(first posted 4/10/2013) As well engineered as it was, there’s no doubt that the original 1960 Valiant was one of the weirdest-looking automotive confections ever offered to the public. So what happened when the inevitable occurred and Dodge wanted their version?
Let’s start off with a look back at the Valiant (CC here): Whereas the Corvair was crisp and airy, and the Falcon playfully rotund, the Valiant was very zeitgeist Space-Agey–and that’s putting it politely. However, at least as early-’60s Virgil Exner designs go, it wasn’t that bad, its most ungainly aspect being a C/D pillar angle that’s far more-upright than the windshield rake. Other than that, I characterize it as endlessly fascinating to look at, rather than just plain ugly.
Dodge, as usual, clamored eagerly for its own version of the Valiant. In 1960, Dodge had decimated Plymouth big-car sales with their relatively more luxurious and slightly more modern-looking full-size Dart, and now wanted to solidify their turf as a purveyor of a full range of lower-and medium-price automobiles. Highland Park planned on officially designating the 1961 Valiant as a Plymouth, which would leave Dodge dealers without a hot compact to sell.
Enter the slightly more Americanized Lancer: Gone are the cats-eye tail lamps. Thankfully removed is the “Toilet Seat” trunk stamp. In place of an aggressive, Letter Series 300-inspired grille there was a rather simple, well executed full-width grille. Inside and out, it was also measurably better-finished than its Plymouth counterpart.
Compared with contemporary Valiant marketing materials, Lancer advertising strove to evoke a rarefied level of elegance (or snobbery). Given the imagery, one couldn’t fault the less-aware for thinking the above ad might be for an Oldsmobile F-85–and the strategic placement of the 770 hardtop helps hide some of the more freakish carryover elements from the Valiant.
A closer examination of the body aft of the face shows the same undulating curves and random bulges that blessed/burdened the Valiant. Obviously, the Lancer make-over budget was very limited. The Lancer’s nose was stretched a little bit (encouraging the perception that there was added value here) and the character line around the rear wheel was a little less pronounced, but beyond the necessary chrome jewelry, there were few other distinguishing features that justified its price premium over the Valiant.
Also carried over was sterling performance, which made it one of (if not) the best-performing six-cylinder compacts around; in fact, the base 170-cube Slant Six had as much horsepower as the optional motors in the Falcon/Comet and the Corvair. Upgrades included the 225-cube slant six, with only 10 less horsepower than the 215 cid V8s in GM’s new senior compacts.
Then there was the potent, if highly temperamental, Hyper Pak option for both Slant Sixes. The 225 version could trounce pretty much every other compact, but rough running made it a less-than-ideal choice for daily driving. And the 170 incher was shockingly rev-happy, willing to turn 6400 rpm before demanding a shift. Even as this ultra-sporty option started fading from the option books, a more direct appeal to sporting interests was building up, one designed to provide visual excitement to complement the robust mechanicals.
Whereas the 1961 770 hardtop coupe could look as dainty as possible, in the context of its weirdness, the 1962 Lancer GT hardtop donned war paint (and an optional vinyl top) to make those underlying sporting impulses a little more accessible to the immediate touch–although it didn’t help that the sedans’ somewhat “pregnant-looking” roofline had been carried over intact. Chrysler had no budget for a unique coupe roof, and it showed, all too obviously, especially in those rear-most side windows.
If we swap this faded red paint for a sandier beige color, we’d have my father’s second car. It was during the period between the loathing of his Corvair and his love of Oldsmobiles that I took a pictorial walk through my uncle’s photo albums to uncover the mystery Dodge for my fifth-grade family-history project. Among a sea of poses next to Impalas, Eighty Eights, Ninety Eights and Coupe DeVilles was one of my father, next to a beige-and-black Dodge Lancer GT, dated June 1969.
Having moved on from construction to an entry-level lab assistant position at Raychem, my Dad could afford something a little fancier than the red-headed stepchild of a ’60 Corvair 500 sedan. He also needed something that could reliably ascend the Emerald Hills to reach Cañada Community College for his evening classes. Out went the fan belt throwing-Corvair, and in came the semi-sporty and reliable Dodge.
It wasn’t too long before the combination of the Oldsmobiles swarming around him, his savings and the aging Lancer presented a good opportunity to move on. By the spring of 1970, a lovely Cutlass S (much like the one in this ad, but with a white vinyl top) had inspired a recent trade-in at Paddleford Oldsmobile. Thus did the Lancer become a footnote to a love affair still talked about today.
