Whoever is responsible for stenciling “Land Shark” on this ’72 Fury II should reconsider their analogy. As the Barracuda’s big brother, the shark moniker may have seemed appropriate, but as applied to a car so blatantly out of synch with the increasing Broughamification of the time, it’s more apt to consider this softly contoured, unadorned creature as a whale swimming alongside the hulls of GM’s and Ford’s bejeweled land yachts.
Among the repeat shots on The Cohort, Chrysler Fuselage cars are surprisingly rare, given their status as mainstream models from a big three manufacturer. But we’ve had a surprising number of them uploaded in the past few weeks, which is to say there have been three posted out of hundreds of recent contributions. Last week, I posted a red ’73 Fury with a white vinyl top in Gran trim, but this chickpea colored ’72 Fury II is an excellent example of why not many of these cars have survived. For most people, it’s hard to feel much love for something this plain and any appreciation of this look is difficult outside of the era’s aesthetic sensibility, unless architecture and design are things one takes seriously. This was a very optimistic and forward-looking shape arriving at just the time that Broughamification and neoclassicism were both really taking off; suddenly, people were afraid of the future and wanted to isolate themselves in a cocoon.
Sadly, unlike buildings, cars can get thrown away without having to involve an entire demo crew. Preserving early post-modern architecture is a fight in and of itself, but the time has finally come for its historical significance to be recognized (the loss of Prentice Hospital in Chicago, pictured above, was noticeable, but a good number people fought to keep it up). Most of these Fuselage Furies haven’t been able to last nearly as long, on the other hand, and when it was time to scrap most of them by the mid to late 1980s, few might’ve considered how well they captured the aspirations of the society which conceived them.
It’s actually a surprise to me that they made it to production with such purity of line. While the 1971 GM B-bodies had a similar mojo, there were enough straight lines for onlookers’ eyes to latch onto, as well as a slight rearward slant to the greenhouse and a strong shoulder line to suggest capacity and speed. The Chrysler C-bodies, it seems, were envisioned mainly as a way to make a progressive design statement and if that’s indeed what happened, Chrysler overestimated its buyers in much the same way Nissan did when penning the grilleless Infiniti Q45. These were cars stylists could relate to, but not the general public.
When the marketing and product planning folks were able to cobble together a nice, higher level trim package, like this ’71 Gran Coupe, the result wasn’t as stark, but with such bare basic models, getting people into a fully loaded car was that much more difficult. I have no breakdown of sales by trim packages, but this car must be one of a very small handful remaining.
If it’s true that success is more a matter of circumstance than genuine effort, you could do worse than to use these two Plymouths as an example. How else to describe the debut of cars famously sculpted to emulate the jumbo jet, right before disaster movies like Airport made a fear of flight cool again?
Thanks to WilliamRubano and Foden Alpha for uploading these famously unlucky cars.
Related reading: Fender Blades on a Fuselage: The Design of the 1973 Imperial by Chrysler
sorry, i never wanted to be cocooned in anything that ugly. i did not like them when they came out and i do not like them now. they appear so ‘amateurish’ in their approach to styling.
points for humor to the person who is having fun with the size by calling it a landshark. granted it could easily be called blue whale but someone has a sense of humor.
This are a love it or hate it car. I know a 30 year old guy with 2 ’72 Furies, one coupe and one sedan. He’s a mechanic and on a whim built a 360 for the coupe that burns E-85 and kicks out some ridiculous amount of power.
The base trim on these was far from complimentary but still possesses a certain muted charm. Likely most lived out their golden years to the tune of “oh taxi!”
Thank you for the link to my story, Perry.
These actually DID unintentionally predict the future. Compared to their immediate predecessors, the ’69s were less solidly built, and there wasn’t enough differentiation between low- and high-trim nameplates. Such complaints became more common across the industry in years to come, and now Olds, Pontiac and Mercury have joined Plymouth in the dumpster.
I love how the brown 71 “Gran Coupe” has 4 doors. I have little doubt that Chrysler actually built it this way.
The 71 is an attractive car. The 72 is not now and never was good looking. The lower trim levels, like this one, were especially awkward and ungainly. I was newly enamored of Mopars around that time, and tried hard to love it, but just couldn’t do it. It’s 1961 all over again for Plymouth.
