Ponderous styling of the so-called “fuselage” Plymouths has been pointed to as the biggest reason why sales were smaller than the well-regarded platform it replaced (e.g., auto editors of Consumer Guide, 2022). Output for the fuselage body, which was produced from 1969-73, was indeed lower by an average of 15 percent per year than the boxy 1965-68 models.
Plymouth marketing for 1969 was correct to argue that the Fury was more substantially changed than its full-sized, low-price competition. But was it for the better? Click on image to enlarge (Old Car Advertisements).
Even so, first-year fuselage production hit a high for the 1960s — almost 367,000 units. That was greater than Plymouth’s banner years of 1965 and 1968. I would argue that this lends credence to the theory that — at least initially — car shoppers were less put off by the styling than Chrysler’s growing reputation for quality issues.
As a case in point, Consumer Reports (1970) rated the 1969 Fury V8’s frequency-of-repair as “much worse than average.” Problem areas included body integrity, brakes and mechanical aspects of engines.
Production of the 1969 Plymouth’s highest-priced four-door sedan, the Fury III, almost reached 73,000. This was a level not seen since 1957, but output would drift downward to under 52,000 units by 1973 (Old Car Brochures).
In addition, the Fury’s 1972-73 reskinning has been panned for its generic styling (Niedermeyer, 2013). While the criticism has merit, the more mainstream look did help stabilize output at roughly 260,000 units per year.
Plymouth’s share of the overall full-sized, low-priced field peaked in 1969 at 14.5 percent and hovered around 13 percent through 1973. This was somewhat lower than Chrysler Corporation’s total domestic market share, which averaged 15.2 percent. But at least 1970-73 sales were steady. You can’t say that about the fuselage’s replacement, which sank like a stone after the first oil embargo.
The 1969 Plymouth Fury’s unusually high beltline and vast expanses of plain surfaces gave the car a ponderous and rather cheap appearance. Also note how inset the wheels are from the body sides of this Fury III convertible.
Plymouth did best with lower-priced models
Plymouth managed to maintain altitude in the early-70s primarily from its lower-priced models. The Fury I, II and III together generated almost 77 percent of total big-car output in 1969. By 1973 that dropped to under 67 percent due to increasing sales of the top-end Gran series. However, Chevrolet’s equivalent series (the Bel Air and Impala) generated under 61 percent of total full-sized output in 1973. Meanwhile, Ford’s Custom 500 and Galaxie 500 represented a mere 26 percent of big-car production.
Plymouth did do a wee bit better in the upper-reaches of the low-priced field with the introduction of the Gran series in 1972. Output not only outpaced the Sport Fury line it replaced, but production — which almost topped 42,000 — was more than twice as high as the VIP in its peak year of 1967.
That’s not to say Plymouth kept pace with the broughamization of low-priced big cars. Between 1968 and 1973 that market niche soared from roughly 272,000 to 661,000 (not including wagons). However, Plymouth’s share drifted down from 6.4 to 5 percent.
Plymouth’s best year for its luxury models was 1972, which coincided with styling that arguably hit a good balance between maintaining the fuselage’s unique look and going brougham.
The 1972 full-sized Plymouths were the last to offer distinctive front-end styling. The Gran series hit record sales for a top-end Plymouth. Was this a coincidence? Click on image to see full ad (Old Car Advertisements).
For 1973 Plymouth switched to a generic front-end design. Ditching the “donut” bumper was arguably necessary because of federal bumper rules. Even so, Plymouth’s new fascia looked like a dime-store Ford.
Might Plymouth’s me-too styling have contributed to Gran series output dropping 21 percent even though the market for Big Three luxury models rose 15 percent in 1973?
The 1973 Plymouth’s new fascia looked plain and generic compared to top-of-line models from Ford and Chevrolet. Was a design goal for Plymouth to avoid competing with Dodge, its higher-priced corporate sibling (Old Car Brochures)?