I still think my Dad missed out on the affair of his life when he gave up the Dodge. He and his surviving brothers would regard as sacrilege the fact that I find the Dodge far more intriguing than the run-of-the-mill Cutlass of legend, but thankfully only one of them bothers with “this Internet thing”– which means that at least for now, my secret is safe.
While Virgil Exner reportedly complained that the disastrous, downsized 1962 ‘plucked chicken’ full-sized Mopars were not his fault, because the styling of the original Valiant/Lancer were most assuredly all-Exner, it’s a rather specious denial, since he ‘was’ responsible for the weird styling of the cars upon which the 1962 cars were based.
Imagine if the A-body had had a more cohesive design from which to derive the 1962 cars (like, say, the much cleaner 1963 Valiant). Maybe the downsizing wouldn’t have went so badly, after all (and the brief president of Chrysler, Charles Newberg, who was solely responsible for it, would have been vindicated).
Agreed. It may (undoubtedly was) have been a big mistake to debut a radical new design concept (fuselage styling) on an economy car. And having done so, it may have blunted the impact if that design language had been more successfully pioneered by more upscale Chryslers.
The idea of building a car roughly the size of the downsized ’62 Plymouths and Dodges was not a bad one, and viewed as entirely new class of car, they weren’t bad sellers (See “Ford Fairlane”). Maybe with styling that was more palatable to the mainstream, they would have done even better.
Of course, the idea of having a car that size as your full-size car, and not having anything larger available, just as the economy snapped out of the 1958-61 recession and the market for big cars bounced back to pre-recession levels, was an absolute disaster.
I wonder if the rationale for introducing the new theme on the Valiant was that the Valiant was not originally intended to be a Plymouth, but a separate brand. (Had they not dumped DeSoto, I wonder if the Valiant would have ended up being sold through all three dealer lines, like Plymouth in the early days.) In that sense, it didn’t have to be tied to any existing styling themes.
On the other hand, they could also have done that with the Imperial, particularly since starting in 1960, the Imperial was divorced structurally from the Chrysler line. Introducing a new theme on the Imperial and letting it trickle down would have been a smarter commercial move.
By the time these cars were designed, Exner’s “jet-age” stylings from the mid-1950s were passe. His designs were bizarre, but sold well – and when the cars fell apart within months after purchase, “jet-age” stylings got a bad rap.
So, he had to do something else as big, but he couldn’t. His top selling designs pushed the envelope of good taste to such an extreme, he had no where else to go but over the edge, which he did with these 1960s Chrysler products.
There is so much ugly in these cars, buying one had to be a statement in instability. The best one can say is that Exner’s stylings became “whimsical”, or “french”, or “daring”. If his cars only lasted a year before rusting, or collecting enough rainwater to become an aquarium, or another other poor build malaise, then falling out of fashion wouldn’t have been a crime. In many ways these Exner designs were disposable rolling art.
These cars are tacky and tasteless. The last thing the scandal-plagued Chrysler Corporation needed on the market during these years were cars that looked like alien potatoes. If Exner styled cars during the Roaring 1920s, he would have made them look like horses asses, chariots or locomotives – one would have thought he could have picked up a lot more taste working with Raymond Loewy.
There is a huge difference between a Loewy-designed Studebaker Avanti, and an Exner-designed Valiant. Exner tried too hard and Loewy didn’t have to try – he just had the right touch.
Loewy designed auto trends while Exner designed auto fads. Both can find market success, but waking up one day to discover a 1960 Plymouth Belvedere in your driveway is definately not the way to go.
I will not dispute that these cars visually were at best an acquired taste and more likely just plain bizarre. But as to your statement: ” the cars fell apart within months after purchase,” surely you are referring to the disastrous quality-control impaired ’57s?
From ’60 on through most of the decade, Mopar not only thoroughly out-engineered GM and Ford, their power plants–from the slant six and the workhorse wedges coupled with TorqueFlite trannys were light years more reliable and durable than their competitors in the U.S., Europe or Japan. You simply must not know much about 60s cars to believe otherwise.
