(first posted 12/2/2014. This was inspired by a comment from 1964bler, a man with whom I’ve had a delightful conversation on Checker build quality.)
It’s September 26, 1972. You have just had your first child and your other half has announced that carrying a baby around in the Barracuda is simply not going to happen. Stylish and trendy Mopar fan boy that you are, you promptly head to the Plymouth dealer to make Momma happy. The dealership is flush with examples of all the new 1973 model Plymouths; this is the day of introduction for the new 1973 models.
Wanting to shift gears into fatherhood, without totally over-reacting, you decide to skip any wagon for now – and hopefully forever.
Looking at the Valiant four-door sedan, you aren’t so sure that will fill the ticket. It strikes you as rather dowdy and this won’t mesh with your aura of sophistication. It’s great for grandma and grandpa to drive when going to see the grandkids, but not for a young, virile guy. Keep looking.
The mid-size Satellite intrigues you, but the car angels aren’t singing. With a baby here, and likely more on the way, there will be a lot of baby related items to haul around so you figure, what the hell? Let’s go big or go home.
This is the ticket! Large and in charge. Lots of room to haul the baby paraphernalia and you realize the car angels are smiling upon you. The dealer has three new ones in stock; all are in a color that looks more at home with that recently concluded soiree in Munich. This isn’t the Olympics, so no gold for you.
The dealer has offered to order you a car; he said the turnaround time is pretty quick right now. Looking at the color sheet, you are amazed. Seventeen different colors! That’s a color for almost every digit on that new baby. In your profound state of amazement, you don’t realize the amount of overlap with three golds, four blues, and four greens. You are a dapper and charming fellow; nothing other than “Amber Sherwood” will do. You decide to order one.
Looking at the option sheet makes you almost as excited as that quick reprieve from your in-laws’ dinner party which you suspicion indirectly led to your being here. Well, maybe excited isn’t the best word to describe it, but it’s pretty darned wonderful to look at the cornucopia of possibilities. Thinking about it you order:
The green interior. It matches the exterior so wonderfully. It’s 1972 and nothing says suave and debonair quite like green. All the critics agree that green is a reflection of keen intelligence and shrewd risk taking. You tell the salesman to check the box.
What lies under the hood is truly the heart and soul of any automobile. For 1973, Chrysler has made the 318 standard fare (as well as front disc brakes) for the Fury. Looking at the option sheet, you marvel in how well spaced Chrysler has their engine displacements – 318, 360, 400, and 440 cubic inches.
Gasoline is cheap so you enthusiastically declare your desire for the 440. You need something to propel your 3,800 pound sedan with authority. Little do you know that Road and Track would soon be testing a very comparable Dodge Polara; it would accelerate to 60 mph in 7.7 seconds, equal to a new AMC Javelin AMX and a 455 powered Pontiac Grand Prix, all while doing the quarter-mile faster than the Pontiac. Your shrewd choices will pay dividends for years to come.
The trim you choose is the Fury III. Perhaps Plymouth was less creative by naming their series Fury I, Fury II, Fury III, and Fury Gran Sedan, but it appeals to your sense of order more than does Biscayne, Bel-Air, Impala, and Caprice.
After a few weeks, your new steed arrives at the dealership. Upon arriving with the Mrs. and your new progeny, the sales staff is watching a promotional film by Chrysler. You catch enough of it to agree that your new Plymouth wears its new federally mandated bumpers much better than does the Ford Galaxie or Chevrolet Impala.
When your new car is wheeled around to the front, you present your bride with your new car. Upon seeing it, she exclaims “Avocado Green! My favorite. Oh, you are so wonderful, honey!” She then looks at you with the same sparkle in her eye that she had at that epic dinner party. Life is good.
Upon your buxom bride entering the Fury, she gushes even more about how wise you are to get green for the interior. After a few moments, your wife has an admission. “Honey, the car looks a little bulbous on its backside. Do you like it?”
Yes, you admit, you have noticed it does have some pronounced hips and creases, but while it won’t win any beauty contests, there is something about it you find intriguing with a certain inexplicable charm. Your wife is okay with this; you married her for a reason, did you not?
Proud of your new car, you and your family take it to see your in-laws. Upon pulling into the driveway, your father-in-law walks outside. He flicks away his cigarette and says, “What the hell is that? It looks like an Imperial cross-pollinated with a ’70 Oldsmobile. Did you actually look for anything else?”
You retort: “I looked at as many different makes as you did when you bought that Impala last year.”
Smiling, your father-in-law responds. “Touché.”
Upon your wife taking the baby into the house, you offer your father-in-law a ride. You slowly back out of the driveway. Dropping the gear selector into low, you romp the throttle and promptly lay two black marks on the street in front of his house.
As he regains his composure, he sullenly asks “440?” That new Polara will top out at around 129 miles per hour, five more than does a 455 powered Pontiac Trans Am; your Fury should do similar.
image source: www.pcooa.com
Besides, you weren’t exactly clueless when you ordered it. The boys in blue aren’t dumb, so you knew they had found a hot commodity. Plymouth didn’t have the bulk of the police car market in the 1970s without ample reason.
As the years unfold, and the babies keep arriving, you soon realize your purchase of a Fury was wise. It has been a rugged and dependable car for your family. Yes, you are aware some of them weren’t as solid; the only thing you would change is that infernal green color. Who would have guessed 98.6% of Fury production in 1973 seemed to be green or gold? If you had it to do over, you would have chosen Regal Blue or Rallye Red – it wouldn’t have dated your trusty ride quite as badly.
