1966-67 Plymouth Satellite was most anonymous-looking car of its era

(EXPANDED FROM 11/10/2021)

I hereby nominate the 1966-67 mid-sized Plymouth as the most anonymous-looking car of the mid-1960s. At least to my eyes, the Belvedere line — which included top-end Satellite and GTX models — was more colorless and odorless than even the definitive “anycar,” the 1964 Chevrolet Chevelle.

Some folks have taken issue with this view. For example, one reader complained that an earlier version of this essay was biased and failed to acknowledge the performance of Hemi-powered models. Yes, Indie Auto is a journal of opinion and this is a “Design Notes” feature, which focuses on styling.

A more relevant counterpoint comes from Richard M. Langworth and Jan P. Norbye, who described the newly restyled 1966 Belvedere lineup as possessing “some of the cleanest, sweetest styling in Plymouth history” (1985, p. 205).

Clean? Okay. But sweet? Only if it’s a box of chocolates

The mid-sized Plymouth’s styling was given a bland, squared-off look at precisely the moment when General Motors and Ford were shifting to coke-bottle shapes with more personality. Only American Motors aligned with Chrysler’s approach, and that ended with a dramatic redesign in 1967.

The mid-sized Plymouth’s styling reflected a broader trend at the Chrysler Corporation under its new design chief Elwood Engel, who championed “long straight lines” (Knutson, 2021). Although you can see that in all of the automaker’s cars introduced between 1965 and 1967, boxiness showed up most prominently in the B-body intermediates.

Engel’s team hedged its bets by giving the 1966-67 Dodge Coronet a hint of the coke-bottle look. In contrast, the Belvedere/Satellite was all straight lines. There’s only so much you can do to give a boxy car individuality, but Chrysler designers didn’t seem to try very hard.

Here we have the ideal car for an insurance ad

The Belvedere’s rear and side treatments were so generic that this car would be an ideal prop in one of those insurance ads, where a car’s identity is purposely obscured.

There were only two exceptions to the “anycar” vibe. Two-door hardtops carried over the Chrysler Corporation’s fan-shaped C-pillar. In addition, a “barbell” front end had a slight resemblance to the 1965 models. That made the front end of the 1966-67 Belvedere/Satellite more recognizable than the 1964 Chevelle. However, the Chevy had an organic shape that looked more contemporary.

A number of commentators have mentioned how the 1965 Dodge Coronet was also rather generic, so let’s take a look. That car was given unique front and rear styling, which was fairly boxy and bland. Even so, the Coronet still shared the roofline and door sheetmetal with the first-generation B-body, so it was more rounded than the 1966-67 Belvedere/Satellite.

New styling runs too far away from Chrysler’s past

A prime goal in restyling Chrysler’s entire lineup of passenger cars in the mid-60s was to step back from the vivid but controversial imagination of head designer Virgil Exner. He was fired in the wake of the B-body’s poor sales in its introductory year of 1962 (Grist, 2007). Unfortunately, Exner’s successor went too far in throwing away the positive elements of his handiwork.

For example, the rear end of the 1965 Belvedere/Satellite — which still maintained the basic look established by Exner — had pleasing lines that deserved to be updated rather than thrown away.

Even the sporty Satellite looked utilitarian

The main stylistic touch that provided some visual relief from the 1966-67 Belvedere’s utter squareness was W-shaped side sculpting. But even here the detailing was rather bland. Although the front was given a slight vee shape, in the rear the sculpting was chopped off in a remarkably heavy-handed way.

I am hard-pressed to remember another American two-door hardtop from that era which had a more upright and plain rear end. This was the kind of utilitarian styling typically reserved for station wagons. Or cereal boxes.

The slightly rounded and veed shape of the top and bottom of the trunk lid wasn’t carried over on the fender ridges, which had an almost straight vertical drop to the bumper. This raises the question of whether Plymouth inherited the W-shape from the Dodge Coronet design studio and didn’t quite know what to do with it. To save on costs, both brands used the same door sheetmetal on two-door models and front doors on four-door models.

Also see ‘General Motors trumped Ford’s 1962 foray into mid-sized cars’

The Plymouth’s main sign of frivolity was its front-end treatment. The fender tips ended in a point that was nicely accentuated with the W-shaped sculpting.

The biggest styling change for 1967 was that single headlamps were traded for duals. I don’t think that looks as cohesive as the previous year’s model.

Would it have costed that much to modify the front sheetmetal ever so slightly to better align it with the new, more horizontal shape of dual headlights?

In keeping with its halo-model status, the Satellite was given unique trim such as the silver rocker-panel application. This dressed up the basic body better than any other 1967 Belvedere variant but had a tacked-on look because the trim didn’t coincide with the bottom of the sheetmetal sculpting.

Dodge and Plymouth had minor interior differences

The dashboard of the B-body Dodge and Plymouth were so similar that one might wonder why Chrysler bothered to differentiate them at all.

The Coronet 500 may have been priced slightly higher than the Satellite, but it did not have a specially contoured rear seat back like the Satellite (and its high-performance stablemate the GTX). That may have been because the Satellite was Plymouth’s top-end intermediate whereas the Charger was positioned above the Coronet 500.

The 1966-67 Coronet sold better than the Plymouth

Dodge’s intermediate lineup consistently sold better than Plymouth’s from 1965-70 even though its models were typically priced slightly higher.

Even though the above graph includes the Charger with Dodge’s B-body production, that wasn’t the decisive factor in 1966-67. All by itself the Coronet outproduced the Belvedere/Satellite from 1965-69.

By the same token, the hot-selling Road Runner pumped up Plymouth sales in 1968-69 but not enough to overtake Dodge when it came to sporty intermediates.

Let’s go back to the 1966-67 Plymouth. One could blame its overly utilitarian styling for relatively weak sales, but even in 1965 the Coronet sold better. Did the return of Plymouth’s full-sized car cannibalize intermediate sales more so than Dodge’s did?

From 1968-69 the Belvedere/Satellite was more competitive with the Coronet — and actually outsold it in 1970. Could that have been at least partly because the B-body was given new sheetmetal with a softer coke-bottle look? The Plymouth was hardly a fashion leader (particularly compared to General Motors’ new designs), but it no longer looked like a box of chocolates.

NOTES:

This story was first posted July 24, 2020 and expanded on Nov. 10, 2021 and March 26, 2024. Production figures and prices came from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006) and Gunnell (2002).

Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.

---

RE:SOURCES

• Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International; Lincolnwood, Ill.
• Grist, Peter; 2007. Virgil Exner, Visioneer. Veloce Publishing, Dorchester, England. 
• Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
• Knutson, Lanny; 2021. “Plymouth cars of 1966.” Allpar.com. Accessed Nov. 10.
• Langworth, Richard M. and Jan P. Norbye; 1985. The Complete History of Chrysler Corporation 1924-1985. Publications International, Skokie, IL.

ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:

• oldcaradvertising.com: Chevrolet Chevelle (1964)
• oldcarbrochures.org: Chevrolet Chevelle (1966); Dodge Coronet (1965); Ford Fairlane (1966); Plymouth Satellite (1965, 1966, 1968); Rambler Rebel (1966)