“…buying one had to be a statement in instability”. Good grief. So, you had to be mentally imbalanced to buy a Valiant or Lancer? You are making the mistake of using present criteria to rule on the taste of people 50 years past–judging a book by its cover, a shallow approach at best, while ignoring the engineering that made Road and Track (the snootiest car rag available on your local newsstand in 1961) opine, “It is rare to find general appreciation of an American sedan from a staff such as ours, which is oriented toward small, efficient sporting vehicles but we, as a group feel that the Lancer is an excellent compromise between performance and economy, compactness and roominess, soft ride and roadability.” It goes on. Not a few “Vancer” buyers were sports car buffs with families who, incidentally, “got” the styling because at one time they owned, or had yearned for MG TD’s, whose body and fender relationship was emulated by Exner’s stylists to give Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class a little pizzazz. I owned a ’61 Lancer about 15 years ago, and it was a delight to drive. As for something as subjective as styling, I’ll give you that the Avanti is a classic, but Loewy had a free hand to design it for a small, wealthy market. Valiants and Lancers were family cars, built to a price. Loewy’s ’53 Stude coupe was certainly a beauty, but the frame was suspect. And, by the way, how did THAT design translate to a four door sedan?
Laurence, you forgot to mention the perforated, Masonite headliner.
My aunt owned one of these after they traded her 1961 square steering wheel Dodge, but I can’t recall whether it was a Dodge or a Valiant. I do recall it had air conditioning, and after a day’s cruise on the Mississippi aboard the SS Admiral with her and mom, and her car sitting in the hot St. Louis summer sun all day, it sure felt good – a new experience for me – my first encounter with auto A/C!
In the summer of 1963, I really didn’t care what the car looked like – it was white w/blue interior – it WAS a come-down from her magnificent 1961 Dodge cruiser, however.
Later, as my love of cars grew, I did prefer the Lancer over the Valiant, in hardtop configuration, of course. Number of doors didn’t matter in this case, because it was hard to tell how many doors it had from a distance with all those vertical lines and glass panes!
Oh…one more thing, Mr. Jones: ” the fact that I find the Dodge far more intriguing than the run-of-the-mill Cutlass of legend…”
YOU LIAR, YOU!
Just teasing, of course! Upon seeing that Cutlass, I began to drool…
Nope, no masonite headliner on these cars; they all had conventional fabric-and-bows headliners. The A-bodies with the cardboard headliners were the last few years of Duster/Dart Sport.
Back in the day, if you were a kid, one of your first zen experiences was to lay your head over the seat back and gaze into those perforated headliners, let your focus drift, and watch the little black dots levitate (you can do that in a tiled men’s room while using a urinal, too)… a mini meditation.
Laurence, a great piece on a favorite car of mine. Oh, to live somewhere where you find not just one Lancer to photograph, but two!
When I was in college in 1979-80 (when I owned my 59 Fury sedan) a guy on my dorm floor had a gray Lancer sedan. We bonded over pushbutton automatics.
I always really liked Lancers for some reason, but they never seemed very common. My favorite styling detail was that little reverse curve character line in the door. It is a shame that they could not have done something different with that hardtop roofline. On the other hand, the Valiant and Lancer were two of the most uniquely styled cars of the early 60s, and maybe the most stylistically successful designs out of Exner in the early 60s.
“they never seemed very common”
I don’t have any sales figures in front of me, but my sense is that these were mediocre sellers, probably due to some combination of the odd styling and insufficent differentiation from the Valiant. When Chrysler fixed both of those problems for ’63, they decided to start over with a different model name.
I wouldn’t mind a Lancer GT Hyper Pak with a 4-on-the-floor & I’d like it in either red & orange or green & white.
+1, although my color choice might be a bit different.
Of course you find it more interesting. You, like the rest of us, are an auto blogger. That specis that finds a car, when new, an utter failure to be nitpicked to death. Let it go out of production, however, and it has suddenly become one of the finest products in that manufacturer’s history.
I’ve always thought the difference is between having to buy it new, or being able to buy it used. After someone else has taken the depreciation hit, of course.
Sorry Virgil I’ll take the Falcon or a Comet.There were some very odd looking Mopars about in the early 60s. Despite attending many car shows I’ve never seen a Lancer of this era.
I found these cars very baffling as a kid, newly arrived from Austria.Especially the Lancer hardtop; I found it (and still do) hard to believe this was an American car. I kept (and keep) thinking it has to be French; are you sure it isn’t a LeCreuseot?
