What does a mid-1970s Chrysler have in common with national politics? I don’t have a sincere interest in either. This 1977 (my best estimate) Newport, however, is far too nice (unlike most political campaigns) not to share.
A nice car deserves a nice, period bumper sticker, such as this one for Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale’s reelection campaign from 1980. Jimmy Carter, like Chrysler Corporation, was seen as an outlier, as his reputation as a “nice guy” put him at odds with the cutthroat world of the Beltway. Carter and Mondale’s motto for this go-round was “A Tested and Trustworthy Team,” but their ill-fated campaign had about as much a chance of succeeding as a Chrysler Newport in an American car-buying landscape that was fraught with peril for cars of its size and weight.
But that’s all in the past now. Jimmy Carter has settled into a groove as a well-respected elder statesman, Chrysler has been bought and sold about 183 times, and this big Newport is still plying the roads as if it were 1980 and a grain of salt has never touched its verdant flanks.
Having generally ignored this era’s C-Body offerings, I was in for an educational mini-adventure to determine the model year of this Newport. At first, I thought it was a 1976 model because of the front license plate (a Michigan bicentennial plate, which was used from 1976 through 1978). The grille of this car, however, was only used on the Newport Custom in 1976, and those wore a “Newport Custom” emblem on the front fender. In 1977, the standard Newport earned the Custom’s grille from the previous model year and the Custom was dropped. In 1978, the four-door sedan was dropped and only the two and four-door hardtops were available. Therefore, through a process of elimination, and because this car has a center pillar, I learned that this is (probably) a 1977 Newport four-door sedan.
OK, so we’re dealing with a pristine green Mopar from the year of my birth. I found this fabulous Newport in the parking lot at Henry Ford Museum’s “Motor Muster” car show in June, and it was as entertaining as anything inside the walls of that fan-favorite event. There were no signs of rust anywhere, even under this unblemished vinyl roof in a complementary green of its own.
This Newport had the optional “Williamsburg Cloth” bench seat, which is hideous and awesome at the same time. It is, like the rest of the car, in perfect condition.
Our featured Newport wears “Jade Green Metallic” paint, although it doesn’t wear these useful trailer towing mirrors.
According to the brochure, the Lean Burn (yuck) 400 with a Thermoquad was standard equipment in the Newport, as long as you were not a resident of California or a high-altitude area. In those unfortunate cases, your Newport was equipped with the “lowly” 360, which was still a good engine. In fact, the 360 might have been preferable in this case because it didn’t include the Lean Burn System (according to this brochure).
Regardless of the engine choice or means of fuel and ignition management, this may be the nicest 1977 Newport in the world. Because of who I am, I ran around this car taking pictures and not really paying attention to how I looked or who was watching. It might as well have been a UFO – it was immaculate enough that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
In a way, President Carter and our featured Newport have a little bit in common. Both were maligned during their most formative years, both endured a form of reckoning (a lost election and a government loan), and both lived through that reckoning to emerge as something to be treasured and respected. Who would have called that in 1980?
Wow, what a killer find. A true time capsule. A 440 would be the cherry on top!
Awesome car and now I have a craving for peanuts…..
For a second, I wondered if this might have been Bess Truman’s car…it is practically the same color scheme as the ’72 Newport that was the last car Harry Truman bought before he died: https://www.nps.gov/hstr/learn/historyculture/the-truman-car.htm#:~:text=Delaware%2C%20Harry%20Truman's%20last%20car,looking%20for%20the%20best%20deal).
Nice car. Shame about the bumper sticker.
They got “tested” alright and they lost in a landslide after they failed their test.
The Reagan campaign going behind his back and convincing the Iranians to hold onto the hostages until after the *inauguration* (not even just after the election, no, they got an extra ten weeks in hell just to make Ronnie look that much better…) should be better known as one of the worst dirty tricks in the history of politics.
+100
+200
+300
Shame about the bumper sticker
Aaron asked me to not publish this post, as he was concerned about starting an inappropriate political comment shitstorm. I told him it’s going to be fine; our commenters are over that, at least to for the most part. But of course, you have to be the exception.
