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. It’s 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.
Nice post – I have to agree. I’m not sure I could come to call it an actual Deadly Sin, but it comes awfully close. I’m also a big fan on the 67-68 models; especially the Imperials. Pure Engel…
And here’s another victim of nickel-and-diming customers and naively hoping they won’t notice it.
All of the Big Three have done something like this at some point.
My dad had a 67 valiant signet and my uncle had a 68 Plymouth fury VIP so I was familiar with Chrysler products
A co worker invited us to go skiing and we drove to the slopes in Fritz 69 Newport
What a disappointment hollow sounding doors road noise cheep looking door cards cheep looking dash giant cheep window cranks.
The only good part of the car was the bullet proof engine and transmission
I’ve always liked these big Chryslers, but always felt a little let down by the fuselage years. And instead of looking at the entry-point Newport/Royal, consider the match between the New Yorker and Olds 98, Buick Electra, and Mercury Marquis. These are all mid-level “premium” sedans, not as “premium” as Lincoln, Cadillac, or even Imperial.
Exterior style is always a personal thing, but the reality is there’s no real discernable difference between the Newport and its pricier New Yorker sibling. Minor grill differences, and chrome ribbing over tail lamps don’t really make much of a difference. Why pay the price premium when the neighbors won’t notice the difference? The 98 and Electra in 1969 looked substantially different, primarily because of styling from the C-pillar on back to taillights. And the Marquis for 1969 look quite a bit different from the Monterey, since it’d started on its march toward Lincoln-esque styling, including hidden headlamps, and full-width-look tail lamps.
Inside, the difference between the New Yorker and it’s competitors was even more pronounced. Both 98 and Electra offered fabrics that looked and felt far more expensive. Both featured sleek “door consoles” on many models which housed logically laid out power window switches, door lock switches, and power seat controls with heavy chrome accents. Door pull straps were big, almost full width of the door, and felt and looked substantial. Optional door courtesy lamps added even more sparkle at night. Not an exposed screw head in sight on the doors/trim.
The Marquis had the standard-trim armrest, added a slim door pull on upper models, but still retained the window switches lined up in a row. Door courtesy/warning lamps on the front doors only added a little more sparkle, and door panels featured upholstery closely patterned after the seat trim for a little more distinction, along with extra wood-grain trim. And I don’t recall exposed screw heads.
The New Yorker used exactly the same armrests as the Newport, exposed screw heads holding the door panels in place, power window switches lined up in a row (and on models without power windows, the window crank handles look like giant phillips-head screws (with a screw holding them in place in the center). Maybe a little more wood-look trim, but not a lot, and far fewer models even had separate door pull straps, and no door courtesy lights at any cost.
The bottom line is that the interiors of the Chryslers felt substantially chintzier than those of its competitors. And the fabrics used weren’t necessarily in the same league in terms of quality when compared to competitors.
Consumers may not necessarily notice such differences; instead, they “feel” the differences–and the New Yorker felt far cheaper inside than its competitors, and its exterior would get you no additional notice from others in its family lineage….so why pay that extra price?
And yet, a loaded New Yorker of this period has an irresistible draw for me….
Well, Chrysler’s revisions for 1972-73 certainly addressed this gap, with entirely different rear sheetmetal for the New Yorker (and, likewise, a different front end – with headlamp doors! – for the Dodge Monaco versus the Polara).
I think the lack of difference among the New Yorker/Newport/300 starting with the 1969 cars may have had to do with the realization that they’d been overdoing the distinction among the three models, for very little return. Three completely different rear end treatments for 1967 was kind of absurd, for example.
I agree – I’ve always found the hardtop C-body Mopars of this era compelling.
My dad’s ’69 New Yorker weighed in at 4,400 lbs, which is almost identical to what a new Challenger weighs today. Couple that with a 440, a 2.76 rear end and the torsion bar front suspension, and you have a uniquely nimble land yacht that would deliver 17 mpg on the highway when using the cruise control.
That’s no typo. A trip to Chicago once prompted a passenger in the back seat to ask, “Does this thing ever take a drink?”
Never an economy car, of course, and neither was it a 1st division luxury barge, but the Chrysler had its talents.
In the mid-1970s I had several rides (with five other passengers) in a ’69 New Yorker 4-door. Astonishingly capacious. And the family I was visiting parked it on the street, in Bensonhurst. That too was astonishing.
Good to see an article on these huge cars. But still I am not sure what the Deadly Sin is about these cars? As both graphs show the production at the end of the Fuselage Years was back where it started. Only after 1973 production dropped dramatically.
Amazing in that time they could advertise with sentences like “Royal is just as big as our most expensive New Yorker” , “it is also bigger than our chief competition” and “Royal is bigger inside… and longer outside”.
Bigger is best. Try advertising that nowadays 🙂
“the production at the end of the Fuselage Years was back where it started”
The problem is that 1973 was a blockbuster year for the industry, and it took a record breaking year to bring that generation of Chrysler back to a kind of “break even” with where it began.
And one look at the Plymouth line on the graph shows where all of those Chrysler sales of 1972-73 came from because not even a record industry year could move more Furys.
Hmm… Dion has a point, though.
That Plymouth line in that graph is an issue though. It’s essentially dead stable from 1964 to 73. You say 73 was a great year for auto sales, but then so was 65.
If the numbers plateau for a decade and then plunge in 74, doesn’t that undermine your DS case for the Fuselage? Your narrative makes a compelling case, but the data are not really backing it up that well…
Excellent post regardless.
“Let’s be clear – I love these cars. At least I like them, because the ones I really love are the 1965-68 versions” – my thoughts exactly. The Fuselage Chryslers are fascinating and gargantuan, but just a little lacking in spice. The previous generation was better.
I will acknowledge having to wrestle with whether to give these the DS stamp. I finally decided this: Chrysler lost all kinds of market share after 1953. After an uptick in 1955-56, things went into the toilet. Chrysler spent the rest of the 1960s (a prosperous decade that played to the brand’s strength) growing. The 1965-68 C body was a big success, with the 4 year old model in an off year far outselling the new model in a record industry year. This car broke that streak. Where the prior model brought new buyers into the brand, the Fusey did not, and those few exceptions certainly never went back for another.
1969-73 was the end of the golden age of the big American upscale sedan. There was no one thing about the Fusey that squandered those years, but it was a hundred little things that Chrysler stopped caring about and the car showed it.
Chrysler in this era was a lot like GM in the late 90s. The bottom had not yet fallen out, but the products it was building were not doing what they needed to do to bring in new buyers. They just had a bigger customer base to live off of in 2003 than Chrysler did in 1973.
Maybe this chart of Chrysler’s market share I just created will help. I’ve become quite convinced that showing raw sales numbers is not nearly enough to tell a complete story, because the total car market was much more volatile back then. Market share tells the story of how well a certain car or brand or manufacturer did in relation to its competition.