Outfitted carefuly, as a Gran Sedan, as a 4 door hardtop, with the hidden headlights and fender skirts and in the right color (like black) with Road Wheels, the car could pull off the look. Unfortunately, .002% of production was like that. The rest were Fury II sedans in baby blue or one of three shades of tan or beige with poverty caps, and truly looked like they had been left out in the sun to melt.
My grandmother’s neighbors bought a brand-new 1972 Fury III four-door sedan. It was dark metallic green with a black vinyl roof and exposed headlights.
I didn’t think it was very attractive even then, and the years haven’t softened my opinion. As you note, these were best bought as top-of-the-line models with the hidden headlights, but those versions were quite rare even at the time.
Between that Fury and our neighbor’s 1972 Dodge Polara four-door sedan, I thought that full-size Mopars were definitely “out there” when it came to styling.
“…..definitely “out there” when it came to styling.”
Suddenly it’s 1962!
“Gran Coupe” is correct for both the two and four door in ’71. For ’72 the four door became the “Gran Sedan”:
jpc, I agree, the 72 is probably the least attractive of the 69-73 Furys.
However, they look a lot better in uniform.
+1!
They may not be the most attractive cars, but I still love them. More so than their contemporary GM rivals, and much more so than their FordMoCo competitors. Especially looking at them from a 2014 standpoint, they stand out in a sea of rather similar-looking vehicles. I never would’ve thought of comparing the fuselage Furies to the Infiniti Q45, but it makes a lot of sense. To go even further, both the Fury and Q45 were eventually restyled, with more conservative looks, then forgotten, and ultimately axed.
The architecture tie in is interesting. There is (was?) a similar cantilevered building on the Yale campus, visible from I-95 that my childhood self used as a landmark on our frequent pilgrimages from Philly to Providence in the early / mid 70s.
FWIW I enjoyed Volvo week and I do like car shows, but it is nice to see CC spend some time back in its roots this week , with survivors like this one.
I’m surprised at the comments suggesting the ’72 Fury is ugly. As a European I’m not as familiar with older American cars as most people commenting on here, and am often baffled at the enthusiasm for certain cars that seem grotesque to me.
OK, this one might not be elegant exactly, but it has a certain “attitude” and seems very much of its time. Reckon I’d have one as a second car if I could afford it.
Same here – I think European and American ideals are sometimes VERY different. To me it has a slight European air about it; look at some of the designs coming not just from Chrysler’s European arm but also at Opels to get what I mean. Yes, it works better in black:)
Two of my 70s design favorites: Bertrand Goldberg and fuselage Chryslers. Nice job!
The 1969-73 Fury is an interesting car, both as a car and what it meant to Plymouth.
When the completely restyled Fury debuted for 1969, Lynn Townsend made lots of noise about getting Fury sales much closer to the level of full-size Chevrolet and Ford sales. I believe that total Fury sales did increase for that year, but not by that much.
Even worse, there was a whole lot of channel stuffing going at Chrysler to keep the factories open. I’ve read that there were over 480,000 cars in the infamous Chrysler sales bank by February 1969! I’m guessing that a lot of them were full-size fuselage cars, as customers weren’t that enthusiastic about them.
This generation of Fury was changed every year it was on the market, and Plymouth offered it in a bewildering array of body styles and trim levels. There were even different greenhouses for hardtop coupes in the early years, and different rear quarter panels, depending on the body style. I’m guessing that these distinctions were largely lost on customers. Chrysler spent a lot of money to make this car a stronger competitor, and it didn’t reap much in the way of increased sales.
This generation of Fury sold well enough, but didn’t really improve Plymouth’s competitive position. A fair number of them were police cars and taxis by 1972. “Civilian” versions were rare in my hometown.
The division’s great success during these years was the Duster/Valiant, which sold well enough to hoist Plymouth into third place in 1971 and 1974, but was a relatively low-profit vehicle.
The completely restyled 1974 Fury was hammered by the Arab Oil Embargo, but, unlike the full-size cars from Chevrolet and Ford, its sales did not bounce back as the market recovered in 1976. As the full-size Fury withered, it seemed that Plymouth withered with it. By 1980, the brand was hardly on the radar. It was hard to believe that Plymouth had once been the third best-selling brand in the country for many years.