By 1980, the Fury has wormed its way into your family. Your firstborn, unable to say “avocado”, called the car “alvie” in 1975. The name has stuck. Alvie is as much a part of your family as is any of the children.
As a teenager, your youngest son took a special shining to Alvie. Moving onto a different newer and more economical car, you let your son informally take over the care and supervision of Alvie. Your wife was aghast at the wheels he put on the old girl, but as you told your wife, old ladies do need a pair of spiffy shoes. It’s no fun sliding into the doldrums.
A few years after your youngest son puts those gaudy shoes on Alvie, he moves away to college. Soon thereafter Alvie develops a disconcerting knock under the hood. You haven’t the time or skill to give Alvie the treatment she requires. In a completely rash move, you part ways with Alvie, a move you quickly regret. Your wife and children are all furious.
Alvie is now looking for a new home. While she has been mechanically rehabilitated, she is now parked in the back of a used car lot partially occluded from the highway. For such a loyal and trusty friend, poor Alvie deserves a better reward in her twilight years.
Not interested in any of the 4 doors, but that 2 door Plymouth Scamp is a beauty, along with its sister, the Dodge Dart Swinger.
I like it and the colour I had a couple of Aussie Falcons virtually that shade of green a 71 XY and a rust bucket 72 XA no Plymouths however they kinda hard to get here.
Ordering a Mopar during the 70s was a risky move. Playing the Plymouth lottery. Like that color. You ordered the Forest Green, but I think you might have actually gotten one painted Amber Sherwood.
The 73 was a little ungainly, but I understand not looking at a leftover 72 (there must have been plenty) with the bizarre front end. Also, you failed to mention any regret in choosing the 440 when gas prices jumped after the Arab oil embargo in 73 then again in 79. Selective memory? 🙂
I just updated the color – perhaps I was a participant in the Plymouth lottery when identifying paint!
The Arab oil embargo crossed my mind considerably when I opted to use a 440, so either the car was used by the Mrs. (thus low mileage) while he kept the slant six Barracuda or he grinned and endured.
You’ve hit upon a curiosity. Being born in this initial time period, what were some experiences with the fuel crises? My parents really didn’t alter their driving habits (dad’s commute was 50 miles each way, 5 days per week) nor have they ever mentioned there being a shortage of fuel in the area they lived.
I was of the age in high school where gas shot from 35-40 cents/gal to around 75 cents, then again to around $1.25 during college. I recall big gas guzzlers being inexpensive to buy and people getting interested in smaller cars.
My mother weathered the 70s in a 74 Luxury LeMans but by 1980 caved to gas prices and bought a Plymouth Horizon – and ChryCo dealers were selling them as soon as they came off the trucks, even in a recession. She would soon revert to a Crown Victoria.
My father detoured from a 72 Connie Mark IV into a 76 Mercury Monarch. He then went back to a 78 Town Coupe. I think that high gas prices again influenced him to not hold onto the 78 any longer, trading it for one of the “fuel efficient” 1980 Lincolns.
In the midwest, we never experienced shortages. But a summer of 1979 trip to the east coast (in a motorhome, no less) saw a lot of time sitting in gas lines and worrying if we would get enough gas to keep going. This seemed to be the future in 1979-80. It felt a lot like the summer of 2006 where gas in the midwest cracked $4/gal.
I asked my dad about this before. He said that fuel prices in Ontario shot up but there was no shortage. He soldiered on driving his 1967 Sport Fury convertible with the 383 Commando engine until 1977. He also bought a moped (1975 Malaguti) to commute to work cheaply when the weather cooperated.
As much as anything, he was worried about the end of leaded gas because the high-octane that his Fury required would be unavailable. Then in 1977 he acquired my grandads 1966 Chrysler. It had the lower compression 383 2-bbl so it could use regular gas.
Meanwhile, mortgage rates in the late 70’s and early 80’s were in the double digits! My dad put in a bunch of overtime and paid off their mortgage ASAP.
I was a student with a part time job when the Arab oil embargo hit, and was commuting 20 miles each way, every day. But what I remember is that it wasn’t the price of gasoline that was the main concern (it helped that I had a Slant Six Plymouth Valiant) as much as being able to get any. Fortunately my workplace paid for parking at a gas station a block away. If any of us needed gas, we only had to drop into the office before walking to work. In an hour or two, the tank would be full and we would settle the bill when we came back to retrieve the car and the keys. I never had to wait in a gas line or submit to the “odd/even days” or the “so-many-gallon” limits.
” Being born in this initial time period, what were some experiences with the fuel crises?”
I was born in ’74 right at the height of this whole debacle. My mom and grandfather worked in the same town when she was pregnant with me, and I hear tell he (shrewd Irishman that he was!) had my mom fake going into labor a few times to get ahead of the gas lines! I must’ve inherited my wiley streak from my grandpop!
I well remember the Arab oil embargo as well as the real supply crunch of 1979. I was just out of high school on 1973 when gas hit 1.00 a gallon. This was shocking as well as the odd/even days along with the lines at the gas stations.During the Summer of the 1979 the gas shortage lead to talk of actual gas rationing. I remember that there was talk that motorcycles would be considered recreational vehicles and would not get a gas allotment. I had wanted to take an around the country trip on my motorcycle and figured that I’d better go before it was too late. I installed a bigger tank on my Sportster but I spent some time in gas lines. The worst was in Memphis, with a long wait and a five gallon limit. Believe it or not, but all the cars were only driving 45 mph. on the freeway. I made a four week, solo trip around the country, coast to coast and a bit of Canada too. I’m glad I went when I did.
