(first posted 8/20/2015) Perhaps it’s unfair to level the blame for the 1974-77 full-size Plymouth’s failure entirely at the 1973 OPEC Oil Crisis. After all, Chrysler Corporation was grappling with a rapidly degenerating financial situation and rampant quality issues. The company was fast heading for bankruptcy, cars were piling up in the infamous sales banks, and incentives were being offered like never before. The Fury (Gran Fury for 1975) was launched into a perfect storm, and drowned in the tumultuous tides.
The story was different for the C-Body sedans, wagons and coupes bearing the Chrysler badge. Their sales rebounded shortly after the fuel crisis, and they were modestly successful during a trying time for the corporation. And yet, the Fury (Gran Fury for 1975) and its Dodge Monaco cousin floundered in sales oblivion.
Plymouth was Chrysler Corp’s low-price marque and rivalled Ford and Chevy. Accordingly, the Gran Fury was targeted at the Ford LTD and Chevrolet Impala/Caprice. To say they outsold the Plymouth during 1974-77 would grossly understate it.
In 1974, Ford produced 461,743 of their full-size models. Chevy produced 629,847 of their Bel Air, Impala and Caprice models. As for Plymouth, only 118,283 of their brand new Fury sedans, coupes and wagons were manufactured that year.
It looked grim, and it was. Even Pontiac’s full-size range, traditionally one of the least popular full-size lineups during the 1970s, handily outsold the full-size Plymouths with 1974 production figures showing a total number of 175,653 full-size Pontiacs.
The low sales figures weren’t due to a limited range. On the contrary, Plymouth offered its full-sizer as a 2-door coupe, 4-door sedan, 4-door hardtop sedan and a 4-door station wagon. Sedans and coupes had a 121.5-inch wheelbase, as on the Monaco. Wagons shared the longer 124-inch wheelbase with the full-size Chryslers and Imperials. The range consisted at first of Fury I, Fury II, Fury II and Gran Fury; wagons were labelled Suburban, Custom Suburban and Sport Suburban. Styling was cleaner and more elegant than the ’73 Fury, if somewhat conservative and reminiscent of the ’71 full-size Buicks, and the government-mandated 5mph bumpers were neatly integrated.
The interior styling was similarly conservative, and even the flagship Gran Fury cabin couldn’t match the poshness of the Ford LTD’s cabin.
Chrysler’s 360 V8, with a two-barrel carbureter, was the base engine: power output was 180 hp. For California, the base engine was the 360 with a four-barrel carb. Wagons had the 400 V8 with a two-barrel carb or optional four-barrel. The flagship engine was the 440 V8, optional across the entire Gran Fury range. The big 440 was down to 245 hp, and fuel economy was barely in the double digits with an EPA-estimated 10/15mpg. Skinflint shoppers couldn’t buy a three-on-the-tree anymore, as the sole transmission option with every engine was the three-speed TorqueFlite automatic.
Once again, Chrysler Corporation had the full-size cars on the market with the best ride/handling balance. Ford was still invested in cushy isolationism above all else. The Gran Fury’s dynamic superiority wouldn’t be challenged until the down-sized 1977 GM B-Body’s arrival.
For 1975, the Gran Fury name was adopted across the entire full-size line. Plymouth had done some nameplate shuffling and put the Fury name on a restyled B-Body Satellite and advertised it as the “small Fury”. Perhaps “smaller” would have been a more apt description, but they were also marketing the mechanically-related Chrysler Cordoba as a “small Chrysler” after all.
The 1975 Gran Fury was available in base, Custom, Brougham and Sport Suburban trims, and the new base engine in 49 states was the 318 V8 with 145 hp and 245 lb-ft. Brougham models featured single headlight units, rather than duals. But sales fell by 38.46%, and the entire division saw an almost identical decline. The full-size line was now accounting for only 15% of Plymouth’s total volume.
Gran Fury sales numbers continued spiraling downwards. For 1977, only 47,552 units were produced. The bulk of those would likely have been to fleets. Private buyers were flocking to the downsized GM B-Bodies or, if they wanted to continue livin’ large, were buying LTDs. Even the related Dodge Royal Monaco sold better, albeit marginally.
As sales never picked up, Plymouth started to simplify the range. The four-door hardtop was dead after 1975, leaving just the pillared sedan, coupe and wagon. For 1977, all mid-range Gran Fury models were gone: only base/Suburban and Brougham/Sport Suburban models remained. Plymouth would axe the entire range for 1978.
The Gran Fury was a sales disappointment with private buyers, but one of its biggest customer bases loved them. The Gran Fury and related Royal Monaco were well-liked by police forces across America. As the 1970s wore on, though, many police squads were downsizing too and the B-Body Fury and Monaco became increasingly popular. Plymouth learned they could no longer count on even police fleets to save their biggest sedan.
It’s telling that Plymouth didn’t bother to offer a replacement for the Gran Fury. While GM was downsizing their entire line and Ford was slowly following, Plymouth first dumped their full-size model and then dumped their intermediate Fury the following year. Shoppers at Chrysler-Plymouth dealers looking for a full-size model would have to pony up some extra money and buy a Newport.
