(first posted 9/1/2012) For Chrysler, just getting up off the canvas after the “plucked chicken” fiasco of 1962 was hard enough without Ford doing something crazy by dropping its Mustang bombshell on the market. What’s more, the personal-luxury coupe market was heating up by the day. So what was a beleaguered Chrysler to do? Fake it, that’s what. And do so with a memorable and venerable name.
The earliest Charger I remember (at least referring to something other than a hay-consuming equine) is this car, which a sporting band of Chrysler engineers campaigned on the drag strip. This car was the “High and Mighty” (actually a ’49 Plymouth). According to Alpar, it existed as seen above into late 1958. The original 354 truck engine, fitted with 392 heads, eventually gave way to an all-392 Hemi. Obviously, the car sacrificed aerodynamics on the altar of weight transfer and traction.
Chrysler cashed in on several subsequent cars bearing some variation of the Charger name. The FX class identifies this one as a factory car whose race parts or other modifications distinguish it from stock. (Such cars could run as factory super stock if at least 50 of them were built.) While this factory car uses the Charger name, apparently less than 50 were made. In any case, “FX” seems a pretty standard designation throughout racing’s various sanctioning bodies.
Around this time, the actual production Charger we know began to emerge.
The Charger name showed up on this customized ’64 Dodge Polara–a typical example of cars the Big Three would put on the car show circuit with no genuine prospects for production. Anyway, there were more important things to think about, other than Polaras trying to imitate a T-Bird Sports Roadster. In 1964 arrived a name that literally transformed the automotive landscape: Mustang.
Chrysler knew the Mustang was coming. Like most folks in the industry, they assumed it was going to be just a sportier Falcon, and not something with all-new proportions and a totally fresh look. Chrysler had grafted a fishbowl onto the back of the Valiant, and called it good. Actually, Barracuda. The market called their bluff.
Naturally, the Dodge dealer-boys wanted in on some of that sporty/personal car action. Knowing to some degree what was coming down the pike at Ford and Plymouth, they demanded a car “like Plymouth has.” Be careful what you ask for, as they say. Chrysler boss Lynn Townsend wanted the dealers off his back, and summoned Dodge’s head designer to his office. He demanded a car sized between the Barracuda and Thunderbird, one that resembled (but would not directly compete) with the Barracuda. Their solution? Another giant fastback, this time attached to the redesigned-for-1966 Coronet body with a few flourishes.
The Charger II concept car is shown here. Actually, Dodge had constructed it before getting an official go-ahead, and was showing it around the country in order to gauge public response. While the story you get depends on who’s telling it, it’s likely Dodge considered public acceptance a foregone conclusion. The theory was, so we’re told, that public reaction to the concept would be helpful in tweaking the production model. Sources disagree on the exact time frame, but generally acknowledge that the building of the production car started well before the concept car hit the show circuit. At the time, such shenanigans were typical of Detroit: “Let’s show a deliberately juiced-up concept to get buyers’ juices flowing!”
The Charger’s giant fastback was thought to be the hot new thing. By whom, who knows. Maybe that had been the case when it was first penned, around 1963, but that dud of a 1965 Rambler Marlin should have been the tip-off: Putting a full-length fastback on a boxy, mid-sized car wasn’t all that brilliant an idea after all.
OK, maybe the Charger wore its long back somewhat better than the Marlin. And it did make an impression on most of us who were around at that time. It simply wasn’t a long-lasting one, as the sales figures show.
Dodge felt that the fastback would make the car very aerodynamic, and actual racing proved it to be quite slippery. In combination with the 426 Hemi, it could also provide unwanted lift at triple-digit speeds, both on the strip and in a banked oval–which required Dodge to fit its 50 copies with this little spoiler (known as a “Nascar Spoiler” or “Nascar Lip”). It was claimed to be the first spoiler on an American production car.
In any case, it helps to be able to outrun the good old boys. The Charger hit the showrooms just months after the 426 Hemi became a regular production option. Coincidence? David Pearson didn’t think so, and proceeded to pilot his Charger to the Nascar Grand National Championship. In fact, in that season Pearson and his Charger won races enough to inspire this ad. Nor did one of my shipmates, who had a ’66 Hemi Coronet. Of course, he also didn’t regard as coincidental the six mpg he got on a regular basis.