And as this chart clearly shows, Chrysler peaked in 1966, and the fuselage cars were on a general downward trajectory from 1969, except for a modest uptick in 1972 and 1973. But their share numbers overall are too modest, and show what a sick brand Chrysler was.
Thanks for that chart, Paul. I may insert it into the post as time allows, if that is ok. I suspected as much, but had trouble finding a decent source for production of competitive models.
Plus the numbers rebounded when the hit Newport Royal was introduced. Chryslers started selling better because there was a new cheap Chrysler.
But I think the true DS was not having any cars smaller than the landbarges when the gas crisis hit.
This is what comes mind when I hear “Chrysler Royal” The Australian AP3 version. Not my photo, a Wikipedia image
A co-worker had a ’69 Newport which I believe was a base model 4 door sedan in that same color green in the post
He invited us to his house to go skiing and we road in his Newport to the slopes
The interior was very cheep looking it was noisy and the window regulators were big and ugly and did in fact look like giant Phillips head screws
What a disappointment
My dad had , ’67 Plymouth valiant signent which was luxury next to this Newport
I can appreciate the styling now but I didn’t like them when new especially the loop bumpers
How about a C C on loop bumpers ?
In period, these cars were completely off my radar. Maybe it was just my location, but I didn’t know *anyone* who drove a full-size Chrysler. Hindsight being fuzzy, but I would swear to you that I saw more AMC cars on the streets than big MoPars of *any* brand.
Nope, the only big-car products from the Chrysler Corporation I can remember seeing were cop cars and cabs, and only on television. Local cabs were Checkers, and cops drove Fords in my world.
Yeah, same for me. The Valiant and Dart, and later Volare and Aspen, plus Córdoba and Charger, were consumer cars. Any other Mopar was a government fleet car. By the time a lot of agencies were switching to intermediates, these big Chryslers were mostly a footnote on the streets.
As a mechanic at a Ford-Mercury dealer during the fuselage years, I harbored a dirty little secret. My own car was a ’66 Newport. I had serious gearhead lust for a neighbor’s new ’69 300 convertible. It was a visual delight in gold with a white top. He traded his ’65 Starfire for it. May have been one of Chysler’s few conquests. After about a year, the 1st of what become a parade of fuselages came in for trade on a new Mercury. Test driving the used one was shocking. Oh, it still handled better than a Mercury. The performance gap was narrower, but I’d still give the Chrysler an edge. But oh the road noise. Even compared to my well used ’66, the fuselage felt cheap and tinny. After giving the car a mechanical check and sending it to the detail shop, I happened to run into our sales manager who asked me what kind of shape the Chrysler was in. He confessed he too had always liked the style. I gave him my opinion and said he should take it for a drive. When he was done, he made every salesman in the store take it home for a day. He priced it high to ensure it would stay on the lot and instructed our sales guys to let prospective customers drive it for comparison. Even as a Chrysler fan, I had to admit that driving a Mercury and a fuselage back-to-back would convince anyone the Mercury was a more substantial car. Over the next few years, our dealership got a more than normal share of conquest Chrysler-Plymouth owners. Every fuselage I drove – and most seemed fairly well screwed together – conveyed a general aura of cheapness that was out of place in any new car much less a mid-price one. Such a nice design. Such a sad execution.
What a fabulous story, and not surprising at all. For those who never drove one, I can see how the style could be appealing. But as you note, one drive was all it took.
There were a lot of issues with Ford products of that era, but they had one thing that Chrysler lacked – a sales guy high up on the food chain who knew the importance of a car’s subjective feel. Ford was king of the kinds of things that would appeal to someone on a test drive. To keep a big Chrysler on hand to sharpen that point with buyers was genius!
You are 100% right about all the ways Chrysler cheaped out on these. But one thing’s for sure: these are the last big Chryslers that had their own design language, and were not just a straight crib of what GM was building 2-3 years prior.
A compelling article. This is an example of once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Like so many others, I truly like these cars. I even found another green Newport for sale a while back and had more than a few passing fantasies about taking it home. But, the cheap appearance jumps out so quickly.
If a person put a Plymouth nameplate on the featured car, would it look out of place? Other than a standard 360, what did purchasing a Newport net a person that was unique to the Chrysler and not available on the Plymouth?
I’ll go out on a limb and say the entire Newport range from 1962(?) on was a deadly sin for the Chrysler nameplate. It cheapened up the image by giving a person a Plymouth with a Chrysler name.
My Grandma bought a new 1969 Pontiac Catalina. It was apparent that Pontiac had cut costs inside the car compared with the 1964 model she had traded in. But the cost cutting resulted in simplification of everything, not a cheapening of what was there.
The seat upholstery, the door panels, and the general feel of the body were very basic, but they were not cheap. The car felt like a solid, well-built car which had suffered some dialing back in the content level. These Chryslers, on the other hand, felt cheap. You had to be an engineering geek or a dyed-in-the-wool Mopar guy to buy one after word got out on the 1969 models.
I want to make sure I understand: which models from Ford and GM was this one supposed to be competing against? Buick and Mercury? Maybe Oldsmobile? To qualify as a DS, I want to see the numbers of how badly this was beaten in the market by its competitors. I agree it was a poor effort by Mopar, without a doubt.
I had so much time sunk into this that I couldn’t spend any more time on it. I saw where big Buicks (not including Riviera) cranked out 425k cars in 1972, more than double what Chrysler did. Think back – The Mercury Marquis was on a roll, Oldsmobile 88 and 98 were on a roll, even the Ford LTD and Chevy Caprice were hot. Numbers require some research, but Olds and Buick were selling 6-700k cars a year, and the big ones were a high proportion of that. Mercury went from 365k in 1971 to 442k in 1972, and I doubt that the Comet and Montego were the biggest factors in those numbers because the Mercury Marquis was becoming very well known.
Quite right you are. A very precipitous fall from nowhere near the lofty heights that GM attained. Chevy or Buick alone I’m sure, laid waste to Chrysler on their own merits. Walter P would have been disappointed, which in itself makes it a Deadly Sin.
To my eye, these looked bulkier than necessary, that they needed to lose several dozen pounds if not more. They didn’t achieve that trim showing that GM achieved. The Fords were boxier, but these Chryslers were just too heavy looking. Wait to see what 1974 would bring!
I remember my dad picking me up in the new 1970 New Yorker and I was only a kid, but I was seriously underwhelmed. It was an attractive car, but it couldn’t hold a candle to our church friend’s Oldsmobile, Buick or Mercury. Like all kids, I bragged about the New Yorker, but in kid comparisons between our parent’s cars, the New Yorker lost.
It didn’t ride like the other cars either. It was louder. The Olds and Buick was silent, as was the Mercury. Not my dad’s car.