For 1980, Plymouth would half-heartedly field a new Gran Fury. A straight rebadge of the 1979 Chrysler Newport, the new Gran Fury rode the aging B-Body platform. Coupes and wagons were gone. Sales were even more dismal than its predecessor, and the new Gran Fury lasted just two years. The name was then transferred to the M-Body, where it lasted until 1989 on a single sedan model, never exceeding 20,000 units annually.
By the dawn of the 1980s, the majority of Plymouth’s lineup would consist of captive import Mitsubishis. The oil crisis had rattled American consumers, and made them seriously re-evaluate what they wanted in a car. Those consumers who were less concerned about fuel costs and still desired a dreadnought were only interested in more luxuriously-appointed models like the LTD and Cadillac and Lincoln’s offerings. That desirable private buyer just wasn’t interested in the plainer Gran Fury, especially considering the very real fear Chrysler Corporation wouldn’t live to see the 1980s. Roy Schieder may have said in 1975’s Jaws, “We’re going to need a bigger boat”, but in the choppy seas of the 1970s, a bigger boat didn’t help.
N.B. I spotted the featured Gran Fury in Far Rockaway, NY but could only snap two shots as it was in motion. It is definitely a 1975-77 model, but I’m not sure of the exact year.
Personally, with few exceptions I don’t see the appeal of the last truly large full-size domestics, but these are pleasantly styled and are said to be decent to drive. I much prefer the look of these to the overly fussy Chrysler Newport and New Yorker of the same generation.
Related Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1976 Dodge Royal Monaco
Curbside Classic: 1978 Dodge Monaco
This is a triple play of sorts – a C-body of this vintage, a Plymouth, and a two-door. Great catch.
Plymouth was indeed the best selling brand to police fleets in the US during the 1970s. I suspect Chrysler didn’t want to admit to its sales split between retail and fleet.
The last C-body Fury / Gran Fury I saw was in a salvage yard in Kansas City years ago. For whatever reason, I removed the undamaged left rear tail light and have had it in my auto part collection ever since.
A 74 version of this car, a tan 2 door, was locally for sale a few years ago, in excellent condition and for a very reasonable price. I just couldn’t get excited about it. These 2 doors were just ungainly, with proportions that were not quite right.
The bodies on these cars never felt “tight” like earlier unibody Mopars.
We took a family trip in 1974. Dad rented a 74 Galaxie 500 that was a nice car, if a bit basic. We also got rides in a 74 Plymouth wagon hotel courtesy car. I was enamored with Mopars then and wanted to love the new Plymouth, but even then it left me cold. It was a letdown, it felt cheap and just wasn’t attractive, inside or out.
Even as a kid, I was shocked at how much these cars looked like GM offerings. While Plymouth cribbed the ’71 Buick (with a healthy dose of 1970s Chevy), Dodge went straight for the 1972 Buick. Rooflines, grilles, tail lights, even side sculpting were all blatantly GM. At that time of course, if you wanted a GM car, there were plenty of real ones to choose from. Why on earth would you go for a Mopar knock-off? I think the ’74-’78 Chryslers, which actually looked like Chryslers, sold better for that reason.
I also hated the switch to dual headlamps, which looked lost and cheap on such a large car.
I’ve always thought that the 1975+ Dodge Royal Monaco copied the 1973 Mercury Marquis.
Why not. The Marquis pulled off full size 70s baroque better than most. I am a sucker for covered headlights and wish they would come back. The oblong multi-mirrored current things with the fogged up plastic covers have in my mind jumped the shark.
I think Chrysler could have saved a lot of money turning the B body into the R body in 1974 instead of 79. A slightly smaller 118 wb model with a standard slant six would have been a unique and ahead of the game offering for Chrysler, also a final vindication of the then too small 62s. The old B body could have sold along side until the Diplomat M body was available. The Volare could have been skipped entirely and the Valiant could have been shrunk back to a 108wb in it’s next reskin and enough weight taken out to use the mitsu 2.6 and five speed as standard. A better lineup doable on a smaller budget.
Alternative reality aside, this Fury hardtop coupe is very appealing to me. Just give me the cloth interior and the 360 four barrel.
Another idea would had been the A-body Dart/Valiant/Duster having a stretched version replacing the B-body Belvedere/Satellite/Coronet/Charger along with a chopped version a la AMC Gremlin who fill the role of a subcompact until the Omni/Horizon arrive. Becoming a “proto-K car” before its time. The Argentinian A-body Polara/GTX wheelbase was around 114-115″ as well as the luxury version of the Australian Valiant, the Chrysler by Chrysler. Althought another possibility would be the C-body could had became a stretched version of the B-body imitating AMC who built the Ambassador on a stretched chassis of the Classic/Rebel/Matador.
Or I could even further go back in time where their compact arrived. Instead of being a new division Valiant, Plymouth is repositionned to be the compact car with Dodge, DeSoto filling the full-size gap.
