The second pair of big Mopar coupes Jerome Solberg shot were these two, much closer together than the other pair. And they’re closer in age too, with only four years separating the ’62 Chrysler and ’66 Doodge Monaco. And there’s only one inch of difference in their wheelbases.
Even the interiors show the family resemblance.
Instead of one instrument nacelle, there’s two. And curiously, the aftermarket tach is in almost the same spot as the utterly useless dash-mounted rear view mirror in the Chrysler.
Here they are from the front.
And the “dog-bone” grille of the Dodge.
The familial relationship is really strong in the back end of the ’62 Chrysler, which is really just a somewhat toned-down ’61 Dodge rear end. Looks like the exact same bumper, and most likely the same trunk lid.
When Chrysler abruptly pulled the plug on the new big “S” cars for 1962 in favor of the downsized ’62 Plymouth and Dodge, the cancelled Chrysler just got a toned down Dodge rear end and a somewhat revised front end as an interim solution until the more heavily redone ’63s came along.
“utterly useless dash-mounted rear view mirror in the Chrysler”
My ’60 Dodge Dart has that dash-mounted mirror, and I thought it would bother me but it doesn’t. It seems to do the job just fine.
Speaking of useless, I would not want to buy a ’61 Dart with those added, “tacked-on” extra round taillights (bottom photo). Ruins the purity of the original design (in my opinion).
If you’re tall, those dash mounted rear view mirrors weren’t bad. For a tall person, they didn’t create hazardous forward blind spot like a high mounted mirror. The forward blind spot on a dash mounted mirror only obscured a part of the hood for tall people.
No experience with this particular model Chrysler, but I liked the similarly dash mounted mirror on my ’58 Plymouth. I was still 6’5″ when I owned that car and I thought the mirror position was great. Gave a great look backwards through the tail fins.
Small differences in mirror mounting position between various years and models of Chrysler cars could lead to a different experience. For the Plymouth, I understand the more forward mirror location on the ’57 models had less visibility. A slight repositioning rearward near the side of the instrument cluster housing for ’58 improved things.
Shorter drivers may have encountered difficulties not shared by taller drivers.
Without those added-on round lights, the brake and taillights are uselessly small, dim, and practically invisible even when new and clean. Any dirt or years on ’em and they are utterly invisible, and then comes a rear-ender which stands even odds of making the car look worse or better, but would be very bad for anyone inside the car. Even as a big fan of Exnerian Mopars, I just can’t-never-could get onside with the ’61 Plymouth-Dodge cars. I’d’ve stopped at I would not want to buy a ’61 Dart. Your ’60 is a much more coherent, thoughtful, grownup design in every last detail (including its great big brake-tail lights).
The dash-mount rearview mirror in your car is maybe not quite so prone to vibration-induced uselessness as on the pre-’60 (body-on-frame) cars, but its other problems remain: their low location sharply limits the driver’s rearward seeing distance even under ideal conditions. They were also blocked by anyone sitting in a middle seat, which was very common back when the cars were late-model items.
My Dad had a new ’56 Plymouth Plaza (year before the Forward Look came out) as his first car, which had the rearview mirror in the “normal” location up high on the windshield (not on the dash as in ’57) and at some point, Chrysler stopped putting the rearview mirror on the dash, even though starting with the ’57, the cars were about the same “height”, the last “tall” ones being the ’56 model year. Of course, in model year ’57, the Forward Look cars being new looked “low” compared to the ’56’s, but at some point the “low” look became “normal” for pretty much all US cars….so why did the rearview mirror need to move at all to the dash in ’57? Couldn’t they’ve kept the mirror in the normal high windshield spot….especially since they reverted to doing so a few years later?
I know the ’57-’59’s still had frames, so maybe you couldn’t sit quite as low as on the ’60-up unibodies (all except Imperial which waited till ’67) but the early 60’s Chryslers still had the dash mounted rearview mirror for a bit longer…did it disappear for ’63? Was the dash mount considered a bit safer than the windshield mount ?(realize that they actually were roof mounted, the windshield mounted ones seemed to have started sometime in the 70’s but the effective “height” of the rearview mirror was about the same independent of mounting location). Could the dash mount mirror “break away” in an accident?
Similarly, under the hood, which also was lower for ’57, they seemed to have tried to make the air cleaner sit lower, as if there wasn’t enough “thickness” left under the hood to put the “normal” pie pan shaped cleaner….but similar to the rear view mirror, the air cleaner went back to being “on top” of the carburator instead of along side of it.