I was in high school when the ’73-’74 gas crisis hit. Suddenly, overnight, big cars were (temporarily) out of vogue . . . . stuff didn’t really have an impact ’til the fall of ’73 and loosened up in the mid-summer of ’74.
I remember Ford ads where some lady got “up to 19 mpg” with her ’74 Ford LTD . . . . . but big cars (except, oddly Cadillacs) sat on dealer lots and used cars; anything with a V-8 it seemed – suddenly became dirt cheap. Case in point: My Dad bought for my older brother as a high school graduation present a VERY CLEAN, low mileage 1967 Buick Skylark coupe. 300 2-bbl 90 degree V-8; Super Turbine two speed auto. Loaded except for P/W and air. Black vinyl top. Looked “GS” like from a distance. Price from Felton VW in San Rafael (May, 1974): $995.00.
I went to visit Granny and the relatives in Missouri that summer and by then, everyone was back on the road in (and buying brand new) BIG cars; 98’s, LeSabres, LTD’s, Marquis and some big Mopars (at least out there). That’s also when I began to take notice of rural Mid-Western youths doing some real stupid things with their cars (goofy wheels, raked rear ends on 4 door sedans . . . . non-functional white plastic hood scoops).
Avocado Green and Harvest Gold, the two darlings of the 70’s. And orange counter tops along with dark wood paneling. Holy shag carpet! In the 73 fuel ‘crises’ I remember my 17 year old self rarely needing gas for my VW, school was a few blocks away. People really did sleep all night in their cars in line at the gas station so they could fill before the pumps ran out. This was in LA area. In 79 I had my 70 C10 and my 66 VW Fastback. Once gas hit a whole $1.00 a gallon I bought the VW and retired the truck as a daily driver. Both had even number plates and a friend would drive VW behind my truck and we would fill them both. I would only drive the VW to work and the truck held 2 VW tanks worth. I would pump it all into VW as needed, at least this way I only had to fill up once a month. Gas cans except for a one gallon can were a no-no.
Nice article on a cool car Jason!
I believe I dated Amber Sherwood in high school…
Very fitting color for a car from 1973. As I’ve said many times, the ’73 C-bodies are my least favorite Fuselage year – the larger bumpers and more “conventional” fascias didn’t mesh well with the rest of the body in my opinion. Great find though as full-size Plymouths are far rarer than comparable year Chryslers.
Funny, these never came up in yesterday’s discussion of most attractive sedans ever made. 🙂
This may have been a “down” year for the styling but this is still a fine-looking machine to me. I like the “hips”–maybe it corresponds to one’s taste in women!
The ’73 Chrysler product that decidedly Did Not Work was the ’73 Newport. Seriously looks like a Chrysler with an Impala grille and headlamp assemply.
Great narrative of how a great car can become “family”. And, that reminds me of a story…
It makes me think of my Dad’ s avocado ’69 Fury II sedan, a car so trustworthy and durable that it earned place near the top of his list of the 96 he owned. Mom’s cars were chosen in those days, while Dad’s were only partially so, being what was known as “company cars”. He got to pick the make and color, but trim level and power plant were mandated. Cars were changed at 60K miles,a total he would accumulate over a year and a half. They were always full size sedans (except for 1960, when compacts were experimented with, and deemed not that much cheaper to run). Being fleet vehicles, they always came with dog dish caps and black walls.
’69 Furies wore the fuselage with less aplomb than their rich cousins, looking like their pants were pulled up too high, but there was a certain battle cruiser air about them that was well founded in the amazing durability of Dad’s sedan. He had just bought a partially finished house in a rural New England town, and the Fury was immediately tagged for construction duty, playing the role scripted for a character called, “F-150”. Dad (with the help of some disinterested offspring) laid a long, C-shaped concrete drive, and every pebble, grain of sand and particle of cement got to the site in or on the Plymouth, often at the same time, while the car towed a small cement mixer from slab to slab, as well as trailers of construction debris to the landfill. One of the few options he had been allowed to chose when he ordered was limited slip, and it, along with a set of Gabriel air shocks, played a major role in the Fury’s success as a hauler.
Somehow, that car stayed in Dad’s hands for twice as long as most of his company cars, eventually being replaced by a Naples yellow ’72 Satellite which seemed ill vested in 4 doors, but a ’69 Fury remains a vehicle that, were I not separated from my 89 year-old father by the width of a country, I’d love to take him for a ride in to Home Depot.
As much as I love and miss the “Fury” name, I’ll pass on these – they were cheap, cheap, cheap.
Even though the Impalas by that time were not of the level of quality as years earlier (neither were any other cars regardless of OEM), they were far ahead of anything from Chrysler.
1973? Umm… I’ll take a Colonnade Grand Am…
I’m going to agree with you, Zackman. The relatives in Mo. (Audrain County) were all Mopar folks in the day, and my Uncle/Aunt had the paisley-topped, fecal metallic brown ’71 Fury Gran Coupe (as did my Granny and her gold ’69 New Yorker). Granny’s minister friend in Hannibal had a brand new ’73 Chrysler New Yorker (same color as the featured Plymouth). The fuselage cars had a decidedly tinny sound to the doors as you opened and shut them and the windows when being rolled down sounded as though a coin was dropping into a vending machine.