These are typical of the ads that flooded contemporary magazines and newspapers. They were part of a pretty effective campaign that sold over 37,000 1966 Chargers in the car’s first six months. In contrast, the ’67 model sold only about 15,000 units over its entire model year.
What happened? For one thing, the competition didn’t stand still. The 1967 Camaro and Firebird hit the market while the Mustang and the others evolved. The handsome 1967 Mercury Cougar redefined the luxury-sporty-personal coupe. What’s more, the Charger’s fastback design wasn’t wearing all that well with consumers, many of whom insisted for some crazy reason on being able to see out the back window. Of all the cars in its segment, the 1967 Charger was the least changed from 1966–and holding fast in a torrent of revolutionary change is a surefire way of losing customers. Just ask a certain general.
Maybe the Charger should have been a Chrysler? The interior it had in 1966 surely seemed up to Chrysler levels. It had a dramatic chromed console that swept all the way back.
The rear seats could be folded flat individually, and the armrest flipped forward too. With the trap door between the the “trunk” and the rear seat area open, the Charger could haul 4×8 plywood, just like a station wagon. As if. But the fittings and hardware were all of the high quality that Chrysler produced then but wouldn’t much longer.
The Charger might have shared the Coronet’s basic dash structure, but it still contained very Chrysler-ish big round gauges that were electroluminescentally backlit, just as on the ’60-’62 big Chryslers. Nice, expensive, wouldn’t last. Too bad.
The cost-cutting started right with the ’67 model, which ditched the big console, rear buckets, and seating for four. In 1967, the buckets remained available, but now the console stopped at the front seat backs. This particular car has a rear bench and, except for the fine gauges, is again just a Dodge. Those gauges would be gone by 1968.
I happen to think Dodge missed an opportunity: This could have been an excellent hatchback– even better than the Nova–if anyone had wanted a pricey and luxurious big hatchback in 1966, never mind the structural challenges.
The Charger is the only car (at least of its time) to have the Fratzog symbol fore and aft. Supposedly the name meant absolutely nothing and was dreamed up by engineers who’d consumed too many adult beverages.
I found this ’67 in a shopping mall parking lot, and it is in beautiful shape. Its grille and disappearing headlights represent Chrysler’s first flirtation with hiding headlights since the problematic ones on the 1942 DeSoto. This time, the stylists demanded and the engineers gave in.
I agonized for some time over whether this was a ’66 or a ’67. The “zits” (actually external turn signals) on top of the fenders identify it as a 1967. In fact, those fender-top signals were the only visible exterior difference between the two models. OK, so maybe the special “1967” front plate I saw while checking the photos helped me out as well.
As we know, the next year the Charger traded in its fastback for a tunnel-back, and showed the results of some serious estrogen infusion. That did wonders for its hips and popularity. Over 90,000 were sold in the first year of the second generation…and there’s no telling just how much a certain movie had to do with it.
re the second from top photo-
Like blow my mind daddy, that is some groovy far-out thingy!
I seem to recall seeing that car sitting in the basement of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills.
It’s quite disturbing…
There was a girl I dated in high school, her dad had a black version from this first generation, although which year I can no longer remember. What I DO remember is looking at the well-abused thing and thinking, “My god, what an abomination.” Giant fastbacks are not my thing. Wait, no, that’s not right, let’s try that sentence again. GIANT FASTBACKS are not my thing (oh, that looks more appropriate). Of course, I was driving a Hyundai at the time, so what do I know?
“…Maybe the Charger should have been a Chrysler? The interior it came with in 1966 sure seemed up to Chrysler’s levels…”
If DeSoto was still around in 1966-67, it could had been a DeSoto as well.
Ironically, the Charger morphed later into a Chrysler Cordoba lookalike. 😉
We could also wonder what if “Bullitt” had been released one or 2 year earlier with Hickman driving a 1966-67 Charger instead of the ’68 if things could had been different for the Charger fastback?
I think the sentiment that ‘Bullitt’ had an impact on 1968 Charger design (or sales, for that matter) is an urban legend. The movie wasn’t released until October 17, 1968, well past when the final 1968 Charger rolled off the line. It’s doubtful the movie had any effect on the improved 1969 Charger all the much, either, since sales dropped off over 1968.