New 1974 Plymouth body was the anti-fuselage
In a history of Chrysler first published in 1976, Richard Langworth noted that after the early-60s the automaker’s cars “began to follow rather than lead. Today the Corporation publicly admits that this is the policy. Some officers actually seem to be proud of it” (1993, p. 153).
Copying the competition ended up working quite well with the 1975 Chrysler Cordoba, a mid-sized personal coupe that looked like an understated version of the Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Chrysler designers adopted a similar strategy with the 1974 Fury, which had the quality of a toned-down Chevrolet Caprice.
As a case in point, the roofline for the Fury’s four-door hardtop was similar to a 1971-74 Chevrolet’s, with its wrap-around A-pillar and rounded rear window. In addition, an upper-body side crease and a tapered deck had vaguely similar lines. However, styling details were button neat rather than exaggerated.
The 1974 Plymouth Fury (top) had an admirably clean design but could be confused with a Chevrolet (Old Car Brochures).
The 1974-77 Fury was the opposite of the fuselage in being utterly devoid of stylistic controversy. Even so, it was one of the biggest failures of the 1970s.
Despite being the only low-priced big car with a new body in 1974, Fury output fell 72 percent between 1973 and 1975. Chevrolet and Ford also saw major declines due to the first oil embargo, but they were less dramatic (63 and 59 percent, respectively).
In addition, Chevrolet and Ford sales ticked upward in 1976-77 whereas Plymouth’s continued to sink. In 1977 the Fury generated less than 48,000 units, which represented only 4.1 percent of full-sized market. That was right down there with the AMC Ambassador in its final years.
The anti-fuselage Fury did poorly even compared to its sibling Chrysler Corp. big cars. In 1974 the Chrysler brand came close to matching the Fury in output — and from 1975-77 significantly outsold it. Even the long-suffering big Dodge did slightly better than Plymouth in 1977.
The Fury’s 1974 redesign was a double-bad idea
The 1974 Fury was a bad move for two big reasons. First, Chrysler could plausibly have squeezed at least one more year from the fuselage body. As a point of comparison, Ford kept its full-sized body through 1978 even though it first entered production in 1969 — the same year as the fuselage.
Second, the anti-fuselage styling ran too far away from Chrysler’s design heritage. In a big-car market that had been shrinking even before the oil embargo, why buy a Plymouth when it copied a Chevy or Ford? Whatever else you can say about the fuselage, you couldn’t mistake it for a Big Two product.
Chrysler Corp.’s 1974 big cars had a wrap-around windshield that looked similar to GM’s 1971-76 big cars. The Fury wasn’t well differentiated from a Dodge Monaco, which shared a hood, front bumper and trunk lid (Old Car Brochures).
Plymouth product planners arguably made some other smaller mistakes that added up. For example, in 1975 the top-of-line Fury switched to single headlights, which looked both odd and cheap for a luxury model.
Then in 1976 four-door hardtops were dropped even though they had sold fairly well. I you wanted that body style you had to move up to a Chrysler. Presumably at least some buyers did because Chrysler output soared above Plymouth’s by more than a two-to-one margin in 1976 and three-to-one in 1977.
For 1976 a top-end Gran Fury Brougham four-door sedan listed for $5,162. That was $15 more than an entry-level Chrysler Newport in a four-door hardtop body style, which was now unavailable on the Plymouth (Old Car Brochures).
Big-Plymouth sales may have also been hurt by a rejuggling of nameplates in 1975. The mid-sized lineup, which had been called the Satellite, was renamed the Fury. Big cars were now called the Gran Fury. This gambit didn’t even help the sales of mid-sized cars, which fell well below Satellite levels.
Chevrolet picks up on Plymouth’s abandoned good idea
Perhaps the ultimate indignity was that in 1977 — the big Plymouth’s dying year — Chevrolet sales sharply rebounded because of its newly downsized body. The brand’s share of the full-sized, low-priced field grew from 45.5 percent in 1975 to almost 67 percent by 1978. Note that the Chevy was remarkably similar in size to the 1962-64 Plymouth so often dismissed by automotive historians.
