1963-66 Plymouth Valiant inched away from Virgil Exner’s styling quirks

A recent Curbside Classic article (Stern, 2022) about the Canadian 1964 Valiant reminded me of one of my stylistic pet peeves: The car’s front fender had a weird, hairpin-shaped character line.

Jim Benjaminson (2020) of Allpar.com wrote that the “bent ridge was stamped into the upper edge of the fender to provide some character to an otherwise rather plain design.” Well, okay. And I do like how the character line helped to make possible a relatively flat hood. However, the size of the hairpin strikes me as entirely too big — kind of like an overly flamboyant signature.

That character line has a Virgil Exner vibe to it. This would make sense because he reportedly oversaw the redesign of the 1963 Chrysler compacts (Grist, 2007). Although Exner was fired before the cars went into production, his successor Elwood Engel apparently made only modest refinements to the basic design.

Engel tones down Exner’s 1963 Valiant

Engel’s most substantial change was to square off the rear fender ridges. Under Exner they followed the curve of the trunk lid. In addition, the rear wheel openings were flattened on non-wagon models (Benjaminson, 2020).

My guess is that Exner did not give the Valiant wagon a downward sloping rear character line like the rest of the lineup. That may have been partly because the rear sheetmetal was shared with the Dodge Dart and partly because a horizontal character line worked better with a wagon’s basic shape.

Also see ‘Did a rumor cause the downsized 1962 Plymouth and Dodge?’

Engel’s changes strike me as a net improvement with one exception: Exner’s curved rear fenders arguably aligned with the hairpin front character line. So once the rear fenders were squared off, the hairpin made less visual sense.

For 1964 Engel squares off the Valiant

The Valiant received relatively few changes for 1964, but they served to further tone down the Exner look. In front, the classic Exner radiator grille was ditched in favor of a more horizontal look.

In back the taillights were switched from horizontal to vertical. This helped to give the rear a more squared-off look by counterbalancing the curvature of both the trunk lid and base of the rear window.

For 1965 the Valiant gets partial sheetmetal changes

For 1965 the Valiant’s front fenders were reshaped to make the hairpin significantly smaller. Perhaps just as importantly, some high-end models received brightwork that served to made the hairpin visually disappear.

Also see ‘Defense of Virgil Exner’s 1962 Plymouth doesn’t add up’

In addition, the trunk lid was given a more angular shape (which presumably also required new sheetmetal for the inner portions of the fender edges).

The new front fenders were kept in production only one year. Why didn’t Chrysler wait until 1966, when the Valiant was given a full facelift? Engel may have had the general goal of getting rid of Exner styling cues as quickly as possible, but the biggest timing issue may have been the introduction of the Valiant Barracuda in the spring of 1964.

Also see ‘Lee Iacocca got lucky with the 1964-66 Ford Mustang’

The hairpin front fenders from 1963-64 would not have worked well with the sporty fastback because they made the front end look too tall and stubby.

Meanwhile, the squared-off trunk lid on the regular Valiants was more in sync with the Barracuda’s angular rear.

The sheetmetal changes made for the 1965 model year strike me as a meaningful improvement. Indeed, I would argue that the 1965 models looked much better than their even boxier 1966 successors.

Hey, man, that 1966 Valiant looks really square

For 1966 the Valiant received a new front end, roofline and rear fenders. This was an unusually expensive redesign because it would be in production only one year. The luxury of hindsight brings me to wonder: Why did they bother?

Valiant designers doubled down on squareness. Rather than making the car look more modern, it instead looked old and frumpy. That was particularly the case with the Barracuda. No wonder output fell at the same time that the Mustang’s was hitting an all-time record.

Also see ‘1966-67 Plymouth Satellite was most anonymous-looking car of its era’

It made sense that designers would have completely eliminated the hairpin character line, but in the process they also got rid of the 1963-65 models’ lovely curvature around the headlights. To make matters worse, thin wrap-around bumpers were ditched in favor of big, flat and decidedly unsporty designs.

A similar situation played out in the rear, where a nicely rounded fender blister that extended a wrap-around bumper was replaced with flat and drab surfaces.

The 1966 facelift may have thoroughly extinguished Exner’s design influence on the Valiant, but it didn’t work at a time when the competition was gravitating toward more rounded, coke-bottle fender shapes and ultra-thin bumpers.

NOTES:

Production data are from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006) and Gunnell (2002). 

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RE:SOURCES

• Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 1993, 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL.
• Benjaminson, Jim; 2020. “1960-1969 Valiant and Barracuda: Compact Plymouth cars.” Allpar.com. Posted Nov. 16.
• Grist, Peter; 2007. Virgil Exner, Visioneer. Veloce Publishing, Dorchester, England. 
• Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised Fourth Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
• Stern, Daniel; 2022. “CC Capsule: 1964 Valiant Signet 200 • Don’t Say the P-Words.” Curbside Classic. Posted May 1.

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• oldcarbrochures.org: Plymouth Valiant (1963, 1964, 1965, 1966)