At the time, Chrysler was heavily shifting performance emphasis to NASCAR aerodynamics and that, more than anything else, was what influencing musclecar design. Of course, everyone knows how short-lived that plan lasted, too.
But the idea of how using a 1st generation Charger might have played out is an interesting one. Frankly, I’m not sure it would have been as effective because of the added chrome trim used on both the interior and exterior of the earlier model. The dechromed exterior of the ’68 (along with the more subdued, darker interior) lends itself better to the sinister aspect of being wheels that a pair of hitmen would drive.
It’s another in the series of Chrysler styling miscues of the 1960s. The front end looked inhumanly sinister…imagine a robot coming to execute you. No humanity; no recognizable expression…just something bad coming face-on.
The side profile simply looked awkward. The rear…the light-bar tail end could have worked but for the clumsy profile of the rear…flat vertical side glass, no tumblehome on the greenhouse, and that long fastback
I thought the Coronet in that era to be mildly attractive; but this permutation didn’t build on it; it emphasized the bad.
As an eight-year-old, I remember these coming off a truck at the local Dodge dealer…across from the local grocery store. I remember, in particular, one in a pale pastel yellow…a more milquetoast paint scheme could not be imagined; and when I think of this era Charger, that’s what I envision. The Dodge dealer…had a lot full of them; they slowly left; a few hung around town for a few years and then were gone.
I haven’t seen one of these in over 30 years.
The side window glass is not flat, and the tumblehome is probably about average for the time.
This is one of my favorite cars. I passed on buying a 67 25 years ago and have regretted it ever since. A few weeks ago I was out working on my 66 C-20 in the driveway when a nieghbor pulled up in his new toy. He is slightly disabled and can’t get under the hood that easy and I was standing there with my toolbox parked next to the truck. He had an engine miss at speed. Turned out to be a loose spark plug. An easy thing to have with one of these cars with a big block in it.
While I really wish the car had been done in 7/8th, or even 3/4th size, the Charger was one of my favorite cars from the ’60’s. I liked the exterior styling a lot, and was blown away by the four bucket interior. I’d love to own one (one of the few muscle cars that turns me on at all), but it’d be difficult to find one with a four speed. I just don’t do automatics.
I have often thought the same thing, it’s too big, yet I bought a 68 Mercury Cyclone GT fastback in 1971.
Until you mentioned it, I didn’t think of what might have been it Dodge had instead produced a smaller Charger on the DART body shell, tho without the Barracuda’s fastback.
Didn’t the Mexico market get a Dodge Coronet sedan with the Charger’s hidden headlights?
The proportions make the car look heavy in the back., the original “Baby Got Back”.
Even though, I want a 66; the full length console and rear buckets are very nice.
When these cars came out, it was the interior that blew me away. It almost out-Thunderbirded the Thunderbird.
More in the mold of the `60-62 Letter Series 300s. Maybe that’s what Mopar was shooting for.
Pictures don’t do this car justice. It’s one of those cases where “you had to be there”. Somebody spent a lot of money restoring or maintaining over the years.
Mid-sized fastbacks may not have come off nearly as well as those in compact form, but none of the fastbacks sold all that well. For example, less than 36,000 Mustang 2+2s were produced in 1966. In 1967 that jumped to 71,000, but this was a fraction of notchback production.
From a styling standpoint, the fastbacks that worked best didn’t have a “full” arc that ran from the c-pillar to the rear fender peak. As a case in point, the 1967-68 full-sized GM two-door hardtops broke up the sheer mass of the roofline with an s-curve. To a lesser extent so did the 1972 Torino/Cyclone fastbacks.
In contrast, the 1968-69 Torino/Cyclone had too much mass in their c-pillars — much like the 1966-67 Charger and all of the Marlins.
I wonder what was the main buyer resistance to the fastbacks of that era. Was it primarily half-baked styling? Lack of visibility? The greenhouse quality of the large, flat rear window? Or did most buyers want more rear-seat headroom offered in a notchback? In addition, was the extra storage capacity some fastbacks offered a selling point to a relatively small number of buyers?
