I spotted an (insert obscure car name here) classic car today!

andre1969 · July 2013

One thing that bugs me is how often, a bigger car will actually have less useable room in it than a smaller one! For example, Consumer Reports noted that a 1968 Dart sedan, on a 111" wheelbase, had more legroom, both front and rear, than a 1968 Impala, on a 119".

I can sort of vouch for that, as I had a '68 and '69 Dart, although they were hardtops. And I had a '69 Bonneville and have a '67 Catalina, both similar to a '68 Impala, although the Bonn was a 4-door hardtop and the Catalina is a convertible. Anyway, the Darts had a good deal more legroom up front than the Catalina does, or the Bonneville did. However, the Catalina's back seat is a bit roomier, and the Bonneville was better still.

But, those measurements don't tell the whole story. An Impala would have thicker, more comfortable seats than the Dart. And the longer wheelbase would give a much better ride. The Impala would also have a larger trunk and better shoulder room, and if properly equipped, better at trailering.

And sometimes, back in the old days, they'd make cars in different lengths, but use the same passenger compartment, so you wouldn't get any increase in interior room. For instance, a '57 Plymouth rides a 118" wb, a Dodge/Desoto Firesweep 122", and the big DeSotos and Chryslers are on a 126". However, they all use the same basic passenger compartment. The Dodge/Firesweep moved the rear axle 4" back compared to the Plymouth. The bigger DeSotos and Chryslers also moved the rear axle 4" back, but also moved the front axle ahead 4". No extra passenger room, but the longer wheelbase would give a smoother ride on the larger cars.

Personally, I prefer a longer, sleeker car, up to a point, at least. As long as the hood, passenger compartment, and rear deck all balance out. I think a '57 Plymouth 4-door sedan looks a bit awkward, with that big passenger compartment bolted to the small wheelbase. I think the hardtops and convertibles, which used a shorter passenger cabin, look pretty good though.

But by, say, 1969, I think some of those fuselage Chryslers and Imperials just looked too awkward, in coupe form at least, because the passenger cabin was fairly short, but the hood and trunk were just way too long. By that time I started preferring the 4-door models.

uplanderguy · July 2013

My buddy wondered if NHTSA would be bidding on the '59 Chevys.

fintail · July 2013

The fuselage coupes are the best/worst - trunk and hood almost look to be the same length, and by that, I mean the same as a football field.

fintail · July 2013

Good one...maybe they are thinking of that. Crash a 64 Impala and a 14 Impala, I can guess who'd win.

andre1969 · July 2013

Ugh, that one, I think would be even worse than the '09 Malibu versus '59 Bel Air (or was it an Impala?).

A '64 Chevy, essentially, is the same as a '59 Chevy, just minus the wraparound windshield and some of the styling excesses. However, it's the same wasp-waisted X-frame. One potential advantage though, may be the lack of a wraparound windshield. Those dog-leg A-pillars are essentially "pre-bent", so I'm fairly confident they're going to give more quickly than an A-pillar that slopes forward.

And a 2014 Impala is going to be heavier than the Malibu was. I'm sure it'll hold up even better than the Malibu did, while at the same time exerting more force on the '64.

I'll tell ya what would be an interesting mash-up...something like a '64 Newport/New Yorker or Dodge 880, against a modern Charger or 300. Again, cars of similar weight, but in this case, the Mopars were unitized, and it was a basic design philosophy that carried on up through the 1981 R-body. And, with the exception of the transverse torsion bars, even an '89 Gran Fury/Diplomat/5th Ave aren't that radically different. I'd be curious to see how those early unitized designs would hold up, compared to the body-on-frame of the time.

But, at the same time, I'd hate to see another nice old car sacrificed for something like this. We all know that new cars are a LOT safer, so there's really no need to sacrifice another old one, just to beat a dead horse.

fintail · July 2013

Yeah, at some angles especially, a 14 would cut through the 64. It wouldn't be pretty.

The 65 Chryslers also seem pretty big and sturdy, and many seem to have survived - I bet they'd fare better against a new 300 than the 64/14 Chevy matchup.

If an old car is common and not reclaimable anyway, I don't have a problem with testing it, especially if any hard to find (trim) pieces are removed. A few years ago, MB crash tested a late 50s Ponton , just to see if it all still held up. It did. I didn't really mourn, the car was not really nice and never going to be restored. To crash a really pristine car would be more of a shame.

ab348 · July 2013

The '69 Fuselage cars were not the best. The designers tried to get a "lead sled" look for the coupes but the proportions and details were compromised. The flat front ends were not at all attractive.