Then it started to have problems. It overheated. We’d take trips throughout the Rockies, and my dad was always on edge, watching the temperature gauge go up. He even installed another more precise gauge in order to know how to get it over the next series of mountain passes. More than once, we were stranded with the hood up, and my older brother under the car. During these three week trips, we usually expected a mechanical problem. Fortunately, my dad was a first-rate mechanic.
I really couldn’t tell the difference between the 1969 New Yorker and our 1970, except for the grille design. I really couldn’t tell the difference between the 1971 New Yorker either. All of them looked alike, but the Newport and Royale looked like strippers with unadorned rear bumpers and fenders.
Our family admired my dad’s uncle who was the owner of a 1962 Newport. My dad really admired that car. Our neighbors had a 1965 New Yorker, and it was another awesome looking ride. My dad was a Ford man, but took the leap with the 1970 New Yorker. That was his last Chrysler.
So, yes, I consider this a mediocre car that does qualify as a Deadly Sin for Chrysler.
Count me as another who likes the fuselage Mopars. One of my friends’ family had a Chrysler, and when I rode in it I was struck by how huge and luxurious it was compared to the Ramber Americans my family was driving.
Yet these were not supposed to compete with AMC compacts, so I see your point. I’d more think of it as a pre-deadly pre-sin.
Ten years earlier, Chrysler was offering silly overwrought auto designs, thanks to Exner. Engel cleaned them up and gave Chrysler a very sharp 1965 design obviously based upon the Lincoln he designed years earlier. Then he kept that design for three years until every other brand had moved on from the Lincoln design he pioneered.
By 1969, it was time for something else, but Engel didn’t deliver. The Fuselage is just a streamlined Lincoln without the Brougham touches. That loop bumper was a one year wonder on a Chevrolet, yet Engel put it on everything for the next five years. The in-bumper tail lights were done by GM years earlier, but Engel kept that design years after the competition moved on as well.
After the marvelous 1965 Chrysler, Engel kept putting out designs that Ford and GM had left behind. By 1969, the Fuselage didn’t really look new anymore. Yes, it was attractive, but the competition was giving buyers something new, while Chrysler wasn’t.
So, the 1974 Chrysler was really important. They needed to do something that didn’t look like a copy of a Buick or an Oldsmobile. The Imperial that year did deliver a Brougham classic for all time, but the rest of the line looked like something offered by the other brands, not fresh or different. And we all know what happened in 1974. Instead of giving us a redesigned compact car, that was last redesigned eight years earlier, Chrysler gave the market what it definitely did not want.
Considering how badly Chrysler design was by this time, obsolescent design ended up saving it, thanks to the Valiant/Dart/Duster. Knowing what we know now, had the Valiant/Dart/Duster 1966 design been updated as completely new, it could have ended up with a copy of a Torino or Colonade GM thing that would have sunk them.
I don’t know why Engel is considered a magic man anymore than Exner was. Both men gave Chrysler a one-year hit then sat on it for far too long. Perhaps it was corporate culture to mimic the Boss. Perhaps it was a generational trait, don’t challenge the Boss. But Chrysler wasn’t the only brand suffering from this as Ford suddenly thought Bunkie from Pontiac to be the guy to turn Ford into a sales winner when all he had to offer Ford was a bird beak front clip that looks completely ridiculous today. No wonder Lee Iacocca thought he could design cars. Was anyone looking forward in those years? Success really screwed the pooch, didn’t it?
I have read that Elwood Engel was a design executive who really lacked a particular style. He would see something he liked from one of the stylists and then work with it. He was in charge of everything for a decade, yet there was no real design language that lasted beyond a few years.
Chrysler had been a formerly great company that was still running on the fumes of Walter Chrysler and all he built, even as late as 1960-61. When Lynn Townsend was hired, he was a CPA with no background in the auto business, other than having done accounting work for them via an outside firm. For that matter, he had never run any business.
In a book written about Chrysler in the early Iacocca years, Lee was quoted as trying really hard to identify some key Chrysler people to build around. His new team identified only one (whose name I don’t recall) and even he didn’t work out. Townsend allowed that company to rot from the inside out. In terms of the general business guys who ran things, anyone who had been any good left while those who stayed were content with “The Townsend Way”. There may have been some good folks down in the trenches, but the management systems that had been put in place almost guaranteed failure.
Sounds like you don’t put accountants in charge of designing cars that stir the passion. Townsend sound like an earlier version of Roger Smith.
Iacocca was a snake oil salesman, but at least he knew how to sell snake oil. A lot of guys in leadership positions were bureaucrats living too comfortably to challenge the downward trends in their corporations until it became obvious to everyone that there was a problem in the corporation.
Disagree on these being a Deadly Sin, and its not just because I love them.
ALL American cars got cheaped out in the ’70s and big car sales were already trending downward in the early ’70s. As mentioned, the C-bodies did as well as expected given the market.
The F-body disaster, the lack of a real subcompact car until the Omni/Horizon in 1978, the lack of a real personal luxury coupe until the 1975 Cordoba, and Lynn Townsend’s failed sales bank selling methods were all far more contributors to Chrysler’s near death experience in 1980 than the C-bodies.
Dan, it was guys like you and me who would have kept buying those cars. I loved the “mechanical” feel of the cars and respected the engineering. I would certainly choose one of these over the 1974+ versions. I am quite sure I would have bought one had I been in the market in those years.
But – have you read the comments above? People who had exposure to the competition stayed away from these cars in droves, and most who tried one for the first time never tried another. The more I think about it, the biggest reason for the juice in sales in 1972-73 was the fugly styling on the Plymouth Furys in the same showroom.
oh I dont disagree that the cars didnt have faults-I had a ’72 Fury and knew every inch of the car, and it howled going down the road from the road noise, I just dont agree that they were a MAJOR contributing factor to the near demise of Chrysler and therefore not worthy of the Deadly Sin title.
Drive a 1970 Barracuda and then drive a 1970 Camaro. Both stunningly beautiful, new-for-1970 models but the build quality and overall road worthiness of the GM F-Bodies were far superior to the Mopar E-bodies, and I say that as a life long die hard Mopar fan thats owned examples of both cars. The same could be said of the A and B Bodies of the same vintage. Mopars had the edge in engineering but their build quality was always questionable across all of their car lines.
And sure, a lot of people probably left Chrysler for GM in the 70s but then they left GM for Toyota in the 80s.
While the total market share claimed by traditional full-size cars had been sinking for years by the early 1970s, sales of the Chrysler’s direct competitors – Buick, Oldsmobile and Mercury – actually held up well. The big decline was experienced by the full-size Chevrolet, along with the full-size Pontiac. This car’s direct competitors were thus doing reasonably well in the early 1970s.
What also hurt the division’s image was the lack of an intermediate offering (until the Cordoba came along for the 1975 model year). Sales of the Oldsmobile Cutlass dramatically increased during the 1970s, and the Buick intermediates also sold well. Their strong sales helped the respective parent division avoid the “old person” aura that increasingly engulfed Chrysler during these years.
