If one reads (and believes) the various articles and reviews relating to the Dodge Aspen, it would be easy to conclude it was the biggest chunk of junk to roll out of Detroit in the 1970s. Such thinking would be inaccurate, for there were too many other worthy candidates.
The Dodge Dart was a good solid car that had lived a very long life despite being nearly as exciting as a cholesterol test. Chrysler knew that simply remaining competitive would mean appealing to a demographic much wider than nuns, music teachers and math professors. The Aspen, introduced in 1975 for the 1976 model year, was designed to do exactly that. The debut was promising; Motor Trend named the Aspen its 1976 Car of the Year.
The Aspen, along with its Plymouth Volaré twin, was a breath of fresh air for the compact-buying crowd. Aside from drivetrains carried over from the old Dart, it was a completely different car. The Aspen lineup even included a station wagon, a body style unavailable as a Dart since 1966, a full decade earlier. Its 71.9 cubic feet (2.04 cubic meters) of storage space provided quite generous storage capacity.
The Aspen wasn’t perfect, but what is? In a sense, and in many ways, Chrysler was way ahead of its time. Did the front fenders on your Aspen experience premature rust? Chrysler replaced them and took care of their customers. That’s the embodiment of excellent customer service.
www.tmnews.com
In contrast, there is no evidence that General Motors did likewise for owners of their terminally biodegradable pickups of the same era, and Ford simply followed GM’s precedent.
There were also recalls for hard-starting issues, but even these issues produced something positive: They let the driver experience the wonderful sound of the Highland Park Hummingbird starter motor for a longer time. Numerous people here have commented on their enjoyment of that wonderful sound. Giving the customer what they desire is another hallmark of excellent customer service.
Chrysler was ahead of their time in customer service, yet is still chastised over the Aspen. No good deed goes unpunished, as the old saying goes.
www.splitsider.com
Often missing from the critiques of the Aspen is the one thing most important to its owners: How well did it actually perform when it came to meeting their needs? I’m not talking about raw acceleration, or how many g’s it could pull on a skid pad. I’m talking about a car with the ability to mimic the pledges in the movie Animal House: “Thank you, sir, can I have another?”. (Author’s note: Google “Animal House Frat Initiation” and you’ll see why I chose that picture.)
www.politicalcarnival.com
I’m talking about the Timex of cars, one that can “Take a licking and keep on ticking.”
I’m talking about a car that can take punishment and keep chugging along. Let’s examine that a bit.
In late 1978, my parents bought a leftover ’78 Volare like this one, but in fecal-brown metallic. Theirs was a two-door in Premier trim. Equipped with the Super Six (a slant six with a two-barrel carburetor), it was as reliable as ever a car was, and also pretty easy on fuel. I suspect it was one of the hard starters, but that sound was a sweet mechanical melody to a six-year-old Jason.
The Volaré was a tough girl. My mother had a natural talent for using it to thin out the local dog population, but it never suffered a scratch. Once, during a period of freezing rain, my mother, a nurse, left work at midnight for the 11-mile trek home. She ran off the road into a field, and then used about 20 acres’ worth of it to turn around, judging by the ruts we saw the following day. Driving through the tilled field didn’t even compromise the front-end alignment.
Throughout their ownership, which lasted until 1983 and covered 105,000 miles, it needed absolutely nothing major. The only surgery it ever required was a catalytic convertor-ectomy shortly after purchase.
As an aside to those of you outside my neck of the woods, I’ve yet to get an emissions test on anything I have ever owned. In the context of place and time, pulling off the converter was then a fairly routine procedure, much like LASIK surgery is today. I fully realize the likelihood of my experience being the polar opposite of your own.
http://www.ohtm.org/gallery/album624/80_dodge_aspen_1
Compared with my grandmother, however, my parents were rank amateurs. My grandmother has a Ph.D. in car abuse. She had an ’80 Aspen sedan in pine green with a pine green vinyl interior, also with the Super Six and Torqueflite automatic. Did Chrysler ever build a better combination?
Grandma, who is now 91 years old, bought her ’80 Aspen new, in mid-year. Her house was seven miles from the nearest paved road. She had an eight-mile drive to work, and over seven of those miles were on gravel roads; suffice to say that she was on gravel pretty much non-stop. These gravel roads were of the large creek-gravel variety, were maintained by a very poor county, and were graded perhaps once every two years. They would work suspensions and gobble poor quality tires. Oh, and did I mention she drove 45 mph regardless of the road surface, and employed the “point-and-shoot” driving methodology?