I always thought of the car as Italian, but maybe that was because I was familiar with the Ghia cars done for Chrysler in the early 50s. Now that you mention it, it really does look French.
Hmmm, I don’t know how I should take this, and I’m not sure I wanna know either :-)… but you’re absolutely right, there is something positively Simca-esque about the Lancer Hardtop. Like an Aronde coupe on steroids. Plus, the side windows are very DS-like. What a great oddball. Never, ever saw a 2-door Lancer in Europe and I don’t think many people could identify it over here. This one really looks good in red and black.
Not in a bad way at all. It’s just so unlike anything coming out of Detroit (or South Bend and Kenosha) at the time. I still find it amazingly unique and a fascinating piece of history. And you know I love French cars, even the more unconventional ones! I wonder if Chrysler made a push to sell them in France?
I was kidding and you know it. That’s precisely one of the things I like best about CC. You give us a wealth of information about US cars in a way that makes even the most basic Chevy Caprice sound exciting – which it is! – and at the same time offer a lot of space to non-US cars, including the lesser-known ones. We get the best of both worlds.
Plus, you manage to strike a great balance between the automotive icons we all love (and wrongly believe we’ve already heard everything about) and the – ahem – more objectionable cars. Hey, I grew up in an Ami 6. So, no matter how you pull CC off, please keep it that way!
I too find it amazing that cars like these Dodges and Plymouths could come out of Detroit at that time. And, to answer your question: I may be wrong, but I don’t think Chrysler ever considered selling these in France. The domestic demand for V8s was never large to begin with. Whatever demand there may have been at that time was already covered by the US-inspired Simca Versailles and Chambords.
Besides, since all cars regardless of origin were taxed on the basis of the engine capacity, imported US cars were not cheap in France almost by definition. They were not supposed to be and were not marketed as such either. “American car” meant luxury, period, and did so at least until Chrysler started to sell minivans to middle-class dads in the 1980s. In the early 1960s, the few people in France willing and able to afford and maintain a US car wanted presumably to go all the way to luxury. Thus, they would buy a Buick or a Cadillac – ie, a car that was really upmarket and that, as opposed to the (in American eyes) more modest and unconventional Valiants and Lancers, would really scream “expensive Detroit iron” in your face and scare all Citroen 2CVs in a 200-meter range away .
So, all in all, I think the potential market for cars like these particular Dodges and Plymouths was very small. In any case, too small to warrant an effort from Chrysler. Things were possibly different in neighbouring Belgium and Netherlands, and Scandinavia of course, but that’s another story.
These cars make AMC’s styling department look brilliant.
Ha! Aint that the truth.
Another Mopar not available to Canadians.
Didn’t Canada get some mash-up of Valiant/Dart? Usual front clip from one on the body of the other.
Commonly called the Vart,only ever seen one in magazines
From 1960-66, Valiants in Canada were badged only as “Valiants” (not Plymouths or Dodges), and were sold in identical form by both Plymouth and Dodge dealers. Some Canadian Valiants were the same as U.S. Valiants, some the same as U.S. Darts, and some were mash-ups of both, depending on the year and specific model. The Lancer and Dart names were not used in Canada during this time period.
From Roger’s comment below, I take it that all 1961 and 1962 Canadian Valiants were based on the U.S. Plymouth Valiant, and the 1961-62 U.S. Dodge Lancer was never sold in Canada in any form, not even badged as a Valiant.
The ’60-’62 Canadian Valiants were the same as US Valiants except for badge differences (“By Chrysler”) and some mechanical specification differences (DC generator was standard equipment and alternator was optional in Canada—alternator as standard equipment had been one of the big-news items on the US ’60 Valiant) and some interior trim differences.
In ’63 and ’64 only, Canadian Valiants used the US Valiant front clip and the US Dart body.
In ’65, Canadians could buy both the 106″ wheelbase US-type Valiant and the 111″ wheelbase Dart-badged-as-Valiant.
In ’66, Canadian Valiants were all 111″-wheelbase Darts badged as Valiants.
(’63-’66 Canadian Valiant wagons, like all ’63-’66 A-body wagons, rode on the 106″ wheelbase).
It was only in 1967 that the Canadian Valiant became a Plymouth with the full effect of the Auto Pact.
That started in 1963.
That’s why I’ve never seen one!