Among the fuselage cars, these did seem to be more popular among retail buyers than their Dodge and Plymouth siblings. (And about 75 percent of all “civilian” fuselage Mopars were painted this color!) A fair percentage of those two were sold to taxi cab companies and police departments by the early 1970s.
The Chryslers did sell more to retail buyers. Unfortunately, it seemed as though most of them were over the age of 60, and they were less likely to order “loaded” models, as compared to buyers of the Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Mercurys.
I got stuck with a Plymouth version of one of these in the summer of ’72 when I had been rear ended. The HUGE 4 door, IIRC, Plymouth something was what I had to drive until my full size Chevy was repaired. Talk about a wallowing boat! There was nothing about the huge, floundering Plymouth that appealed to me, at all. Brakes, handling, ride, economy? NONE of those seemed to exist as I pushed my way through L.A. traffic in this monster.
Deadly sin? Maybe given there seemed to be nothing likeable about the car for me……..DFO
I have said it many times: I absolutely loved the 69 Plymouth Fury my high school received as a driver’s ed car. Next to the 67 Ford that I would always wind up with, I thought that Plymouth was a jump ahead in styling and overall design.
But this car? If this exact car had been my school’s driver’s ed car, I don’t think I would have given Plymouth or Chrysler a second thought after the mid 60s.
Today, car manufacturers limit some paint colors to certain models…this avocado green with a green interior graced every model Chrysler Corporation would build. Perhaps because my 69 Valiant Signet was this same green, I really don’t care for it. My point being, that just from the paint colors, this is a VERY cheap looking car. And it just goes downhill from there. Why in the heck car manufacturers thought it was a good idea to make extremely cheap versions of upper level cars, I will never know. It makes the whole range look exceedingly cheap.
The words “cheaper” and “Chrysler” should not go together. But when I listen to your description of these cars, and look at the ads, that is what comes to mind. I had thought that their contribution to Chrysler’s near-demise was because they were a stylistic dead end, but you have convinced me that the real cause was the drop in real and perceived quality that they represented. Cadillac got away with this for a little longer, but Chrysler did not have the reserves with which to do so. Ouch.
I was reminded about how awful Cadillac had become by this time as well. Coasting on brand legacy isn’t a long-term strategy.
Regardless of its industrial impact, you found a really nice example of a ’71 Chrysler, JP! It’s a perfect survivor, right down to the wheel covers. I imagine it’s a 383, and it looks like it has two tailpipes under the bumper, so it’ll sound great. I’m not a superfan of Fuselage Chryslers, but I’d drive this one around for a while.
I know! For a Wisconsin car to look like this, it had to have been driven very little, and only in good weather.
I wonder if anyone has noticed the really unusual 2 tone paint job – the roof is painted a darker green in lieu of the more common vinyl roof.
A great article! It seemed as though most fuselage Mopars were painted in this color. There was actually a mint fuselage Newport sedan for sale at last year’s Fall Carlisle show – painted in this color.
From what I’ve read, a big problem was that Townsend was spending money to shore up Chrysler’s money-losing European operations, instead of investing it back into the North American operation (which was making the money in the mid-1960s).
The engineering staff was not expanded to deal with additional model lines, let alone new government safety and emissions regulations. As one insider put it, “The trunk of the E-body (Barracuda and Challenger) leaked because the trunk of the C-body leaked.” No real effort was made to address this and other issues.
In the early 80s book Going For Broke it was reported that the management structures had just broken down. There was no coordination between departments, one part would get engineered then it would be tossed to the next department without regard for whether it met the next department’s requirements because those requirements had not been communicated. It was also reported that the head of quality control reported to the head of manufacturing, so that when manufacturing was desperate enough for numbers to hit end-of-month targets set by management, everything got shipped whether there were problems with the cars or not and there was nobody with any power in charge of quality processes. The cars showed it.
It’s interesting to read the Popular Mechanics Owners Reports on Chrysler Corporation cars in the 1960s. From 1962 through 1965, Chrysler Corporation quality was actually good – better, in some respects, than GM or Ford (fewer complaints about poor workmanship in 1964 and 1965).
Then things went south for 1966…which coincides with the beginning of the notorious Sales Bank. Some owner complaints regarding the 1966 Dodge Coronet reflect that many of cars that had sat outside for too long.
The report on the 1969 Chrysler New Yorker is equally interesting – particularly compared to the report on the 1969 Oldsmobile Delta 88. The higher quality of the Olds is quite evident, based on owner feedback.
Chrysler laid off large numbers of white collar staff starting in 1958, during those ugly years. Management slowly came to to the painful realization that they really were #3 (and a significantly smaller #3) and were destined to stay that way. That limited their development and engineering capabilities.
Note how the programs for the new 1962 large Chrysler and Imperial were abandoned at that time. The ’63-’64 Chrysler was really cobbled up, and looked painfully so (despite certain charms) compared to the GM competition.
The ’65 C Bodies obviously took all of their efforts, and they were fine cars, but the C-Bodies weren’t actually successful as a group. Dodge’s big cars fell off a cliff and never recuperated. The Newport was just stealing from Dodge and Plymouth. Look at that chart: total large Mopars never really improved on their 1964 numbers! It’s a bit irrelevant talking about just the Chrysler brand when Dodge was already dying in terms of large cars. Chrysler was dead meat when it came to the large car market.
In fact, I’ve harbored the thought that perhaps Chrysler had it right in 1962, killing the big Plymouths and Dodges, but they would have had to still build a more compelling Chrysler and Imperial line.
These fuselage Chryslers were just barely tarted-up Furys. And that was painfully obvious at the time. And yes, they were noisier and felt cheaper than the competition.
Another factor: Everyone new that Mopars were essentially all the same under their barely-varied skin: Same engines, same starter sound, same parts everywhere, same feel. GM was dominant in the mid-upper sector in large part because folks still saw them as being somehow unique in certain respects, like their engines, and some transmissions, and other qualities. There were only Mopar guys. But there were Chevy guys, Pontiac guys, Olds guys, Buick guys and Cadillac guys. That’s why GM’s market share was so dominant.
Even Mercury finally found the secret with the Mercury Marquis. It was a Ford under the skin, but provided a lot of Lincoln to buyers who did not have a Lincoln budget. The cars felt good, were smooth and quiet. Everyone who watched TV knew that you could cut diamonds in the back seat. Yes, we all knew it was hype, but can anyone remember an ad for a big Chrysler in these years?
Hmm. Full-size Mercury share peaked in 1969 at 1.9%, and went downhill from there. In 1975 it was half that (1.0%). Maybe the credibility of that diamond-cutting commercial in 1972 wasn’t all that good?
