11 of the greatest Mopar designs

From its inception, Chrysler was engineering-led, and its multiple divisions (Plymouth, De Soto, Dodge, Imperial) were for many years satisfied to case its numerous technical advances—hydraulic four-wheel brakes and Hemi V-8 power to name just a few—in car bodies that were decidedly workaday. Chrysler's strength was good solid engineering to advance the cause of the automobile, and to help it last longer than you might have thought worthwhile in those days of trading up every three years.

Traditionally, styling wasn't part of Chrysler's makeup. In an era of longer, lower, and wider, Mopars were styled so drivers could continue to wear their hats as they drove. Meanwhile, GM and Ford competed for the sexiest designs, and the best sales.

In the 1950s, once Chrysler finally figured out that styling really mattered, man, they went for it, pens a-blazin' with up-to-the-moment creativity and stylistic flourishes that are seared into America's collective memory. Some were design whimsy, but a couple of them changed the automotive industry for good.

This is not a story about the prettiest Mopars ever built. It's about designs that opened eyes and shifted markets, and about style that would have long-lasting effects out there on the American road. It's about success and failure, sometimes simultaneously.

AIRFLOW

Chrysler's Director of Research, Carl Breer, envisioned an automobile as a harmonious whole: all parts of a car designed specifically for the goal of advancing driver and passenger comfort and efficiency. The oft-repeated story is that Breer was driving home one night when he caught sight of a flock of geese overhead; further investigation revealed that it was, in fact, an Army Air Corps squadron on maneuvers. This set Breer wondering why aircraft had been evolving at such a rapid pace, when cars were not so radically changed from a decade before.

Passenger comfort was foremost on Breer's mind, and all else had to be made to fit. His years of aerodynamic experiments yielded the ultimate shape: a teardrop. Thoughts of a three-in-front, two-in-back seating arrangement were scuttled, as were thoughts of moving the engine to the rear. The teardrop shape was therefore compromised in order to end up with a true six-seater. The roofline curved down into a bustleback trunk, moving back seat passengers ahead of the rear axle rather than on top of it, as was the custom of the day. As a result, everything else in the cabin had to be pushed forward, too— driver's seat, steering column, windshield, cowl, radiator… and the engine.

Powerplants were traditionally mounted behind the front axle, but thanks to packaging issues, moving the Airflow's engine forward was a necessity. The engine rested one-third in front of and two-thirds behind the front axle, tipped back at a 5-degree angle, with special oiling provisions in the pan. More weight on the front end, plus softer leaf springs in front, introduced the "boulevard ride," and became the blueprint for more comfortable highway travel in the years to come.

Conventional metal-skin-on-wooden-frame construction was discarded. While unit-body construction was considered, a hybrid structural concept, which saw a framework of metal beams crisscrossed with trusses for strength, was developed. Body panels were welded to the frame, so body and chassis were essentially a single unit, offering superior strength and saving weight.

Most controversial of all this was the Airflow's front-end styling. Cars up to this point had a stationary chromed radiator grille front and center, with separate front fenders, pedestal-mounted headlamps, and a center-hinged hood that lifted up on either side. Because the Airflow's hood was so much shorter, it was a single rear-hinged piece, lifting from the cowl and taking the grille with it. Headlamps were mounted to the body aside the grille, and the fenders were still separate. Today, it's a Streamline Moderne masterpiece, and was so admired that it was copied abroad (by Toyota, among others), but was jarring in its day. Airflow's poor sales scared Chrysler off adventuresome styling for more than two decades.

1959 DODGE CUSTOM ROYAL

FORWARD LOOK '57s

Between 1956 and 1957, a Dodge Coronet gained 2 inches in wheelbase and 3 inches in width, while losing 3 inches in overall height. But that dry description of Virgil Exner's designs cannot come close to defining how Chrysler's entire 1957 lineup (all five divisions—Plymouth, Dodge, De Soto, Chrysler, and Imperial) became a sales and style sensation across America. How big a sensation? Their appearance in the late summer of 1956 caused GM to rethink its upcoming all-new 1958 models and tear up all of its 1959 facelifts in order to compete. Chrysler putting GM styling on the back foot was an eye-opener for most of the industry.

How big a sensation? Plymouth went from fourth to third in the overall sales race for 1957, building an extra 150,000 cars and knocking Buick off its perch; similarly, Dodge toppled Mercury. Imperial sales more than tripled. Even De Soto saw a 20-percent sales bump over 1956 numbers. (Only Chrysler division's numbers remained roughly static.) The public had spoken, and they liked what they saw from the Pentastar.