However the big Dodges for '70 and '71 were much improved design-wise, with a shorter trunk and a longer hood. Those changes plus improvments front and rear with the use of loop bumpers and they are really quite handsome. Plymouth also adopted similar style bumpers and were better but not as nice as the Dodges. The big Chryslers really didn't change much.

For '72 and '73 they did a body refresh that really did get the lead sled idea across better.

lemko · July 2013

...red 1966 Buick Wildcat convertible with a white top at Rhawn and Verree in NE Philly.

andre1969 · July 2013

When I was a kid I think I hated pretty much all of the fuselage era cars, except maybe the Imperials. I don't recall the Imperials as being all that common of a sight, though. As I've aged, my attitude on them has softened.

I think my favorite of them all, for some reason, is the '69 Dodge Polara/Monaco. It just seems less fat than the others, sleeker, and more muscular, somehow. I also liked the later Monacos, with the hidden headlights.

One problem, I think with the fuselage cars is that the styling seemed a bit nondescript. Overstyling a car can be a bad thing, as the late 50's taught us, but I think under-styling can be, too. The styling just doesn't seem that radically different among them, they were a bit featureless, and they sort of just blended in to the automotive landscape. In contrast, I think the GM products of the '69-73 era, while not always the most tasteful of designs, at least tended to stand out more, have more variety, and were more memorable. IMO, at least.

ab348 · July 2013

By contrast, I liked the fuselage cars from the first time I saw them. I am biased a bit because we bought one new when I was a kid, a '71 Monaco, but dad traded in a '69 Impala for that, and we all hated the Impala, which was soft and floaty and had a blah interior. I liked the clean design of the Fuseys. Later he bought a '74 Impala and we didn't like that one much either. Go figure.

andre1969 · July 2013

I could actually be biased myself, because as a kid my grandparents had a '72 Impala 4-door hardtop, that I really liked. But, I was a young enough kid that I wouldn't have appreciated things like the ride, comfort, handling, and so on.

And Chrysler products back in the day usually tended to seem roomier inside than their Ford or GM counterparts...at least to me. That's something I'd appreciate more as an adult. So, while the little kid in my loved that '72 Impala, if I was a car buyer, or even a teen who got some time behind the wheel, I might have a different opinion.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the '69, or '74 Impala, either. Don't actually hate them, but there are just other years I like better. It seems like with GM cars of that era, there are some that I find myself really attracted to, some that are only so-so, and some that are downright vulgar. But, at least there was enough variety to give me that range of emotion. With the '69-73 Mopars, while I have my most and least favorites, I just don't find the same range.

jljac · July 2013

By contrast, I liked the fuselage cars from the first time I saw them.

I remember the first time I saw a 1968 Dodge Charger. I was waiting for the bus at at high school (sophmore year) when a girl named Collette got picked up by her dad in a red one. Awesome. My favorite Mopar. The original design was the best. Rent the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt where he is chased by a black Charger driven by Bill Hickman, the same driver who was James Dean's racing coach the day Dean crashed and died.

Here is somewhat related trivia. When James Dean lived in New York City with his roommate Martin Landau, James Dean's motorcycle mechanic was Steve McQueen. Martin Landau reports this in his on-line biography.
You could look it up.

ab348 · July 2013

Our '71 looked a lot like this one, minus the wheels obviously. The color on this is a lighter shade than ours was but otherwise it is very similar. I love the look.

andys120 · July 2013

All sorts of interesting cars show up in my town (Loudon NH) when the Vintage Racing Assn has a race weekend. Friday I saw a small parade of MGs heading away from the track, two MGAs and a half dozen MGBs, all roadsters in street trim and nice shape. Unfortunately for them it was pouring rain.

There's a particular misery to driving an old Brit roadster in the rain, the tops invariably leak, the wipers offer only marginal visibility and the ignition system can fail at any time. You'd think that it hardly ever rained in the British isles. :confuse:

I also saw what looked and sounded like an original 1964 Pontiac GTO but as it was going away from me I spotted small vertical taillights on the rear fenders that gave away it as a Tempest or LeMans that had been converted to a "Goat" replica.

