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

(EXPANDED FROM 5/4/2022)

One of my stylistic pet peeves is the 1963-65 Plymouth Valiant’s front fenders, which had weird, hairpin-shaped character lines. They undercut what in many respects was one of the cleaner compact designs of the mid-1960s.

Jim Benjaminson (2020) noted 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 — particularly on 1963-64 models — 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.

Richard M. Langworth and Jan P. Norbye argued that the Valiant looked “stubby” and “not as stylish as the Dart” — Dodge’s new compact entry (1985, p. 194). Even so, production soared 43 percent to over 225,000 units. That was well above the Dart’s roughly 154,000 units (go here for further discussion).

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.

This would prove to be the best-selling year for the second-generation Valiant. Production almost reached 228,000 units, which was 1 percent above 1963.

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.

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.

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. Even so, the 1965 Valiant saw output fall by almost 27 percent to roughly 167,000 units.

Note that those figures do not include the Barracuda, which racked up roughly 23,000 units in the second half of 1964 and almost 65,000 units in 1965. In addition, the top-of-line Valiant Signet saw its output fall from more than 45,000 units in 1964 to under 14,000 units the next year.

While some prospective Valiant buyers may have shifted over to a Barracuda, others may have gone over to the Dodge Dart. For 1965 it shot past the Valiant in sales and would stay in the lead for the rest of the decade.

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?

As with the mid-sized Belvedere (go here), designers emphasized the Valiant’s 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.

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.

Meanwhile, the sedans and hardtop were given a more squared-off roofline that accentuated the car’s lack of curved side glass. By 1966 that was a major stylistic liability because even in the compact class, where the only other entry that still had flat glass was the Chevrolet Chevy II.

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. The extreme squareness of the styling accentuated that the Valiant had the oldest sheetmetal of any compact.

Not surprisingly, Valiant output for 1966 fell 17 percent to just over 138,000 units . . . and that was without the Barracuda, which dropped a whopping 41 percent. When it came to compacts, Plymouth had become an old square.

NOTES:

This story was originally posted on May 4, 2022 and expanded on April 2, 2025. Production data are 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.

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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.
• Langworth, Richard M. and Jan P. Norbye; 1985. The Complete History of Chrysler Corporation 1924-1985. Publications International, Skokie, IL.

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