Here’s the funny part: you totally missed the whole point of this sticker, which is of course not original, but obviously a new reproduction. It’s all about the “Malaise Era”, since Carter’s famous speech was later interpreted by the press to represent national malaise (Carter never used that word). This Chrysler is obviously a classic Malaise Era car, and the owner wanted to enhance that image by adding the sticker.
On top of it all, even if you aren’t (obviously) a Carter fan and this sticker miraculously was an original, it would be a remarkable time capsule, and the fact that Carter lost, should make you smile, not leave such a curmudgeonly comment.
Shame about your comment.
Oh this brings back memories. My girlfriend’s dad had one back in the day, in medium brown. Even the interior upholstery had the same pattern, but in brown accordingly.
I’m there with you on this Paul. It’s an interesting ” of the period piece” . It’s like going back to 1980 and glancing at the towns big shots 3 year old car sitting at the road side. ” Got me a Chrysler, it’s as big as a whale”. Love shack baby….
Besides Paul, not only for the reasons you state, but how perfectly does the color of that Carter/Mondale bumper sticker go with that car? 😉
Great find, Aaron. Thanks for sharing!
My Valiant has a similar (if more conservative) theme.
Your sticker should really be on the right side of the car!
For the left side, this vintage ’64 sticker would be interesting!
I’m amazed the sticker isn’t faded at all. Is the owner a vampire? Wonder what the mileage is.
Vintage bumper stickers can be bought on eBay – here’s a current ad for one just like this.
I would never dream of using a political bumper sticker or yard sign myself, but I do think this kind of thing is a nice touch on a vintage car.
As I noted above, it was rather obviously added by the owner to enhance the car’s status as a genuine “Malaise Era” mobile, in referring back to Carter being the father of that.
“If you can find a better-built, better-backed presidental team, vote for it.”
– not Lee Iacoca
I can’t remember who it was that said Jimmy Carter is the only man who ever used the American presidency as a stepping-stone to greatness.
Jimmy Carter is by far the best Ex-President we’ve ever had. A nicer, more honest, more moral man you’ll be hard pressed to find.
“Verdant flanks” … I’ve read my local paper and and a good part of today’s NY Times this morning and those words of yours, AARON65, describing this behemoth, are the most memorable of the day. CC for the literary win!
That is an excellent use of the word! One of the foundation sponsors of the PBS News Hour states its mission as that of a more “just, verdant” world.
I had to look it up, I figured it meant bountiful, but it is more focused on green and growing. Which, this car is.
This was a popular color combo on Chryslers of all models, and a lot of big Ford and Lincoln-Mercury products. I thought it looked pretty good, and still wears well today.
Chrysler started to offer a more contemporary cloth fabric in the Newport line, but in 1977, this brocade just screams grandma car. GM was way past this, and its trimmer big cars were much more in tune with the times. The Tested Team of Newport and New Yorker was indeed losing the confidence of the public, no matter how verdant some of them were.
Thanks!
Hello Aron, what a nice article. I am proud owner of Newport 1977 2 dr. I have also very nice living example 🙂 with white vinyl interieur. Looks to be original all aroung with 55k miles.
I btw agree with Eric about the bumper sticker being a nice touch, even though I’d not put any bumper sticker on my daily driver or anything that reflects contemporary politics. I like the Carter-Mondale sticker! I might just order one for the 76 Volvo 🙂
So many good things about this post and this find! First, green 1970s car. That alone is hard to beat; but that vinyl roof, wow. This car must be owned by the scion of the ArmorAll family. (or kept indoors…but I prefer to speculate on the ArmorAll connection). Your description of the “Williamsburg Cloth” upholstery as “hideous but awesome” is spot-on. GM had something similar (I guess everyone did in the 70s) that was often found in the full-sized Olds and Buicks. Stuff looked geriatric from Day 1. But it also reminds one of their grandparents…and so that’s awesome (usually).
Finally, I love the brochure picture of the car pulling the Airstream. I would so love to see full sized sedans pulling trailers again. I know, I’m a geezer…but it’s just not the same cool look when there’s a SUV or truck as the tow-vehicle.