Were people happier in those days? They must have been. After all, when you came out from a hard day at work and slipped into one of those colorful, chromey interiors, it had to make you grin. That copper upholstery with the white stripe is wild, wild, wild. Much cheerier than “would you like black or grey in your silver Toyondissan, sir?”
Funny, I looked at those seats and all I could see was what the back of my legs would look like after getting out of the car on a hot day when wearing shorts. 🙂 Those vinyl seats were brutal in the summer. I do agree with you, though, in that I always loved the look of those beautiful chrome-bejewled dashes from that era. I can’t speak for everyone, but they certainly made me happy when I got in the car.
“Those vinyl seats were brutal in the summer.”
Yes, and so were the REALLY THICK seats in my avatar. The solution? Those “cool cushions” – loosely-woven vinyl-type material with long, thin springs inside, about an inch thick, which insulated rear end, back, and, by extension, bare legs when wearing shorts that you used to be able to buy at Western Auto, Sears, JCPenney and almost every store that sold auto accessories, including Walgreen’s!
On Sacramento Valley 100-degree-plus days, a “cool cushion” came in very handy, as well as back home!
I used them religiously, and they worked very well. Nary a burn in sight, and you could feel the air circulation around your back, too! A god-send, for sure.
Was the cool cushion what those car seat pads for the both the lower and upper parts of the seat were called? I’d completely forgotten about them, but now I remember the early ones with coil springs inside them that came out when they aged and the later foam ones that were more comfortable except they didn’t allow air to circulate.
We had two Mopar hardtops when I was a kid, and they both had dark vinyl. Oddly, it was the Scamp rather than the Coronet 440 that had metal medallions in the seats, waiting to brand you after a day in the sun. Our ’79 Horizon had this feature too, even though the seat material was velvety cloth that time.
My Dad and Mom had the cool cushion seats on the ’61 Pontiac Catalina Safari Wagon and the ’65 Dodge 880 (which had reasonably plush nylon fabric and vinyl bolstered seats). The Dodge, however, had clear plastic seat covers put on it (my Grandfather thought my Dad wanted those), so it made the seats mondo hot after sitting in the sun. Usually came from Grand Auto – makers of “Cordovan” tires! Stores all over Northern California!
My Uncle (the eventual Grand Marquis guy) had a blue ’62 Lancer in the early/mid-sixties.
My parents come from a time (and an area) where seat covers were almost mandatory…probably because a car was a substantial purchase, but I’m not sure why, but they’d put them even over vinyl seats (so 2x the vinyl, since seat covers were usually also vinyl). My Dad stopped doing it sometime in the late 60’s I think, but our ’65 Olds F85 with vinyl seats also had “puckered” clear vinyl seat covers, and I think his prior cars likewise did.
Lawrence, your Dad and mine were probably very similar, but offset by some years (maybe my Dad is older, he’s gone now, died in 2016). He started out with a ’56 Plymouth as his first car (which he bought new). He was also a chemist, and (briefly) worked in California starting in 1959. He always worked on semiconductors, but for many different companies…but we moved back to the east coast in 1961…by then, he bought the first of 2 Rambler Wagons, a ’61 and a ’63. The ’63 was totalled outside our motel room right after we moved out of our house moving (once again) due to a job change, this time up to Vermont (where we lived 2 separate times, 5 years apart). He bought a ’65 F85 wagon up at Val Preda’s in South Burlington. He did return to Mopar, specifically Dodge, 2 more times, in 1980 (an Omni) and 1986 (Dodge 600), though he actually owned 3 Mercuries in a row (right after the Dodge 600 was totalled).
I guess he might have missed the “oddball” Mopars, his ’56 was a stripper, but pretty conventional for its time, and the Omni and 600 weren’t too much out of the norm at that time. As 2nd cars, he owned a really common one (’59 Beetle) and a really uncommon one (’68 Renault R10, which he bought new). He also bought a ’76 Subaru (quite a bit before they were popular, and back when they were FWD instead of AWD). They all suited his needs at the time he got them, the wagons were for my Mother (they were his first automatic transmission cars, and as wagons gave us room for my twin sister and I when we were young) but he was an early import buyer (he actually drove Beetles while in Germany in the early 50’s which apparently were assigned to them instead of Jeeps, though he also drove REO trucks).