I always figured that part of the Fury’s problem in 1976 was the hash-job on the front end styling and the awful transformation of the coupe roof into an opera window roof. It was just not an attractive car, even to me who wanted very much to love them.
By contrast, the Cordoba was selling like hotcakes. Everyone knew that Chrysler had quality issues (my parents would never for a moment consider buying one) but they were at least very attractive cars. Make it beautiful and it will sell. Make it ugly, and it won’t, certainly not from a company with known quality issues.
I always thought it was interesting that Chrysler revamped the front clips on the top-of-the-line full-size Dodges and Plymouths for 1975. It was almost as though the corporation realized that the 1974 Fury and Monaco were too close in appearance.
The single headlight paired with the vertical parking light on the Gran Fury struck me as strange even then. The front of the Dodge, with its hidden headlights and blunt grille, looked very massive – almost too massive for the rest of the car.
Love it or hate it, these cars make great LeMons racers:
http://blog.caranddriver.com/an-upside-down-camaro-the-homer-a-cessna-plane-and-many-more-our-favorite-race-cars-of-the-2013-lemons-season/
I never thought these were that ugly, but I never thought they were all that advanced looking either, to me they seem like half hearted re-hashes of GM full size cars from 1968-1970, right down to the front and rear “uni-bumpers” and optional hidden headlights.
I do love me some funky 70’s brutalist modern architecture. Guaranteed to be at least one on every university campus.
How about “Whaleshark”?
Loved that paisley vinyl top, but they were running a bit late, fashion wise, with that too, just like the rest of the car.
Wasn’t that paisley top a “mistake” where they tried to color over a “mod” paisley top material with burgany color, but the paisley pattern still showed thorough?
Still pretty unique, it reminds me of my mother’s purse material, even though they never offered it again (maybe why I think of it as a mistake)….guess it gives it a “European” flair, with the “paisley” edition.
I like Furys a lot…wonder if this was “overreation” to the too-small 1962-1964 models…as if they would “err” on the side of making the car too big, rather than too small like they did in 1962 (though I’m also a fan of the ’62 Fury, I know there are lots of people who wanted the full sized ones they were used to).
I ran this down once. Chrysler offered a maroon vinyl roof on Imperials in 1971. They had tons of leftover paisley print vinyl and decided that they could take that and dye it maroon. As the cars weathered, the paisley started to show up.
The Imperial Club did a piece on it here: http://www.imperialclub.com/Yr/1971/Paisley/index.htm
It’s interesting that you see them as such a striking design statement, because the general consensus I seem to get from people who actually lived through that era (i.e. not me, or you either actually) is that the ’69-’73 Mopars were the most generic, average, nondescript sedans plying the streets at the time. They seemed like a soft, watered-down version of every other contemporary ‘fuselage’ sedan, with ever-changing front and rear clips that aped everything from GM to Ford depending on the year and whether it was a Plymouth/Dodge/Chrysler. I’m sure their “generic” image was bolstered by the fact that these were THE police/taxi vehicle of choice at the time. Fords and Chevys were minority players in that market until the 1980s, strange as it seems from a modern perspective where Ford and Chevy own the police market.
I think that’s also the reason these don’t exist in the same number as Caprices and LTDs – much fewer were sold when new, and the ones that were sold either went to fleets which bashed the hell out of them by 1980, or to the stereotypical ‘Chrysler Cheapskate’ (the same type of people who drive Sebrings and Calibers today) who sent them to the scrapyard by the time the K-cars were released.
They’re really subtle and minimalist, except for the sometimes clashing front clips (the ’70 and ’71 front clips look best). They are much, much more stark designs that the competition and it takes a certain perspective to appreciate them for what they are. But I think that, whether looking at the era’s suits, institutional structures or office furniture, there’s a certain focus on soft curvature over decoration which is inspiring to some, and anti-septic to most others. It’s a rather inhospitable way to design a domestic appliance meant for mass consumption. Notice that most popular cars and most home decor began to look very busy by the middle of the decade.
A big problem with these cars was that the “starkness” wasn’t limited to the exterior styling.