Exner's fins not only elongated the look of his Mopars, but he believed they had aerodynamic benefits as well. The new styling helped to put some pizzazz behind Chrysler's other engineering feats, like the three-speed TorqueFlite automatic (launched late in the 1956 model year) and torsion bar front suspension for improved ride and handling on most models. Sales exploded in '57, tanked (along with nearly everyone else's) in recession-year 1958, and rebounded in 1959. But after the explosion of interest in those initial '57 models, Chrysler would never underestimate style again.

1960 PLYMOUTH VALIANT V-100

1960-'62 PLYMOUTH VALIANT

After spending most of the 1950s drawing your eye to the rear of the car with fins (or stabilizers, in Moparlance), Exner reversed course. Noticing that most American cars had hoods and trunks of roughly equal length, he decided to go for a long-hood, short-deck approach. The grille tightened up to approximate the size of the radiator instead of going full width, and fronted a hood that was taller than the Valiant's fenders. Blades over the front wheels were echoed at the rear. A tall, six-window greenhouse ended in a semi-fastback roofline that fell neatly into the trunk, which featured a stamped faux spare tire cover. There were canted cat's-eye-style taillamps, too. It was all toward making a compact-size car look larger (and somehow less shocking) than a small car otherwise might.

Valiant launched as its own marque before it was absorbed into Plymouth. It also marked the debut of the long-lasting A-body chassis, which was designed to feature an all-aluminum six-cylinder engine from launch. Casting issues meant that Valiant came to market with an iron Slant Six under the hood instead, though the aluminum engine became an option for 1961. The first Valiant also had a significant life overseas, being built in such faraway locations as Australia, Venezuela, South Africa, and The Netherlands.

1962 PLYMOUTH SAVOY

DOWNSIZED '62s

Once fins had reached their literal and figurative peak in the late 1950s, Exner decided to go finless for the new decade. He had styled a full-size 1962 Plymouth, said to be as big an advance as the '57 Forward Look cars were, full of asymmetrical trim touches, like license plate location, "wind split" trim that replaced a standup hood ornament, and different numbers of taillamps left-to-right.

But a Chrysler bigwig had heard that Chevrolet and Ford were coming out with smaller cars. And they were: The Chevy II and Fairlane were additional model lines to supplement the full-size cars, not replace them. So, all existing plans at Chrysler were torn up, and cars were put on a new platform that was 7½ inches shorter and 4 inches narrower. On top of that, new Chrysler president Lynn Townsend insisted on dialing back Exner's asymmetrical excesses, centering and evening out everything.

The result was controversial: Plymouth sales were down slightly in an overall up year, but Plymouth fell from fourth in 1961 to eighth in '62. Dodge remained in ninth place, and Chrysler division sales were actually up (as it turned the deceased De Soto into Chrysler division's entry-level models).

Yet the style offered up some important benefits. The front subframe was now welded in instead of bolted on, making for a true fully unitized chassis. This saw the midsize full size drop 200 pounds and maintain interior room compared to the larger '61 models. Chassis stiffness was boosted by 30 percent, too. And the new aluminum casing for the TorqueFlite transmission was 60 pounds lighter and smaller to boot, reducing the size of the hump in the front footwell. Plus, with an available 413-cu.in. V-8 engine (and later, a 426-cu.in. V-8), this lighter, smaller generation became a standard-bearer for high-performance Mopar action.

1963 TURBINE CAR

TURBINE CAR

Ghia hand-built 55 coupe bodies for Chrysler's ever-advancing Turbine Car program; the company retained five of them, and the other 50 were lent out to the public for a week at a time. All were painted metallic bronze with black vinyl tops, and if there's a whiff of Ford Thunderbird about the body, particularly from the rear three-quarter view, recall that Elwood Engel had been recruited from Ford to replace Exner, who was asked to step aside following the debacle of the 1962 downsized full-size program. The front and rear treatment were copied from the Ford La Galaxie show car of 1958, although we also see 1963-'64 Dodge Dart in the headlamp treatment and the leading edge of the front fenders as they wrap around into the front bumper. (The Turbine Car was also predicted with a Chrysler two-seat concept called Typhoon.) It was clean and uncluttered, in stark contrast to some of Chrysler's more recent designs appearing in showrooms: Beyond a trio of chromed strakes between the front wheels and the headlamps, and a small script on the rear quarter, there was little in profile to distract from the long, gently bowed body sides. It was also a signal for what Chrysler was going to be up to throughout the rest of the '60s—clean, smooth, uncluttered flanks.

1965 PLYMOUTH BARRACUDA

1964 PLYMOUTH BARRACUDA FASTBACK

Fastback styling was everywhere in the 1960s. The first Chevrolet Corvette coupe, in the fall of '62, was a fastback. Ford introduced entirely new rooflines to the Galaxie and Falcon models mid-1963 (though they weren't technically fastbacks, they at least acknowledged that rooflines mattered). The Rambler Marlin beat Dodge's Charger to market by a year for the midsize crowd. By 1968, GM's entire A-body coupe line was wearing a semi-fastback roofline. Suddenly, 1949's styling sensation was hot once again.