It didn’t seem to take many years for people to just accept the “longer…lower” cars…which seemed to have taken hold by ’59, within a couple of years of Chrysler doing so. I know many prefer the higher seating of the pre-57’s (I’m one of them myself) despite the lack of “swoopy” styling, but it seems like it didn’t take long for styling to win that battle completely (except for trucks which seem to always have kept their “high” profile).
When I was five, Dad bought a 1958 Plymouth Custom Suburban wagon. (It was the worst car ever, he said). Dad was 5’8″, Mom was 5’3″, and both complained that they couldn’t use the rear view mirror when we had three passengers in the front. I was usually stuck there when we had the back seat down to transport things and my taller brother and I were along for the ride.
I’m kinda partial to the ’62 Chrysler’s; my folks bought a white ’62 Newport 4 dr sedan to replace our ’57 New Yorker in 1964. I eventually inherited it from my dad in ’70 when I got my first summer job and needed a car. He bought himself a ’66 Plymouth Fury I Police Interceptor with the 440 and gave me his Newport … it wasn’t that ’69 Roadrunner I wanted but it was a set of “wheels.”
A set of recaps on those wheels at 20 bucks a piece and a new water pump I installed with my dad’s “assistance” for the 361 engine got it roadworthy enough for a 16 year-old-kid to drive to his first “public job” at our local airport.
I loved the push button transmission and the fantastic “Astradome” dashboard. I did manage to save the cassette tape deck I installed under the dashboard and the two speakers I added to the rear shelf when I parted with it three years later.
And … I wish I still had it. It would be quite a unique ride today!
I think you are right about the rear bumper and trunk lid. Recycling body parts was a Chrysler trademark, the ’73 and later Dart used a very slightly modified ’69 Barracuda hood.
Love that light blue ’62 Chrysler. The canted headlamps look cool and unique, not like the cross eyed look of the late ’50’s Lincoln. I really like the clean look of the roof, deck lid and rear fenders. My Dad had a ’61 Dodge, I never could figure out the thinking behind those reverse curved fins. Unique, but not cool, at least to me.
Thanks, Paul, for creating an article from my pictures!
These 2 cars, and the two cars previously posted, all belong to the same nice gentleman, I talked to him a bit, he does his own work and just really loves Mopars from the 1950’s to the 1960’s!
Somewhere in my pictures, I don’t think I’ve uploaded those yet, I have a set of pictures of his 1961 Dodge Dart he found, if I remember correctly, in New York.
Many years ago I read an article [in Old Cars Weekly I think] about how the planned standardization of vehicle controls was stacked against Chrysler Corporation and some of the foreign car manufacturers.
The article suggested Ford & GM had an advantage because their driver controls were similar to what ended up being the norm, while Chrysler had to make changes to interior and exterior door handles, inside rear view mirrors, dashboard gauge illumination, placement of control knobs, automatic transmission controls [no push buttons], and more. Studebaker changed one specific driver control going into 1965; the ignition key moved from the far left near the driver’s door, to the right of the steering column.
The Federal standards were required starting in 1967, but as I recall, published several years in advance to give manufacturers time to comply.
I’ve owned dozens of 1955-68 Chrysler products, from a 1959 Plymouth wagon, to a 1965 Imperial Ghia limousine. I’ve worked on almost every make & model of Mopar vehicles in the same time frame, and I’ve never had a problem with rear view mirror locations, hanging from the top edge of the windshield, or mounted to the dashboard cover. The one mirror location I did not care for was the factory location of MoPaR outside mirrors that were mounted too far forward on the front fenders, as the view thru the mirrors showed a much smaller portion of what was behind and to the side.
My absolute favorite instrument cluster is the 1960-62 Chrysler Astrodome. for years I had one on display in my shop office, hooked up to a special high voltage transformer so I could lite it up at night. If I was to build a street rod, it would have an Astrodome dash.
I think not; there’s too much wrong with this story. I have no doubt you read the article you describe, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it were in Old Cars Weekly or another of those; “Eeeeeee, the big bad government hates cars and drivers and driving and they’re gonna ruin all our fun with burdensome, onerous regulations, eeeeeee!” types of screeds were common in publications of that nature (still are, in some).