Mopar quality was very spotty in the 70’s and I remember the fascia caps on the front/rear ends usually did not line up with the fenders/quarter panels and there were uneven gaps between trunk lids/hoods and fenders. They felt like they had an ‘unfinished’ ambiance about them . . . .
A few years later, my Dad remarried and Step-Mom brought into the marriage her ’72 Scamp. 318. Sleeper. Tinny.
In a nutshell, Zackman, you are right . . . compared to the competition, these cars looked and certainly felt cheap.
Jason,
If I may say so – would it be safe to suggest that Alvie is a direct descendant and relative of the world’s most famous Plymouth Fury, Christine?
I bet Christine would have gone bonkers if she was owned by that fictional family and they decided to part with her. 🙂
Both are branches on the Mopar family tree but undoubtedly face different directions.
Is this autobiographical, Jason?
Not much. I was born the same month and my father later went car shopping. It ends about there. The car he did buy was a tobacco brown ’73 Ford Torino that got 12 mpg with its mighty 302.
I have no fuselage Plymouth/Chrysler comments, but I do have memories of fuel prices having those two spikes in ’73 and ’79 (or so).
I coped just fine. No American barges for me back then. ’73 Volvo 140 series, four speed manual (green) dealt with the first “crisis”. ’79 Scirocco, four speed manual (green) dealt with the second “crisis”.
No gas lines in Denver in those years either – just bitching about the prices.
*applause*
I laughed, I cried, it had everything.
My Dad did drive a Fury company car when I was born in ’73. Pretty sure it was “Forest Green.” I’m going to bet it was a 360, though.
[Minor nit: It’s “avocado”]
My mom wound-up with a 1973 Dodge Coronet as the primary kid transporter, which is identical to a Satellite save for the grille. It was the dark metallic brown and had the 318. (Not that my parents had much choice in this; they bought the car second-hand from her parents.) As I recall it was a good car. They finally replaced it in 1986 because the firewall was starting to rust through.
Jason, does today’s featured Fury really have a 440 or did you just make that up? I see the dual exhaust tips, but dual exhaust could’ve easily been added later. If it does have a 440, this could be quite the “sleeper”.
Not sure what it has so I gave it a 440.
Now, here’s what has troubled me. What happened for it to have no reverse lights? Were the lights or bumper replaced at some point?
These cars had a single backup light in the rear bumper – it is visible in the brochure pic of the rear of the light blue sedan. The “Plymouth” nameplate was on the backup light. This car plainly came without. Only Chrysler would offer a design of backup light that required manufacture of two separate bumpers, or at least a separate stamping operation for cars with backup lights. I would have figured that they would be standard on a 73 Fury III, but evidently not.
That’s interesting, as I thought that reverse lights were made mandatory by the federal government in the late 1960s.
The backup light looks kind of cool in the bumper. I do recall that low end Plymouths seemed to have the look of the subject. It makes me wonder a bit if this car has acquired a donor bumper along the way, especially because it has the bumper guards on the front, and not the back. I’m pretty sure the base cars had standard back-up lamps, located in the main rear lights.
Your point about the cost of inventorying two bumpers for this feature is spot on. Chrysler had a knack for making their cars interesting, but expensive and more difficult to build, and it showed in their bottom line and quality control.
The ’67 full size Chevy did something similar with the back-up lights. On Caprice the lights were in the bumper, on all other models they were the center lamp in the main light fixture. Chevy used what appeared to be a three section bumper, and the Caprice used outboard sections with holes stamped in – maybe a cheaper solution that was also easier to justify with Chevy’s much higher volume.
The missing backup lights are a puzzler, but I’ll give it a shot. My guess is that it’s a factory foul-up. The taillight lens are correct, but the wrong bumper was installed on the assembly line; it’s for a stripper Fury I, which had the backup lights in the taillight lenses. That’s why that one photo where the taillights are on is actually of the backup lights (but with the Fury III lenses, they glow red instead of clear).
Back in the day, this sort of thing was not unheard of. There were two stacks of bumpers and, just for a laugh (or it was a Monday or Friday), the guy installing the bumpers picked from the wrong pile. It’s quite possible it was a fleet car, so they figured no one would care, anyway.
When you think about it, it makes sense, since the wiring harness for the backup lights would be different, too. It was a Fury III with a Fury I rear wiring harness, so rather than go thru the trouble of ripping out and replacing all the rear wiring for the proper backup light in the bumper when it got that far down the line, they just slapped in a Fury I bumper and sent it on it’s way for the dealer to straighten out. All it would really take would be a couple of Fury I taillight lesnes, anyway, but whoever ended up with the car apparently didn’t notice or care.
I will guess accurately that it WAS a factory f__ up. I had older cousins who worked for Mopar in Belvidere, Illinois at the time. There were many times as they told me, cars coming down the line and what was in the tool bin, more often than not, a “aw, f___ it . . . . we’ll just put that on . . . . let the Goddamn zone guys or dealer worry about it . . . ”
They also told me it was sometimes a game to where a Plymouth was sent down the line with a Dodge fratzog on a steering wheel center cap just to mess with the less-well-liked foreman or QC guy towards the end of the line. “Hey! Let’s see if Bozo catches this one!”
Also, ice-cold beer lunches were common in the day . . .
Add to this that production and shipment volume was the metric prized above all others in the Lynn Townsend era. Everyone was under constant pressure to close every month with the highest number of units out the door possible.