The downsized 1977 Chevrolet was 10 inches longer and more than 500 pounds heavier than a similarly equipped 1962 Plymouth, but its wheelbase, width and interior space were comparable (Old Car Brochures).
Oh, the irony. Plymouth was pushed out of the full-sized class by playing it safe while Chevrolet re-established its dominance by violating one of Detroit’s most sacred rules: “bigger = better.” How could Plymouth have been a leader rather than a follower? Go here for further discussion.
NOTES:
This story was originally posted Aug. 6, 2013 and expanded on Sept. 25, 2020, May 13, 2022 and May 3, 2024. Market share for brands was calculated from figures listed in Wikipedia (2013). Market share and production figures for individual nameplates were calculated from base data found in auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006) and Gunnell (2002). Specifications were from the above sources and Automobile Catalog (2022).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
Working on the 1963-65 Buick Riviera story got me curious about the long-term trajectory of the brand’s high-end family cars. A low point was the 1958 recession, when the Roadmaster and Limited together garnered under […]
Curbside Classic commentator Steve (2018) has argued that Nash-Kelvinator should have combined with Studebaker rather than Hudson for an interesting set of reasons. He effectively follows the advice of Aaron Severson (2024), who recently suggested that […]
“That bell you hear tolling ominously in the background could be for the automobile and driving as we know them. An ever-increasing number of individuals and organizations are expressing alarm over the proliferation of cars. […]
13 Comments
Popular Mechanics surveyed owners of the 1965 Fury, 1967 Fury and 1969 Chrysler in its “Owners Report” series. Comparing the results, it’s easy to see how assembly quality declined during those years for the corporation’s C-bodies. The 1969 Chrysler was so bad that 25 percent complained of poor assembly quality, another 13 percent complained of door leaks and 8.6 percent simply complained about “quality.” Those were lousy results even for that era. I doubt that the Plymouths were any better built that year.
As for the 1974 models, I would add another problem – they looked so much like the Dodge Monaco, that there was ultimately little reason to buy one over the other. It probably boiled down to any remaining brand loyalty for each marque, or which local dealer the buyer preferred.
All models in the Chrysler Corporation line-up from 1974-78 did not sell well, so the fact that they looked alike I believe was of little consequence. If they had been styled radically different from each division, I doubt it would have meant more sales for Chrysler.
In my opinion, the Chrysler cars were just “nothing new” as a result of being shamelessly cloned from the 1971 GM designs. If the cars looked like a GM product, consumers would expect it to drive like one. This is where Chrysler feel far behind. The road feel and quality of the Chrysler vehicles simply could not match the smooth “drive ability” of GM cars.
The overall quality of all Chrysler products after 1965-66, except for the 1967-1968 Imperials, were to blame for most of Chrysler’s ills, plus, the inconsistency of their dealer network. If Chrysler’s as-delivered new-car quality matched the average G.M. product (excluding the Vega) after 1966, I think most of Chrysler’s cars would have sold better and take a bite out of Ford, which went downhill, in my opinion after 1972, only Chrysler’s cars were much worse than Ford’s products.
Good assessment Steve, I think you made all the key points. I wonder what the result would have been had the company stayed with fuselage’s clean rounded form through the 70s and 80s and focused more on the mid-sized platform. Photo mod shows a cleaner and more luxurious version of the ’76 Dodge Coronet that depicts an Imperial. Had this car included Imperial’s ’74 grill design, all the better. (Old Car Brochures, AACA Forum)
Let’s go a step further and wondering what if Chrysler had decided to do only a light reskin of the Fuselage body and decided to focus much more on the intermediate field by giving a sedan a bigger restyling rather than having only a reskinned frond end for the 1975 Coronet/Fury sedans and wagons?
Chrysler Corporation should have done ONE major thing in 1967: SLOW DOWN the production lines, at least on the full-size cars, to improve showroom and as delivered quality. Much of the time, all Chrysler was doing was adding to its notorious sales bank that it would have to deplete at the end of the model year.