I suspect that fastback styling died out primarily due to visibility issues. Although stylish, it was tough to see out of those cars, and the fad wore off quickly with the stress of trying to change lanes with limited rearward visibility. Remember, this was a time when passenger-side mirrors were still relatively rare.
A case in point is the as-mentioned ’68-’69 Ford intermediates. The fastback versions were actually cheaper that the notchbacks, but I don’t think that, even at the lower cost, they sold that well.
I owned a ’67 from 1972-76. It was yellow with a black vinyl top, which in retrospect took away from the smooth look of the fastback roof line. Electrical/trim problems abounded, include a voltage reducer (built into the gas gauge) which killed the gas and temp gauges; the hidden headlight system had an array of 3 relays and limit switches which were problematic and leaky wiper gaskets which allowed water to drip onto the driver’s leg. I won’t mention the rust issues I encountered. The 1966 Coronet 500 2 dr which I owned several years later had none of these issues and was probably the best car I’ve owned from the ’60’s. Both cars were 318/auto trans—the ’66 was the old poly head, the Charger was the newer wedge head design. Both drivetrains were very reliable and never let me down.
Pity the poor ’66-’67 Charger. While the appearance was nothing more than a Coronet with a tacked-on fastback roof, it was okay for the time, and Chrysler did their best to make the car special with original front and rear treatments, as well as an exclusive interior. Besides the special mechanical bits, the 2+2 seating was pretty cool.
Unfortunately, that stuff was expensive and, in the case of the seating, not too practical. The very next year, the full-length console was gone. And, as pointed out, the non-appearance-based special appointments tended to be problematic (hidden headlights and dash), as well as the smart money would simply buy a much cheaper, big-block Coronet or Satellite hardtop (especially the 440-powered ’67 Coronet R/T or GTX) which offered up identical performance at a lower cost.
Another entrant in the 1960s Mopar Owner’s Lottery. Will it be a dream or a dud?
I like the Charger better than the Marlin and Dodge should have kept the luxury appointments up. This could have been a great Thunderbird alternative.
Or alterative GP!
This is one of my favorite cars of the 1960s. I vividly remember a TV commercial advertising this car when it came out – an aerial view of the car at speed on a 2 lane highway. I was about 7 years old and in love.
I have always considered this to be one of the better proportioned large fastbacks, and it is all of the details that seal the deal for me – the hidden headlights, the full width taillights, and especially that interior.
I came very close to buying a 66 as my first car in early 1977. I test drove a red one with black interior, 383/TF. The owner was a college kid who had replaced both doors with doors from a metallic red car. The car also didn’t run quite right and was going to need some work, including a repaint. As much as I loved the idea of a 66 Charger, this would not be the one for me. Like another poster above, I have had a Charger-shaped hole in my heart ever since.
I had not realized that sales dropped so badly in 1967, but this would seem to explain why the 66 is seen so much more frequently.
The ’66 Coronet 440 2-door hardtop is probably my favorite American car. I can’t find a photo of one with the proper full wheel covers and ride height, but this hemi car hints at the grace of the mid-line model:
When in high school, in ’82, I had the chance to buy a 1966 Coronet 2 door hardtop. Yellow, black interior, bucket seats, console with floor shift A/T. Poly 318. $500. Regret not buying it to this day. Sigh…
My late older brother completely trashed a clean ’66 318 powered Coronet way back in the late ’70s. He had that effect on pretty much every vehicle he ever owned…
It is mine also. I have owned a ’65 and a ’67 Dodge Coronet 440 but both of mine were 4 dr sedans. Even so I wish I had them back today.
I have always thought that the 68 and 69 coronets were as good looking a car as the 60’s produced. I owned a 69 Coronet 440 (that’s body style not engine) until I had to go to a south pacific vacation spot and had to sell it. I don’t think the 66/67 models whether coronet or charger were even close. The big thing that drew me to this car was the rarity. I didn’t even know how rare till I read the sales figures on the 67. I suspect more were sold with the 318 than the 383 like this one, and that’s because bigger engines were available for the “go fast” crowd. I really prefer the second generation charger as well.
All told, just a rare steed.