The Good Old Days…which weren’t that good when you were actually living through them.
I’m not all that sure the ‘good ole days’ have changed all that much. Wasn’t there a recent (like around a year ago) wide-spread report that made the national media where some local tv news station sat outside one of the Chrysler plants during lunch to watch and videotape assembly line workers sitting around drinking beer and smoking dope?
The really ironic thing about the attention and outrage over it is, as most everyone knows, German auto factories (you know, where they build uber-expensive Mercedes, BMW, and Porsches) allow beer to be drank on the line, up to and including having it in dispensing machines.
And that German beer has a substantially higher alcohol content than American beer…
I ran into a guy at a car show near Seattle some years ago who was looking at a fuselage Fury and trying to figure out if it had come off the assembly line he had worked on as a young man. He claimed to have tossed a few loose parts in cavities behind the dash of cars he was building just for the fun of it.
Even when faced with a family in the making, I cant see a ‘young virile guy’ in these days choosing a big frumpy 4 door as his ride. For him, a satellite sebring seems more in line with the times. Very much a ‘guy car’ while able pull daddy duty when needed. For the wifey, a wagon seems likely. In these days sedans were aimed at the late middle aged.
My grandparents had a forest green Fusey-era Coronet bought new. 318, TF…only after near 20 years of NJ road salt did the body finally rot away…with less than 50K miles.
I’d guess this dude, if having to choose a large four-door Mopar from the day, would’ve went with a Dodge Polara with the sport wheel option.
Being in the Navy in the 70s (and 80s) I never experienced the jump in gas prices as I was stationed overseas during each one.
I’m one of the few people who actually likes the 69 Fury. Of course, by 1970 my eyes started to stray towards Chevy’s Impala. I would never own either car but put plenty of miles on other folk’s cars as well as a few Ford Galaxies/Country Squires.
I owned a 69 Valiant Signet 2 door that was avocado green with white seats….I am no fan of this color. If I had ordered one of these 73 Furys I think I would have gone with the light or dark blue.
Looks best in the police car configuration.The kind of police car that speeders feared.
I can’t say that I was ever inconvenienced by a gas line except for a couple of times when the first embargo had just begun. For most of the seventies my vehicles were pretty fuel efficient so my wallet was insulated from the pain at the pump. The one exception was a Nova with an LT1 transplanted from a wrecked Corvette. That car got around 11 MPG around town, largely due to the 3.73 final drive, with an assist from my right foot.
That must have been a really fun sleeper!
Great write-up! There weren’t too many of these around when I was a kid in the 1970s. Our neighbors had a brand-new 1973 Sport Suburban that was loaded with everything from power windows to the deluxe wheel covers. I believe it was honey gold with the fake wood on the side.
The family of a high school friend had a Fury III hardtop sedan in chestnut metallic with an off-white vinyl roof. The roof was a color that looked dirty no matter how clean you kept the car.
Both families were Mopar loyalists. The neighbors had a 1962 Dodge Dart 440 wagon that they used for their “beater” car, while the friend’s family had a 1965 Fury III sedan. Otherwise, there weren’t too many “civilian” full-size Plymouths in use during those years.
I remember thinking that the restyled 1974 models were a big improvement, even if they did look like warmed-over 1972 Buick LeSabres. Unfortunately, full-size Plymouth sales plunged in response to the fuel crunch, which began in December 1973, and never recovered. As the full-size Fury withered away, Plymouth seemed to wither with it. By 1980, Plymouth was a non-entity in the market. It was a sad end for a make that had once been one of the top-three sellers in the country.
Avocado Fury would make a great name for a punk band.
Back in the late 70s and early 80s thanks to Ozark Air Lines I spent a good amount of time in Champaign/Urbana IL where existed a music venue called Mabel’s. One of the bands that appeared there was named “Jesus Chrysler.”
Amazing. You managed to buy a screamingly large Detroit boat with the 440 engine – and the Gas Crisis (Crises?) never happened in your world.
Literary license. Having him in a depression induced stupor would have been a downer for everyone. 🙂
I’m glad no one is dumping hard on this car. Not a great vehicle, but not a bad one, and it represented a third and fairly distinct look in the “low price field” even if Plymouth, Ford, and Chevy were rarely marketed with those words by ’73.
GM and Ford seemed to dominate our neighborhood, so a Mopar was kind of a refreshing sight. There was an old couple living on our street that we rarely saw, they had a couple of Fury III sedans in the Forest Green Metallic. Probably a ’70 and a ’73. They were so loyal, that they went back to Plymouth one more time in the ’80s and bought a dark blue M body Gran Fury – one of the few consumer sales of what had become a popular police car.
The sedan / hardtop discussion yesterday reminded me how much making a car into a hardtop really makes it handsome. So many of these cars were the color of the subject, or the Forest Green Metallic, you would have wondered if there were really 17 colors.
Make mine a ’72 hardtop with that crazy double loop bumper and the hidden headlights. Chestnut metallic with the optional (black) vinyl top and fender skirts, in either Fury III or Gran Sedan trim, along with the 383 and AC.
The 383 was a 400 by ’72 . . . . and n/a in California.