But no one quite threw themselves into the fastback like Plymouth did, with its Barracuda. As ever, Chrysler was on a budget, so Barracuda was built on a standard Valiant A-body chassis but was all-new from the B-pillars back. Marketed with sporty, youthful buyers in mind, the Barracuda carried a price starting under $2,500. It boasted what was, at the time, the largest backlite installed on a production car (4.4 square feet of glass), and also featured a fold-down rear seat for additional storage room. It came with standard front bucket seats, plus an available four-speed transmission and the new 273-cu.in. V-8. With the fastback style on a compact chassis and its emphasis on sporting accoutrement, Plymouth earned the honor of being America's first pony car, beating Ford's Mustang to the market by a matter of weeks. But we call the compact-in-sporty-drag genre pony cars, not fi sh cars, for a reason: Barracuda never came close to achieving Mustang's popularity. Even so, its trendsetting fastback look set the stage for many Detroit offerings later in the decade.

1974 DODGE DART SPORT RALLYE

PLYMOUTH DUSTER/ DODGE DEMON AND DART SPORT

Just because you're poor doesn't mean you can't make an impact. Plymouth pulled off a coup: With just $15 million to restyle the Valiant line, it created an entirely new body—the semi-fastback Duster—which launched mid-1970 as a sort of A-body Barracuda replacement. (The Barracuda had graduated to the new-for-1970 E-body chassis, a B-body platform with a few inches spliced out of the wheelbase.) The Duster sported a new roofline, rear quarters, trunk lid, and, initially, taillamps that weren't tacked on so much as peeking out from behind slits in the rear of the body. Mid-1970, Duster got people's attention. When Dodge saw what its sister division had done, it protested loudly and received the Demon (or Dart Sport, after 1972) as the sporty-looking A-body it never had. What's more, the OPEC oil crisis had buyers fleeing to smaller cars. Better fuel mileage, a cheaper buy-in price, plus all of the comfort options now available in the Valiant family meant that buying a compact car no longer meant having to sacrifice. Plymouth sold more than a quarter-million Dusters in 1974 alone, more than they sold standard Valiants. The Duster and Dart Sport once again hit the sweet spot of economy, value, comfort, and style—and knocked it out of the park.

1971 PLYMOUTH ROAD RUNNER

1971-'72 PLYMOUTH SATELLITE/ ROAD RUNNER/GTX

Chrysler Corporation styling remained conservative as the 1960s wore on, but cycles and tastes came and went. For 1971, you may recall that the coupes and sedans had different wheelbases and didn't share body panels beyond a general family look. What you may not recall is that stylist John Herlitz, who had a hand in both the '67 and '70 Barracuda models, was tasked with making the hot versions of the B-body (Road Runner and GTX) first, and then making more workaday Satellite versions for general consumer consumption. This approach was something Herlitz, not a fan of Chrysler's previous buttoned-down styling approach, was happy to roll with.

"I came from a design education where form and curvature to metal is a desirable, if not essential, objective," he said in an interview in High Performance Mopar magazine in 1992. "The 1968-'70 Road Runner suffered from Chrysler's mid-'60s devotion to linear design; the value of the metal was limited to connecting the various fl at surfaces—lots of sharp character lines. This delineation of separate hood and fender surfaces creates unnecessary visual distractions."

His initial sketches were inspired by the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom jet fighter: a pointed nose, laid-back windscreen, low roofline, short deck, and rolled body sides to set off aggressive, squared-off wheel openings. "I wanted the body surfaces to have more homogeneity in order to focus the eye on the wheel and wheel cutouts. This was accomplished by flowing the fender shape from plan view (directly above) and side view to the wheel cutouts.

"The flares drove the modelers crazy. The surface had to be just right, or the reflections went to hell. Finally, [studio boss] Dick Macadam told me I had one last chance. Fortunately, it was enough." The result was a taut, underrated shape that lasted two years before the new-for-1973 bumper regulations mandated a front end redesign.

1989 DODGE CARAVAN

K-MINIVANS

It's not the most stylish car in Chrysler's lineup, but in the last 40 years we can't think of a more significant one.

While at Ford together in the 1970s, Ford President Lee Iacocca and Product Planner Hal Sperlich championed a small van, the "Mini- Max" concept. This was meant to be a van sized to fi t in a standard American garage, unlike the traditional Econoline, which was intended for work duty. Henry Ford II scoffed at the idea, so once years passed and Iacocca and Sperlich were together again, this time across town at Chrysler, they revisited the small van idea and pressed the upcoming K-car chassis into service.