Excellent post!
I wrote up a Kijiji car awhile back that had similar upholstery…it was a ’74 LeSabre (and I loved it then, too!)
The fabric may be dated, but it hid spots and cigarette burns better than velour and was a lot more comfortable than vinyl or leather.
I haven’t seen one of these that wasn’t a hardtop in forever.
What a great comfortable automobile! As for the bumper sticker, I am not fond of bumper stickers. I worked for Chrysler at the time and had the opportunity to drive these vehicles. I find the styling attractive. Oddities include that the Plymouth and Dodge equivalents did not offer power door locks on the two-door models, only the Chrysler buyer had this privilege! So, if you were driving the “lesser” marques, you had quite a stretch to reach from the driver’s seat to the passenger’s door to lock it. Nice essay! Thanks so much.
You’re welcome!
Ma Mopar was caught off guard in Oct ’73, with new C bodies, just in time for Oil Crisis. But, even in better circumstances, they were copying 1971 GM cars, and would have been flops anyway.
Plymouth and Dodge were fleet queens, and the big Chryslers were for aging loyalists. [ Many switched to A bodies and Cordobas, and were outdated in year.
Personal lux segment ate into big cars, while GM and Ford tanks hung on. They rebounded in ’76, and their downsized replacements lasted into the 90’s +
Changeside Coin effect?
Look at the bicentennial quarter that turned up in my change from the vending machine after reading this post. I wonder if any of these are hiding out in the Newport’s ash trays or seat cushions? 😉
I bought my only new Chrysler product in 1977, a Cordoba in the same color combination. That was the car that sold me on velour upholstery. Decadent!
Wow, just wow! While I didn’t pay much attention to these full-size Chryslers back when they were new, this one in mint condition (sorry for the pun) just grabs your attention by the lapels!
Those interior fabrics remind me of a quote from Jim Mateja, the Chicago Tribune automobile writer, who reviewed something like this Chrysler or the above mentioned LeSabre: “after five minutes of driving, I found myself whistling the Nelson Brothers Loves Me! jingle.” Nelson Brothers was a big Chicago furniture chain that advertised credit deals heavily during the ’70s and was well known for selling living room sets with similar upholstery.
Can’t really say I saw any of those late Chrysler’s back then. Just started Grad School at Berkeley and one wouldn’t see these cars in Berkeley. When not at Cal I lived in Orinda which was becoming a hot bed of foreign cars, Mercedes especially, but still some Caddy’s. So many of the 77-81 American cars escaped my view back then because of that. The bumper sticker is even in green like the car and it was the second time I ran across Jimmy in the last two days.
https://www.kfogforever.com/playlists/ten-at-ten-may-1-2006-1980
Very well written post Aaron, “verdant flanks” and “hideous and awesome at the same time “ are masterful.
+1
Thank you… 🙂
This pristine Chrysler is in this condition probably because of its Lean Burn Ignition System; when this system failed (and they all did) then the 400 engine went into something called “limp mode” or simply refused to start and thus refused to run. This Newport probably experienced those classic Lean Burn symptoms, and was obviously not driven that much … and that turned out to be a blessing in disguise for this iconic mid-seventies Chrysler survivor.
The cure for this Chrysler engineering fiasco back then was a trip to your local junk yard in search of an electronic Ignition system that was used on Chrysler cars from 1972 until ’76. If you couldn’t find a Mopar with its electronic Ignition intact, (and they were virtually impossible to find) then it was necessary to step back to the conventional ignition system … something called “points” which required changing out the distributor with something containing a “vacuum advance.” You could take it one step further and trash the Carter Thermoquad and install a Holly 4-bbl. This would insure that your Chrysler would run like its predecessors of a few years previous; the Thermoquad had its own set of unique problems.
My dad bought a new 1977 Chrysler New Yorker with the LB System. After 30,000 miles, give or take a few, he grew tired of his Chrysler coughing back through the Carter Thermoquad and going into “limp mode.”