Memories of the 1972-1973 Mopar Fuselages are, for me, inextricably entwined with the 1972 Dodge Polara Pursuit that I bought several years later after the Arab Oil Embargo had ended. I thought the 1973 Plymouth looked the best of the last three years’ Fuselages but when you are buying a used car, you get what comes, and for $425 it was the Dodge, in a cheap used-car-lot light blue repaint. I quickly learned that the town I was moving to was still using unmarked 1972 Polaras retired from patrol duty, and that one of them, in the same Miracle Auto Painting light blue, was called The Blue Goose. To top it off, two years later I was a reserve officer in that department, regularly driving MY Blue Goose to the station.
The 1972 Dodge Polara was a real Hodge Podge Dodge on the outside. Its styling did not “hang together” like the 1973 Plymouth’s. It was as though there were three separate designers doing the front, back and side. But the dashboards were the same. I especially liked the big podlike instrument panel which clustered and curved all the controls for easy reach by the driver. Besides, your front seat passenger could not see the speedometer, so if the car didn’t FEEL like it was going as fast as it really was (the Chrysler police packages were very good at that), (s)he wouldn’t know!
For all that, I can’t find a good picture of that 1972-1973 Fury/Polara/Monaco dash on the web, only some small catalog illustrations.
My Dodge had the El Strippo Police “decor” package…but I dolled it up with the fake wood paneling on the right side of the dash and on the glove box, getting the three pieces from a wrecking yard and gluing them to the no-holes-punched dash with black silicone adhesive that matched the plain black painted metal. Mine, at least, had come with the fake wood applique on the periphery of the instrument panel. I added a “POLARA” badge, the same way. A factory AM-FM radio provided entertainment, looking like it had always lived there in the radio hole where some police equipment had previously been housed. And I put a factory clock into the instrument panel, which had formerly only a blankout panel. But the plain grey vinyl-and-cloth seats and the prisoner-grade rubberette floors continually reminded me as to what I had.
I have to say that it was the most FUN old car I ever owned. Utterly reliable and running like a top once the choke-pulloff diaphragm was replaced, it served me for many years. Removing the rear seat cushion let me use it to move furniture between apartments; even the console TV set fit in there, and the trunk was cavernous, even more so when the spare tire was removed. That allowed the couch to be moved in the trunk, lashed down by what seemed like miles of rope. No, not on the same trip as the TV set…
I got my drivers license and first job as a delivery driver for “Chicken Delight” in the Fall of ’79. Gas was about 25 cents a gallon, then shot up to 40 cents. My boss was furious – it made a huge dent in his bottom line. We drove ’67 Valiants with a Slant 6, half-size fuel lines and a lockout in the automatic transmission that prevented us from selecting anything other than Park, Reverse or Drive. We would get those things up to 40mph (took about 10 seconds!) and not slow down for anything. As a result, my personal driving habits took years to “soften”!
The gas “crisis” abated, then returned in 1979. I remember riding home from college on my motorcycle for Mothers Day weekend. I had neglected to fill my tank earlier in the week so I had a little over a gallon available to start my trip of 120 miles. At 40 miles I pulled into a gas station with a long line. I was really concerned that I wouldn’t make it home (or back to school, for that matter.) I remember pleading with people in front of me in the line “I’m trying to get home for Mothers Day – I only need 2 gallons!” People let me move up. Then one guy opened the back of his van, which was filled with red gas cans, and poured 2 gallons into my tank. And he wouldn’t let me pay him! I made it home without further incident and Mom was thrilled.
Ah, the 1973 Fusies where Chrysler seemed caught in the crossfire. The Plymouth C Body is definitely my least favorite C body of all time. There is that bulbous rear end treatment. What makes it worse is that is pretty much the same treatment on the 73-75 Newport and almost identical to the 73-78 Imperial. All that green doesn’t help either and even back then, when 20 years old, all that green was still bad.
As to what G. Poon said the 72 Polara follows the 73 Fury in that I look at that car and try to like it but just can’t seem to manage. To me it is like looking at a crooked picture and wanting to straighten it out. As to his inability to find a shot of the dash I can supply a slightly side view of a 73 Polara.
THANKS so much, tbm3fan, for that photo. Yup. I still like that instrument panel styling. Mine did have the 140mph speedometer with 1mph calibrations, so it looked a little cluttered, but no big deal. I forgot to mention, the deeply-set panel was floodlit, not backlit. That bothers some people but I thought it was pleasant and easy to read, though if you turned the brightness too high, it could be excessive. A look at the photo reminds me that the parking brake release was hard to reach, which I cured by getting one off that wrecking-yard car, bending it to shape, and securing it to the existing one with two small hose clamps. The Polara went to its next owner like that!
In a way, I still miss that car (it’s the one that I drove from San Francisco to Davis, CA at an average of 90mph when my brother was late for his graduation), but although they are not all that super-hard to find here in rust-free territory, I don’t have the time nor the facilities to buy another one and do it justice; and besides, the 1972 Polara’s front is just too weird.
The ending of this hits a little close to home. Evidently, well before I was born, my parents had a Dodge Polara, which my mom nicknamed “Sam”. One day, without telling my mom, my dad traded it in… for a Simca. Which they eventually had to get rid of when it was in a minor accident and they couldn’t get ahold of parts for it.
If the topic comes up, my mom still seethes about it, 40-something years later.
Nice article!
The subject avocado Fury illustrates perfectly how modern wheels and rubber don’t look right on older cars. Those Halibrand-look wheels (what are they, 17s maybe?) aren’t terrible as far as aftermarket wheels go, but they don’t fit with overall the look of this ’70s barge. At least they’re not donks! And those seriously undersized low profile tires… just plain wrong!