Who knows…if my sister and I hadn’t come along, and it was just him and my Mother, maybe they’d instead have bought a Valiant or a Lancer…my Mother learned to drive on a semi-automatic 1951 Chrysler Windsor, but she was never comfortable with anything but an automatic, so either would have to be so equipped (my Dad hadn’t yet met my Mother when he bought the ’56 Plymouth Plaza which as a stripper had a column mount manual. My Mother stopped driving last year (partly due to age, as well as her small stature…she’s about 4’8″ and less than 80 lbs, even power steering is hard on her in parking lot, she was born with scoliosis, and as she’s gotten older the effects have amplified such that she’s frequently in pain (but otherwise is healthy…too bad there isn’t much that can be done with her ailment at her age).
“the sedans’ somewhat “pregnant-looking” roofline had been carried over intact. Chrysler had no budget for a unique coupe roof”
Isn’t that preety much the definition of a 2-door sedan? Not all 2-doors are coupes.
I always thought coupe definition really went by cubic foot volume of an interior, and that most American Two Doors, especially most larger ones, where actually 2 door sedans instead of coupes. Then again, the only concrete way I can think of this is when Car & Driver did throwback reviews of old American coupes, and the majority I think (Impala SS and a 4-4-2) were categorized as sedans.
Coupe is probably a state of mind with no real definition.
The term coupe comes from a time when there was a difference between coupes and sedans. For illustration, here’s a 2-door sedan. (A 1947 Ford)
…and here’s a coupe, again a 1947 Ford.
I always figured the “2 door sedan” vs. “coupe” thing was a holdover from the 1940s and earlier. At that time, a 2 door sedan was shaped just like a 4 door sedan, only it had just 2 doors. Think, say, 1940 Ford. The coupe had a shortened roofline/passenger area and a long deck in the back, and were 3 window coupes, 5 window coupes, club coupes, business coupes, etc.
By the mid to late 1950s, there ceased to be a functional difference between a 2 door sedan and a coupe at that point, and the “coupe” label just sort of stuck to anything with 2 doors. By then, 2 door sedan and 2 door hardtop became much more precise descriptions.
Edit – Oops, Pete just beat me to it, and with pictures!
By 1953, the difference wasn’t as noticeable. Here’s a 53 Ford club coupe.
Here is a 1953 Ford 2-door sedan. The basic difference between a coupe and a sedan is that a coupe had a shorter top. The 2-door sedan and 4-door sedan shared the same roof shape, but the 2-door sedan had the same longer door as the coupe.
Noting the slight difference between the 53 Ford coupe and 2-door sedan illustrates one reason why most manufacturers ended up having only one pillared 2-door body style. Of course the other, and probably main, reason was the increasing popularity of the pillarless 2-door hardtop body style.
Have you ever heard a two-door pillarless hardtop referred to as a two-door sedan?
Admittedly, there is overlap in the application of the word “coupe” and “two-door sedan”; bu generally, the two-door sedans were plain and basic. But never have I heard a hardtop being called a “two door sedan”. That term was generally applied to sedans with a B-pillar, and with framed window glass. There might be an exception, but that clearly was the common convention.
In Chevy-speak, a two-door sedan was pillared. A two-door hardtop (pillarless), was a “Sports Coupe”.
I submit my 2nd car, a 1961 Chevy Bel-Air two-door sedan. Uh…yes…it was painted 1969 Camaro Rallye Green while I was in basic training in fall, 1969…
That looks very familiar; we had one as a family car bought new in the summer of ’61, dog dish hubcaps and no radio (ours was turquoise though).
Mine was originally black w/white top, gray-ish interior. 235, 3-on-the-tree, NO oil filter(!), manually-tuned tube radio – no push-buttons! The hump was carpeted, but the floorboards were mats! The car was very rusted when I foolishly bought it in November, 1968 for $300.
That car has a l-o-n-g story that I’ll save when someone finds one for a CC article!
Coup’e usually meant only a 2 seater, No Valiant 2doors came here new only the 4door sedan However as the only compact from the US to be released down under that didnt fall apart the Valiant was a success the styling took some getting used to but with 225 cubes they went ok and with 14inch wheels they coped with Aus/NZ road conditions well unlike the cute but severly underdone falcon.
Two of my mom’s friends had the Valiant. At an early age I felt that people, especially women, looked like their cars. Not just stylistically but physically. Probably a trick that the mind plays. Makes no sense as sometimes the car would change to something newer, and completely different, and still look like its owner.
Anyway one of the friends, Evelyn, fit the owner stereotype to a tee – never married, frugal and a little, what’s the word, portly. Her mouth was shaped like the grille opening.