There was no planned standardisation of vehicle controls as you recall the article describing. Exterior doorhandles? No. Interior doorhandles? No, not really; only to whatever degree hazardous hard/sharp-edged projections were controlled. Ignition key location? No. A ban on pushbutton transmission controls? No (that old myth was rigourously debunked here on CC). Placement of control knobs? Nothing beyond requiring the crucial ones be operable by a belted-in driver. Dashboard illumination? Minimally—just a requirement that the safety-critical ones be illuminated when the car is running and the headlamps are on. And so on and on; you can read the entire relevant Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard № 101 in its current form here, and in its original form here. As you can see, its scope has expanded and its requirements have increased since it was first enacted in 1968, and yet it’s still not very design-restrictive.
Really, go compare the configuration, placement, and illumination of the controls and displays on (say) a 1963 Dodge Dart, before any hint of any regulatory effort, and a 1976 Dodge Dart, well after the regs had been fully phased in. Everything’s pretty much the same, except the interior doorhandles; nonglare finish instead of shiny chrome on the parts regulated by FMVSS 107—windshield wiper arms and blades; inside windshield mouldings, horn ring and hub of the steering wheel assembly, and the inside rearview mirror frame and mount bracket.* So where’s any of this big wholesale quashing of Chrysler’s designs by Ford and GM?
The first Federal safety standards were published in 1967, and took effect on 1/1/68. They were not written, let alone published, any years in advance—the closest thing that actually happened is that the General Services Administration drew up their own list of standard equipment required on cars purchased by the government starting with the 1966 models. The list included front and rear seatbelts; nonglare windshield wiper arms; windshield washers; a driver’s sideview mirror; reversing lamps, and automatic transmission controls with no forward and reverse position immediately adjacent.
Onward: the thing about Chrysler having to change their interior door handles makes no sense; Chrysler were first to market in 1966 with safety doorhandles that did not invite misuse as a panic handhold. They kept that 1967 design in production for many years, as late as 1993 on some vehicles. Exterior doorhandles…what? No. Chrysler, GM, Ford, and all the rest of the auto industry used the same kinds of exterior doorhandles in at least the ’50s to ’80s: a lift-up or lift-out hinged item, or a grab-bar-and-punchbutton arrangement.
That sideview mirror you rightly object to, the 4-inch round item mounted far forward on the front fender, more or less above the front wheel, was useless for exactly the reason you describe: the field of view was much too small. FMVSS 111 (Rear Visibility) defines a minimum requirement for the side mirror field of view, and those small/far items flunk badly, so they went away—very fine.
And regulation or no regulation, dashboard-mounted rearview mirrors were a bad idea that couldn’t go away fast enough. Their low location sharply limited the driver’s rearward seeing distance even under ideal conditions. They were useless (blocked) by anyone sitting in a middle seat, which was very common back then. They were useless above about 30 mph due to vibration.
As to the regulation nixing foreign makers’ control configurations…no, that didn’t really happen, either. The Japanese makers’ preferred headlamp on-off and high/low beam switching arrangement (rotate the turn signal stalk forward for on, push it forward for high beam, pull it back for low beam) was never forbidden. It—and the more or less European pull/pull beam selector variant—shoved the American convention of a floorboard kickswitch off the market. And the Japanese wiper control stalk grew very popular, as well. Neither did VW or Volvo or Saab or Fiat or Renault or MG or any of those have to significantly redesign their controls to sell cars in the American market. Citroën might have, but if so it’s because they went out of their way to design them in the first place as though from Mars.
That article you describe just cannot survive scrutiny.
The Chrysler AstraDome instrument cluster (the Astrodome is a sportsball stadium in Texas) got some coverage in this piece.
*FMVSS 107 was stupidly rescinded in 1996. Yup, sure enough, back came shiny chrome emblems and ornaments to zap the driver with sun glare.
Having never driven my Plymouth with more than 4 people, I hadn’t thought about the effect of a middle passenger on a dash mounted mirror. You make a good point. The location would have been blocked by a middle passenger.
Not sure what you mean about vibration though. My Plymouth never showed any noticeable mirror vibration at any speed. Even when the road was rough, it didn’t affect the mirror any more or any less than on any other car I owned. Not sure about the idea that a dashboard would inherently be more susceptible to vibration than a windshield our headliner mount.
Daniel, thanks for the corrections. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’m sure the article was in OCW back in the late 1970s. The only other car publications i subscribed to back then was Special Interest Cars and Hemmings, and I seriously don’t think it was in either of those.