For the Mercury post I tried to find a copy of the SNL parody of the diamond cutting in the back seat ad where they had a rabbi perform a circumcision….It has seemed to have been excised from the internet by SNL
The failure of the big Dodges to gain traction during 1965-68 is somewhat mystifying, given that they did not share a showroom with the Chryslers, while the full-size Plymouths did. A Dodge dealer couldn’t “upsell” a prospect to a full-size Chrysler, but a Chrysler-Plymouth dealer could offer customers either the Chrysler or the full-size Plymouth. Yet the Plymouths easily outsold the Dodges during those years.
Another reason the GM divisions were more successful is that Bill Mitchell’s staff did a very good job of developing and maintaining specific styling cues for each division. Chryslers changed considerably from a styling standpoint with each generation, while the full-size Buicks and Oldsmobiles maintained a more consistent look. It also helped that the big GM cars had a better reputation for reliability and build quality.
Big Dodge styling was “odd” in that era compared to the more conservative Plymouth, yet there was not a “premium” look to it. Compare that with Mercury or Pontiac, similarly priced competitors. Mercury pulled off a Lincoln look on a Ford and Pontiac had its own distinctive look above a Chevy.
When I was learning to drive, my older brother had a 1970 Plymouth Fury III in the same green as the featured car. While it wasn’t my cup of tea, it was a 2-door hardtop, so it matched my basic template of an acceptable car. I was OK with the green exterior and the interior was a pretty sharp three tone green vinyl. Oh and the 383 2-bbl with Torqueflite – pretty cool.
Two things I couldn’t get over were the horribly plain grille (I was OK with the loop bumper) and the fugly dashboard. One thing a Chrysler Royal buyer would get over a Plymouth would be a much more attractive grille.
I loved the earlier Chryslers…. the 69 Satellites and Barracudas and even the Valiants were all lean and handsome cars with great engines. They were less sophisticated than Fords and GM cars of the equivalent model, but they did indeed seem like they were cars where fundamental engineering took precedence over style. Then came the fuselage cars….they all seemed bloated but with less content ( Krispy Creme doughnuts with a tempting exterior but nothing but air inside), and the engineering improved not one whit. I had a friend with a 72 Barracuda which was the cheapest-built POS I had ever seen.
To be perfectly honest I must confess there was one exception: I have always wanted a 1971 Sport Fury GT with the 440…. but only because of it was the perfect example of wretched excess taken to the extreme. I mean:
In 1970, Car & Driver magazine wrote that Chrsyler’s product design philosophy was to jump onto a trend late but to jump harder than anyone else. Their example at the time was the new at-the-time Dodge Challenger, a car aimed at the first generation F-body Camaro and Firebird. It arrived to market just as GM was moving in a fresh nee direction with those cars.
This full size Chrysler was much the same, a car design a full 3 years too late, a great car but at the wrong time.
Riding in a comparable GM product you did notice the ride difference, harshness and noise of a Chrysler. Chrysler doors did feel less hefty and didn’t have the same feel as a Ford. Good observations all around
I hate it that I agree with this article, and I would LOVE to have a ’71 Chrysler like this with a 360.
In my garage are a 1968 Plymouth Fury VIP fast top and a base model 1979 Dodge St. Regis. Both cars have been in the family a really long time though not from brand new. The differences in quality are almost insane between them with the ’68 the very clear winner. Much of that is how much cheap plastic is in the ’79 and the painfully cheap approach to headliners, window regulators, interior panels and more. It would take a book to describe all of the differences between the two but if you’ve ever had much experience with an R-body Mopar, you’ll know what they are. I’ve had my St. Regis 25 years and counting. My dad had it for ten years before me and his complete mechanical rebuild when he bought it made it the most reliable driver either of us ever had and I love driving the St. Regis (love driving the Fury even more) Sadly it doesn’t make the St. Regis interior the most pleasant.
If I were to compare the ’71 Royal to the ’79 St. Regis, the ’71 would be the clear winner. While the Royal would be a cheap car by the standards of 1971, by 1979, the even cheaper R-body would make the base model C look like luxury. I know this from the times I looked at fuselage Chryslers as a daily driver replacement for my ’67 Sport Fury back in the early 90’s. Would have preferred a Plymouth to the Chrysler but examples good enough for the purpose were thinner on the ground at the time.
The series in the middle (1974-78) sort of splits the difference between the Fusey and your R body. There were parts of the interiors that seemed better done than the earlier car, but then they rusted worse and you had to deal with Lean Burn.
I will say that a friend’s father bought a new 77 Newport 4 door hardtop and it seemed to be a big improvement. Still, the carpet, upholstery, door panels and all were a step down from the FoMoFo and GM stuff I was experiencing around that time. My own 77 New Yorker was quite nice inside, but was still not as refined.
My ’79 St. Regis had Lean Burn which the original owner removed and switched it to points. When my dad bought the car in the mid 80’s, he converted it to standard electronic ignition. He actually wanted something a bit older than the St. Regis, but finding one not eat up with rust was a problem. (Central Kentucky is the southern end of the Rust Belt with the crazy amount of salt that gets dumped on the roads) The St. Regis probably did better in the rust department, but the 74-78 cars were definitely better looking. I wouldn’t mind having a 74-77 Fury as either a Fury III or a Brougham. Had a chance to buy one in 2009 but I had just rescued my late grandfather’s ’68 VIP from a field where it sat for 13 years so I passed on the last gen C.
How to distinguish a 1970 versus a 1971 full-size Chrysler (or Plymouth or Dodge) was no mystery if it was a pillared sedan, wagon, or 4-door hardtop: If it didn’t have vent windows, that made it a 1971 and not a 1970. (In 1969 and ’70, two-door hardtops had vent windows too, but if the car was equipped with factory a/c, they were deleted. All convertibles had vent windows but were discontinued after 1970.)
The facelifted 1972-73 models regained vent windows as an option on 4-door cars and wagons, but they were manually operated rather than cranked. This option remained for the 1974-78 full-size cars.
Also, the outside rear view mirrors were round on all ’70 models: square on the ’71s. Actually, it was only the ’69 two door hardtops, without ac, that had vent windows. All ’70 two door hardtops lacked vent windows, with or without ac. You’re correct about the four door hardtops though.
Thanks for the correction regarding the 1970 coupes; I was going by memory only.
Great article! But what about the wagon perspective?
My parents bought a Town and Country in 1971, but not especially because they were MoPar fans. While they were replacing a 1961 Plymouth wagon, and we’d had some positive experiences renting 68 – 70 Dodges for family vacations, AND my dad always fancied himself as something of a Plymouth guy (heck, we even owned a Simca 1000 when that was being sold by Chrysler dealers), what they REALLY wanted in 1971 was an Oldsmobile wagon.
As a 10 year old, I eagerly awaited the arrival of a Vista Cruiser (nearly 50 years later, I still eagerly await the arrival of a Vista Cruiser….). But that wasn’t to be due to the 1970 GM strike. So, we wound up with the Town and Country mostly because that’s all we could get. I wonder how that strike effected Chrysler sales figures that year.