Personally is my favorite version of the Charger, I like the taillights and grille. I do think they would have done better selling it as a personal luxury car against the T-bird, Riv and Toro vs the Mustang and Camaro.
Those years were the heart of Chrysler’s best. I loved these Chargers. I also loved the Marlins! The first ride in a hot rod was a friend’s brother’s 1965 Barracuda – a 273, 4 speed. Four of us in the car and that thing just flew! I was 14…
My aunt – the one who years earlier had the ’61 Dodge with the square steering wheel, had a 1968 Coronet sedan. I liked that, too.
My world back then was Chevy, Olds, Buick and Chryslers. Ford, aside from the Mustang, didn’t register until the 1968 Torinos.
I rode shotgun to Chicago from Minneapolis in a buddies 67 Charger back in 1975 or so. This Charger had the basic 318- auto combo for drive train, and was a very tired worn out Mopar at the time. With that being said , the car really rode well ,and was a great road car. Build quality , and fit and finish of the car was top notch , even though the car was eight years old ,and had well over 100,000 hard miles on it . I never understood why Chrysler dropped the excellent E/L dash lighting from the Imperials only to re-introduce it in the Charger.
call me crazy but i love this era of charger and i love the fishbowl baracuda. 4 on the floor fastbacks rule especially if they have a hurst shifter.
It’s interesting to see the side profile of the Marlin and Charger, it really shows up the “wear a hat in the rear seat” compromise forced on the Marlin, especially when you think the Charger is 12″ longer but the same height as the Charger.
That, plus a narrowing shape, plus the far more boring borrowed body, plus the Charger’s flippy headlights and full width tail lights, squared off side window shape, plus a lot of other things make the Marlin a dud while the first Charger was and is pretty cool.
The comparison in the post was unfair. It should have been all about why the Charger worked and the Marlin didn’t.
Seems To me These cars Were Built off The Coronet Wagon body/or was it the 2dr harttop ? ‘
I Remerber Briefly THese Were THE CAR I was on The Lookout 2x… First in 66 – cool backseat, Colors, Tail @ night…then mustan 2 plus 2 stole back thunder breifly until 68 charger… 97000 that car was hot in purple or even lime with white… yeehaw, wish i had one now
SomedAY maybe Ill find a Lime Or Purple Charger that is unloved but so far the Rarity I think limits them. If I Could Id Clamor for Those, and Fushia As well as Plum Crazy Challengers @ unloved Used Prices…white interior if convertible cooler in ca, texas, az
i guess Im glad Marchionne & Fiat believe in frequent updates on cars. I Have missed That On GM and Ford once again.
another way to tell a ’67 chrysler product is trim in the corners of the windshield and back light this was ’67 only and they always fell of dads valiant . I was !! at the time and rember going to century motors chrysler plymouth parts deparment to replace them ,I think they were .35 cents each.
I tried to buy one of these new in the summer of 1966. Unfortunately, the salesman “low-balled” me. Upon my return to the (nameless) dealer, the price had risen by some unrememberable amount. To compensate, I purchased a fire-engine red Plymouth Fury III hardtop the next day. No big regrets, but I thought the Charger to be very cool back then!
I’d take a ’66 Fury over a Charger any day! 🙂
As an aside, all of you with ipods, ipads, tough screen readers, etc., owe a thanks to Chrysler’s push into NASCAR. Chrysler wanted to lighten the race cars as much as possible. This push to lighter materials included the glass. They went to Corning Glass who had a formula that worked, Corning made a short manufacturing line and turned out a batch of very light, very tough glass for Chrysler. Corning then stored the formula and the line.
Decades later Apple comes to Corning asking if they could make a glass that was optically excellent but tough enough to be in small items which would be dropped, steppe on etc. The line and formula came out of storage and within weeks Apple has their glass.
Only saw a 67 Charger once in recent history. Some years back, I stopped to look at a silver blue model for sale in someone’s front lawn. The car seemed overly big for the fastback style, and the interior had the fold down buckets. I noticed the doors seemed overly light and closed without the Chrysler authority. I don’ remember what the guy wanted for the car. The car was nice, however.