Nothing wrong with that IMO, the GTO was just an up-spec LeMans but if you're gonna make a replica you might as well finish the job.

andre1969 · July 2013

I still think the '69 is the best of the breed, but that '71 is pretty sharp looking. Sleek, muscular, and clean. In many ways, it's almost like a big, 4-door musclecar. A stark contrast to a '71 Impala or Galaxie, which were going for a more upscale, pretentious, poor-man's luxury look.

I always equated a Dodge as a step up, and more equivalent to a Pontiac or Mercury, but in retrospect, it looks like Dodges by that time were getting pretty low-priced Here's some MSRP pricing for 1971 4-door hardtops:

Polara: $3497
Galaxie 500: $3604
Fury iii : $3612
Impala: $3813

Catalina: $3939
Monterrey: $3968
Monaco: $4362

So, it looks like the Polara was actually the cheapest full-sized 4-door hardtop around at the time! I wonder why they weren't more popular? That actually sounds like a screaming deal to me. Unless, perhaps, it was simply the styling. Looking at it today, I appreciate the clean style, but at the time, maybe people wanted that upscale pretentiousness?

And in all fairness, I guess a Monaco would be more equivalent to a Bonneville or Marquis than a Catalina or Monterrey, so that would explain its relative priceyness?

ab348 · July 2013

Dodge was always tinkering with their model lineup and in '71 they had 5 levels: Polara, Polara Custom, Polara Brougham, Monaco, and Monaco Brougham. They probably covered most of the full size mainstream and mid-priced range with that lineup. A Polara Custom was roughly equivalent to an Impala or Galaxie or Fury III.

berri · July 2013

That pix reminded me how "green" was a fairly popular color in the early 70's and it came in many shades. I agree with whoever previously noted that the fuselage 2 dr ht looked a bit awkward, but otherwise I thought they were pretty contemporary for their time. They also tended to have nice interiors.

berri · July 2013

I always liked the mid 60's GTO chrome pillared coupes even more than the hardtop ones. The 65 Lemans always struck me as a nice car as well. Personally, I was always a bit more partial to the Triumphs over the MG's though.

fintail · July 2013

My grandpa had a green on green fuselage Chrysler.

I just remembered, here's one of the few shots I can find of it:

Thick doors! I think it was a 71 - he bought this before I was born. I've been looking for more pics with it but can't find any yet.

fintail · July 2013

Out on the road for a couple hundred miles over the past day. Must have been a rod show, I saw many - 70s and 80s style stuff especially (purple ~39 Dodge coupe, 57 Chevy with a jacked up rear end and Cragar style wheels, lowrider 65 Impala, etc). Also a nice VW Thing on the highway, a cigar 'Bird, a 90s Roadmaster wagon pulling a trailer made of the rear of another wagon, a Prowler with a Prowler trailer, Porsche 356.

hpmctorque · July 2013

Who could anyone like any '74 domestic car? Somehow the drivability issues, horrendous gas mileage and low power resulting from those primitive mechanical emission controls not only conspired to make for a miserable driving experience, but even influenced my view of the styling. That year was the nadir for the ownership experience, in my opinion, even though '73, '75 and '76 generally weren't much better than '74.

fintail · July 2013

When I was a little kid, my mother had a T-Bird of that era. She loved it - thought it was comfortable, luxurious, even good looking (!). My dad liked it too, and many of my first car memories contain that beast, especially when it comes to road trips. The flip side is that I know it was off the road by around 1985 - not the most durable thing.

hpmctorque · July 2013

I agree that the '68 Charger was the nicest of that generation. It's a beautiful, timeless design, in my opinion. Don't know why it didn't sell in larger numbers.

ab348 · July 2013

The styling of the Charger was great, but it was fairly pricey for the times and was a big car compared to a lot of the competition. All of the Chrysler intermediates in the '68-'70 era seemed big and bulky compared to the Ford and GM offerings.

andys120 · July 2013

Personally, I was always a bit more partial to the Triumphs over the MG's though.

So was I until I owned a '66 TR-4A, pretty car and fun to drive (in good weather) but shoddily made.

Looking back I think the MGB-GT was the one to get- weather proof, good look">ing and actually practical with the big hatchback.

lemko · July 2013

I'd say the 1968-72 GM intermediates were the most attractive of the bunch.

The 1968-70 Mopar intermediates had a tough, businesslike appearance.

The 1968-69 Fairlanes and Montegos look kind of anonymous. The 1970-71s looked like they were trying to ape GM.

berri · July 2013

I think Dodge was kind of a confused brand to consumers back then. I don't ever recall actually seeing many Monaco's. Pontiac could pull off that wide price range because they had a well defined sporty image and offered their own 389 engine.