Or doing the current dealer system (Chrysler-Dodge-Ram-Jeep) more earlier, imagine Chrysler-DeSoto-Dodge-Plymouth all under the same roof.
If DeSoto had continued to soldier to the 1960s and 1970s, would Pontiac and Oldsmobile had taken the 3rd place so easily back then?
I while back Paul showed us a Dart variant sold in Spain which had I think the same wheelbase but extra length in the nose and trunk. This may have worked since the Dart was already so roomy, as it did with the GM A bodies of 82-96.
A Valiant based Gremlin type car would have had the same problem as the Gremlin, no 4 cylinder, except perhaps the 1.75 liter from the Hillman Avenger, which would have been a weak motor with emissions, and probably expensive to import. I don’t recall any larger Simca engines. I don’t know if the Colts being sold were constrained by supply issues or if they were selling as many as they could.
The dealer system they have now could only have been done thru bankruptcy. They sold franchises to people, that creates a lot of fiduciary duties. Fun discussion, reminds me of business school case studies.
The actually did have a Valiant based Gremlin type car on the drawing board, and then AMC beat them to it.
If they had fully updated the B-Body ’75, “de-fusalaging” the sedan and wagon as they did with the coupe, that’s effectively what they would have done. Then, if they’d managed to launch a full R-body in ’77 or even ’78, they would have been better placed in the admittedly waning full-size car market.
I really do like these cars and think some more clever thinking about the front and rear clips could have easily softened the ’71-2 Buick comparisons – perhaps a continuation of the ’73 Plymouth and Dodge Monaco themes, Plymouth, especially, would have benefited from some front and rear end continuity after whipsawing from ’71 through ’73.
Lack of cashflow is what crippled Chrysler in the ’70s, resulting in less-than whole-hearted efforts with its full-size models. They simply couldn’t afford to substantially differentiate their vehicles from one brand to another the way GM or Ford could. Likewise, Chrysler always seemed a year or two behind the curve with its full-size offerings.
Plymouth was just one too many brands for the Corporation by this time, and the noticeably weaker attention put into Plymouth compared to Dodge and Chrysler should have been a sign the Plymouth’s days were numbered. I never like it when a brand dies or saying one should, but by the late-1970s, Plymouth had served its purpose. The once “mid-range” Dodge covered all of Plymouth’s bases and even some of Chrysler’s by this point. If Chrysler wasn’t going to make vehicles between its brands substantially different, having 3 brands just wasn’t necessary.
In a perfect world, Chrysler would have been positioned higher, as a Lincoln/Cadillac competitor, with Dodge competing with Olds, Buick, and Mercury, and Plymouth with Chevy, Ford, and maybe Pontiac. Of course, money, history, and brand association prevented this.
I imagine it is difficult to pull the plug. The shut down costs are high, and there are teams in place are avidly pushing turn around plans, that purposely cost less the first year. The still successful if not very profitable Valiant/Duster/Scamp was still a big asset. Much later Chrysler just called it Neon whether Dodge or Plymouth to lessen Plymouth shutdown issues.
I think part of the challenge at the time was the dealer network. Plymouth was combined with Chrysler, while Dodge was stand-alone. Chrysler dealers could not have made it without Plymouth’s volume. Also, the Dodge Boys were reputedly fierce individualists who insisted that anything Plymouth got they should get too. I’d argue that the roots of Plymouth’s problems can be traced back to the late 1950s, when Dodge was allowed to build a “low priced” car (the Dart) of their own for 1960. Previously, Plymouth had been combined in dealerships with either Chrysler, or Dodge, or DeSoto and always covered the “low end” of the market. When that broke down, internal competition ensued, and to your point, Ma Mopar did not have the resources to properly attend to so many divisions and models.
The original plan was to give Plymouth its own dealer network, as it was felt that having Plymouth sold in tandem with the corporation’s other car lines was hindering its sales growth. In 1940, Plymouth had come very close to knocking Ford out of second place, but the early 1950s, Ford was well ahead of Plymouth. Dealers wanted to sell a customer one Plymouth. When that customer came back for the next car, the dealer often urged him or her to trade up to a more profitable Dodge, DeSoto or Chrysler on the same showroom floor.
The problem was that Dodge dealers objected loudly to this plan. Since Dodge was, in many ways, the corporation’s most powerful division, they were given the Dart, a redesigned 1960 Plymouth, as compensation.
The move ended up seriously hurting Plymouth – the Dart outsold the standard Plymouth – and the traditional medium-price Dodge. From that point, Dodge and Plymouth became direct competitors. The end result was the demise of Plymouth.
Whether the plan to separate Plymouth at the dealer level was viable remains an open question. Ironically, for all of the belly-aching by Dodge dealers, the division did have the volume to allow its dealers to survive without Plymouth sales. The real question was whether DeSoto and Chrysler dealers could have survived without having Plymouths to sell.
Even when Plymouth got a ‘budget muscle car’, Road Runner, Dodge had to have one too and got the Super Bee. But the RR is more memorable.