Looked at new cars on Saturday. For 20 to 25 thousand dollars, the offerings are really pathetic. The salesmen tout the Bluetooth, USB connections, docking stations, and other such nonsense more than the engine, etc. The cars are so low that a road pothole could do major $$$ damage.
One model I looked at, (just looking, do not want) a Suburu Imprezza, seemed to have less power than my 85 Lebaron. The car was screaming in gear going up a slight hill. Road noice drowned any attempt at speech. The salesman said the car makes thousands of calculations per second. I think the car should think about driving nicer.
Just strengthens my resolve to keep the old cars until I’m dead.
The 1st gen Charger is my favorite Charger body style. I think the fastback roof fits well with the Coronet donor body, and the Charger-specific touches differentiate it beautifully. The hide-away headlights are really well executed. I love the full-width taillights.
As for the Fratzog logo, I think that Dodge should have brought that back recently when they split-off RAM pickups and RAM kept the Ram’s head logo, instead of red slashes // (yawn). There are numerous aftermarket companies that make replacement badges for newer Dodge cars. If I had one, mine would have Fratzogs.
I think they should bring out Fratzog as a model name, or at least a subseries, LOL.
Dart Swinger, meet Dart Fratzog.
Makes more sense that many recent model names!
The hideaway headlights got simpler by ’69 or so. One motor with gearbox and limiter, one relay under the dash. Of course, even in 2012, a lovingly rebuilt motor can be immobilized by a fritzy relay that would cost 85 bucks to replace. Ask me how I know this, razzafrazzit.
I never cared a whole lot for the first generation Chargers, but I would still like to have a nice 67 Coronet R/T in my garage, one of the nicest looking American cars of the 60’s.
hi my name is joe this fastcar am in to cars that go fast I know tha are bad on gas but I don’t have lot of money to buy this car if I had a job I wood buy this car
I always liked the 66-67 Chargers but I liked the Marlin as well and owned a 69 Fastback Torino so I guess I’m weird.. Loved how unique the Charger interiors were and thought the hideaway headlights were cool. I put a lot of miles on a 69 Coronet 500 back in my College years and would love to get my hands on another though I didn’t appreciate that car at that time and have been a fan of the reliable 318 to this day..
This type of fastback roofline never worked. On any car. The interior is nice, however.
I’d beg to differ, GM sold a ton of full-size fastbacks from after WWII to the early 50s.
Of course it wouldn’t surprise me if those cars…especially the all-new ’49s…weren’t originally styled as fastbacks, then once the proportions were locked in, the sedans, coupes, etc., were adapted to fit.
And there were a couple fastback Plymouths in that ’49-’52 era that looked quite pleasing to my eye.
That said, even in Charger II showcar guise…the fastback looked more like an add-on than even the Barracuda, whose proportions always looked good to me. But there was always the concurrent Marlin to make Charger look more serious and less goofy by comparison.
I never got that vibe from the ’68-’69 Torino/Cyclone.
Yes, many many fastbacks were sold. Have you tried driving one from that time in today’s traffic? Even with one of those Wink mirrors most of what you’ll see is headliner …
I think with enough glass back there the question of whether it “works” is mostly one of taste, but it’s tricky trying to find enough headroom for the back-seat occupants. The most lavish appointments won’t do any good if there’s room only for kids, especially ashtrays and cocktail tables!
This generation Charger was something of a personal luxury coupe before they were really a hit. Three years before the Grand Prix, Dodge wasn’t sure whether to market the car upscale or sporty. That changed in 1968 when they we went straight muscle car and sold like hotcakes. Even became infamous in Bullit, a movie many people believe the Dodge was actually faster.
Agreed, I think Pontiac gets too much credit with the 69 Grand Prix starting the intermediate personal luxury coupe segment, the 66 Charger truly was the first, and while yes today the 68-70s have been puffed up into “muscle car”, most in fact weren’t – it was in essence an intermediate sized Mustang, featuring secretary specials and all.
“Bullit” is a 15 minute movie. Take away the car chase, and it`s only a routine thriller.
Without many thrills. That movie did make me want a Charger as my first car, with a Roadrunner right behind it. A neighbor’s bright red Charger R/T 440 got me foaming at the mouth.
Owned a 68 Cyclone, and yes, rear visibility was almost nonexistent.
