1960 Valiant by Chrysler - Bump (or Was That A Hump) In the Road



Of all the automotive shapes of my early childhood, there wasn't any as memorable as the "Valiant by Chrysler" that the family in the duplex across the street from us had. If I thought that "a car" was a block long Cadillac or Buick imagine what I must have thought of something like our subject here. Their car was light blue. While mini me thought he could actually handle driving it, I was put off by it's unusual styling. That didn't mean that I didn't find its bulging flanks fascinating to look at. If only...

If only it didn't have a toilet seat festooned to its trunk lid. This unusual detail is called a "continental kit" and was meant to evoke "Great Gatsby" era cars with their ornate spare tire cases that flowed seamlessly into the overall design of the car. The entire effect was lost on me since I had no first person experience with such things and I've always felt that such styling frivolity, if anything, belonged on large luxury cars and not cars intended for the bourgeois. This thing made about as much sense to me as a mobile home with an ornate chandelier.

Then again, as with so many things in life, context. We have to understand that Chrysler sold these cars along side hoity toity Chrysler's and Imperial's. Again, for 1960, this was a "Valiant" and not yet a "Plymouth Valiant". With that in mind, the hump on the trunk was a styling doo-dad intended to gussie up the little car. Plymouth, incidentally, was never a fully independent division and was also lumped together in the same showroom as a loss leader; a "companion make" so to speak. So, instead of making a car more akin to the low cost Plymouth, Chrysler instead shot for the moon. Would not be the first nor last time a domestic automaker over thought how to make a peanut and jelly sandwich.   

It's hard to fathom now but up until 1959, Ford, GM and Chrysler made only one type of car, a big one, and they offered it various forms of trim. In 1959, in response to the growing popularity of  imports, which were tiny compared to leviathans Detroit was pushing out, to say nothing of the success that Rambler had with their small cars, GM introduced the first of what would be a quadrumvirate of sorts with their rear engine Corvair. In 1960, Ford went conventional with their Falcon that could best be described as a shrunken Galaxie. Meanwhile over at Chrysler, they went avant garde with their little Valiant here. While the Corvair and Falcon sold quite well, Chrysler's hump on the trunk became a literal bump in the road.  

Sales of the "Valiant by Chrysler" were so bad that Chrysler canceled plans for a separate Valiant division and began marketing the Valiant as a Plymouth in 1961. Which, again, made no sense given the car's pretentious, luxury car styling details. Would it have sold better as a Chrysler or Imperial? We'll never know.

 

The Valiant was such a cost drain for Chrysler that its poor sales also forced their hand in discontinuing their long-suffering DeSoto brand halfway through the 1961 model year. Subsequently, Chrysler reorganized into two succinct automobile divisions, Chrysler-Imperial-Plymouth and Dodge. Whereas prior to the Valiant debacle, the plan was for Chrysler to have up to six separate divisions.  

Plymouth changed little on the Valiant for 1961 but they pulled the spare time hump off the trunk for 1962. While it didn't do the design of the rear of the car any favors, sales up ticked slightly. A complete overhaul of Valiant for 1963 resulted in a car whose shape was far more conventional albeit forgettable looking.