Ironically, when the Roadrunner was in the initial planning stages, Dodge wasn’t interested in getting their own version. The most vivid example of this was when Chrysler’s production planners were assembling the punch-card decks of exactly what components would be going into the Roadrunner, such as using the same hood as the GTX. Because this was a time-consuming process, the techs wanted to know if they should prepare a similar card deck for a Dodge version of the Roadrunner. The story goes that the answer they got from the Dodge execs was, “No”. Imagine the scrambling they had to do once it became apparent that the Roadrunner was going to be a huge hit and the Dodge Boys quickly changed their minds at the last minute.. So the Super Bee was actually a late entry for the 1968 model year.
Dodge dealers were also quite bent out of shape about not getting an A-body version of the Barracuda (even though they got the Dodge-exclusive Charger two years later). Likewise, it’s worth noting that Dodge’s version of the wildly successful 1970 Duster coupe, the Demon, wasn’t introduced until the following year (they already had the Dart Swinger hardtop, a Valiant version of which quit being made after 1966). In what was probably one of the last moments of fair play between the two divisions, Plymouth dealers then got their own version of the Swinger hardtop, the Scamp.
When you think about it, the Dodge dealer network’s ability to push around Chrysler execs to the detriment of Plymouth comes dangerously close to qualifying as a Deadly Sin.
Interesting too that in all the examples Rudiger gives, Plymouth had the great idea first, and big brother Dodge went all “Me too!” after Plymouth’s ideas were a success. Seems they weren’t so good at coming up with the ideas themselves.
And then of course, beginning in the 1970s, Chrysler-branded vehicles seriously began moving downmarket into Plymouth territory.
There’s another issue to the idea that Plymouth was one brand too many in 1974. In 1972, Plymouth sold about 775,000 cars, and sold about 750,000 in 1973. The Chrysler brand sold about 225,000 cars in 1973. So, for the typical Chrysler-Plymouth store, 75% of their volume was Plymouth. Even the Fury was an important car in 1973 and 1974, selling over 200,000 cars each year, and was approximately equal to the entire Chrysler brand in total sales.
So, the product planners in the early 1970s definitely were not thinking about ways to kill the Plymouth brand, it was simply too important to the company’s bottom line, and the Fury was still a relative cash cow – simply being unique sheet metal and trim on the company C platform.
Plymouth, being Plymouth, sales for Fury in 1974 were not really all that terrible with 118,000 units – a terrible year for sales no matter who you were.
How important was the Plymouth Fury to Chrysler Corporation in 1974? Simply, it was the best selling full-size Chrysler product. Dodge only sold about 75,000 Monacos and total Chrysler brand was about 107,000 cars – also about 1/2 of its 1973 volume.
I’m not as savvy as others here, but I guess I can agree that the full-sized Plymouth could have been “killed-off” in 1974 if this was the best they could do. The idea of a “smaller” Fury with a standard slant 6 is interesting. Doing a sort of “re-boot” of the Plymouth brand as a maker of smaller and PERHAPS cheaper line of cars than Dodge, and certainly Chrysler, would have been groundbreaking. Having a big and small Fury copied Ford….but 2 years late, right about the time Ford was about to drop it’s small LTD.
My friends bought a 74 Fury, mostly because of the (perceived) generous rebate. As a guy who grew up with several Plymouths in my immediate family, I liked that car, but not immensely. The steering was very light, but immediate….with little slack and the brakes were strong giving a feeling that large car could stop on a dime. But the assembly quality? The car was delivered with the rear edges of the vinyl roof curling away and the interior was assembled out of panels that were 4 or 5 shades of the same “oyster” color. I couldn’t even imagine what that car would look like by the time the last payment was made.
Love the slotted steel wheels on the subject car and the green Gran Fury coupe in the last image. IIRC they were available on many MoPars of the era.
IIRC those wheels were usually called “road wheels” and I love them. I know that supposedly brake cooling issues prevent us from having largely solid disks for wheels but I love the look. But then I always liked the full cover lakes disks as hubcaps.
Bentley is somehow able to keep their brakes cool. I know the holes are much larger, but so is the surface area of the “disc” and the brake underneath it.
I like it. A very clean design for what was generally a “more is more” era. As long as the engine was 360 4 barrel or greater I think I could be quite happy with one.
You really had to drive these to appreciate them. They were big boats that actually handled well for what they were. They might look like GM copies but they didn’t drive like them and they were miles ahead of Ford in handling.
It is also interesting to consider this car as the swan song of Elwood Engel’s career. I believe that the full-size C-body program for 1974 would have been one of the last ones developed under his watch. As such, it makes a striking contrast to the exit of some other design chiefs.
GM comes to mind, with the design dictators fighting for their vision until the bitter end. Just imagine Harley Earl towering over his design kingdom and surveying the bloated hulks while commanding “Chrome! Chrome! Gimme more chrome!” It took a design coup to get him out of there. Or consider Bill Mitchell. Though the reputed father of GM’s “sheer look” he is said to have hated that design direction. As a parting shot, he was able to browbeat GM management as such: “screw the trend toward function and efficiency, what the luxury market really needs is a bustle back pseudo Rolls-Royce!”
