I’d like to imagine that I found and shot this curbside Charger, as I’ve been on the prowl for one since this treasure hunt began. Bu it was shot and posted by LeSabrethoothTiger, which I believe makes it likely to be the New York area. These gen1 Charger are a bit of an odd duck; they’re both so compelling at yet not just quite right either. Well, putting a big fastback roof on a Dodge Coronet body is liable to create a bit of a split personality. At the time this Charger was new, I was working at a little gas station owned by a cab company, meaning a sea of yellow Coronets. But no, this is no taxi.
I’m not exactly wild about the shed-roof hood scoop, but then this is how these cars often ended up. And I like it better like this than if it had been perfectly restored; it’s a period piece. The badge on the fender says “383”; no wonder it got this kind of attention. These Chrysler B-Bodies suited guys who were a bit more, a, visceral than average. Maybe that’s a stereotype. But during my time in Maryland from 1965 – 1971, it seems like a disproportionate number of young guys who had moved to Baltimore from the sticks and even further south, because that’s where the jobs where, tended to drive Mopar B-Bodies. They were Southern Boys, and they liked their Mopars, and fast at that.
These were that, and tough and big. They weren’t really mid-sized cars like the Chevelle and Fairlane; these sat on a 117″ wheelbase, just two inches shy of an Impala’s. The B-Body started out as a full-sized car, in 1962, even if it was a bit shorter than the competition.
Which of course explains why they were so popular as cabs: they were big enough to be considered “full-size” in that role; nobody was running Chevelles and Fairlanes as taxis back then. But they were cheaper than a big Chevy or Ford; and tougher.
So why am I talking about taxis instead of the Charger? Well, the credibility factor on this big fastback was a bit hard to swallow, especially since it cost a good chunk more than a Coronet 500. Too much so, which explains why this gen1 Charger was a bit of sales dud. Unlike the cheaper and yet more distinctive 1968 version that replaced it, and became an icon. And could even be had with the slant six, unlike these, which were V8 only. A Dodge Coronet coupe seemed more honest, and a bit less affected.
Related reading:
CC 1967 Dodge charger – Chrysler’s Marlin
CC 1968 Dodge Charger Six – Rarer Than An (Original) Hemi Charger
“A Dodge Coronet coupe seemed more honest, and a bit less affected.” So true. Still, I had a taste for these big, flashy bruisers. They look great in profile and in three quarter view, and the plain hubcaps look tough with the silver/red color scheme. As for the racer boy mods, no thanks.
While I do like this car, and it is a highly sought after collectible, I have a hard time thinking of it as a Charger. The 1968–1970 was by far my favorite Charger, and IMO by far the best looking, though I certainly wouldn’t turn down a 1971-1974. I specifically liked the ’74 with the vinyl top and three opera windows. I knew someone who bought one just before I turned 16.
A lot of people (including non-Chrysler mavens), consider the ’68-’70 Charger the best-looking car to ever come out of Detroit. After that (at least for me), it’s a toss-up between the ’66-’67, ’71-’72, and ’73-’74 versions.
Considering everything that came afterwards (up to and including today’s cars), they probably should have just retired the name.
These early Chargers are my favorite. This is the car that caused my fascination with full-width taillights. there would be a 66-67 Charger in my dream garage, except it would have an uncut hood and full grille with working hide-away headlights, and big block or Hemi power under the hood.
I was 7 years old when these hit the streets (and TV screens in their commercials), and I was immediately hooked. I looked seriously at a red one when shopping for my first car (a 383, even) but it was a might rough so I passed. I have carried just a wee bit of regret with me over that ever since.
My car-mentor Howard was bit by the Charger bug too. He had bought a 66 Newport six window sedan, and it was only a few months old when the Charger made its midyear intro. He immediately traded the nearly new Newport on a silver 383-powered Charger with red interior. He later upgraded to a 68 R/T with a 440.
I know, I’m gushing. But I don’t care.
I like these now,at the time they came out I never noticed them much.The Mustang was my favourite American car as a 9 year old.A bit ahead of the fastback Ford Fairlane and Mercury Cyclone,right car wrong time.
Coronets were pretty tough. We had a 1966 Coronet 440 two-door hardtop with the new 273 V8. My parents gave it to my cousin who racked up 270,000 miles, the last 2/3rds on NYC streets. None of our other Big-3 cars were good for 100,000 miles.
I well and fondly remember these , ‘ tough ‘ is a vast understatement and no , they’re not talking about how long the engines lasted ~ the entire car was sturdy and well designed .