I do not blame Chrysler for not staying with the 116-inch wheelbase as its big car offerings for Dodge and Plymouth after 1962. The Dodge dealers squawking during the 1962 model-year led to the hasty 1961 Dodge front-end clip on the definned Chrysler Newport body. Plymouth dealers had no easy answer until the restyled 1963 and 1964 models. The 1977 downsized G.M. full-size cars were in response to the upcoming CAFE corporate fleet standards, not really a desire to make Detroit iron more rational. One also forgets that Chrysler’s market timing was terrible: It’s third generation pony cars (1970), its restyled full-size cars for 1974 were a year too late, and its Valiant / Dart replacements were at least tardy by a year-and-a-half. Even worse, the poor downsized 1979 Chrysler Newport / New Yorker and Dodge St. Regis were blown away by the downsized 1979 Fords and Mercurys. Chrysler had a story to tell with its cars and its Omnirizon, but not money to advertise its new models, except to get rid of its hundreds of thousands of 1977-1978-and early-1979 cars and trucks in the sales bank at the Michigan State Fairgrounds !
In 1979, Consumer Reports tested a Dodge St. Regis against the Chevrolet, Ford and Mercury competition. The magazine liked the Chevrolet, Ford and Mercury. But it noted that it had to buy a second St. Regis to complete the test, as the first one broke down during the testing.
From 1968 on, the magazine regularly noted the poor assembly quality of various Chrysler vehicles it tested. Quality hit a low point during 1978-79.
My understanding is that GM always planned to downsize the full-size cars for 1977, but only by about 400 lbs. Only after the fuel crisis did GM decide to downsize the full 1000 lbs.
Panthers were rather underwhelming when they debuted, and car magazines were already reporting by 1980 Ford’s plans to drop them, but Ford changed its mind when fuel prices dropped and sales increases. Ford made steady improvements to the Panthers during the 80’s, while GM did little or nothing with the B bodies, with the H bodies coming.
IMHO the fuselage cars would have done better if it were not for management interference. Don Clayton, the C body Plymount studio chief, told me of the edict from management to make bumpers more crash resistant, but at a late stage in the cycle. Gone were the planned stacked headlamps and the result was a rather plain front. Dodge C- bodies originally had a tunneled backlight design, ala the wildly succesful Charger, but the execs killed that too. Also, I recall shopping for a car with my dad in 69 and even my teenage eyes were put off by the cheap interiors, door panels especialy. Dad bought the Chrysler wagon since it was only a few dollars more than the Plymouth or Dodge.
Mark, I was wondering why the Plymouth’s front fender ridges were so tall; perhaps that’s a vestige of stacked headlights. Regarding the Dodge’s tunneled backlight design, I’m curious as to how it would have looked, e.g., whether the quarter windows had a steeper rake and the rear glass was flat like on the Charger. If yes, that could have given the big two-door hardtop much better proportions. I could see the bean counters asking why Dodge couldn’t save some money by copying Plymouth’s greenhouse, but that made the deck look way too long.
I recall a howstuffworks article on the fuselage Plymouths said that the fenders and beltline were raised to proportionately offset the fact that management had dictated a higher roof for greater interior room. That higher roof did translate to at least one competitive advantage: fuselage Chrysler sedans had meaningfully more interior room than their GM and Ford competitors.
Not sure how much you can validly conclude from production numbers though. Chrysler vastly overproduced relative to sales in 1969 (this was a theme in a Fortune magazine article on how Lynn Townsend appears to have had his eye off the ball). As others have mentioned, this led to several years of sales banking which followed from the wrong idea that it was better to maximize use of capital investments and deal with the lack of demand otherwise. Quality issues and derivative styling aside, the 1974 models had some good qualities. Norbye and Dunne rated the 1974 Plymouth tops among the full size low priced cars until Chevrolet’s 1977 downsizing. The sustained decline in Plymouth sales may reflect the realization as Ricardo and Cafiero were assuming control that the overproduction/sales bank model was a financial disaster.