The Town and Country was a fine car, although I’d agree with nearly everything said in this article. It was truly, seriously, enormous and drove more like some kind of watercraft than a car. When I was getting my license in 1976, I recall taking only one turn at the Town and Country’s wheel before I decided “Nope…too big. I’m absolutely going to hit something.”, and then took up with the Fiat 128 (which by that time had replaced the Simca after inept Chrysler dealer mechanics pretty much killed that thing). I guess my family had a thing for extremes.
When he wanted to travel incognito, John Lennon’s last ride was a plain 1971 Chrysler station wagon.
Harry Truman’s last car was an early seventies Chrysler sedan, as well.
Good story. Maybe I’m missing something, but why were these called “fuselage”?
The general shape of the body resembled an aircraft fuselage in the way the sides curved at the top and bottom.
and also how it didn’t jut out just underneath the beltline, as the ’65-68 cars did by a few inches. This same look was previewed on the ’66 Toronado.
My dad got a yellow 1974 Dodge Royal Monaco wagon with the wood applique done in the baroque style of that time. It had the cheap interior of vinyl bench seats and a third row seat. It lasted three years, I think. It rusted quickly, showing through the yellow paint by 1977 right at the front fender where the A pillar drained into the fenders.
I drove it. I’ll never forget how ginormous it was. I had to slide over the bench seat to unlock the front passenger door, and it was the longest non-truck or RV I ever commanded on the road.
I meant to correct that year before posting – 1973 Dodge Royal Monaco wagon
That is a beautiful looking wagon from afar.Too bad they couldn’t build them solid and with better materials like in a Colony Park. They were truly throw away cars back then if in any region with snow and salt.
The one thing that I remember about these Dodge’s was how most of them drove around with the hidden headlights exposed. The picture of the woody wagon looks like a parody from today’s perspective. The wood decal wrap-up into the roof? Seriously? Chevy Chase, your car awaits.
The problem with labeling the big Chrysler fuselage a DS is that Chrysler had other candidates from the same timeframe that could easily qualify, as well. The ill-fated E-body, in particular, sucked up a lot of development money that Chrysler could not afford to squander. In fact, the only car that Chrysler had that ‘wouldn’t’ be a DS would be the stout A-body (particularly the wildly successful Duster).
What’s the problem? That leaves room for more DS posts, right?
As you know JP I have a full size Mercury Park Lane and the full size 73 Polara Custom. I can first attest to the fact that these two cars ride differently. The Mercury, although a 67, rides very solid and smooth on the road. There are no rattles even now at 53 years old. It feels to be a much heavier car than it is.
The Polara, however, doesn’t ride and feel like a solid car if you know what I mean. It rides like it is a lighter car for one. It has some rattles one hears when not driving on a smooth section of freeway. Hard to pin them down. Now I have never driven a Fusie New Yorker to see if it is any more solid. Yet, if I had my choice I would rather have a 66 New Yorker. I did improve mine with a generous application of sound deadening material throughout top to bottom.
The interior of my Polara isn’t much different from the Newport. In fact Chrysler used the same door rest in all their full size cars. My white rest can go into a white Newport. Same goes for the door handles in and out.
If it weren’t for the fact that a college friend of mine bought a brand new 73 Newport Custom 4 door I wouldn’t have recalled seeing any of these. I recall his gold one clearly because I kept asking him what 21 year old buys such a car? I was dumbfounded by his purchase. Outside of that car these draw a blank in my mind till 2010 when I saw a Cougar Club mate with one and went what is that?
The headline had me prepared for a put-up-yer-dukes, but I’m standin’ down; you’ve made your case very convincingly.
Great post JP, and I agree that the Fuselage cars were deadly sins for Mopar. As noted here, quality was “hit or miss” (apparently more often “miss”), but I think the real problem was the styling on the ’69s, which proved design boss Elwood Engel was not one of the greats. The justification for Engel was that he was needed to “tone down” on the excesses blamed on preceding design chief Virgil Exner, but losing the trend-setting design capabilities (even if they included some major duds) was not a good formula for a company desperately trying to differentiate from bigger, better funded competitors.
Whether you love or hate Virgil Exner’s work, he did have an excellent sense of proportion, and was an early advocate for the long hoot/short deck look that would become prevalent in the later 1960s and 1970s. But Elwood Engel very deliberately dumped that look, and created designs with long hood/long decks that felt very “early 1960s.” The redesigned full-sizers introduced for 1969 both at Ford and GM sported the long hood/shorter deck proportions, so the Chrysler products felt instantly dated.
And that ties to my my childhood perception of these cars being for “old people.” My Great Aunt had New Yorkers (lots of them through the years, including the Fuselage models), some of my grandmother’s friends had Fuselage Chryslers, but basically no one my parents age seemed to have them. 40- and 50-somethings seemed to gravitate to GM and Ford biggies, 60-somethings (and older) went Mopar.
To further dump on the Fuselage design, contemporary reviews noted that the ’69 Dodge and Plymouth models felt like bloated versions of the ’66 Chevrolet. A fair assessment when you look closely, but in no way were they as elegantly sculpted as Bill Mitchell’s mid-decade big cars. Mitchell would also do “fuselage” right with the ’71 GM big car redesign. The relatively airy greenhouse, well-shaped wheel openings, body sculpting, and overall proportions made the GM “fuselage” cars look light years more sophisticated than the bloated, poorly-proportioned Chryslers.
As for the “lost year” of 1971, I have to think that the ’72 Fuselage major facelift (which was horrible in my opinion, making the cars look even more dated/bizarre/ungainly) was originally planned for ’71, but got pushed back to save money. Perhaps the fully redesigned ’74 cars were originally planned for ’73–and if so, they might have had a fighting chance to actually gain share in an booming sales year. But no such luck.
In 1972, my dad bought a fully loaded New Yorker Brougham, identical to the one in the picture. To us kids, the most satisfying aspect of the purchase was that he brought it home on the same day that our neighbors across the street got a 1972 Caprice. As kids (and parents, too) often do, we had gotten the “snob” treatment, because they got a new car every 5 years or so. This time, however, OURS was more highly optioned than theirs, and to be honest, the feeling was most enjoyable!! AND, I inherited my Dad’s old car as my first!! 🙂
There was not enough difference between the three model years from 1969 through 1971 aside from a few trim and detail changes. It was hopelessly stale by 1971. And as others have stated, there was no upmarket longer wheel base New Yorker that was substantially different from the lower Newport and 300 models, as was done with GM’s upmarket B-body (98 & Electra) and noticeably smaller C-body (Delta & LeSabre) platforms.
Chrysler was really looking for conquest sales with the new 1969‘s. The ad slogan that year was “Chrysler, your next car.“ Many of the commercials are up on YouTube. The jingle was written by Steve Karmen, the Jingle king who gave us I love New York and Pontiac’s “Break Away”. The name of the theme is “Moments” and there’s a full length instrumental of that up on YouTube as well.
