I first shot this Sebring in San Mateo, CA. seven years ago, very shortly after I started Curbside Classics at the old site. And on our recent January road trip, I encountered it again, near my SIL’s place. It’s obviously moved forward about thirty feet or so, and it’s showing distinct signs of aging, despite the fairly benign climate. And it looks like someone sideswiped it too, or maybe that happened some other way. And the tires are flatter. In any case, it’s not as fresh looking as it was in in 2009, but neither are the rest of us.
The other two vehicles that were there in 2009 are both still there, although the Mark VII was now behind the Sebring.
Frankly, I was a bit surprised at how much this car has aged in seven years, given its doting owner.
I didn’t shoot the interior this time, but I suspect it hasn’t changed as much. UVs are being blocked considerably.
Already in 2009, it was obvious that the vinyl top had been painted over. And this is a Sebring Plus, even if part of the name is missing. The poor Sebring had a formidable task, in trying to compete with the new GM Colonnade coupes, especially the monster hits Monte Carlo and Cutlass Supreme Classic. And even Ford’s Gran Torino was much more in tune with the times. We covered the ill-conceived 1971 Sebring here in considerable detail, and Chrysler’s efforts at trying to make it look less overtly sporty in 1973 with the new front end and changed C-Pillar was not effective. Now it just looked…dorky; neither fish nor fowl.
The hood was still quite pristine in 2009.
Now genuine patina has erupted through the slowly thinning paint layer. I can relate.
As best as I can tell, this is the only 1973 Sebring to grace the pages of CC, so it deserves an encore. Frankly, it deserves a proper CC, as the first go-around was hardly worthy of that name. Maybe in another seven years…
I’ll shed a tear and pour one out.
Although thank god I only had to go about 3 years without a garage for the Mustang. Although a hailstorm gave me an insurance check to help replace the top.
My guess is the owner lost his carport/garage and the seven years out in the elements did a number on the finish.
This also makes me feel emotions. Did it have to turn out this way? It’s a Plymouth… two door. An extinct (or nearly-extinct) species. The damage looks reversible – which I hope happens.
I am doing some heavy duty cycling on this car. When these came out I didn’t much care for them. Then within a year or two I built a model kit of one and started to pay attention to the lines, and came to like them quite a lot.
Today I was gazing on this fair car again and for the first time noticed that in updating the front end the stylists got rid of the ridge that went up and over the front wheel opening. But left it there in the back. Gaaaah! A horrible detail that I will never again be able to un-see. Oh well, it is at least still more attractive than the 73 Fury.
Isn’t that a trip about that ridge over the wheel openings? I noticed that when I shot it seven years ago. It’s Studebaker cringe-worthy.
That ridge is ghastly on it’s own, it is less noticeable on Roadrunners where the stripe camouflages the lack of ridge up front, but then this restyle wasn’t about making the Roadrunner look flattering.
I don’t know why they left it, they had to have changed the quarter stamping anyway for the revised window shape….so???
I don’t think so. That rear quarter panel almost certainly stops short of the sail panel. There has to be a well-concealed seam somewhere around there, I assume, to connect to the roof stamping. But I’m not an expert in that.
Mopar bodies of this period typically put the seams diagonally in the C pillar, but I think the seams on these were actually higher up towards the roof based on the 71+ Bs. Note the rust pattern, perfectly uniform sheetmetal patina from the wheel opening ridge to the roof curve, where there is a straight strip of filler and paint, and then the rest of the roof is uniform rust. That stamping definitely encompasses the quarter window,
I always liked this car’s face but they should’ve given it to the sedan/wagon, along with a butt-tuck for the former, and left the coupe in its’ 1971 styling.
Much as I agree with you, that’s not where the coupe market was heading. For some reason Americans wanted to go formal.
It’s worth noting that the ’73-’74 rear wheel-well ridge is significantly toned-down from the ’71-’72 Sebring coupe. In the later version, the ridge fades out and disappears as it goes down into the rocker panel. That doesn’t happen with the earlier ridge, which stays quite vivid as it parallels the rocker panel both in front of and behind the wheel-well.
The real key is in the doors. The earlier cars have the ridge whereas the later cars do not and are smooth. If they had really recycled the quarter panels, the door is where there would have been a fade-out transition of the ridge disappearing before it got to the front fender.
It’s still goofy, but the Chrysler stylists obviously intended for the muted ridge to be there on a brand-new quarter panel and did not recycle the earlier car’s clearer and more pronounced stamping. Simply put, the two quarter panels, even if the quarter window had been exactly the same, would not have interchanged.
