave up, and simultaneously conquest sales were falling, too.
That is an interesting point Chrysler makes in the Royal ad about torsion bars, and how Cadillac and Olds have them in their most expensive cars. That sounds like a convincing pitch, if one is unaware of why those particular FWD cars have torsion bars. Of course, GM and Ford would have torsion bars in all their cars if they thought they were that much better. Ad people can grab any fact and turn it in their favor!
I suspect Chrysler managed to stay afloat for a long time in the sixties on three main things:
– Former independent owners who would gravitate to Chrysler when their preferred make went under, i.e., Studebaker.
– Defense contracts and government fleet orders.
– A successful line of compacts (A-bodies).
As the years wore on, the failure of the intermediate and (especially) full-size cars really hurt their bottom line. Big-car sales were both GM and Ford’s bread and butter, and Chrysler simply was never in contention in that most profitable market, but it got really bad with the fuselage cars.
It’s a shame because the fuselage era certainly had style over the competition. But, man, even Chrysler loyalists really took a chance on a vehicle purchase in the seventies, and it just got worse with every new model introduction. If not for the success of two cars (Cordoba and Omnirizon), Chrysler likely would have gone under before Iacocca became available to work his marketing magic and rescue the company.
Interesting views here.
My Dad was a Dodge guy, typically buying the top of line station wagon with all the options every 7 years. So it was with his 1965 Dodge Custom 880.
But when the engine started acting just as it was about out of warranty, and the factory refused to fix it, he parked it, consulted a lawyer, and bought a 1969 T&C wagon off the local dealer’s lot. It was the F8 green, yes with the wood paneling, and it was a gorgeous looking car. But the interior was a shockingly cheapened out execution, particularly compared to the then 4-year-old Dodge Custom 880. Other than the 3 in 1 seat (which was very cool), it was a huge letdown, particularly the base Newport sedan door panels with no carpet and little trim, compared to the Dodge. When the factory finally agreed tix the ’65 (I believe it needed a valve jo), my Dad went back to driving that car, and the T&C became my primary driver as a highs school junior/senior.
At that point having driven both cars extensively, I preferred the handling, interior space, and overall styling of the T&C over the Custom 880.
Also, the ’69 T&C was actually quite a sales success that year, posting its best ever yearly sales and enjoying (at least in my midwestern enclave) a good deal of local visibility and acceptance. The ’70 and ’71 sadly, much less so.
Two other considerations that could be mentioned here – adoption of the “torsion quiet ride” (for the 1970 my if I recall correctly) fixed some of the ambient noise concerns, and the wider track rear axle (also in 1970) substantially helped the rear 3/4 view of all the Fuselage era sedans and hardtops.
Both of these to a degree perhaps helped to offset the lack of acceptance of the relatively high beltlines of the Fuselage C’s, which were a little controversial for many large and luxury car buyers back then
TIM
Having owned a number of Fusey Plymouths: 2 sedans (both ’71), 3 wagons (1 ’71, 2 ’73) 1, 1 ’70 convertible
2 of which we owned as daily drivers for in excess of 100k miles, I do agree somewhat with JC’s proposition. But Torsion Quiet did make the ride quieter as advertised, yes, the handling was softened a bit over earlier models (we owned ’65 and ’66 Newport/NYer), and interiors were certainly cheapened, my Dad’s ’67 F3 was much nicer than our ’71-73 Plymouths, however this was less objectionable on a Plymouth, while not so acceptable for a Chrysler.
The styling was futuristic and the best of all full-sized makes imo. The quality thing has always been a Mopr bugaboo. Ours were good. I’m not sure what could they have done, trashed it after 2 years and broughamied them in ’71 or ’72? Not the way to go, again, imo. A lot of it was just the market and the strength of the Big 2, and the ’74-75 market was pure bad timing. Regardless ofnall this, these will always be my favorite combination of full-size styling and Chrysler engineering, I’d love another one!
Maybe because it’s old and the paint is dingy, but there’s something about the green Chrysler in the pictures that screams government motor pool. A chrome strip along the beltline instead of the rubber ding strip and maybe one on the rocker panels would go a long way.
I agree, The wheelcovers don’t help either, they look like poverty caps with trim rings, some whitewalls would do wonders as well.