While I thought that by and large the fuselage look came off well (except for some of the coupes), I also think it was the precursor to Roger Smith a decade later. Often, the cars seemed to look too much alike and shared the same drive trains. Yeah, Chrysler's may have come with a 383, but you could option that same engine on just about any Plymouth. I think in the late 60's the Plymouth and Dodge intermediates kind of had the same issue. Mopar changed that on the coupes with the 71 restyle of the Satellite Sebring and Charger.

I don't remember if it was in the late 60's or early 70's, but I recall some school of thought in the media that Chrysler should essentially either make Dodge a strictly truck brand, or eliminate Plymouth.

berri · July 2013

GM did do a nice job on those intermediates. I was a fan of the 71/72 Plymouth Sebring coupe and owned one. I didn't care for the squaring off of the 73. However, the market seemed to say the opposite! You don't see many 71/72 Sebrings at the old car shows, just an occasional Road Runner or GTX. I do know that my 71 had pretty lousy build quality, so that might explain it all. The only Ford intermediate I cared for during that era was the fastback 72 Torino and that style didn't last long (hmmm, what am I saying here about my styling preferences!). Did you ever notice that looking at the side profile of a say 71 GM intermediate coupe, that it resembles a Boeing 707/727, while the Sebring coupe is a bit like a DC-8? I don't think it was just Harley Earl whose designs were sometimes influenced by aircraft.

berri · July 2013

One of my friend's dad bought a fuselage Newport with a 413 wedge. He wasn't a muscle car nut or anything, but he liked Chrysler's and followed the automotive industry. Back then, Chrysler was notorious for getting it's inventory out of whack. He said he got a great deal on it, and it was a seemingly unusual combination, because Chrysler had jumped the gun on a large police car contract it thought it was going to get and started building 413's ahead of it. Now Fury's with that engine weren't likely going to fly off the lot, but they could pull it off by putting the excess engines in a Chrysler. It was a great car - smooth, roomy, handled well and could blow the socks off a lot of Pony vars on the road since most of them had small block V8's.

berri · July 2013

Man, I think you're right on the mark about those mid 70's cars. A few were decent, but by and large - bad news!

berri · July 2013

When I was a kid, you actually seemed to see more TR-3's than MG's on the road in the Chicago area. They were actually kind of popular there for awhile.

fintail · July 2013

I am pretty sure my grandpa's car was just a 383. It replaced a 65 with a 383 that he loved - and instantly regretted selling, as the newer car was trouble-prone. He bought the new car on impulse, my grandmother still laughs at some of the issues it had (lots of stalling and hard to start).

For obscure cars, I stopped to visit the fintail, and parked at the garage was a blue on blue Ferrari 328 GTS - has to be a rare combo.

Mr_Shiftright · July 2013

The TRs were faster!

ab348 · July 2013

Something's not right about that story, Berri. The 413 went out of production in 1965, while the fuselage cars didn't come along until 1969.

andre1969 · July 2013

Maybe he meant the 440? Most of those fuselage Newports used a 383-2bbl, but at some point the 400 replaced the 383.

I briefly owned a 1967 Newport hardtop with a 383-2bbl. For whatever reason, they screwed with the tuning that year, and it only had something like 270 hp. I think it had 290 the year before, and for '68 it jumped back up, but for whatever reason, the '67 was a bit weak.

While not very fast, it was adequate, at least.

berri · July 2013

Yeah, Andre is right. It was a police interceptor 440. That sucker took up a lot of real estate under the Newport's hood. Sorry about my mess up there ab, and thanks Andre! The rest of that story is as his father told us and if you drove by any Mopar plants in the late 60's and 70's you'd often see car production parked all over the place including vacant fields. Another Chrysler story; when I was in business school, one of the professors consulted with them on management efficiencies and NC equipment. They were having a problem where sometimes the NC messed up and a car came off the line with mixed Plymouth and Dodge pieces. Evidently, sometimes it was actually cheaper (or at least easier) to crush it for scrap than mess with all the union rules reworking it. One of the students in that class with me had worked summers in that plant and verified what the professor said. Kind of astounding really.

ab348 · July 2013

I don't know about the crush-vs-repair story, though it wouldn't surprise me. I know that such "Frankenstein" cars were sometimes donated to vocational schools to let auto mechanics students work on them. But the sales bank story is true. It was devised by Chrysler's Lynn Townsend, an accountant who ran the company through the 1960s into the mid '70s. Under accounting rules, they made the cars, somehow recognized them as sold to artificially fluff up revenues on the books, and then stored them all over Greater Detroit. Naturally, the longer they sat, the more they deteriorated, not a wise move. Allpar has the following story:

"Possibly the biggest mistake Mr. Townsend made in his career at Chrysler was the âsales bank.â It was created by him, and carried on by his protÃ©gÃ© and successor, John J. Ricardo. Both men were accountants and had come to the auto industry convinced that business methods were more important to success in the auto industry than product knowledge.