Now think of Engel. Other than the 1961 Lincoln Continental, he is most noted for effectively borrowing successful design cues and repackaging them over time. Some great designs done under his watch, such as the ’68 Charger and the ’70 Barracuda/Challenger, were beautiful but hardly original. Even some of his best work at Chrysler, the ’65-’68 big cars, were handsome retakes on the Continental. When he did break out of his shell with more originality, such as the Fuselage cars, the results were less spectacular. So it’s no surprise then, that with big Mopar sales floundering, honchos at Chrysler told him what to do, not the other way around. Bob McCurry, then head of Dodge, could sell ice to Eskimos but had the branding instincts of a gnat. Imagine McCurry, pounding his fists on the table and demanding: “look how the GM big cars sell!! You need to give me big cars just like that!” And Engel, the master of automotive pastiche, simply complied. The results, like this car, really hurt the company.
Remember that Engel was hired by Lynn Townsend after Virgil Exner was fired over the failure of the downsized 1962 Dodge and Plymouth (even though Exner had been opposed to making his originally planned 1962 cars smaller). Chrysler-Plymouth and Dodge dealers were increasingly up in arms over the bizarre styling of the corporation’s cars, and their discontent reached the boiling point when the 1962 models were unveiled. Supposedly several Dodge dealers immediately dropped their franchises at the dealer introduction of the 1962 cars. (Chrysler-Plymouth dealers at least had the more conventional 1962 Chrysler to sell.)
Townsend hired Engel with specific instructions to get Chrysler styling “back in the mainstream.” That meant getting rid of any Exner-inspired touches, or anything that reminded people of that era – including the pushbutton-operated automatic transmissions. It also meant essentially copying GM, which was the styling leader in those days, with a few exceptions (1961 Lincoln Continental, original Mustang and 1968 Continental Mark III).
Engel was not hired to be original or make Chrysler products “distinctive.” Townsend, the shareholders and the dealers had their fill of originality during the final years of Exner’s reign, when they watched the corporation’s market share fall to about 10 percent by 1962. They weren’t going to complain if a Plymouth looked like last year’s Chevrolet, or a Dodge adopted Pontiac styling cues 1-2 years after they appeared on the Pontiac, as long as they sold well.
Coupled with improved build quality and more emphasis on performance, this approach worked – at first. The corporation’s market share hit 18.9 percent in 1968. That was almost double the corporation’s market share in 1962.
By 1969, it was time for some originality, but, as you noted, Engel and management dropped the ball with the fuselage C-bodies. It didn’t help that the 1969 Plymouth looked like a 1966 Chevrolet Impala given the fuselage styling treatment.
Just as damaging to the corporation’s market share was its perpetual tardiness in entering new market segments. It completely ignored the subcompact market for as long as possible, and never offered an Imperial competitor to the Riviera, Eldorado and Continental Mark III/IV. As a budding car buff in the early 1970s, it always seemed to me as though Chrysler was the last to do anything when it came to styling or exploiting new trends – even behind AMC in some ways.
Those are some great comments comparing Chrysler’s chief stylist throughout the sixties and most of the seventies with GM’s styling monarchs. Engel was content to essentially just toe the line at Chrysler, not make any waves, and simply adapt previous GM or Ford styling cues to the current Chrysler lines. Even the fuselage cars weren’t really all that radical when compared to mid-sixties GM cars. And during the heady economic heyday of the go-go sixties (combined with scarfing up the leftover Studebaker customers), it worked out well enough. The problems arose during the much tougher times of the seventies. The automotive landscape was changing dramatically and Chrysler simply didn’t have the resources to make changes quickly enough to the rapidly shifting market. The poor quality of the cars, widely regarded as the worst of the Big 3 (which is really saying something in the seventies) put the final nail in the coffin. With one notable exception (Cordoba), consumers didn’t leave GM or Ford to buy a Chrysler product; it was just the opposite. Then, when they got burned again, it was a Japanese product, usually never to return to a domestic, again.
Describing Engel as “the master of automotive pastiche” really says it all.
If Engel had never penned another car after the 61 Continental he still would be considered one of the greats. Like Dick Teague at AMC and earlier examples at Studebaker, operating at Chrysler in the seventies meant no budget and long lead times for when and if tooling is ordered. Remember the Valiant foolishly going to the 111 wheelbase of the Dart when the tooling wore out with no money for replacement, on a best selling model. I think some understanding should be shown Mr. Engel for his seventies work.
I’ll have to admit, it’s a tough call on Engel. But what did he think was going to happen when he took the design chief job at Chrysler under Lynn Townsend? He went from being a small fish in a big pond to a big fish in a small pond. Seems like he might have been better off with any original designs he had in mind if he’d stayed at Ford.
Imagine, too, how differently things might have been if not for the ’62 Mopar downsizing that cost Exner his job at Chrysler. It’s worth noting that the attractive 1963 Valiant was an Exner design that Engel had almost nothing to do with, yet Engel gets the credit for it. You have to wonder if Exner had stayed at Chrysler if he’d have been able to show enough restraint to satisfy Townsend, yet get some nicely styled, original new Chrysler cars built, anyway.