Too big for me but I remember some really fun/fast/E-Tickets rides on them back in the day .
-Nate
I arrived in taxiland after the Coronet was on the road, but I sure heard lots of stories about how tough they were. The most common model was the 225 Slant Six and of course Torque Flight. I always saw the M Bodies as the spiritual successor to the Coronet.
It’s a shame we don’t have any pictures of this Charger’s interior. Chrysler offered a full length center console in the Charger that created an interior with four “bucket” seats.
I don’t know if every ’66-67 Charger offered this option, but it certainly created an far different interior then the one in the Coronet.
Plus the Charger adds the fabulous dash with the electroluminescent instruments. I think that rear console (along with the fold-down seats) was standard issue for the Charger, at least in 1966.
Due to customer complaints about passenger access, the rear console was eliminated for 1967, but the folding rear seats and center cushion (albeit in a much more abbreviated version) remained. Along with the fender-mounted turn signal indicators and vinyl roof (if so equipped), the missing rear console is the easiest way to differentiate between ’66 and ’67 Chargers.
That side view at the top shows how lo-o-o-ng this Charger and its fastback roof really are. Looks stretch but OK to my eye. Which reminds me of the Rambler Marlin that famously looks too long and all wrong.
Interesting to try and put my finger on just why the Charger succeeds where the Marlin badly fails. Marlin’s roof stays straight much too long, that’s well known. But I think there’s more to it than that. The Charger’s coke-bottle body shape certainly helps it wear the fastback. What do you see?
AMC stylist Vince Geraci commented in “Hemmings Classic Car” about the Marlins awkward profile. Senior management was concerned about a lack of rear seat headroom, so they insisted that Geraci lift the top about 2.5″ in the back. Geraci was furious because his original treatment was far more graceful.
Well, that pretty much sums up AMC in a sound bite. Talk about misinterpreting your potential buyers!
Like the old-fashioned-looking Plymouths, Dodges and Chryslers of the early 1950s, way too tall just so the CEO could wear his hat behind the wheel.
The side window profile is very close to the Marlin but the Chrysler designers had the luxury of a long rear overhang to make the long roof slope work. The rear side window of the Marlin as also a bit elongated; I’d be curious to see what it would look like with a little less window and a thicker C pillar.
Good points. I’ve wondered too how a Marlin would look with a different side window. Yet another PhotoShop opportunity for someone: make the Marlin side view look right.
AMC’s first design proposals to get in on the exploding ponycar market were by putting fastbacks on compact-sized Rambler Americans, a la the Valiant Barracuda. They were code named ‘Tarpon’ (someone else can post pictures). Some of them didn’t look too bad.
But then someone at AMC decided to move the Tarpon’s fastback up to the larger Classic body for production, probably for fear of the Barracuda’s lackluster sales. If that was the case, the logic failed miserably, as a Tarpon would almost certainly have sold better than the Marlin.
The fastback was added to the Classic, instead of the American, because AMC didn’t have a V-8 that would fit the American in 1965. The new, small V-8 would debut for the American line in 1966. AMC management felt that any fastback had to offer a V-8 to be taken seriously.
While certainly true about a prospective ponycar needing a V8, the timing still seems off. If the American was going to get the new, narrower V8 in 1966, anyway, couldn’t they also have brought out the Tarpon at that time and just skipped the Marlin project entirely? The timing would have still fallen in line with the Javelin, which didn’t come out until MY68.
Seems like AMC management panicked and went with the Marlin just to get something to market ASAP. They’d have done better if they’d been a little less hasty and went with a two-year run of mediocre-selling, American-based Tarpons, instead of a three-year run of poor-selling Classic/Ambassador-based Marlins.
AMC was in a rush to get something sporty to the market. Roy Abernethy had made a comment about his desire to get rid of AMC’s “Romney image,” by which he meant the image of a company that made sensible and slow cars for middle-age church ladies.
Abernethy also wasn’t as enthusiastic about small cars as Romney had been. As one person put it, “Roy was a big man, and he liked big cars.” It was Abernethy who insisted that the roofline of the production Marlin be raised to allow adults to sit comfortably in the rear seat.
These cars helped Chrysler get a return on those shrunken Dodge and Plymouth products from five years earlier. It made sense. They put out intermediate sized cars before Ford and GM, then played catch-up within the market in 1965 with competitively sized rides. This let Chrysler rename them and compete within the Fairlane and Chevelle market.
America ended up with large intermediates that were almost as large as their biggest cars, yet these large intermediates ended up with interior space right up there with a Valiant or Dart, a compact car.