She drove that Aspen until 1990, when she traded it off after having driven it 55,000 extremely tortured miles. In addition to her 45 mph habit, she would overfill the trunk with firewood from a nearby sawmill (then drive back at 45 mph, on gravel), and let her 10-year-old only (and rambunctious) grandson drive it, often while overloaded with firewood. One can only imagine how she would have overloaded a wagon.
And my point? I washed and waxed her Aspen–for the first time in its life–when she traded it off in 1990, and it looked just fine. It had endured more physical abuse than most cars ever will, and yet it was ready for more. Even the oft-maligned transverse torsion bar front suspension wasn’t doing too badly. The ability to absorb abuse is the best testament to a car’s worthiness, and she had had zero issues with this one. Would you dare think of using your Camry or Accord in a similar fashion?
In 1989 I made a trip to Washington, D.C., where I had one of my most memorable taxi rides. As you might have guessed, the cab was a ’78 Aspen wagon similar to our featured car. During my 15-minute ride, I discovered that the cabbie could successfully moonlight as a stunt driver. His Aspen was totally unfazed by any of his U-turns, full-throttle left turns and 80 mph blasts through tunnels.
In 1978, the Aspen was considered a compact. At a curb weight of 3,448 pounds (1,570 kilograms), this was the sole American-made compact offered in three body styles, although wagon sales slid from 125,305 in 1977 to 61,917 in 1978, and dwindled to 38,183 in 1979.
Ford offered the Ford Granada and Mercury Monarch twins only as sedans and coupes.
Likewise, Chevrolet didn’t have a Nova wagon, only Nova sedans and coupes.
In typical fashion, Chrysler fully thought out the Aspen/Volare development process, as evidenced by model-specific wheelbases of 108.7″ for coupes, and 112.7″ for sedans and wagons. The practice of using multiple wheelbases started with the Dart, with its 108″ coupe and 111″ sedan wheelbases.
GM euthanized the Nova in 1980, and the Granada would get a new body and chassis for 1981. Nineteen-eighty would also be the final year for the Aspen, but not for its legacy.
Witness the Dodge Diplomat and Plymouth Gran Fury;
the Chrysler Fifth Avenue, an M-body strongly based on the Aspen’s J-platform; even its front-door shape is eerily similar to the Aspen’s.
Did you know that the Diplomat/LeBaron also came in wagon form for a short while? Chrysler deserves credit for recognizing a good platform and getting full use from it, offering these M-bodies through 1989.
Are today’s examples of the Aspen/Volare twins representative of them all? Hardly. However, I do not subscribe to any theory about Chrysler’s having a lemon factory that cranked out Aspens.
www.imcdb.org
The Aspen was even good enough to get Mr. Roark around his fantasy-fulfilling island, so it couldn’t have been an unrelenting pig of a machine.
www.autonavigator.ru
Besides, a genuine swine-mobile would never have been used as the basis of the Monteverdi Sierra.
I found this out-of-gas Dodge Aspen in the parking lot of a nearby grocery store resting next to a Buick Century, a certified cockroach of the road. Since then, I’ve seen it on the road twice, both times driven by a little old man who could barely see over the steering wheel. It makes me wonder how many owners it has had.
It also made me curious as to how much more punishment this emissary of ’70s-era wagon Nirvana was ready to take.
Related reading:
1976 Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volare: Chrysler’s Deadly Sin #1
1976 Volare was a good winter beater back in ‘80-81. Handled well in freezing rain and the cold air temperature helped cool the red hot exhaust manifold. Must have needed something in the exhaust unplugged/replaced. Didn’t keep it long enough to find out.