I wonder if sales of the Marlin were low because it was an AMC product? I often wonder if AMC had produced the car that was the 65 Mustang if brand resistance would have changed the story or would it have been a major turning point?
To me, the 2nd generation Charger looks like a 66-67 GM intermediate hardtop, but with the “trademark” Charger grille added. The 1st generation suffers from looking too obviously like what it was….a Coronet with a LONG fastback roofline added on. Especially coming on the heels of the Valiant with a fastback roofline.
Imagine that 1st generation Charger with a more formal roofline (as in a 60s Thunderbird) and Chrysler styling cues, sold as a Chrysler ( Cordoba)?
There is a first generation Charger parked in a garage about 4-5 blocks from my house, I see it frequently on my walks. It has been in that garage since I moved here, early in 2000. From the looks of the thing it has not been driven in a good number of years. I have wanted to stop and inquire about the Charger but the people who live there, an indeterminate number of folks with few teeth and multiple other older cars, don’t seem like the friendly, talkative type. I don’t find this generation of Charger as off putting as some do but it is far from my favorite mid-sixties Chrysler vehicle.
If this is the Marlin, it’s like the Marlin with the details done right. I find this car quite handsome, and that briefly common ’60s beige color looks great.
These cars had interiors on par with the generally high quality ’65-’66 Chrysler C body cars.
I would very happily have this in my garage!
As was usual in this era the print ads appeared in various publications but along with Mustangs and Camaros we could not buy the cars here new and importing one used was quite a mission back in the day,
.
I remember when these cars came out when I was in High School. I really loved the overall look, the concealed headlights, the wall-to-wall tail lights, and the very cool interior with the very well done folding rear seats and arm rests. The early Mustangs and Baracudas were the only other cars to have the cool fitted folding rear seats. I did not have the money to buy one back then, and still do not have one – but if the right deal came along – who knows!
I collected car literature from 1963 through the 1980s, which I still have in a large chest of drawers. When I was in High School, I became interested in 3D photograph after having a great aunt give me a Stereoscope with some original Stereographs from the early 1900s. I figured out how to make them using my Instamatic 154 camera, and also how to make them by moving cutouts and pasting them on a cardboard card. The first one that I made was using two copies of the 1966 Charger literature (same as is in this article). I still have it, and here it is for those of you who have a Stereoscope. I made the girl in the car look like she is behind the C pillar of the car, and the same girl (smaller) look like she was in front of the car.
Very cool!
Put me squarely in the fan category. Love the hidden headlights and the clean, simple shape of the front end…love the long, sweeping fastback…love the interior. It really does look like they were gunning for the Thunderbird with those appointments. Shame they’re so rare, I’d sure love to have one.
This generation of Charger was always a “What the hell were they thinking?” sort of thing to me. I hated it. I liked the Coronet and the Plymouth siblings. In 1968, that would change and the Charger would be my favorite B Body, but only in full R/T trim. The lesser ones are boring. And it’s got to be a good color too, not brown, beige, green, or “frosty” anything. The weak yellow is as bad as Top Banana (Or whatever it was called) was good.
It is an updated GM Fleetline look just twenty years later!
I think that would give ideas to lots of car fans who might like to photoshop various GM cars of the 1950s and 1960s to imagine what if the Fleetline keep soldiering? 😉
The worst thing about the exterior is the lack of fender liners. Her slip is showing!
Certainly, the too tall top and too far back large C pillar of the Marlins, ruins the design from a side view. The Challenger got it about right. I believe that the Marlin was to have the top about 2″ lower, but due to the man in a hat rule at the time, it was raised.
Here is the Marlin with the top lowered and the C pillar moved forward, as well as the side cove being elongated. At least the eye is not drawn to seeing the heavy rear top. Much more pleasing to my eye. My opinion of course.
I took delivery of my 1966 Dodge Coronet 2-door sedan with slant six on May 28, 1966. Then my brother ordered his 1967 Charger which he received in December 1966. His was equipped with a 383 4-barrel, heavy-duty drum brakes, A/C. Dark blue with matching blue interior. Could that car ever go! He loved it and so did I.
Last I heard the Fratzog is coming back! This time on a new line of electric Mopars.