Why is it that Mid-Western tastes in after market wheels are so goofy? These wheels on this ’73 look extreme low-rent like a garage sale bargain off of some ’80’s Mitsubishi stuck onto this otherwise, straight and clean ’73 Fury . . . . . OK, maybe I’m a purist. I’d find some correct period Mopar steelies and full early 70’s Plymouth (or maybe even Dodge) wheel covers for this.
+1!
I think those wheels might actually be from a relatively recent, base Mustang V6. They’re not particularly bad on the car they originally came on, but in this application, they look like hell, even if the guy got a good deal on them.
OEM steelies and wheelcovers would have been much better.
I know which wheels you’re talking about and I even have a set that I used to use on my Cougar, those definitely aren’t them. Both are modernized replicas of the same wheel but the OEM mustang ones are only 16×7″ and have much more open spokes than these.
I wouldn’t be too critical of Mid-western car tastes Billy, many of the West Coast originated fads I see are pretty stupid too.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who considers 1973 to be my least favorite year of the fuselage Mopars, I prefer the headlights/taillights of the earlier fuselage’s Mopar’s, I didn’t think the 5mph bumpers looked as bad here as it did in Ford and GM’s full sized cars, several years ago I came across a 1973 Plymouth Fury III that was brown and had a tan vinyl top.
The very first V8 car I started was my aunt’s beige 1973 Fury III hardtop coupe. I was 13 or 14 then and was quite thrilled about doing that! This car had factory a/c which was unusual for an inexpensive car sold in the Quebec market back then.
About the car above, I guess it just got it’s bumper replaced with a Fury I or II rear bumper.
The best looking thing in these pictures is the rear glass in the Impala sedan. I never noticed how nicely shaped it is.
The wheels wouldn’t be terrible if the tires weren’t so low-profile. Though they’re not ideal in any case!
Nicely written though–makes me want to make room in my driveway for “Alvie”!
Nicer than Fords of the same year,was this colour around in the late 60s?My cousin Ian’s first American car was a 68 Polara 4 door in the same(or near) shade of green.
Since I was born in August ,1972 this one really hit home with me. But the car I would have grabbed would have been, no expense spared, the new Mercedes S-Class, introduced September 1972. The first ones are beautiful with their non-5 mph bumpers.
I saw many of these, almost all of them painted in that awful Amber Sherwood Metallic. I wonder how they came up with that crazy name for what was pretty much Avacado Green? I was working at a very busy gas station in the late 70’s, and there were about six or seven regular customers who drove Avacado Furies or Manacos. There was a couple who had divorced and they had identical Avacado Fury III’s. They would sometimes come in at the same time to transfer their daughter between them. The ex-wife was one of our most problematic customers. She was insanely good looking, like a playboy centerfold. She taught at a nearby high school, and got a lot of attention, to put it mildly. One time she came in with some girls to have a car wash. She had a bikini on, with a transparent poncho thing over it, as if it covered anything up. She had a meltdown when some guy getting his car washed told her she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. I was on the receiving end of her insanity one morning when she came in with her car running very badly. All it was was a couple of vacuum hoses getting dried out and cracking. She left it for me to fix. I replaced most of the hoses on the 400 engine, and she came back at about 3PM to pick it up. I showed her the hoses I had replaced and how brittle they were and why they broke. She was looking at the hoses and she started to step back, and I grabbed her arm to keep her from walking into a pile of batteries right behind her. She went nuts, and accused me of trying to “feel me up”. My boss saw it happen, and all three of us were yelling at each other. She finally calmed down, and paid and left. Her daughter saw the whole thing. On Friday afternoon, her ex came in with the kid in the car, and she said to her dad, “He’s the one mom went crazy on!”. He laughed and said, “So my ex-wife went crazy on you? She’s so good looking and so crazy!”. I kind of didn’t want to agree in front of the kid, but her dad says to her, “Tell him how crazy mom is!”, and she laughed, and said, “Mom is an “fing” nutjob!”. I just said, “I can’t disagree!”, and they both laughed hysterically. After I quit, I didn’t see either of them for a couple of years, but all of a sudden I saw him in the Fury several times, sometimes with the daughter, who had become almost as great looking as her mom, sometimes without. Just before I moved away from Vegas, I saw her a couple of times. The Fury was gone, in it’s place was a white ’77 or ’78 Trans Am. I saw the daughter, who was working at Burger King just before I left town and I asked her about the Fury. Mom had wrecked it while having a tantrum after getting cut off by someone while taking her to school one morning. “You know how crazy she gets, right?”. I just nodded, and said, “Oh yeah!”. I always wondered what happened to the other Fury, and if she was still crazy. Hard to believe she would be about 70 or so now.
I owned several Furys (Furies?) in the 70s: Two 1970s, and one 1972.
All were full-on police packages, one of the 1970s with a 383, the other two with 440 magnums. They all cornered flat as pianos, were very fast, and braked well for the monsters that they were – and for the time. My car-nut friends gave me a hard time about owning these – until I proceeded to dust their cars – a 74 Challenger, a 74 Camaro, and a 1970 Porsche 914 (not even close).