There was nothing like them at the time, and they were a hit. Did we say a hit? This is too mild; they changed the American landscape. They seemed oddly proportioned, with their stubby noses and long cabins, but they were absolutely designed for their purpose, easily seating seven people comfortably with a low floor, low roofline, and blessed with carlike driving manners. They featured a tall driving position, which meant a tall-ish roof (though still low enough to fi t in a garage), and a long cargo/people-carrying area, with a sliding side door for easy ingress/egress in tight parking spots. The rear door was top-hinged, and the rear seats were removable to reveal 7 linear feet of room to carry things. They were somehow both smaller and roomier than even conventional full-size station wagons at the time—and certainly far roomier than compact or midsize wagons. The lingering death of the station wagon can be laid at the Chrysler minivan's feet. Even the Aries/Reliant wagon felt redundant after the minivans rolled out in late 1983.

Every Chrysler Corporation division received a version—Dodge had the Caravan (Is it a car or a van? Yes!), Plymouth the Voyager, and Chrysler even dusted off the Town & Country name for its high-zoot version. Oh, they were treated to all of the optional spiffs of the time, from wire hubcaps to stand-up hood ornaments to acres of DI-NOC faux-wood side trim. There was even a stripper version for the trades, dubbed Ram Van.

And Chrysler couldn't stop selling them. Rival automakers scrambled to build competitors, which never sold as well as Chrysler's, and stopped selling them altogether. Meanwhile, Chrysler is still selling "minivans" today, though their footprint has grown some in the intervening decades. Even so, the Smithsonian has an early Caravan in its collection, which should underscore its significance.

1996 DODGE VIPER GTS

1991 VIPER

Over the last quarter century, America's roads have been inundated with retro-modern car designs. The Volkswagen New Beetle. The Mini Cooper. The Chevrolet SSR. The 2002 Ford Thunderbird. The Chrysler PT Cruiser. Any Dodge Challenger built from 2008 until yesterday. We would suggest that one of the first examples of this on American roads—one of the longest-lasting for certain—would be Dodge's Viper, the V-10-powered brute of a sports car, reminiscent of the original Shelby Cobra.

It was very much a 1990s version of a 1960s Cobra, considering it had to be road legal for modern use and sale. The style was there: modernized, flush headlamps in place of round sealed beams; a targa bar that seemed an acceptable modern substitute for the little hoop that generally appears behind a Cobra driver's head; a large, gaping grille looking to cool off that massive engine; bodywork that kicks up over the wheel openings; minimal protection from the elements; and no extraneous trim. There was no finesse, and no poseurs were invited to be a part of the club.

And it was brutal. Four hundred horsepower. No proper top—just a makeshift canvas toupee that stretched between the windscreen and the targa bar. No side glass, just clear plastic curtains raised and lowered via zipper. No airbags. No antilock brakes. No door handles. No automatic transmission option. No air conditioning. And a side-exit exhaust that would burn your calves if you weren't paying attention when you got out of the car. Even by 1990s standards, this was primitive stuff. Only a nice stereo and leather seating seemed out of character.

And yet, you can see and appreciate the homage to the Cobra without being crushed by the weight of history and what's come before. Viper was built with Carroll Shelby's input; recall he was a Chrysler man in those days, thanks to his '80s dalliance with turbocharging K-cars and Omnis. The V-10 engine was engineered with help from Lamborghini, which was owned by Chrysler during the Viper's initial development.

1994 DODGE RAM

1994 DODGE RAM PICKUP

For years, Dodge's pickup line resided in a sort of nether region, selling far less than perpetual sales champs GMC/Chevrolet and Ford. Sure, Dodge's Cummins Turbodiesel-powered pickups had a cult following, but there was little else that drove truck buyers mad with desire.

And then the all-new 1994 Dodge Ram pickups appeared. In a time when trucks were becoming increasingly carlike, Dodge doubled down on the tough, macho vibe with a large gunsight grille and smaller, separate-appearing front fenders that looked like a combination of big rig and 1950s pickup, modernized. The fender lines continued into the doors, and a separate-fender vibe appeared on the bedsides to continue the rugged look.

Of course they were available in a million combinations: two- or four-wheel drive; standard- or extra-cab; short- or long-bed; V-6, V-8, and V-10 engines plus the inline-six Cummins turbodiesel; and a seemingly infinite number of trim levels, ranging from stripper work truck to Imperial-esque luxury. Sales quadrupled in three years, from 1993-'95, and suddenly Dodge's trucks were no longer sales figure also-rans. It was a styling motif that lasted a full quarter century, clear through the launch of the new-for-2019 Rams. It was so successful that Chrysler split off the Dodge truck division a decade ago now, renaming it Ram.