As a cheap full size car, these big intermediates found a market that expanded over the next decade. By 1975, these cars were the foundation for broughamification into personal luxury cars that had billowy rides, raspy V8 power, and padded derriere Levi trunk decks, a la Cougar.
Also, by this time, American buyers discovered that compact cars could provide similar interior space and better gas mileage to boot.
So, how did Detroit end up with ginormous full size cars and giant intermediate cars at the same time? By necessity. Chrysler finally found success for those old 1962 warthog-faced cars no one wanted until they put them back into a box and named them as Coronets and Satellites!
Chrysler certainly got lucky that Ford created the intermediate size class so they were able to sell cars based on this platform as fitting into that class. I wouldn’t say that the original version truly fell into that class when it first came out it was more or less an in between slightly larger than the early true intermediates and slightly smaller than the traditional full size. Of course cars in general grew in size and they eventually found themselves with this platform clearly in that class.
American Motors created the intermediate class with the 1956 Rambler. The debut of the Ford Fairlane in 1962 spurred GM to introduce the Chevrolet Chevelle and the Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac versions for 1964. But AMC was there first.
Given that my family went from a ’62 Fairlane to a ’65 Coronet, I can assure you that the Coronet’s interior was materially larger as well as that of the Valiant and Dart.
It would take a bit of looking, but I bet the interior room on these mid-Chryslers wasn’t significantly smaller than a ’61 – ’64 Chevy full-size interior.
When I was a kid we had the ’66 Coronet 2-door hardtop parked next to a ’71 Valiant Scamp in the driveway, so I can confirm that the Coronet had a considerably larger interior.
Certainly gets less attention than the famous 2nd-gen Chargers, but I really like these cars. Take the already attractive Coronet shape, and then add all the important details–the hidden lamps, the full-width taillights, the fastback, the console–and what you end up with is *very* compelling. Especially with a 383 or 440, to say nothing of the rare hemi-powered versions.
They sure seem to like Chryslers in South Carolina considering the variety I saw there. Driving one might even get you some praise.
Had a ’67. It was kind of an odd car, Dodge’s original intent was to compete with the Buick Riviera, but the Charger always had more of a muscle car flavor to it. Wasn’t near as polished as the Rivi,but not a bad car either. The hide-away headlights were interesting. 2 electric motors, 4 micro switches, and 3 relays. Couldn’t have made it more complicated if they tried, at least Dodge included a thoughtful switch on the dash to turn the feature off when the inevitable happened and the system quit working. The dashboard featured electro-luminescent lighting, a neat touch borrowed from some of the earlier Chryslers. ’66 Chargers had a full length console and 4 bucket seats, the ’67 retained the seats but had an abbreviated console. The rear seats folded down and the trunk partition opened, giving almost wagon-like capabilities. The first gen. Chargers did very well in NASCAR after Chrysler got the aerodynamics figured out, which resulted in a small truck lid spoiler on 426 Hemi powered versions sold to the public. All and all, an interesting prelude to the very successful ’68-’70 Charger.
Yeah, I don’t really get why those early hideaway light setups were so complicated. The later ones with one motor, one relay, two limit switches are annoying enough.
That’s an interesting take. It had never occurred to me that the original Charger was trying for a piece of the Buick pie. Frankly, though, I just can’t see anyone cross-shopping a 1966 Charger against a Riviera of the same year, even with all of the Charger’s gee-whiz gimmicks. That plebeian Coronet doghouse just kills it. For better or worse, Chrysler was sticking with the 300 as their response to the Riviera.
As someone else said, the original Charger was, for all intents and purposes, a factory-customized Coronet.
I guess “factory-customized Coronet” is a good descriptor for this car. In fact, I wonder if the ’66 Charger had anything to do with the existence of the ’68-’74 Torino fastbacks? It seems like one of the few cars to notably feature a notchback *and* a fastback roofline in its 2-door variant. Then again, Ford bought in wholesale, with the hardtop Galaxie going fastback also for ’68 to ’70.
I once saw a really cool ’66-’67 Coronet hardtop where someone had swapped in the Charger’s hidden headlights and electro-luminescent dash. While it undoubtedly took some work, it looked great, and makes one wonder how things might have turned out if Chrysler had installed the Charger’s hidden headlights and dash at the factory for the highest trim Coronets, and maybe just skipped the first gen Charger, altogether.