This is just my ‘observation’, but seems like the ’73 Road Runner made a small ‘comeback’ that model year? Seen more of them when late models, and lately as collector cars, than its ‘low price 3’ rival ’73 Chevelle SS.
Your observation is accurate, 73 sales were double that from 1972. However, the big change for 1973 was that the 318 was made the standard engine, and all of the additional sales came from 318 equipped cars, 340/400/440 sales were roughly close to 1972 levels.
1973 Chevelle SS production was 31,774 cars excluding the SS wagon.
The RR is harder to pin down.
Allpar lists 1973 RR production as 11,233 total but The Paddock says it’s closer to 19,056 total and yet another site says 15,180 (15,929 including GTX).
I assume the other site is the one I used, as the 15,929 figure is what it adds up to. For whatever reason every time I tried linking it in this post I get beaten up by the CC spam filter. I’m inclined to go by it, the breakdown between engines transmissions and bodystyles is more in depth than any other site which just gives out the total number. GTX was a submodel of the Roadrunner in 1973, not a standalone model as in previous years.
318-2 7,056
3 Spd 1,242
4 Spd 350
Auto 5,447
340-4 5,384
4-Spd 956
Auto 4,428
400-4 2,740
4 Spd 749
Auto 1,991
440-4 GTX 749
Auto 749
Sunroof 414
It’s hard to believe that just a scant four years earlier (1969), the Road Runner actually outsold all other musclecars, including the Chevelle SS396 and GTO. I think the number most cited was like 83,000 cars and I recall reading that something like every fourth Plymouth down the assembly line was a Road Runner. That seems a little high and suspect it was more like every fourth ‘intermediate’ 1969 Plymouth was a Road Runner.
I’m sure that it was every fourth Plymouth intermediate. Plymouth as a whole sold well over 600,000 cars in 1969. One out of every four Plymouths would have been 150,000 cars. The Road Runner sold well in 1969, but not that well.
Sad to see but looking closely this car was a 10 footer 10 years ago. I think the car was repainted at some point, and that big swath of fade on the door may actually be the original finish, where the new paint gradually faded/burned away from it. You can see blue on the pinch welds below the rockers, which is a tell-tale sign, from the factory that area is blacked out.
Other than the aeformentioned ridge inexplicably held over from the 71-72 body, these are pretty attractive, sort of a return to the cleanness of the 68-69s if the 71s were too out there for you(I love them though). But yeah, looking more in line with a late 60s design language wasn’t the ticket for success in 1973, and it actually comes off as uptight and conservative, which is a massive overcorrection of the previous model. They eventually righted the ship with this basic body with the Córdoba but the damage was done for Plymouth and Dodge, since their significantly formalized 75 bodies weren’t well embraced either.
Love the Mark VII photobombing the last pic!
I really liked and enjoyed my ’73 Satellite; after all, it replaced my horrendous ’71 Vega! The Plymouth, with 318, was comfortable and reliable, although the gasoline crisis hit just after my purchase. I miss Plymouths… a sign of old age, no doubt! ps.. also enjoyed my ’56 Plymouth!
Ok, so I didn’t exactly have a ’73 Satellite Sebring, I had a ’72 Satellite 4dr as the Google pic shows, although the color and trim are right, its missing the dog caps, but its close to what I had in about 1983. A buddy, now he had the ’73 Sebring, as pictured, in a metallic blue not too dissimilar to this one, with the 318. We hooned around in it during the mid ’80’s, but it was a rather clanky and rattly thing, with giant swaths of hard plastic on the door panels, and was a bit of a let down to the ’72 stripp-o I had, even with its rubber floor mats. Oddly enough, my ’72 ranks about as highly in my memory as any beater I ever had, probably more. For all of $100, it was my daily flog and I just loved it, a great size, pre-crash bumpers al all, and other than the cheapest steering wheel outside a Pinto, it was great. For all the hoo-ha about social media and its ability to connect people, nothing beats a bench vinyl seat in an old car to do the same! (Nudge nudge, wink wink)
Is it me or it just looks a little smaller in new pictures,maybe she is dealing with the bone loss.
We get osteopenia, they get rustitis
Memories! My dad bought a brand new 1973 Sebring for my mom. It was pretty. White, with a red snake skin vinyl halo roof, white bench seat interior, with red houndstooth seats and red shag carpet. It was also one of the most poorly built cars I’ve ever seen.