These monstrous Mopars gave me plenty of room on the road, since other stayed away, and had plenty of room inside too, their gigantic flat seats also proving superior to my friends’ cars on the weekend. The seats were made of heavy-duty material, but were not specifically designed for the aftermarket uses to which they were put…
All in all, I loved ’em, and miss ’em. Thanks for the article.
ever since my dad rented a 72 Fury III in Charleston SC and a 73 Gran Sedan in Orlando Fla for family vacations I have loved the 72 and 73 Fury hardtops and wagons.
these posts are fantastic! it seems the posters are as into the Furies as I am
although Consumer Reports always said these cars didn’t ride as quietly as the GM cars, they weren’t described as being excessively noisy and the objective sound level tests weren’t bad. they just gave a little bit too much tire, wind and exhaust noise to get a rating of ‘quiet”. yet when i rode in a 72 Suburban wagon i could not feel nor hear a thing and my dad said the 73 Gran Sedan ‘rode like a cloud” so i don’t understand what the problem was. I guess every car is different. I know a guy who had a 72 Monaco who said the car was as quiet as a Cadillac or lincoln.
and i like the opening statement about it being 9/26/72 showing all the different Plymouth models from the brochures
there are some who feel that the Furies were not as high quality in appearance as the GM or Ford cars. I agree the interiors were more spartan and the exteriors sometimes showed evidence of tackiness. The Chrysler Newport was a good example. Even if it was in mint condition there was something tacky about the Newport; the Fury Sedans seemed better. I could not understand why someone would spend the extra $$ for a Newport over a Fury or Dodge (BTW I thought the Dodges showed better workmanship than the Plymouths). But then again i could not understand why someone would spend extra for a Monterey over an LTD, a Delta 88 over a Caprice, a LeSabre over a Caprice, etc
when CR’s tested the Fury Gran Sedan with the 318 V8 in ’73 the car averaged 9-18 mpg in normal driving and 14 mpg on a 300 mile trip. the LTD and Impala with larger engines averaged 1-2 mpg’s less. I wonder what the Fury’s mpg would have been with the 360 V8
My first car bought at a city aution for 250 dollars awesome car not even a radio. Monkey sh#t brown! Furious 360
My 70 year old grandmother had this model throughout much of the 1980s – baby blue with a dark blue vinyl top. Many fond memories riding around her rural area with my brother and cousins. My 8 year old self always thought the car sounded like a tractor at start-up. By the end of the decade, she had replaced it with a 1981 Oldsmobile Delta 88 sedan, which I never glommed on to in the same way as the Plymouth.
Snagged my eye as I looked at the pics of this post’s feature car: where are the reversing lamps? They’re missing! They weren’t optional; they were formally, legally required equipment starting in ’68 (informally required starting in ’66). A look at Fleabay auctions turned up the lens in the attached pic here, with integral back-up light—different to the lenses on the green car.
A bit of a dig through the factory parts cattledog turned up the answer: the tail lenses with the integral reversing lamp were used on the Fury I. The Fury II and -III cars had the lenses we see on the green car here, and that “PLYMOUTH” callout we see on the rear bumper was instead on the face of a single 2-bulb reversing lamp set centrally into the bumper bar. This car doesn’t have any reversing lamps because it’s a Fury III with a Fury I rear bumper.
It would have been an odd design concept to have just one reversing light on a car with such a size as this one. The blue Fury III photo in front of the colonial house has the correct bumper it would appear.
Great catch!
But two light bulbs
I knew a divorced couple that owned identical, as far as I could tell, ’73 Fury wagons, both in the (IMHO)awful Amber Sherwood Metallic, with a green interior. Both had 318’s in them and they would sometimes come into the gas station I worked at and their kid would switch from one car to another, depending on what day of the week it was. The mother was amazingly great looking, Like a Playboy centerfold, and was a substitute teacher at a nearby high school. She was also, and her daughter and ex-hubby agreed with this “diagnosis” truly messed up in the head. One time, she came in with some bad spark plug wires. Those stock Mopar fiberglass cored wires were pretty brittle after a year or two and by ’78, they were pretty much brittle like a glass rod, and she had a pretty impressive light show going on with sparks visible all over the engine, and it was missing badly. She agreed to replace the wires and I got the new silicone ones and was installing them, and she had a Praying Mantis land on her head and when I told her, she started screaming, “Get it out! Oh my god, get it out!”, and was running around like she was on fire. I finally grabbed her arm and just waved at the Mantis and off it went. Then she went off about how I touched her arm, and ended up in the rest room blubbering. Her ex and daughter came in the next day and were laughing about “Mom going nuts”. About a month later, I did the plug wires on the husband’s Fury, without any drama. On my ’74 Roadrunner’s 360, I barely got past the 12/12000 mile warranty before I started having issues with those crappy plug wires.
Seemed like this shade of green was everywhere back then. Mid-west kid here, got my license in 1970. Both gas crisis’ here were basically just bitching about the cost. Could always get gas, never waited in lines. Worst of it was we had few 24hr stations to begin with and most cut their hours way back. Sucked when you work nights. I bought my68 XR7 with a CJ428 during the 73 crisis. Muscle cars were selling cheap, you couldn’t give them away. I bought a used Pinto in 74 as a work beater. It was a whole new world when it came time to passing someone. The Pinto was like walking in mud up to your knees compared to catapult launch of that 428.
That photo of the green 4-door brings back memories! In the fall of ’72 I was a junior in high school, looking forward to my favorite class-Driver’s Ed! That green ’73 is a twin of the Driver’s Ed car we used at Ross High in Fremont, Ohio! Mr. Fields was our instructor. Classmates Beth and Jim and I were the 3 student drivers. I wasn’t a Mopar fan, but that big old boat drove just fine!