“I recall a howstuffworks article on the fuselage Plymouths said that the fenders and beltline were raised to proportionately offset the fact that management had dictated a higher roof for greater interior room.”
The data I’ve come across suggest that the 1969 two-door and four-door hardtops and the four-door sedan were a bit lower than their predecessors and the wagon was only .3 inches taller. The main difference in interior room appears to have been in widths, e.g., shoulder room increased by a meaningful three inches.
“Not sure how much you can validly conclude from production numbers though. Chrysler vastly overproduced relative to sales in 1969.”
Numbers can be tricky but I think you’ve got to start somewhere. If nothing else, the 1969 figures illustrate Chrysler’s overambition — and the 1970 decline hints at cause and effect.
Popular Mechanics surveyed owners of the 1965 Fury, 1967 Fury and 1969 Chrysler in its “Owners Report” series. Comparing the results, it’s easy to see how assembly quality declined during those years for the corporation’s C-bodies. The 1969 Chrysler was so bad that 25 percent complained of poor assembly quality, another 13 percent complained of door leaks and 8.6 percent simply complained about “quality.” Those were lousy results even for that era. I doubt that the Plymouths were any better built that year.
As for the 1974 models, I would add another problem – they looked so much like the Dodge Monaco, that there was ultimately little reason to buy one over the other. It probably boiled down to any remaining brand loyalty for each marque, or which local dealer the buyer preferred.
All models in the Chrysler Corporation line-up from 1974-78 did not sell well, so the fact that they looked alike I believe was of little consequence. If they had been styled radically different from each division, I doubt it would have meant more sales for Chrysler.
In my opinion, the Chrysler cars were just “nothing new” as a result of being shamelessly cloned from the 1971 GM designs. If the cars looked like a GM product, consumers would expect it to drive like one. This is where Chrysler feel far behind. The road feel and quality of the Chrysler vehicles simply could not match the smooth “drive ability” of GM cars.
The overall quality of all Chrysler products after 1965-66, except for the 1967-1968 Imperials, were to blame for most of Chrysler’s ills, plus, the inconsistency of their dealer network. If Chrysler’s as-delivered new-car quality matched the average G.M. product (excluding the Vega) after 1966, I think most of Chrysler’s cars would have sold better and take a bite out of Ford, which went downhill, in my opinion after 1972, only Chrysler’s cars were much worse than Ford’s products.
Good assessment Steve, I think you made all the key points. I wonder what the result would have been had the company stayed with fuselage’s clean rounded form through the 70s and 80s and focused more on the mid-sized platform. Photo mod shows a cleaner and more luxurious version of the ’76 Dodge Coronet that depicts an Imperial. Had this car included Imperial’s ’74 grill design, all the better. (Old Car Brochures, AACA Forum)
https://content.invisioncic.com/r277599/monthly_2022_05/840196902_1976Imperial.jpg.093a0b8df6af71ea82b2eaae4d504364.jpg
I vaguely remember that ad. I dunno, it looks to much like the Mercury/Lincoln of the era. The waterfall grill might help.
Let’s go a step further and wondering what if Chrysler had decided to do only a light reskin of the Fuselage body and decided to focus much more on the intermediate field by giving a sedan a bigger restyling rather than having only a reskinned frond end for the 1975 Coronet/Fury sedans and wagons?
Chrysler Corporation should have done ONE major thing in 1967: SLOW DOWN the production lines, at least on the full-size cars, to improve showroom and as delivered quality. Much of the time, all Chrysler was doing was adding to its notorious sales bank that it would have to deplete at the end of the model year.