The plastic tail light housings cracked and filled with water. The smog choked 318 built up carbon in the intake manifold, to the point where it would barely run. The dealer ripped her off blatantly, every time she took it in for service.
Her 65 Catalina was a Mercedes by comparison.
The mix of muscle car/brougham/police car looks, with 70s flab, just doesn’t work on these. Hard to believe this was considered a mid size. Makes a Duster seem like so much a better buy.
Chrysler couldn’t win for losing in the early seventies. Even when they had a certifiable hit with the 1970 A-body coupe (i.e., Duster), the ‘conquest’ sales didn’t come so much from GM or Ford, but their own E- and B-body coupes. It’s generally accepted that, while it was a pretty miserable car in it’s own right, the A-body coupe is what killed the E-body (and put a seriously big dent in the B-body coupe, as well)..
So, even though there were lots of Duster sales, all it did was lower their overall bottom line since the sales mostly came from their own higher profit cars.
Chrysler really dropped the ball with such underwhelming intermediates and full sized models between 1973 and 1975. Not counting the Cordoba of course. Further managing to taint their compacts with the F-body’s issues in 1976.
I actually liked the 71, in fact I almost bought a 71 Sebring but the steering feel (actually the lack of steering feel,) was a turn off.
I actually liked the sedan and wagons from 65 on, but this facelift? I can’t imagine what they were thinking, and until reading the comments I never understood what was wrong with the side sculpting.
“what they were thinking”
Were trying to look less “racey”, since average, middle aged, buyers were avoiding anything that attracted attention and speeding tickets.
OTOH, when mid size cars got bigger and more luxo, then the F bodies took off with young buyers who used to have 60’s mid size cars. So there was still a market for ‘racey looking’ cars, just smaller ones.
It helped that the Camaro and Firebird had no real domestic competition after 1974. The two cars cornered what was left of the old pony and muscle car markets.
I find the ‘undersized’ vinyl roof almost as unsettling as the sculpting above the rear wheel arches. Leaving the painted metal visible above the drip rails and around the rear quarter windows helps the vinyl top look like a poorly fitted toupee. Besides making the design element appear ‘busier’ visually.
That was known as the “halo” vinyl roof option. GM had offered it as an option on various models in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but had phased it out by 1973.
Hey I thought I was the only person who called those ill fitting vinyl roofs “toupee roofs”. As funny as it looks on this coupe, I thought they were hideous on 4 door Hard tops like the Buick park Avenue!
No rational explanation but I tend to like the whole 71-74 midsize Plymouth cars. I’ll never own one since prices have skyrocketed, but I like that whole generation. And I like this one.
This car immediately made me think of this scene in the original Gone in 60 Seconds
https://youtu.be/w8MFeATapn0?t=10m35s
There is another, sportier incarnation of this body style at 22:20
That sweet Chevy Class B RV doesn’t look any worse for the wear after 7 years.
I don’t have any backup for my opinion that Chrysler Corp took a swift trip to Hell in 1971, but it’s always seemed that way to me. 63 to 69 Chryslers seemed very mechanically rugged and reasonably durable, even in Rust Country® where I grew up. We had a 69 Plymouth with the 255 Slant-Six that lasted 10 years and 150,000 miles.
Then suddenly, in 1972 Mopars were fatly-styled cars made from cheap and lazy metal stampings with interiors from K-mart, and engines that (to be fair, like everything else) didn’t run very well. … oh, and they rusted like Hell. My mother’s 74 Plymouth needed both front fenders replaced after 3 years.
What’s the story? Or is it just my imagination?
I think that was pretty much the story. By the mid 70’s, the only car they made that was mechanically worth a damn was the Valiant and Duster.
I contend “Peak Chrysler” happened with the ’67 Barracuda Fastback and the ’68 Charger. I’ve regretted selling my ’69 Charger since the day I handed over the keys. Until last year, when Charger V2.1 arrived in my driveway.
Chrysler hit a peak in 1968. Its market share went back over 18 percent (from around 10 percent only six years earlier!). The Charger and Road Runner put Chrysler intermediates and muscle cars back on the map, and garnered good reviews. Business publications in 1968 were hailing the return of Chrysler.
The problems started with the all-new 1969 C-bodies, which didn’t sell in the expected numbers. Customers didn’t warm up to the styling, and complained about lax quality control and chintzy interior materials. The 1970 E-bodies were another disappointment.