Evidently, Harry Truman liked his 1969 Chrysler Newport well enough that he traded it in on a 1972 model.
We could wonder if things would have been different if the C-body Fuselage was built on body-on-frame instead of unibody like the A and B-bodies?
On a off-topic sidenote, I spotted some infos and pictures about the Fuselage Imperial limousine.
https://www.web.imperialclub.info/Yr/1969/Limo/index.htm
https://www.imcdb.org/v001336128.html
I do enjoy driving my 73 Polara but it does pale in comparison to how solid, as a rock, my 67 Parklane feels when driving. Parklane no rattles while the Polara has one in the back somewhere around the Dutchman panel and trunk. Although the hood feels much longer on the Polara enough that I could launch and retrieve drones onboard. The interior is roomy for sure. Actually my biggest bitch about the car, or Fusies in general, is how they did their back window design and channel. It is taylor made for rust no matter where you live. Add just a little water and let cook a few years. All Fusies have that issue.
Our “73, Fury” rusted surprisingly little for being a western “PA” car. No garage either. Was a yellow, plain sdn.
Subtle differences affect a buyer’s choice. For example, the sound of the power door locks on Chrysler’s of that era was deafening. Power door locks were available on two-door high-trim Chryslers but not on Dodge C-Bodies or Plymouth C-Boies. What is the logic behind this? NONE! I agree that the interior trim looked cheap compared to the Ford and GM models. Where do we live in the car – outside or inside? Too late now. Still, I owned a 1973 Dodge Dart Custom with the package that had “almost everything” and a fully loaded 1978 Dodge Aspen Wagon. The Slant Six in the two vehicles, even as a “Super Six” in the 1978, was sluggish.
Understandable why the fuselage C-bodies never received a thorough 1971 update. Mother Mopar spent a ton of money on the late-to-the-muscle-car party E-bodies that left virtually nothing in the styling department’s budget to do more than some superficial trim changes on the full-size C- bodies for 1970 & ’71. As well, they added the sport coupe body (Demon/Duster) to the A-body lineup that already had a two-door hardtop further straining Chrysler’s finances.
If it weren’t for their style and wide range of engines (that, today, make them quite valuable on the auction block), I’m convinced that the E-body would be considered a Chrysler Deadly Sin in how it sapped precious development money from other, more profitable models.
The E-bodies were simply money pits that never came close to recouping their investment, and it began Chrysler’s long downward spiral in the seventies from which they never recovered until Iacocca showed up and cleaned house.
From early 1960s to early 1980s my uncle bought a new Chrysler corporation vehicle almost every year. He received a letter from Lee Iaccoca thanking him for buying 18 new cars.
Unfortunately, we had a 1970 New Yorker. Beautiful car. Piece of crap. I never understood why it wasn’t as nice as the other big cars I knew. It looked good, but it also didn’t look luxurious. My dad wanted a Chrysler so bad. What he got instead was disappointment. He traded it in for a Dodge Royal Monaco wagon, that was another piece of dog crap. While my brothers and I were die-hard Valiant/Duster fans, our family discovered that Chrysler couldn’t build a good large car after 1968.
Even my Chrysler-loving uncle quit Chrysler after he bought a 1972 Newport and it was totally unreliable. These cars were poison.
Nice looking lemons.
My uncle William had a fuselage Chrysler. It suited him, a bald cigar chomper.
Studying the details of his car I didn’t understand why Chryslers had any cachet. This car was blobby in styling, and ill-screwed-together. The details weren’t even attended to, with misaligned badges and bad gaps.
Then I noticed the previous generation Chryslers and it was a revelation. How far Chrysler had fallen.
I always thought of these as rhe automotive equivalent of Brutalist Architecture. Sometimes beautiful, in their own way, but also austere and, how does one say, not graceful. The design worked great for cop cars and other applications where the “menace” the I feel is inherent to the design worked, less so in family cars and mainline luxury vehicles.
Thanks for the article!
Yep ;
As I age out I’ve gone from total dislike of their looks to thinking they’re good looking cars .
Chrysler Corp. has a long history if good looking car that were let down by iffy initial Quality Control .
-Nate