I find it interesting that in checking prior to publishing the original comment, I wasn’t able to find anything at DOT on when things were first published.
I know it’s the AstraDome, I just prefer calling it the AstroDome. Much like I refer to the ’57 & ’58 Packards as “Packabakers”, and I have proudly owned several of them, driving a Supercharged ’57 Clipper to high school for a while.
I know a popular definition of Coupe vs Sedan is the number of doors. And the two at the top qualify as having only 2 doors. But my gawd, they’re just 2 door sedans. Much like Potter Stewart and his definition of obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” My much beloved BMWs, among many others, but specifically BMW, 2002s, E21 320i’s, E30 assorted numbers were all 2 door sedans. E36 325/328 etc 2 doors were coupes.
I had a roommate for a time with a 70’s Chrysler product, Plymouth I think, 2 door. Curiously he was kind of a high end, well, maybe mid end, delivery driver, with his personal car. He always spoke of it was a coupe. Like it was a big deal. All I saw was a big boat with but 2 doors in a sedan body.
In other words I see the 2 cars pictured at the top as a pair of 2 door sedans.
I don’t claim to know the true and correct categorical definition of a coupé, but popular though it might be*, but a definition just based on door count isn’t a correct one; there are plenty of 2-door cars that aren’t coupés. A defining characteristic of a coupé, as I understand it, is a sloped or truncated roofline. On that basis, I don’t think either of these cars is a coupé.
2-door sedans exist, but these aren’t; there is no B-pillar on either of them—they’re hardtops, and that’s probably how I’d call both of these: “2-door hardtop”.
* so is saying ‘nukular’ for nuclear
We’ve covered the coupe-vs-2 door sedan issue numerous times here. First off, there is no truly official standard; call them whatever you want to call them. That’s just fine with me.
The word “coupe” (from the French “to cut”) originated with horse-drawn carriages and denoted a distinctly smaller, shorter carriage, typically just for two. Like many automotive body style definitions, this and other terms for carriages was carried over to cars.
The definition that I have chosen to adopt and advocated here repeatedly, is that a 2-door sedan shares the same basic roof structure/size/shape as the 4-door sedan. This also conforms most often historically, at least until the more modern era.
Accordingly, these are very much coupes: their roof structure/size/shape is clearly not shared with the sedans (2 and 4 door); the trailing edge of their roofs is shorter, resulting in a longer rear end behind them. Most of all, they have different styling, to clearly differentiate them from the sedans.
I wrote a very exhaustive review of the 2-door sedan here, with many examples and explanation of the differences in the terms. But as I said, call them whatever you like. And yes, “2-door hardtop” is correct too; they’re both.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-the-two-door-sedan-1920-2008-its-history-and-the-last-2-door-sedan-for-each-brand-and-model-us-market/
This is a bit of a tougher call for me than the Part-I pair (in that case, the lawnmower-sized wheels on the ’67 turned me all the way off; who knows what other horrors have been visited upon the poor thing.
As to today’s pair: the ’66 has vastly better engineering and build, everywhere and in every way. In equal condition, the ’66 is overwhelmingly likely to be the better, more dependable, more usable, more manageable car. On the other hand, the ’62 has pushbuttons and AstraDome and canted headlamps and atomic-age swoopy optimism à l’Exner.
They’re both pretty, even though I prefer 4-door cars.
I agree with Paul’s handling of the basic ideas concerning the use of the word Coupe in describing a vehicle body. But there have been car manufacturers who still chose to use the word Coupe on a 4-door sedan, further muddying the situation.
One of my favorite coupe 4 door cars was the British Rover P5B coupe. In this case, the Rover P5B coupe has a lowered roofline and a less formal look than the original P5 saloons. Mine was a 1968 LHD version with the 3.5L V8 [former Buick 215]. I bought it in 1977 from a British diplomat in DC who wanted a car with A/C, as they had a new baby.
I found an owner of a regular Rover P5 Saloon, so we parked the cars next to each other, and noted the roof line was several inches lower on the coupe, and rear seat headroom was greatly diminished.
Kia claims that the signature grille that they use on their cars was inspired by a tigers nose and they call it their tiger nose grille. I guess that sounds a lot better than saying that they were inspired by the grille on the full sized 1966 Dodge. Too bad they didn’t crib the dashboard from the Dodge too.