A great find! While the full size Chryslers of the era are still seen from time to time, I can’t recall the last time I saw a Gran Fury or Royal Monaco here. That it has survived the harsh NY winters is amazing.
Nice if slightly generic cars. That coupe in emerald green is stunning.
The Plymouth version suffered a lack if differentiation from the Dodge, particularly at the back. The migration to the single headlamp on each side beginning with the high trim cars in 1975 was ridiculous and even ugly. Only Ford also tried single headlamps on a large car beginning in ’79, and that was on the bottom end fleet car and they gave that up after a few years. Side trim tended to look cheap on these, and as the article said, the top versions could not match Ford in particular for plushness. The opera window vinyl top treatment that was optional on coupes did the car no favors. The subject car is actually about as nice as these looked with road wheels and lacking the opera windows.
Agree, the one-eyed base 1979-81 LTD looked dirt cheap and tacky to me. Should have just called them plain old ‘Custom’ still.
My first car was a 77 Gran Fury Brougham. Got it from my aunt. Beautifully assembled car, amazingly. Sadly it had the habit of stalling at every corner until it was warmed up. It would also belch black soot whenever it was started up in the morning. in its defense my brother once haul 12 guys to soccer practice in or on the beast he called the Albino Rhino.
Sounds like the intake manifold heat riser passages were plugged up. It was a common problem Mopar V8’s that were driven mainly short distances. I have had a few low mileage ones that were “little old lady” cars and they all had this problem.
Chrysler products stalling at stoplights was a common trait in the seventies. There’s a great story about a Chrysler dealership that had a stoplight in front of it. The story goes that after a new car was purchased, the salesmen would pray that the stoplight would be green when the car was driven off the lot. Otherwise, there’d be a brand-new Chrysler product sitting in the street, unable to be started.
Ah, the relatively unloved Gran Fury. Except that I’ve always really, really liked these, especially the ones with the dual lamps rather than quads (the ones with quad lamps not only look like a Buick, they’re also insufficiently differentiated from the Monaco). It’s an honest “face” and a clean, uncluttered shape. That first two-door, in blue with the road wheels, will work just fine for me.
I can tell you exactly why I like them so much though. Dates to childhood. Because this was one of my favorite toys:
Matchbox even made a bigger version with opening doors and trunk.
Yes, the SuperKings version in 1:43. I’d like to find one on Ebay someday. I admired the bigger one as a kid, but since all my other cars were the smaller size, it always seemed to make more sense to get several of the “regular” size cars instead of one bigger one.
I remember seeing the 1974 cars for the first time in Motor Trend’s new-car issue and being surprised at how much they looked like a GM car. But I also thought that they were an improvement over the fuselage cars, which looked dated by 1973, and really out of the mainstream.
The single-headlight front was strange, but I wonder if Chrysler was copying GM’s Colonnade intermediates, which used single headlights on each side, and were considered to be quite stylish when they debuted. It’s also interesting how much the 1975 Gran Fury’s grille shape and hood resemble those of the new, “smaller” 1975 Fury.
The real problem, in my opinion, is that placing the large, vertical turn signal/parking light directly beside each round headlight, and within the same nacelle, results in an awkward look. The two shapes clash with each other.
I agree, the single lights looked like large toads, and awkward. It was like they were trying too hard to make the C’s look ‘smaller’ to get mid size buyers.
If the ’74-’77 models aped Buick, the “R” body equivalents doubled down on it. I remember a local town that had Newport and Fury police cars, being new, I wasn’t familiar with them yet, I thought to myself, “How did the council approve Buick Electra police cars?”
I like the story that GN told: “look how the GM big cars sell!! You need to give me big cars just like that!”
The 1969 Fuselage cars turned off middle aged buyers, and they were too big for 20-something Boomers. So, I imagine there was a shift to mimic GM’s 1971’s, thinking ‘give them what they want’.
But this only worked for big Chryslers, loyal Fury owners in ’74 model year went either to Valiants or got upsold to Newports. C body Fury tanking added to end of Plymouth in long run. The “small Fury” B’s never really caught on, either, with retail.
I’ve always liked the 1974 Gran Fury. It’s perhaps the best looking of the 1974-77 generation.
Definitely, it was all downhill from after 1974.
Never really liked these cars. Just too big and ungainly looking. Looked a lot like the Buicks of the time, except Buick did that look much better.
I kinda like that white coupe with that unique vinyl roof treatment. Looks like a low budget New Yorker Brougham, a very attractive car-at least in my eyes.
coming from a mopar background there was a bunch of 70’s newports and monacos in our automotive family tree. the lone Plymouth was a 74 fury wagon.
I remember it handled and road like its other ‘brothers and sisters’ but just didn’t have the same quality feel.
the only way I can put it in relation to gm or ford is that a Newport or Monaco felt like an impala/ltd, where the fury felt like a belair/galaxie.