Then, in 1970, Chrysler had a brush with bankruptcy in the wake of the Penn Central collapse. Sales were also down because of a mild recession.
Lynn Townsend was an accountant, and his reaction to these failures was to cut costs in any manner. Added cost pressures in the form of government pollution control and safety mandates, and the UAW contract in the wake of the 1970 GM strike, only aggravated Chrysler’s problem.
GM and Ford had a larger production base, and could spread out these costs over more vehicles. Chrysler didn’t have that cushion. Plus, its most consistently popular cars – the Dart and Valiant – were also the ones that generated the lowest profit per unit. After a brief recovery in 1972-73, Chrysler spent the 1970s careening from one crisis to another, until the government bailout of 1980-81.
I think the cost cutting pressure came even sooner. Chrysler had a great year in 1965 but both 66 and 67 were down in volume, even though their market share may have been inching up. Sales (and market share) were up in 1968 but those gains were getting harder to make and were coming with a lot of strong-arming of dealers. I am pretty sure that costs had been squeezed out of the 1969 C body cars in probably mid 1967 if not before, and it showed, especially in the interiors. I think that if those 1969 C body cars had been built as nicely as the 1965-68 version Chrysler would have come into the 70s a lot stronger than they did. As it was each new generation became noticeably cheaper in materials and more flimsy in construction than what it replaced. The Valiant and Dart did so well in comparison because it was the last of the “fat” products from Chrysler, having been introduced in 1967.
No doubt the cheapness of the 1969 C-bodies came as a result of decisions made in 1967. Interestingly, I’ve read that Townsend agreed to spend a fair amount of money on the 1965 C-body interiors. The cars were a big success (particularly the Chrysler version), and helped the corporation regain a lot of lost ground. He seems to have quickly forgotten that lesson.
Townsend’s limitations really showed up after about 1968. The gains through that year pretty much brought Chrysler back to where it should have been. The 1961-62 market share figures were abnormally low for the corporation.
To really gain on the competition after that point, Chrysler needed to start innovating, particularly with product development, and think outside the box. But Townsend’s policy was “do whatever GM was doing” (and not just when it came to styling). That meant that Chrysler was going to perpetually be a day late and a dollar short.
So here I am in Australia watching an old episode of Policewoman and here are the good guys driving what has to be the four door version of this, or something awfully close. Same colours, very similar front end, but this one is a Dodge. Would I be right in this? Halfway through the episode the Dodge is sacrificed to satisfy the viewing public and is blown up in a parking lot by the bad guys. Angie ( apart from the slly wig she is wearing right now) looks gorgeous.
Ugh. I had mentioned this the last time this car was featured here, but me and a buddy of mine converted one of these into a “race-car”. We raced at a local dirt track and we obtained one these coupes to replace one of our other cars that had been wrecked in the racing season.
It was a fairly nice car, even in 1988, but once we dug into it, the rust was far worse than we originally thought. Even though the car we had would have been declared a basket case by any reasonable person, I still feel pang of guilt for having essentially destroyed one…
These B bodies will NEVER have the cool factor of the previous generation. The stying and execution just aren’t there. That said, I still kinda like these. And I actually very slightly prefer this front end styling to the ’71 and ’72 Satellite/RR. VS the Charger…its kind of a wash either way. It could be that Mopars as a whole didn’t get whacked with the 5mph bumper ugly stick NEARLY as bad as most in ’73/’74.
This car is a textbook case of why the details matter in terms of styling. That nasty ass color, the vinyl roof, whitewalls, hubcaps…definitely pretty damn ‘dorky’ looking, as PN said. I find those things dorky on ANYTHING, but this car is absolutely a musclecar square peg trying to be shoved into a round brougham hole. Now, if it has a proper set of mag wheels, a befitting hue to the paint and a lack of all the tacky garbage, its not a bad looking ride at all. I would hope this car gets the damage repaired and a freshening up into something with a helluva lot more curb appeal….
Hell, I like this one even better. Period correct color, RWLs, blacked out torq thrusts and obviously not a ‘tribute’ RR, while packing a world of its own swagger.
The rear bumper and tail lights look a bit like the ’69 Impala’s. The Chevy’s is a bit smoother, but otherwise very similar.
Daisy Duke wore it well
What car?
Mismatched tires but, otherwise, a rather nice Road Runner. Also notice no engine call-out on the hood, so it’s most likely the lo-po 318 engine version.
Funny how many 1969 Chargers that show destroyed, compared with the much less valuable 1973 Road Runner.