He an I spent a weekend converting it to points and the before mentioned Holly … donated from a wrecked ’71 Imperial, and he was one happy Chrysler owner until he decided he needed a new 1985 Dodge 150 with the Prospector Trim package. His New Yorker was pushing 150,000+ miles on the odometer when he traded it on his new truck. Of course, he did his own maintenance on his New Yorker, telling me, “That’s the way we used to keep ’em runnin’ back then.”
This is a great article … I’d like to see this beautiful Chrysler Newport sitting in my driveway … minus that company’s engineering fiasco, of course. I especially enjoyed seeing the brochure showing the big Chrysler towing the Airstream. We own an Airstream identical to the one in this brochure. Ours is not in this condition, but hopefully it will be after a much needed restoration project in the not too distant future.
Look’s like this car spends a lot of time in a garage and only comes outside of it occasionally… and Grandma gave up going to church, and her daughter still does her food shopping.
That car is in perfect shape for being 49 years old.
I will surprise some people here but this doesn’t excite me much. My car-mentor Howard bought a 77 Newport new. His was a 4 door hardtop with a slick roof, fender skirts, and painted a gorgeous rich dark brown with beige interior in this fabric. After spending some time around that one, I lost whatever interest I had in the 4 door sedans – the only body style that made these cars look dumpy.
Also, I could have used a trigger warning on this for reasons that will become apparent one Sunday morning in the not-too-distant future.
Other than that it’s a lovely car. 🙂
Oh, and in my part of the country, the only people I knew who drove big Chryslers were rock-ribbed conservative Republicans. If any of those people would have had a bumper sticker on the car it would have been for Reagan in his 1976 primary challenge to Gerald Ford. 🙂
Sorry to step on your toes, JP. Blame my ignorance and not my intent.
I’m there with you on this Paul. It’s an interesting ” of the period piece” . It’s like going back to 1980 and glancing at the towns big shots 3 year old car sitting at the road side. ” Got me a Chrysler, it’s as big as a whale”. Love shack baby….
Nothing has been stepped on so you are perfectly fine.
Beautiful car. At the time, I much preferred the GM models like the Olds 98, but I can see it’s charm. My grandfather, despite working at the GM proving grounds and retiring from there, preferred Chryslers of this era. I can almost smell the interior through the screen!
I noticed the little rubber end caps on the rear bumper, something I don’t recall. Maybe an option or just they fell off of cars I recall seeing.
Nice one! I have a ’76 Carter/Mondale image on my ’75 Buick Century. I view it to be just cool ’70s kitch but it was reproduced as a magnet so it can be easily removed if I need to avoid political opinions.
My dad put those mirrors on our 1968 Coronet 500 wagon. We towed a 20′ Aristocrat trailer across the US twice, all over CA, and as far as Banff, AB.
Yep. I recall one trip as a very little kid in the family’s 1961 Plymouth wagon when we had the need to tow a rather large UHaul trailer. The UHaul dealer fixed us up with a set of those mirrors and a temporary/clamp-on hitch (!!) and we lugged that trailer quite some distance.
I’m not wild about towing anything…and it may be related to the fear I had of that hitch even as a child.
That last pic of the car, the right front view, has what gives every appearance of a Burma-Shave sign in the background, but I’m not finding any search results for a Burma-Shave poem involving If you hear. Anyone?
(for those outside the States: Burma-Shave was a brand of shaving cream which for many years ending in 1963 was advertised with serial billboards at intervals along highways. Each sign had part of a poem, like this: Train Approaching / Whistle Squealing / Stop / Avoid That Run-Down Feeling / Burma-Shave)
That’s an interesting serpentine wall in the background. What’s on the other side?
That’s Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-road-trip-1963-ford-thunderbird-honoring-fomoco-and-buying-trouble-in-return/
If he’d made up his mind to take the job sooner, my father could have been the Mondale’s landlord as CO of the Naval Observatory ’77-80. But it meant living on base, and I would have had to commute to Alexandria for my last year of HS (in a ’56 Olds). Instead, he got to commute halfway to Baltimore, 90 miles a day, his last 3 years of active duty.