The ironic thing is, these were the last truly new “full size” full size cars. They used a new platform, whereas the ’73-’78 Fords were a reskin of the ’71 body, and the same for the ’74-’76 GMs.
And as GN notes, these arguably the last designs done under Engel’s watch, although a good deal of the work on the ’75 B-Body refresh would have come under his tenure as well. I’ve noted elsewhere that these cars, especially the 4 door sedans, remind me a lot of Engel’s ’67-’68 C-Bodies – they’re sort of the continuation the fuselage era interrupted.
The ’74 looked pretty nice but the single-headlight ones that followed just screamed “CHEAP” in capital letters.
Still owned by the Pierce County (Washington) Sheriff’s Department…1974 Plymouth Fury.
When I was a kid, we had a 1977 Plymouth Gran Fury Sport Suburban. Artic white with the simulated wood paneling. I learned how to drive on that car. I really loved that car.
Excuse the dirty windshield, but about the time this article was being written I got this quick shot of one in Amarillo TX. Notice the paper dealer plate. Also, why did Plymouth space the bumper guards so far apart?
Since I was a kid, I’ve always liked these cars. They are extremely rare. It took me many years to find the right one. I have a ’77 Gran Fury Brougham coupe with the St. Regis roof and a 440. I can’t imagine many came through this way right at the end of the run. Aside from the lean burn issues, the car is a pleasure to drive. It handles well and is quite comfortable. Build quality is what it is. The trim doesn’t always line up perfectly from panel to panel, but it doesn’t squeak or rattle when driven.
Your 77 sounds like a really nice car. When I was a kid my dad bought a new 77 Dodge Royal Monaco coupe with the 440. I loved that car as a kid. Still remember taking rides in it. I have been looking for a 440 coupe for years now, either a Gran Fury or Royal Monaco. Very rare and hard to find. Good luck with yours.
The Gran Fury spotted in Far Rockaway (first two pics) is a 1977 model. You can tell by the widely spaced rear bumper guards.
This car’s styling was just sooooo derivative of GM’s big cars, particularly the ’73 Impala (front) and ’72 Impala (rear), with some Buick LeSabre thrown in. Particularly the two and four door hardtops. OTOH the dashboard looks much like the one Buick adopted in their full-sizers in 1975-76 so there they were a step ahead of GM (suddenly it’s 1975!). I do like the optional front vent windows, though the big C bodies were the last Mopar to offer them whereas Ford continued to make these available throughout the ’80s from Escorts to Crown Vics.
And the Monaco looked like a Buick.
I drove two of these in the late 70s. One was a ‘74 fire chief special with police suspension and a 400. The other was a fairly basic ‘75 4-door hard tip with cloth interior and a 360. As a teenager, I couldn’t understand the lack of popularity. I really enjoyed driving them. They steered well, had very comfortable seats, and the 360 had adequate power and was relatively easy on gas for such a large car. My family drove Chevys and Buicks, but I liked these better.
The 1980-1981 Gran Fury was R-body
These remind me of “The Blues Brothers” and “Hill Street Blues”. The NYPD and the CHP used them and they were pretty ubiquitous in municipal fleets.
I was going to add former California Governor Jerry Brown’s official car, a light blue 1974 Plymouth, but remembered that his was a B-body Satellite. I thought the b-body fuselage cars were good and perhaps these should have been the recipients of development and design money rather than the big cars. It’s the old story at Chrysler, they were not nimble and were slow to affect the needed changes. The C body Plymouths should have have been discontinued after 1975. Completely terminating the A-bodies before the F-bodies were properly developed was an error in judgement. Truthfully, if the Aspen/Volare twins were necessary why were they so dull and badly executed? As others have noted the A-bodies sold in Spain and Brazil had style and luxury elements that look fresh to me. If Chrysler had freshened the look and improved the quality of the domestic Dart/Valiants in a similar fashion they could have done more to refine their engines and drive trains instead of wasting money on change for the sake of change with tired, uninspired products that were heading toward oblivion.
I will always wonder what could have been done with the Australian straight 6 Hemi if it had been made available in the US in perhaps a down sized Valiant/Duster. I think the Aus. Charger would have been a hit here. Did they ever consider it? Instead we inexplicably got the inexecrable Plymouth Cricket. At the same time Dodge did pretty good with the first generation Mitsubishi Colts which were solidly built and had the 2.6L engine which was a good performer. At a time when Chrysler desperately needed fresh ideas they seem to have missed an opportunity right under their noses.
Jerry Brown’s Plymouth…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jerry_Brown_1974_Plymouth_Satellite.jpg
It’s hard to figure out just went wrong with the ’74-’78 full-size Mopars. The ’73 Oil Crisis certainly didn’t help matters, but it’s odd that the big Chryslers (as well as big Fords and GM products) still managed decent sales during the same timeframe. I can only guess that there was a perceived higher quality associated with the luxury end than the more pedestrian models. I suspect that, even without the Oil Crisis, the ’74-’78 big Plymouth and Dodge would not have faired any better. Then, as unbelievable as it might seem, it got even ‘worse’ with the downsized ’79-’81 B-body-based full-size ‘coffin-style’ cars. Those were so bad that even fleets had stopped buying Mopars.