I tried to buy a ’66 Charger, but failed when the local Dodge dealer “low-balled” me. This was very upsetting as I was about to enter the USAF at the time, and needed a new car to drive to Colorado from New York. Ended up with a fire-engine red Plymouth Fury III with the reliable 318. It served me well!
Here’s one found in Israel- you’ve got to love that fascia:
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The front end shot shows (to me, at least) a fairly strong resemblance to the 1963 Dodge Custom 880, which was Dodge’s top-of-the-line car for that year. I say that as I learned to drive on a 1963 Dodge Custom 880. My grandfather bought it new. Then when he got his 1969 Dodge, he let my parents buy it for what the dealer would have given him to trade it in.
That is certainly one very nice, red, 383 Charger. I’m going to suggest that appears to be a 1967 Charger rather than a 1966. The fender-mounted turn signals, only on the 1967 model, are the give-away. And, 1967 was also the first year for an optional vinyl roof on a Charger.
Indeed it is a 1967 car- I don’t recall writing otherwise… perhaps it’s the comment above mine that set you off. 🙂
https://www.flickr.com/photos/yohai90/7103118185/in/photolist-9x3koc-9v6tDr-9x6k1f-9x3kcH-bPFkyV-b1dv28-cfbg8Y-eSQcQ2-cLc4pQ-ekxFfN-ekrUwe-dFrtcx-euBufq-etw1ad-etsPqa-mgPyhV-mgQCNY-mgQCbL
I love the interior on these but outside I’d rather have a Cornet R/T
Me too. I prefer the standard roof on this body, but would certainly rather have a Charger than a Coronet for ’68-’70.
As someone who owned a 68 Mercury Cyclone and a model of the 66 Charger painted silver, I find this Charger to be quite compelling even though it looks like nothing more than an over-sized roof on a intermediate car.
The first picture here is not this Charger’s best view. No one mentioned it but Chrysler also offered these as a “Brass Hat Special” that included a vinyl roof. Talk about gilding a lily.
Still, in 1966 this was one of my dream cars.
I wonder if the Australian designers was inspired from the 1966-67 Dodge Charger when they created their own Charger with the Hemi 6-pack? In some angles, the Aussie Charger reminds me a bit of the 1966-67 US Charger.
That Aussie Charger kind of reminds me more of a Torino Talledega.
The best thing about those old tv commercials is the Chrysler-Plymouth ‘Coming Through’ ad jingle in the background (particularly when it’s whistled). It sure brings back memories of better automotive days.
Just a little fun fact, my neighbor had one in his body shop and we measured, the quarter panel is 7 feet long.
Okay this comment peaked my interest, this Charger does have a very long quarter panel.
Of course I had to go measure the quarter panel on my 67 Imperial Crown Coupe.
8 ft 6 inches give or take, for any one that is interested.
Since it hasn’t been mentioned, it’s worth noting that the whole reason for the Charger’s existence was the powerful Dodge dealer network (some might say ‘too’ powerful) was seriously bent out of shape over not getting their version of the Barracuda. Chrysler did try to muscle-up the Dart a bit, but the Charger was really the result of the whining. It was a ‘valiant’ (no pun intended) effort, and although not a huge hit, sold well enough to stay in production.
As a Mopar guy, that is what I’ve heard, too. It may not have sold in the number that they hoped for, nevertheless I’m willing to bet that it was worth the effort for the showroom traffic it generated. In one sense, it was almost like a factory-customized 2-door Coronet. And specifically designed for a (likely) younger buyer the the standard Coronet sedan buyer.
Count me as one who prefers the original version. I like the flat sides and the overall lighter look than the “hippy” replacement. I really like the fender line that extends to the rear quarters as an almost “fin line”. The interior is also much nicer. I like big fastbacks. The big Ford XL and Chevy, but especially the big Pontiac fastbacks.
I’m with you Jose’ ;
Fastbacks always have a brief interest then they’re dregs on the used car market , then a few years later they’re back in style , always the same cycle .
-Nate
A limited number of ’67 Chargers (I think 5000) were supposed to have a turbine engine, but the plan was cancelled. See the book “Chrysler’s Turbine Car: Detroit’s Coolest Creation” for the full story.
That jingle was always the very first commercial played on AM WSCV ‘ The Voice of The Contoogook Valley ‘ every morning when they began to broadcast….
My old Philco tube radio would be well warmed up and ready when they hit the air @ 05:00 .
hi yeah that is why i bought my 1966 red over red charger because of its unique looks .plus it has the 383 3 speed automatic .it is a blast to drive, my first thing to do to the car is to up grade the breaks to 4 wheel disk