Seeing cars in traffic or parked, I sometimes idly wonder who the people are that drive them and what they do or why they chose that car. Then there are cars that have indelible associations ingrained, mostly TV and movie cars – such as Rockford’s Firebird, the Duke Boys’ Charger, Mr. Bond’s Aston Martin DB5. And with some characters you have no idea what they drive/drove as it wasn’t part of the storyline. But when I saw this Dodge Aspen R/T, I for whatever reason thought this might be the car that Dwayne Schneider, the building superintendent from the sitcom “One Day At A Time”, played by Pat Harrington Jr. (RIP), might have driven.
I haven’t watched the show in decades but that’s the association I somehow instantly made. The show was set in Indianapolis and ran from late 1975-1984, and perhaps it’s uncouth of me, but the Aspen (and Volare) strike me as typical midwestern cars; and Schneider seemed quite happy-go-lucky and friendly but with just a little bit of an edge – which sort of describes the Dodge Aspen and its R/T variant.
Of course the Aspen was available in sedan and wagon form as well, but the coupe may be the most attractive of the set. Launched for 1976, in 1977 a mainly cosmetic package (with the exception of a 3-speed floor-mounted manual and a heavy duty suspension that Chrysler thought of as extremely sporty) was available for the coupe and labeled R/T. Also available on top of that was a “SuperPak” option package consisting mainly of front and rear spoilers, window louvers, wheel flares and a quite loud tape stripe job.
This car seems to have the louvers of that package but not the other stuff beyond the blacked out grille as far as I can tell. It also has a subtle pinstripe with an “R/T’ graphic at the rear edge so I’m assuming it’s real, but personalized over the decades. As far as engines go, the 318 was standard but you could also option up the 360 in either 2 or 4-barrel carb form but were then forced into an automatic.
I didn’t hear this car go or even see the owner, but sitting there it looked quite good and refreshingly different from the hordes of restored ponycars and also much more common fare such as Novas and the sort. The Aspen (and Volare) get little love in general and lots of scorn due to some early failings which I shan’t dwell on today. By 1977 performance everywhere was generally nothing to get too excited about so looks did much of the talking. This one talks quite clearly and has interesting things to say, even when just sitting around waiting for someone to go for a ride.
Fantastic sighting! Definitely unusual choice for a hobby car, as you stated. Even with a 360 4 barrel, it would have been pretty mild mannered for a “muscle car” in original form. Judging by the outside, I’d bet the owner has lavished quite a few underhood parts on it from the huge Mopar aftermarket, so maybe it’s not so mild mannered anymore.
I always found the Aspen/Volare coupes to be an attractive body, and the Superpak (and even moreso the 78 Super Coupe option) gave it quite a mean look, but one thing kept it from being able to pull off a plausible muscle appearance: the front end. Stodgy with a capital S, and no amount of blackout could help it look slicker. Just as well it has that tell, since late 70’s factory power options could never make it a legit supercar anyway.
I actually owned a 77 Volare coupe in the early 90’s. It was the opposite of the feature car, being white with a slant 6/torqueflight. Even as a commuter grade car, I felt the ultra upright front that was appropriate for the sedan or wagon detracted from an otberwise good-looking coupe design. Apart from the air conditioning, and the fuel pump going out once, it was totally reliable in the 110-140k me range I had it for. And I delivered pizzas in it!
I seem to remember a Car and Driver test of this car, and as I recall it was faster than the Trans Am and the Corvette!
Yeah, grading on a late 70s curve, they weren’t bad. Mopar kept a little bit of the flame alive throughout the 70s.
The I never found the front end of these any worse than the 73-76 A bodies, both looked pretty stodgy
Looks nice to me and I have no beef with the 318CID V8’s .
I remember that TV show and anyone from a large New England city knows Schnider’s character was based 100 % on truth .
-Nate
Totally a Schneider car. I get this completely. Apt! I’m also a fan of the coupes (my parents owned a Volaré coupe), ,but anticipate comments that reference the wagons as the most attractive Chrysler F-Bodies. What a great find. The ’76 and ’77 models are super-rare, as they disintegrated very quickly.
I had gotten a 1978 Plymouth Volare as a hand-me-down gift in 1991, and even though it was a hi-mileage car (well over 100,000 miles) it was highly dependable and easy and fun to drive. Certain features were rather archaic, such as an A-M only radio, but all in all it served me well for quite a few years. I think cars like Volare (Aspen) and Mavericks (Comets) are wrongly blacklisted simply because they did not have factory performance options and the standard models came as bare-bones, plain-jane models. It must also be remembered that in the 1970s the technology was nothing like it is in the 21st Century and all cars from that era could be considered inferior to today’s hi-tech super cars.