There’s a full-length version of Pontiac’s “Breakaway” too (Jimmy Radcliffe on awesome vocals) that was actually a hit in the UK. Steve Karmen is one of the all time successful pop songwriters, only nobody realizes it because the Budweiser jingle isn’t recorded on the Billboard charts. Another car-related Karmen jingle I haven’t forgotten after 45 years was for General Tire: “Someday you’ll own… someday you’ll own… sooner or later you’ll own Generals”.
On the plus side, the Fuselage Chryslers seemed to be a bit bolder in terms of styling trends after very carefully seeming to follow GM styling leads 2 years behind in the mid-late ’60s. On the downside, being a bit bolder didn’t payoff in any real way. These set a theme at Chrysler that was picked up in their 1971 B bodies that also fell flat.
Chryslers were rare in my GM centric world, but to the point made that Chrysler buyers were loyalists, two families I knew with Chrysler cars both had TWO Fuselage four door Newports each. As a youngster, it seemed remarkable to see two huge and nearly identical cars in the same driveway. The neighbors with the big brown LeSabre sedan and the smallish white over orange Skylark coupe seemed more normal.
Still, I kinda liked these although the dashboards always stuck me as painfully cheap looking, all the way through the Imperial level trim (let’s face it, the Fuselage Imperial was a Chrysler trim line). The rest of the interior I generally liked, sort of austere in a European sense – but wrong for an era when the primary competition was going full tilt Brougham.
I like it enough that a few Fuselage cars reside in my fantasy garage, including an aqua colored Newport Custom with a black vinyl roof, black interior, and loaded including those funky power window switches Chrysler used then.
For those wondering where I’m coming from regarding the Fuselage style showing leadership, I note that Chrysler seemed to popularize the thin sedan window frame with the inner chrome edge on higher trims two years before GM, and 10 years before Ford. And, GM’s 1971 B bodies had a bit of Fuselage going on themselves…..
Two American sedans: 124″ vs 113″ WB, 224″ vs 186″ L.
Sad to read all this, though its something I sort of knew as a long time reader of this website.
I will never understand how management at Chrysler could let this happen, When these were released it wasn’t that far in the past that they had been through all this with the Forward Look cars, even though the 1957 issues were more forgiveable because they wanted to be the style leader. So the fuselage cars felt cheap by design, when the engineers drove them and compared them to the competion, how could they just let it all be?. an unforgiveable sin.
Oh well, one of my alltime favourite cars will always be a 1970 Sport Fury GT with a 440.
I have a BIG SOFT SPOT for fuselage Chryslers.
My best friend’s Mom drove a ’69 four door Chrysler Newport.
The backseat was large enough for an entire little league baseball team.
Lots of memories!!
Very much like the attached.
My father drove a series of Dodge Polaras in the 1960s, and each one seemed a little less special than the last. His cream-on-gold upholstery ’65 was wonderful in every respect – the comfort, the performance, the beauty – all there. His dark green-on-gold ’68 was good, quite good, but still lacked a bit in comparison. The he got a mint green ’69 Polara fusie. Not good. The paint was indifferently applied and there were obvious production economies. Worst of all was the lack of room. I’m 6’4″, and I would squirm to find adequate head and leg room in an enormous car. That ’69 was his last Chrysler product.
Very intriguing article! I never really thought of fuselages that way. I always liked their style, but I’ve never owned one or even driven one, so I’m not tuned into their weaknesses. Thanks for the food for thought!
The subject car is remarkably clean, I would have been interested in a little more on it. It is quite a feat for an old Mopar to live in Wisconsin and Indiana and be that rust free. Paint looks original and judging by the interior, I’ll bet it has well under 100k miles. Funny how the armrest is so worn but the original-looking cloth upholstery is pretty solid.
Great find and writeup!
Those armrests always cracked. Even by 1980 or so, finding a good armrest (in the right color) in a junkyard was a hit or miss proposition.
I spent a bit of time taking the pictures and had kind of hoped someone might come out and ask what the heck I was doing. The car does indeed look like it has a story to tell. The combination of the historic plate and the original condition parked outdoors in the parking lot of a none-too-luxurious apartment complex is a puzzler. The tires looked ancient. All the while I harbored fantasies of buying it for $1800 and driving it. But then it is not 1985 anymore.
Try to visit http://www.forcbodiesonly.com, sometimes there are good deals on 4 door sedans in the for sale section.
This is one instance of the wagon being the best looking variant of all body styles. I couldn’t stand the looks of the others at their introduction but I’ve since grown to understand what the stylists were trying to do. In fact, the slightly Botoxed cars of 1973 onward were most attractive, especially the Imperials. Still, I agree with Jim that 1965- 1966 was Peak Chrysler.
Despite being a Mopar guy, on reflection I have to agree the fuselage cars hurt the brand.
My family had a ’64 Newport, and though odd looking, It was a nice car to ride in and to drive (I learned in that car). Dad then got a ’73 Newport. Nice deign–Chrysler adopted a flatter quasi-classical front clip that year–and I have generally thought the fuselage design has grown in appeal over the years. However, that car felt less like a Chrysler. Less solid, cheaper, more plasticy, noisier. It was huge though; my best friend’s dad drove a ’71 Cadillac Sedan de Ville and my buddy was clearly crest-fallen when he realized that the cavernous but lowly Chrysler provided far more leg and head room. But that was cold comfort on the road. Next came a ’78 New Yorker Brougham 4-door hardtop. Vastly different in quality. It seemed a smaller car, but it was so quiet and smooth with that old Chrysler handling, and the interior felt very high quality. This one had the velour interior in brown, and the fabric was sensuous with three different contrasting textures employed; ribbed velour on the seat face, smooth velour for the seat trim, crushed velour for the door panels, with some smooth trim below. It looked rich. Remarkably different experience. (Lean Burn was a bugger, however.)
In my opinion Plymouth did the best with the new “Fuselage Look” in 1969.
As always, JP, a fine read.
We weren’t a Chrysler family – the closest my Dad came was a test drive of a new Aspen or Volare which he immediately pronounced as, “crap”, thus ending the Chrysler product conversation. I dabbled briefly when I owned a 67 Sport Fury fast top for a couple years in the mid-80’s. Oh, to still own that one…….
However, while growing up I rode in many a neighborhood Chrysler. In line with your statement, JP, when I look back I realize nobody I knew had a fusie as their first foray into the brand, but only to replace an older one. A lady two houses down replaced her 63-64 New Yorker with a green model much like the subject car. (She drove Chryslers and her husband drove 4×4 Internationals) , and I remember at least a couple families where their fusie wagons replaced earlier generation, usually Dodge or Plymouth, wagons.
I heard about, the build quality issues with this generation and later witnessed the same at my first job as a technician.
I agree with many posters here that 65-68 were the peak years, I would love to have Newport or New Yorker wagon from this generation, but my dear wife is less enthusiastic in regard to the idea.