1970s cut the MPG of the Slant 6 engine in half… better order gobs of thick protective undercoat if driving on gravel roads or the underside of the vehicle will be gone in only 5 years… GM had small H-body station wagons, Vega, Astre, Sunbird, etc… which got much better MPG than emissions slug slant 6s in bigger wagons… Ford had Pinto/Bobcat wagons…
My wife’s second car after we sold her ’74 duster was an ’80 Volare Duster that her dad handed down to us. She used it everyday for work and we took in on numerous road trips over about seven years. That thing was a total workhorse. It left us stranded only one time when the alternator quit. Another time an adjuster screw decided to unscrew itself from a rocker arm but she made it home just fine on five cylinders. The torqueflite finally gave out at 175k. By then the front end was worn out the bucket seats were worn down to the foam, the carpet was worn down to the floors and the dash pad was cracked into a million pieces but everything outside of the rear window defroster and the transmission, of course, still worked just fine and it had only one small rust hole which was located oddly inside the deck lid next to a hinge. I think the engine could have gone another 100k.
My Aspen memories was from the years I worked for the Cambria County Mental Health/Mental Retardation/Drug & Alcohol Program (Pennsylvania), of which a federally funded Breathalyzer program was a subunit. I was the technician who adjusted the machines (actually, I was the Program’s HR Department, but it was amazing what other duties I accumulated) which the authorization and credit for the job was taken by a son of the President of the County Commissioners.
We had an 80 or so Aspen wagon, base model, in grey with a red vinyl interior, which I use for monthly run from Ebensburg to Pittsburgh to drop off machines with problems beyond my technical adjustment abilities for repair and pick up the previous trips’ repairs. And then slip off to whatever local campus for an hour or so of afternoon enjoyment with whatever coed I was seeing at the time. The county never caught on.
I have very fond memories of that wagon. Couldn’t really say anything great about it, but definitely had no complaints, either.
My family had a green volare with a white top, I was always begging to take it. Why? It was the only car in the family with FM.
Regarding rust, each of the big 3 filled my body shop with rusty trucks that weren’t that old in the 2010s. I eventually started turning them away, nobody wants to pay what it takes to fix those things.
The Aspen/Volaré was sorted out by the 1977 model year. Like the 1957 Chrysler products, it was rushed into production and wasn’t quite ready in 1976.
I bought a 1976 Dodge Aspen V8 off a dealer lot in 1977. Other than the usual 1970s hard starting and driveability issues during warmup for which I mostly blame the EPA, it ran well. It was almost as quick as my 1972 Plymouth Valiant, which was lighter in weight, and once I had my touch on the Aspen’s carburetor, it ran just fine. Those fixed were also applied to the Volarés of two of my cousins with similar good results.
The chassis got some tweaking. I checked the front suspension height at every oil change as specified, and adjusted if needed. Probably over 99% of owners never did, and I can guarantee that no quickie oil change place ever did. But then, they seem to often have problems with tightening drain plugs. A nonstock upgrade was a rear antiroll bar from a retired 1977 Aspen police car, which transformed the handling along with some really good tires.
I finally sold the Aspen in 1998 at 140,000 miles when I drove it to a car show…it was a daily driver, not a show car, but still looked nearly new in white factory paint…and was offered some really silly cash for it. I saw it later at another car show.
The M-body was such a minor update on the F-body that its front door stampings really were the same.
It was a very good car.
We used “test” pipes for cat converter checks here; the tests were typically of very long duration…
The redesigned torsion bar front suspension seem like an unnecessary engineering exercise, but ultimately I think its advantage was as an independent sub-assembly. At least that’s what my teenaged mind thought when I first saw one.
I’m not sure why Chrysler didn’t choose to perform a refresh on the A body instead of the expense of a new platform.
Mine was a 76 wagon with 318. Drove it 154,000 before selling, never had any problems except rust, which showed up on front fenders and bottom of rear panels behind the wheels. I had it treated by Ziebart while new, but they mostly took the money and did nothing. There was absolutely no coating at all applied to rear fenders, as I learned when I repaired the rust. The first year models were very sloppily assembled. If I had waited a couple of years and bought a 78 or 79 I’d probably not have had the rust problem. As far as I’ve heard, later models were pretty good. The Aspen & Volare reputation was ruined by Chrysler ŕushing them into production, much like the 57 cars did for later years, as someone noted.
I saw your posting and went, “I didn’t remember posting here before?” Another Duane I do have a 77 Dodge Aspen wagon, hope to get running again. Clean body from Colorado
“Volare, whoa-oh!
Volare, whoa-oh-oh-oh!
Come drive Volare today
Drive small, ze comfortable way“
Does anyone know if the Aspen/Volare came with “fine Corinthian leather” seats”
I remember a heavy duty vinyl, about the closest I’ve ever seen to Mercedes-Benz MB-tex.