Cool! And yes, I would not have come up with the Schneider association, but it totally works.
I agree that this was a perfect midwestern car. There were lots of Chrysler employees and relatives of Chrysler employees in certain parts of the midwest, so discounts abounded. And it was just the kind of car people hereabouts drove back then. Except for the R/T part – I cannot recall ever seeing many of these at all.
I will part company with other commenters here, as I never liked the looks of the coupe very much, and thought the stylists did a better job on the sedans and a near perfect job on the wagon. The previous A body offered an attractive sporty coupe (the Duster) and an attractive conservative coupe (Swinger/Scamp). The F body coupe tried to split the difference and didn’t really hit either one of those two looks.
The Aspen/Volaré/Nova/Omega/Ventura coupes…er…guess I don’t need to say much more than that. You’re not the only one to comment favourably on the F-body wagons. I don’t agree, but I don’t have to. The taillights alone are enough to put me off, and the rest of it does very little for me, though I suppose if I dig around I can compliment them on probably having good driver sightlines. The sedans are boxes on the curbside made of ticky-tacky, all the same. I have difficulty evaluating them on whatever their merits might be, because the concurrent GM A- and B-bodies made them look outdated and ugly, plus there’s an indelible stain on them: they replaced the Dart and Valiant with this?!.
You’d rather they replaced it with this? 🙂
If it was either/or, yes. That was still an A-body, so although it was differently but equally ugly to the F-body, at least its suspension wasn’t such a completely mediocre crapmess.
MR. STERN :
Do I hear some little bit of anti- A Body bias here ? .
I’ll have _NONE_ of that thankyouverymuch =8-) .
/SARC/
-Nate
No, you hear pro-A-body bias from me, and anti-F-body.
Daniel ;
You missed the SARC part…..
Lighten up dude .
-Nate
»zonk« Yeah, completely! This or maybe a van; a Dodge or Chev. Not a Ford, though. Couldn’t tell you why, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, Schneider surely spent a lot of time behind the wheel of an A100 earlier in his life. There may have been a B200 (def. the 200) Tradesman in there somewhere too. Schneider is all Mopar, no doubt. No Ford, you are correct there and I can’t even think of what Chevy might work…
About the only Chev I can think of would be about a ’74 van, or maybe an old El Camino. But yeah, mostly Mopars.
Behind the wheel and above the bong, yeah, no doubt.
I think the Schneider characterization of this Aspen coupe is entirely apt. If I remember, correctly, though, there was an episode where he came to Ann Romano’s rescue in his van and can picture the long conversation they had about one of life’s mistakes while they drove through the rain.
It seems to me that you are all more ‘fascinated’ by the Schneider name than the automobile. Having serviced these cars as they were new and thereafter, I have to say that I liked the ‘A’ body cars better in their early years. Unfortunately after 1974, even the Dart and Valiants began to overextend themselves from the well built compact car they had been in years prior. The Aspen/Volare came along during Chrysler’s lean years and the build quality showed the result of cost cutting. Even the running gear showed the rush to get new technology on the road too soon. Take the lock-up torque converter. Early failures of the 904 Torqueflite became a very costly expense to Chrysler both financially and reputation wise. I should know, I was the one at the Dealership that had to ‘fix’ those transmissions. It was actually easy to do, but hard to keep up with. My only words of explanation, “engineers are some times too loose with tolerances when it comes to internal clearances in a transmission.” I had the same type of problem with the later 60s 727 Torqueflite.
Don’t know Schneider, but like the car. Has this front end been customized, or just selectively repainted? It looks quite different without all the usual retro-glitz these seemed to be slathered with.
I was going back and forth on that when writing this up, I think the only thing different here (as regards the grille of the R/T) is that there is an upper portion above the chrome outline that on this car is either missing or painted black. I think it’s actually painted as I can see some detail. Stock it’s rather like a mustache, the way it is looks FAR better to my eye. That change alone made it more difficult than usual to identify the car, I just took the shot and continued my walk and then found this picture again a few months later. I was confident all along it was a completely different make and model (equally unseen these days) but then realized it wasn’t and the hunt to figure it out was on…
For all the platform’s faults coupes looked pretty good even in their “tacky” paint on performance forms, of all the deep malaise “sporty” domestic artifacts these various F body editions are the most overlooked (or maybe most extinct?).
If you can find one today they seem like the perfect candidate for a classic Mopar coupe project that doesn’t have such an absurdly high cost of entry the 60s and early 70s stuff does, and you still have a fair amount of M body doners left to scrounge from for upgrades and replacement items.