The general practice in the auto industry had been to produce cars based on dealer orders. That meant that production would follow demand. However, at Chrysler, âautomobiles poured out of the Highland Park and Hamtramck plants like homeless waifs,â according to Brock Yates in his book The Decline and Fall of the Auto Industry.

During the spring and summer of each model year, vehicles would be overproduced, and then stored for later sales. All over Detroit, at giant parking lots that included the Michigan State Fairgrounds on Woodward Avenue, those cars were stored. By the time later summer arrived, the sales and accounting staffs would be trying to unload surplus automobiles in any way possible. That included fire sales to leasing agencies and rental car fleets, registration transfers to Corporate Zone offices, sales contests and giveaways. But the primary method was to lean on dealers.

Zone managers would call dealers and demand that they take more cars. They exercised their leverage, according to an interview that Yates had with an anonymous Chrysler-Plymouth dealer, based on fear, coercion, and pressure. Without the zone managers being in the car dealerâs corner, specially ordered cars might get âlost,â warranty claims wouldnât get processed, parts inventories might slip and truckloads of unwanted and hard-to-sell color combinations and body styles might show up at the store.

The dealers didnât want the sales bank cars since many were poor quality or made with poor options choices. But they took them and sold them, as they could."

explorerx4 · July 2013

this morning on the way to work I got passed by a black aero Fox body Mustang LX 5.0 and black GN. The GN had some nice paint on it.

lemko · July 2013

Sad that Lynn Townsend will be remembered for that blunder. His biography reads like a Horatio Alger novel:

Lynn Townsend

Can't find much information about his successor John J. Riccardo.

berri · July 2013

On the surface this produce all out and sell later concept seems really dumb. I don't really know, but I wonder if Chrysler did this to try and gain manufacturing efficiencies to better compete on cost and price with GM and Ford? They were a considerably smaller company in comparison during the time frame and it was obvious by then what volume disadvantage did to many of the Independents?

toomanyfumes · July 2013

Interesting article, good history.

wevk · August 2013

Im behind the wheel of one of the rarest and most desired Porsches ever made, the 550 Spyder. The sensuous curves of the tiny two-seat convertible are unmistakable as the model driven by James Dean when he met his death on a California highway in 1955.
Only this Spyder is a fake. Or more precisely, a facsimile. Porsche itself has nothing to do with the car. Its maker, Prospect, Connecticut-based Spyder Creations, says that it is officially a kit car, albeit one that costs between $320,000 and $470,000.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-01/repro-320-000-porsche-550-spyder-weaves- -through-curves.html

jljac · August 2013

I took this image at the James Dean crash site and spot on the 50th anniversary of his accident, Friday Sept 20, 2005. The image of my 1955 Studebaker Commander taken that day is what led me to this site. link title

texases · August 2013

Neat car, but I'd be putting that $320k-$470k into something else, car-wise.

explorerx4 · August 2013

PT Barnum has a pretty well known saying. He was born in Connecticut. Maybe there is some connection.
Today, I saw a black MX-3 and a sliver Mark 8.

lemko · August 2013

What was the car James Dean's Porsche collided with? I think it was a 1946 Ford.

fintail · August 2013

A 46-48 Ford convertible just drove by, black, lowered, wide whites, sounded mean.

The James Dean crash was with a 50 Ford.

Mr_Shiftright · August 2013

A Porsche 912 engine? Wheezy old thing. For $470K, you'd expect some serious horsepower.

fintail · August 2013

I could get a couple of real Speedsters for the upper end of that - and they'll hold their value and maybe even appreciate.

jljac · August 2013

Here are a few more images from Cholame, CA on September 30, 2005. The Porsche was a stealth car that blended in with the pavement and was hard to see at dusk. There are now warning signs to turn your lights on before the James Dean Memorial Intersection. I post three images but only two show up.

I spotted an (insert obscure car name here) classic car today!

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