That leather really did come from the town of Corinth, Italy…
There is no Corinth, Italy. The leather came from NJ. “Corinthian leather” was a total fabrication by the ad agency to make it sound more exclusive. You’ve been hoodwinked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinthian_leather
The Volare and Aspen wagons offered good value, by 1978. They were better built, and competed well, on price. Being more affordable new, than the Fairmont/Zephyr wagons. Or the Malibu/LeMans wagons. My dad bought a new Aspen wagon in June 1978. And it served him reliably, with the Super Six and TorqueFlight, until 1991.
I actually had a 1973 Aspen wagon for a while as a winter beater. It was a good, roomy car. I actually camped in it as the load floor was more than seven feet long.
It had the Super Six which made it peppy around town. I was used to driving Rabbit Diesels when I got it, so the 18 MPG (Imperial) it got seems excessive to me.
Like an idiot, I sold it to my cousin for what I paid for it.
Talking about the sound of Chrysler starters, they had a unique sound. Always thought Toyota’s sounded like they used the same starter. On newer cars can’t say that they have a particular sound.
In July ’77 my great grandmother traded in her ’67 Plymouth Fury I sedan for a ’77 Volare Premier 4 door sedan. Dark blue metallic with a white padded vinyl top and Wedgewood blue naugahyde interior. 318 2 barrel, the hated Carter bbd. If I could have gotten a Carter AFB 4 barrel on it, it would have been a great car. Still pretty quick though. I got it when she got a new car, and I did some needed maintenance to it. We drove it for a while longer, then parked it to do more work to it. THEN it started rusting….. wasn’t much left of it by the time it was dragged out of the side yard. I’ve known people who had the wagons with the Leaning Tower of Power, and they unanimously agreed the engine was the best part of the car. But they liked the rest of it; did its job of hauling the family around, economically, for many years.
My dad bought one just like this beige. I was 8 and remember vividly walking back to the 1970 Coronet RT he traded it in on and giving its front fender a hug. That Aspen (which after many years we called “Hasben” was one tough car. Yeah, Dad brought it in for new fenders but that was no biggy. That beast carried on carrying our family for 10 years. Great in the snow. Even after he sold it to buy a Celebrity Eurosport wagon, we saw it kicking around town for many many years after that…..looking a bit more worn as each year passed by. No options, butterscotch vinyl interior. Reliable as an anvil.
I’m enjoying all of the pro-Aspen comments on this great post. My family of origin has owned a ’77 Plymouth Volaré coupe and while it wasn’t a perfect car, it did what it was supposed to do: haul a family of five around, get good gas mileage, and be dependable the vast majority of the time. It did have some recalls, though, and the bottoms of the body did rust in Michigan weather.
Looks Similar to My Wagon, except for the broken Grille and Missouri Tags and Plastic wheel covers.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/my-1979-dodge-aspen-se-station-wagon-part-6-a-voyage-to-michigan-for-bespoke-slant-6-bits/
I always liked these, happy to read these get some respect.
As a teen in 70s Australia, I was hoping these would replace our outdated Valiant range, which was considered briefly, alas it was not to be.
Make mine a coupe with no vinyl roof and no louvres on the rear side windows with a V8 and Torqueflite.
And I believe the Chrysler reduction gear starter should be declared an object of historical significance.
I grew up in a 77 Aspen wagon that my parents purchased new. It wasn’t perfect but I don’t recall any fatal flaws. It served our family well for 8 or 10 years. It got pretty rusty and it finally succumbed to the tin worm. Seems like the torsion bar finally twisted out of the frame. The slant six was durable and always started, even in the northern NY winters.
Parents bought a 1977 Aspen wagon brand new. 225 Super Six with the automatic. It was a family car, secondary car, my car to college. 34 years and 360K+ miles on it when it was finally retired.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1977-dodge-aspen-wagon-the-party-wagon-for-the-whole-family/
My 76 volare, 2 door, was my first car. Received well used from my mom who traded her lime green 78 volare with 318 manual 4 speed ( if I had that car!!!!) She hated the manual gear box. That car took abuse after abuse…….never let me down. I also bought years later, for my wife a 78 wagon….you would not believe what you can fit in that? 97 cases of beer! A Honda 150 trike, fold the handle bar down, in it goes…a freezer on the roof rack! 225 runs forever