I didn’t know that there was a Chrysler Deadly Sin series, so I took this opportunity to look at the other entries. The Volare and Aspen were nice cars that on paper seemed at least as desirable as their contemporaries from the bigger two, but sadly the execution was just too sloppy early in their run. The R-bodies also shouldn’t have been terrible, but there is no getting around that they were. Here was a car that was originally designed to be the right-sized large car that could have righted Detroit’s ship, finally cast back into the role it was meant for. In the intervening years, the platform had underpinned the best intermediate cars the US ever produced. Somehow, late ’70s Chrysler still managed to seize defeat.
The worrisome thing is that the recent Dodge Dart and Chrysler 200 are as awful as anything Chrysler produced before becoming a subsidiary of Fiat. Rejected by the new car market, reviled by mechanics, and utterly devoid of both resale value and dependability; their abbreviated runs mean there won’t be the parts support needed to keep them on the road as long as the worst of the Aspens.
“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.”
This. When I was 12 my grandparents drove up in a brand new Chrysler full size. That was 1970 or so and I don’t remember what model it was. I do remember that it was very large and very beige. According to my father, my grandfather switched to Chrysler after Packard bit the dust and would never consider another brand.
He was still driving that huge beige Chrysler in the late-70s but within a few years he’d traded it in on a K-car of some sort; a Chrysler customer to the end.
I have a soft spot for the fuselage Chryslers.
My best friend’s Mom had a ’69 Newport Custom Sedan. Could fit an entire kids baseball team in the back seat with room to spare. Better yet, five kids and two adults on a vacation trip. IIRC, it had a 383 V8 two barrel. It got handed down to my friend several years later. A/C was busted, but it got him around!!
Our next door neighbor had a 1966 Chrysler Town and Country wagon that was traded on a similarly equipped 1972 T & C. Both were used to tow his huge Airstream trailer. The differences between these two vehicles was stark. The ‘66 was finished like a Mercedes S Class, with a bank vault feel and an interior featuring solid metal and luxurious appointments. The 440 TNT was no slouch either.
The ‘72 was cheaply built, akin to a Plymouth Fury. Thin vinyl upholstery and an overall tinny feel. It’s 440 was less powerful than the ‘66 version and struggled with the Airstream, where the ‘66 would blast up mountains without strain.
At first blush the Fuselage cars might look fine, but for those who remember what a premium car Chrysler used to be, they are indeed Deadly Sins.
One thing seems to be universal: when a Company decides to invest in a good design style they will fail in everything else and they will put a unreal price at it, way more expensive than what the product deliver to consumers and it will fail and the company executives will blame it on the design style. Another thing is also universal in Companies, when they decide for a bland design or an ugly design, they’re forced to invest too much more in quality, high end finishing, recalls as well in marketing, and then even if the product had a bland career with mediocre sales, the executives will say it was a success or it accomplished exactly what was expected from it.
My grandparents had a beautiful Fury III two-door hardtop that I loved. They traded in during the gas crisis in 1975 for a rather dull Buick Regal. I was too young to remember if anything was inherently wrong with the car; it had replaced an even more gorgeous 65 Newport four-door hardtop – exquisite turquoise inside and out. But I have nothing to add except that Chrysler is the whore of US carmakers, and a cheap whore at that. I have no sympathy for their current fortunes because they’ve always been about selling themselves to the lowest bidder like a strumpet. As an owner of two Mopar products from the 90s, you’d never see me behind the wheel of one; I even shudder when I find out my Uber ride is a Chrysler product I hate them so much.
Through my teen years my only very occasional association with Mopar was when my grandfather visited. He was a diehard Dodge man and the last Dodge I saw him in was a 1966 Polara. Never rode in it though. My father had a 68 Fury III for less than a year as a company car and then dumped it. Can’t recall ever riding in it. A college friend bought a gold 73 Newport in 1974 as his daily driver. I thought that was so odd since he was the same age as me, 21. Never rode in it.
Then when I saw a Cougar Club mate drive up to a picnic one day, not in one of his Cougars, but in a 73 Polara as a Air Pollution Patrol car, I was somewhat smitten with the car. Don’t really know why but had to go looking for one similar. That led me to my 73 Polara 4dr. hardtop about 4 months later to add to my collection. That is the first C body I ever rode or drove. Actually like the 66-68 slab sides a little better. I did notice the corners Mopar cut on the car and the cheap interior plastics, the same manual window crank across the lines, and the same arm rest across the lines and years. Tinniness has been minimize be amble application of sound deadener throughout.
A good look at the car that caught my attention.
My family had a ’60 New Yorker that my mom mostly drove, and with a couple of cars in between, a ’68 Imperial that had a cam in it and was the quickest car of all the ones my dad had. Both had issues, the ’60 had unending electrical issues, which finally doomed it and it was replaced by the hideously ugly ’63 New Yorker in a sort of turquoise/corroded copper color. It was so ugly my mom couldn’t wait for it to be gone, and soon it was, replaced by a baby blue Caddy Sedan De Ville. The Imp was ok, except the A/C would get stuck in MAX, and those leather seats in the summer were shockingly cold when wearing shorts. My one friend’s dad was a Chrysler fanatic, and he had a ’65 Newport in an awful cream color and his wife had an old Valiant that was close to the end, it was rusted to the point you could watch the road go by through the floor. The Valiant went first replaced with a ’69 Dart or Scamp, red with a black top. Power was the mighty 318. The New Yorker was wrecked while parked at the cemetary where he worked at, and it was replaced with a ’68 Newport in kind of a black cherry, and I remember thinking, “This is the Imp with a smaller engine and cheapened up interior!”. I drove it once when I was 13 his dad took us to some huge parking lot and let each of us drive the car. He was buying new tires so burnouts were encouraged. The 383 4 barrel did well, but the car was pretty weak compared to the Imp. I remember thinking how much better the brakes were on my sister’s ’68 Cutlass.
He and his wife remained Mopar people until the end, him in 1985, I don’t remember what he was driving, except it was a Mopar and it was silver, and her in 2018. Her last car was a silver St,.Regis that was given to one of the grandkids when she passed away.
As a kid, I rode in a neighbor’s fuselage New Yorker once. Terrible road noise. Really felt cheap compared to our ’68 Electra. The next generation big Dodge and Chrysler looked so much better, but too late, bad timing.
With ‘racy styling’ and cheaper interiors, seems like Chrysler brand was aiming at ‘move up’ buyers from Plymouth, Dodge, but they turned off loyal and conquests.
The ’72 looked like a ’69, even with new sheet metal, and only got die hard buyers, while Buick, Olds and Mercury were getting well-off, paying customers.The ’73, with conservative front end, that looked like the 65-68, got more buyers, in the banner sales year. As stated above, the ’74 ‘Bluesmobile’ C-bodies were too late to the party.