Chrysler products, in general, seemed to have much more austere interior trim than the GM and Ford competition. They were also noisier and less refined that the offerings from the Big Two. This was a real handicap in the full-size class.
It also hurt Plymouth that the corporation didn’t have a desirable luxury car that the Fury could use for inspiration.
By the early 1970s, Ford had turned the LTD into a junior-edition Continental, and the Chevrolet Impala/Caprice looked like it had been inspired by a Cadillac DeVille. The Imperial simply didn’t have a strong reputation or desirable image, which meant that the Fury couldn’t bask in its glow.
The middle-age and older buyers who couldn’t afford a Cadillac or a Lincoln could at least drive a Caprice or LTD that was a credible knock-off of the real thing. The Impala/Caprice and Galaxie/LTD came across as junior editions of a Cadillac or Lincoln, respectively, while the Fury III and Gran Fury came across as tarted-up taxi cabs.
That, of course, I cannot argue with.
I did live through the era, and you are pretty much right. It was always easy to tell a Plymouth from a Dodge from a Chrysler, but with each one getting a slight re-style every year, it was almost impossible for most people to tell the years apart, certainly in the 69-71 era, then again in 72-3. Plus, even though there was a visual distinction between the brands, it was plain that they were all the same car.
Up until the mid 80s, these survived in pretty decent numbers, often bought originally by old people who took good care of them. Also, they were tolerably rust resistant and pretty tough, so they survived in poor neighborhoods as beaters long after the Fords did. But people bought them as used cars because they were tough and cheap, not because they were really desirable.
My mother went from a Pontiac Catalina to a Plymouth. It was awful. The exterior was just a blob. The interior, seats and dash were so cheap and generic. It was the first time I had ever seen a dash crack. I was so glad when she got rid of it.
Funny, my friend’s mom had a 1975 Caprice. It was so much nicer and I bet it cost less.
Geeber hits the nail on the head, again. Fury sales died after 1973, and never recovered, even with renaming the Satellite.
The Fuselage cars were designed during the muscle car era, but younger buyers didn’t buy full size cars anymore by ’69. The elder generatons loved the sharp edged 65’s, but moved to ‘luxurious looking’ Ford/GM biggies in droves by 1972. The ’74 boxy redesign was in reaction to this shift, but was way too late. The Cordoba got some more buyers, but was really just a Monte Carlo copy.
After a string of nice convertibles — a ’57 Bel Air, ’62 Impala, ’67 Monterey, my grandmother bought a used ’71 Fury II in that hideous 70s gold. What a come down. Although the front end wasn’t as hideous at the ’72 model, it was already falling apart in 1974 and ran like crap. We had flown to New Hampshire for a family vacation, and while my mother appreciated my grandmother loaning us her car, she hated the car itself. Our 10-year-old Impala was nearing 100,000 miles, but it was superior to that Fury in every way.
My other grandmother had a ’72 Valiant with a Slant Six, and while it was frumpy looking with a beige exterior and green vinyl interior (if I recall correctly, there was no carpet, only a rubber floor mat), it was a decent little car. We used that one for our next vacation.
The Dart/Valiant/Duster, Cordoba and cop-car fleet sales were the only things that kept Chrysler going in the 70s.
I agree that the Fuselages were an “overreaction” to the flop “too small” 62 Fury. GM and Ford also beefed up their tanks thinking ‘may as well go big or go home’.
But the long, low look of 70’s LTD’s and Impalas appealed more to ‘Ma and Pa’ then the ‘muscle car’ Fury. For 1970, Plymouth was pushing the Sport Fury as part of ‘Rapid Transit System’, but this was way off what the market wanted. Plush 1970 LTD’s were hot cakes, and Impalas were bread and butter. Trying to get muscle car buyers into a Fury scared off older buyers, worried about “getting a speeding ticket”.
https://screen.yahoo.com/land-shark-jaws-ii-224409387.html
I’ll just put this here… seems appropriate for a “Land Shark”
I remember reading about Prentice Hospital after it had been torn down. Looks like it was a pretty cool building, but no one cared. The same thing happened to Michael Reese Hospital, also in Chicago (image from archpaper.com).