Later, my mother did get to converse with Mrs. Mondale at a reception for NOW–Naval Officers Wives club–in the former CNO’s house. I don’t know if it was political (Carter was not loved by the Navy, despite his service) or just mutual shyness, but they had a standoff with her at one end of the room and the wives at the other, until my mother grabbed a friend and went up and broke the ice. Our family’s closest brush with a national politician.
In the early 80s one of my law school roommates had an older sister who worked in the office at The White House. She added our names to a list and for 2 or 3 years each of us got signed Christmas cards and holiday photos from Ron & Nancy Reagan. But we never got invites to any receptions. 🙂
Excellent find, article and photography Aaron! Thank you. Perhaps what I remember most about the entire Chrysler full-sized lineup from this era, unlike their GM and Ford competitors, was they were almost always driven by elderly people. Typically, very elderly.
I rode many miles in an identical car owned by a friend. Same colors, including the brocade upholstery. It was horribly rusty by the mid 80’s and off it went to the junk yard. I went to a monster truck show a short time later, and there it was in the line of cars to be smooshed. I went down and paid my last respects after.
This car is in fantastic condition – and no rust! Don’t know about the drivability of the car with that finicky Lean Burn system – which sounded better on paper than in practice…
This generation of Newport certainly lived up to the Chrysler name better than some of the earlier examples. For instance, I found a ’69 Newport a few weeks ago and it emanated cheapness. This particular Newport is quite the opposite.
Granted, this one is in exceptional condition but it still has a higher value appearance that the prior generation ever managed to emit.
Aaron, this was a wonderful find.
By the mid-1970s, Mopar loyalists who wanted a big car skipped the Plymouth and Dodge and went straight for the Chrysler. Sales of the Plymouth Fury and Dodge Monaco fell off a cliff when the first fuel crunch hit, and, unlike their Chrysler cousin, never recovered. This generation of Newport was fairly popular in our town at the time.
These Chryslers were attractive in their own way. The Chrysler 1974 C-bodies had the best 5-mph bumper integration of any full-size car. Unlike the Dodge and Plymouth, the Chryslers didn’t look like a warmed-over 1971 Buick LeSabre. The Imperial/New Yorker Brougham front end was obviously inspired by the Lincoln Continental Mark III, and the Newport front end predicted that of the base version of the 1975 Ford LTD. The Newport front, however, looked smoother and better executed than the Ford that would follow one year later.
What’s interesting about these Chryslers is that they offered some of the wildest upholstery options of that era. (The one in this car looks rather tame compared to others that were available.) It was as though Chrysler was making up for the drab fuselage cars.
This grille always reminded me just a bit of the one on the 1960 Chrysler, with its Vee’d bottom edge.
I never noticed that resemblance before you mentioned it. The grille on this car does recall the shape of the 1960 grille. The 1960 Chrysler was one of the better-looking Chrysler models, in my opinion.
Aaron, What a great story. I always look at classic cars as literal time capsules or time machine rides back to the eras when they were produced. A few years back when I took my 1980 Olds Cutluss down to the local Lions Club car show and for added appeal I added a 1980 Gulf Station Map of New England accompanied by a travel brochure of Holiday Inn’s. A couple in their teens stopped by and the guy asked me if the car came with any navigation, and I pointed to the map on the front seat. His response was “Whoa”. It was at that moment I realized that I just became the old dude driving an “Oldsmobile”.
I had a low-mileage ’77 Newport (400-4bbl) when I was in college in the late ’90s. It served me well and never gave any trouble, despite the reputation of Lean Burn Mopars. They were rare then and I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen another one in similar shape.
The only pic I have of the car was taken ‘in costume’ before a Halloween party circa 1998 in front of my then-girlfriend’s off-campus apartment. Great memories…of both the car and her.
Can say I had one.
Hi
I’m selling Newton Chrysler 1968 and is also well kept in a garage for more than 20 years and is still a good condition and still running with low mileage.
If interested you can call or What’s app me Walter at 0827636435.
An give me price I can’t refuse.