I do not blame Chrysler for not staying with the 116-inch wheelbase as its big car offerings for Dodge and Plymouth after 1962. The Dodge dealers squawking during the 1962 model-year led to the hasty 1961 Dodge front-end clip on the definned Chrysler Newport body. Plymouth dealers had no easy answer until the restyled 1963 and 1964 models. The 1977 downsized G.M. full-size cars were in response to the upcoming CAFE corporate fleet standards, not really a desire to make Detroit iron more rational. One also forgets that Chrysler’s market timing was terrible: It’s third generation pony cars (1970), its restyled full-size cars for 1974 were a year too late, and its Valiant / Dart replacements were at least tardy by a year-and-a-half. Even worse, the poor downsized 1979 Chrysler Newport / New Yorker and Dodge St. Regis were blown away by the downsized 1979 Fords and Mercurys. Chrysler had a story to tell with its cars and its Omnirizon, but not money to advertise its new models, except to get rid of its hundreds of thousands of 1977-1978-and early-1979 cars and trucks in the sales bank at the Michigan State Fairgrounds !
In 1979, Consumer Reports tested a Dodge St. Regis against the Chevrolet, Ford and Mercury competition. The magazine liked the Chevrolet, Ford and Mercury. But it noted that it had to buy a second St. Regis to complete the test, as the first one broke down during the testing.
From 1968 on, the magazine regularly noted the poor assembly quality of various Chrysler vehicles it tested. Quality hit a low point during 1978-79.
My understanding is that GM always planned to downsize the full-size cars for 1977, but only by about 400 lbs. Only after the fuel crisis did GM decide to downsize the full 1000 lbs.
Panthers were rather underwhelming when they debuted, and car magazines were already reporting by 1980 Ford’s plans to drop them, but Ford changed its mind when fuel prices dropped and sales increases. Ford made steady improvements to the Panthers during the 80’s, while GM did little or nothing with the B bodies, with the H bodies coming.
IMHO the fuselage cars would have done better if it were not for management interference. Don Clayton, the C body Plymount studio chief, told me of the edict from management to make bumpers more crash resistant, but at a late stage in the cycle. Gone were the planned stacked headlamps and the result was a rather plain front. Dodge C- bodies originally had a tunneled backlight design, ala the wildly succesful Charger, but the execs killed that too. Also, I recall shopping for a car with my dad in 69 and even my teenage eyes were put off by the cheap interiors, door panels especialy. Dad bought the Chrysler wagon since it was only a few dollars more than the Plymouth or Dodge.
Mark, I was wondering why the Plymouth’s front fender ridges were so tall; perhaps that’s a vestige of stacked headlights. Regarding the Dodge’s tunneled backlight design, I’m curious as to how it would have looked, e.g., whether the quarter windows had a steeper rake and the rear glass was flat like on the Charger. If yes, that could have given the big two-door hardtop much better proportions. I could see the bean counters asking why Dodge couldn’t save some money by copying Plymouth’s greenhouse, but that made the deck look way too long.
I recall a howstuffworks article on the fuselage Plymouths said that the fenders and beltline were raised to proportionately offset the fact that management had dictated a higher roof for greater interior room. That higher roof did translate to at least one competitive advantage: fuselage Chrysler sedans had meaningfully more interior room than their GM and Ford competitors.
Not sure how much you can validly conclude from production numbers though. Chrysler vastly overproduced relative to sales in 1969 (this was a theme in a Fortune magazine article on how Lynn Townsend appears to have had his eye off the ball). As others have mentioned, this led to several years of sales banking which followed from the wrong idea that it was better to maximize use of capital investments and deal with the lack of demand otherwise. Quality issues and derivative styling aside, the 1974 models had some good qualities. Norbye and Dunne rated the 1974 Plymouth tops among the full size low priced cars until Chevrolet’s 1977 downsizing. The sustained decline in Plymouth sales may reflect the realization as Ricardo and Cafiero were assuming control that the overproduction/sales bank model was a financial disaster.
The data I’ve come across suggest that the 1969 two-door and four-door hardtops and the four-door sedan were a bit lower than their predecessors and the wagon was only .3 inches taller. The main difference in interior room appears to have been in widths, e.g., shoulder room increased by a meaningful three inches.
Numbers can be tricky but I think you’ve got to start somewhere. If nothing else, the 1969 figures illustrate Chrysler’s overambition — and the 1970 decline hints at cause and effect.