The other was a nice looking young mom who absolutely hated her car. Oh sure old Lancers and Valiants are cool now but I doubt in the history of cars there was anything as uncool as a 10 year old Valiant at the start of the 70s.
There was a cream Valiant on display at the 1960 London Motor Show. I loved it.
Charlie Kray had one,recently discovered torched,I think it’s undergoing a major re build
I remember seeing on the Forwardlook.net forums on a post from a guy nicknamed 57burb posted old illustrations from a old copy of Motor Trend predicting how the 1961 Lancer would had looked otherwiese. http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=29648&start=51
Oooooo – and the DeSoto Adventuress! I love it.
The South Africans got the DeSoto Rebel a posh relative of the Lancer/Valiant another I’ve only seen in magazines.
Its interesting that all the advertising photos/illustrations, and even the photos in this articles are low-angle shots, up to roof level at the highest. I find one of the jarring details of the Valiant design to be the square the roofline with quite sharp corner radii, that doesn’t follow the line of the drip rail. I wonder if this would have been different had they not had to use flat side glass?
I quite like the Valiant design, yes there are some unusual styling features, but it is pretty cohesive. It has some personality.
Interesting how perceptions change. When my family was in the market for a ‘compact’ in 1960, the hands down choice was a Falcon wagon. The Corvair was too small, and the Valiant seemed pretty weird (although maybe the fact that there was no wagon had some impact).
Two years later however, when the Falcon was looking decidedly frumpy, a ‘Mad Men’ type junior exec at the company where my father worked bought a 2 door (Valiant) hardtop, and suddenly the coolness registered. Those sculpted sides and thin door profiles looked quite taut and elegant. Bring on the narrow lapel suits and skinny ties!
In the same vein, the Olds has lost the crispness of the 1960’s models – it reads to me as a harbinger of 1970’s bloat and affectation that would only get worse in the decade to come. The ‘bell-bottoms’ of car design.
Was there only a Lancer wagon then? I’m sure I’ve seen one, and the execution didn’t ‘work’ style-wise to my eyes which disappointed me.
There was a Valiant wagon in both V-100 and V-200 trim.
I should have googled before writing – I don’t remember ever seeing one. I guess my parents did decide on the Falcon just on the weirdness factor after all.
That first shot is bitchin!
One of my favorite cars. My Dad bought a new one in ’62, a stripper 2dr.
My only gripe in the over-all proportions is the greenhouse looks too bulbous in some angles, but the wagon takes care of that!
Mmmmm…love those early A body wagons with the boomerang qtr. window!!!!!
Laurence, this is a terrific article (and I oughtta know). Only one thing: a vinyl top was not available. The one you found was added in the aftermarket by someone with more money than brains or taste. The first available factory vinyl top on an A-body was in ’65. There was a factory ’62 Lancer show car with a folding canvas sunroof; see this photo (which also appears in this other Lancer-related CC article).
In ’73 my first road car was a ’62 Lancer, 4 door, blue, 170, typewriter shift. Alas, I totaled it in ’73. Still looking for a wagon or a GT. Replaced the ’62 with a ’65 Valiant wagon.
Not a GT or a wagon, but I’ve just about wrapped my head around it being time to find a new home for my 770.
Current projects are getting my ’84 D150 thru emissions (two years of finding something else to replace on the rust bucket), and in the wings my ’77 W200 Power Wagon which is parked out at a friend’s ranch (no rust, sun rot).
My mother bought a 1962 Lancer GT new in Houston at the end of the model year, so she got the demo car for the dealer — maybe it had that HyperPak? I don’t know. I loved that car and got it as my own a few years later. It ran great, lots of zip and power, though I have to say the pushbutton gears annoyed me as I never got used to shifting without looking at the buttons. Then the electrical system began to have fits and it began to nickel-and-dime me to death. I was moving to the West Coast in early 1970 and could no longer trust it, so I sold it really really cheap. The buyer spent the whole winter chasing shorts and eventually fixed it and drove it a long time. I really miss that car.
I have a buddy that owned a white ’62 Lancer GT with a red gut he bought in ’78. We shared rides to school and I really liked the interior of that car. I have a great deal of respect for Exner and most of his designs (I had an English Springer I named Virgil), I think I remember reading these were to have European flair (?). I am a big Mopar guy, however I really can’t get on board with this design but I also feel the need to apologize for that.