As far as quality goes, all seventies’ Mopars were bad. Maybe not all the way into POS status like the ’57 Forward Look cars, but close, thanks mainly to Rube Goldberg-style emission control systems that caused lots of driveability problems.
And that can be laid directly at the big-bucks Chrysler had wasted on developing the E-bodies. Suddenly, there was no more money to properly develop new models and, in one of his last acts before retiring, Lynn Townsend was cutting costs left and right. One of the key areas most dramatically chopped was letting go most of Chrysler’s engineering staff, a situation which became most evident with the problem-plagued F-body Aspen/Volaré. A truly boneheaded move, considering engineering was the one area where Chrysler tended to best Ford and GM.
So, not many of the last big C-body Plymouths or Dodges were sold, and the few that did find buyers were mainly to fleets. Except for a couple of bright spots like the Cordoba and Omnirizon, Chrysler in the seventies was very nearly just another independent manufacturer on its last legs, closer to AMC or Studebaker than Ford or GM.
I keep looking at this, and have to conclude that the styling was just “off” in too many ways. The 2 door roofline was wrong. This was the era of the big, thick C pillar, but this was neither thick nor thin. And once they tried the opera roof treatment, it stuck out like a neon band-aid the way the body’s beltline was NOT designed to work with it. That 2 door roof might have been OK in 1971 but not by 1975-76
The Newport was a far better looking car than the Plymouth or Dodge, even as a 4 door. Where the Cordoba hit the bulls-eye for 1970s style, these missed it by a good bit. These cars were doughy and pudgy looking. And once the quad headlight treatment went away, it was lights out because it just looked bad in front.
Also, that dash design looked awful to me the first time I got into one of these cars in 1974. We took a family vacation and the hotel where we stayed had a new 74 Plymouth wagon as a courtesy car. I had liked the dash on the 72-73 but this one was just not attractive at all. And the interior materials were not following the broughamy velour trend. The LTD did interiors really nicely, but these did not.
Everyone knew Chrysler was a mess by then, and it took the right car to bring customers – it either had to be tried and true (Duster) or really pretty (Cordoba). Everything else collected dust on lots or came with huge rebates.
I’m shocked they sold over a million big Fords and Chevies, despite the fuel crisis and resulting recession, big ugly new bumpers, seatbelt interlocks, and the worst year for drivability due to emissions standards.
I rode in a fuselage New Yorker in the early 70’s and remember loud road noise that made the car feel cheap compared to our ’68 Electra. If that continued into these cars, that could have been a factor in their poor sales.
By 1974-’78 period, the Chrysler Newport had become the Mopar loyalist go-to first choice for full-sized cars. Only a few of the old-line Plymouth Fury and Dodge Monaco buyers in even our small town held out through the last of these in 1978. It literally was a dying demographic who drove these cars until their end, then the family sold them off dirt cheap.
By the early 1980s’, at the used car auctions, full-sized Plymouths or Dodges, regardless of how good condition they might be, were the darlings of the by-here-pay-here operations. Bought for rock-bottom wholesale, many credit-distressed buyers ended up with one of these barges. In addition to low initial sales, the other reason the survival rate is low now.
After the oil crisis, working class families, which were the backbone of Plymouth sales, took a hit economically. This was the beginning of inflation and this market was disproportionately hit. Food prices were up significantly, and again, these kinds of cost increases hit hourly wage employees. These people bought Plymouths.
What did Plymouth’s demographic target do? They went to smaller cars. If a new car was needed, and it was to be another Plymouth – it was a smaller Plymouth. So instead of big Plymouths selling, you see a dramatic sales increase in Valiant and Duster sales. If you recall, the Valiant was nearly as large interior-wise as a full size car that sat 6.
Additionally, the Jones Generation, those born after 1955, (post-boom boomers), were old enough to drive. The need for a larger car for working families that Plymouth catered to, no longer could afford, or need a large full size inexpensive Chrysler product. Recall, that after 1970, the generation is smaller.
Also, working class mothers began leaving the home and taking jobs. So the market for second smaller cars grew. During this era, we see the last of the single income working families, living off a father’s hourly wage.
This means that the demographic that Plymouth targeted, changed dramatically during the early 1970s. This, to me, explains why we see a drop in large Plymouths, an increase in Duster/Valiant sales, and an overall softening of this kind of car.
In the limited market for full-size Mopars, the Newport was so close in price to the Plym and Dodge C-body cars that the prestige implied by the Chrysler name was the determining factor for most of the dwindling prospects for these cars. That said I’ve owned ’71, ’72, ’73, ’76 and 2 x ’77 C-bodies as we’ll as ’79, ’80, and ’81 R-bodies, and after a total of in excess of 500k miles on them, the ’71 F3 318 2bbl and ’77 Gran Fury 360 2bbl, both 4 dr. sedans were my favorites to drive.