I actually prefer the Valiant front clip and the Lancer rear clip.
The Valiant/Lancer probably looked a lot better in drawings than real life execution. There’s just too much going on everywhere, particularly with the greenhouse. Among other things for some reason the way the windshield and rear window are installed doesn’t match the side windows and is more like most French and British lower end cars of the period, making for more mismatching details. Compare to a Falcon/Comet.
This bit of weirdness along with all the rest was semi-corrected with the rebodied Valiant/Darts. The windshields still used a similarly unmatching mounting but it was less obvious as the shapes blended better. The first year compact Dart had an inset rear window that lasted only the first year, the only actual sheet metal change in its second year.
The Valiant/Lancer was marketed in South Africa as a DeSoto.
While it still can’t be called ‘good’, the Lancer did clean up a few of the Valiant’s weirder touches, mainly the grille, more restrained taillights, and losing the toilet seat. But there was nothing Dodge could do with the hard points, so it was still basically just a slightly better looking (but still goofy) Valiant.
The biggest irony of the A-body is how well the 1963 cars looked. Exner caught hell for the Valiant and disastrous 1962 downsized Mopars (which he had little to do with), but got zero credit for the 2nd generation Valiant/Dart which were as good as the 1st generation cars were bad.
Fortunately, Exner’s replacement, Elwood Engel, was smart enough to tweak the A-body just enough (adding the quarter panel ‘finlets’ and cleaning up the grille and taillights for 1964) which made the cars truly nice-looking and the match of (and, frankly, better than) the Falcon or Corvair. But the 1960-1966 A-bodies were all still primarily Exner designs.
In fact, Exner styling can be seen even more in the 2nd generation, 1963-1966 Dart hardtop with stuff like the little quarter panel ‘kick’ on the hardtops. Although now known as the Hofmeister kink, it actually made its first appearance on 1949 GM 2-doors.
H’mm. Temperamental? Says who? It wasn’t going to sit there idling at a glass-smooth 550 rpm like the stock 1-barrel motor, but it wasn’t supposed to; it behaved exactly as it was meant to. Period reports as well as latter-day accounts don’t use words like temperamental or similar.
There was no vinyl-top option on the ’62 Lancer; the first such option on a Mopar A-body came in 1965. Somebody inflicted whatever it is we see here—black vinyl or matte black paint—on the top of that red ’62 after it was manufactured.
I’ll grant you most of that—I don’t think the coupes look bad in profile, but in any event they look a whole hell of a lot better side-on than the 2-door sedans, which have a seriously fugly forward slant to the B-pillar.
Good to see you’re still with us .
I hope the move and life changes are panning out well .
I miss your old site .
-Nate
I went overboard 9 years ago and regret what I’ve written about this generation Valiant/Lancer. It is an ugly car, but didn’t deserve the vitriol I wrote. That said, I really can’t imagine any car manufacturer permitting this road potato out of a studio. It is a shockingly weird design.
I owned a 1961 Lancer with an auto trans and the 225 six. It rode beautifully on the streets of Brooklyn New York. While not a great fast GT as I referred it to, it was adequate for the time being.Purchasing it at Goldring Motors in Brooklyn I was never aware of the hyper pak. If so I would have got it. Needless to say I was in need of a faster car. One on my mechanics said lets put a four barrel carb atop the manifold. So we ddi and changed the rear ring and pinion to a 3.91 rear. It was amazingly a really quick tranformation into a sleeper of sortts. Took it to Westhampton to see what it could do in the 1/4 and it went 17.2 and 79 miles perhour. I though ok lets see what else. Perusing a JC Whitney catalouge I find for 30.00 dollars a kit to drop in a chevy engine. That was it. I turned it ibnto a B gasser and at the track it turned for a 2500 lb car (the Covette engine was almost the same weigh as the six of slightly less. It turned its best at 11.1 and 113 miles per hour. It still lookked stock even with a 3.56 chevy rear. I wqas king of the streets on NYC and there was nothing that could beat me. Oh rapture oh joy. 421 pontiacs and 409 chevy;s and the big fords could not take the Lancer They were always two car lengths behing as we raced down Crossbay blvd or the Conduit in Queens.Those were the days my friends and at that time the cops had six cylinder engines. This article was great and I love it.My Lancer was the toip of the line two door red and it stood out.