1964 Plymouth Valiant - Defiant

Starting in 1960, GM, Ford and Chrysler began building small cars to compete with  import makes and models and AMC's fairly successful lineup of smaller cars. Chrysler even went so far as to create a new make of small cars they called "Valiant by Chrysler". However, the venture lasted only one year due to designs that were either too avante-garde or just too weird for most people's taste. Certainly not wanting to abandon the burbling smaller car market, Chrysler folded Valiant into Plymouth starting in 1961; easy enough to do too considering Valiant's were sold along Chrysler's and Plymouth's in the same showrooms in 1960. For 1963, Chrysler massaged out most of Valiant's inherent strangeness and came up with a benign if dorky looking little car. Our subject is a 1964 model.

Where the 1960-1962 Valiant's were obnoxiously expressive, the redesigned cars for 1963 were so bland it was as if the designers were defiant in their steadfast execution of a corporate edict to tone things down. The washed out yellow paint on our subject, black biscuits for tires and faceless, drab wheel covers certainly don't help matters either. At least it has vestigial tail fins but those would be sanded down come Valiant's total redesign to a boxy and even more generic model come 1967.

Chrysler's mid year introduction of an optional 273 cubic inch V-8 engine might have made our subject here an interesting little sleeper but, alas, she has but a 170 cubic inch in line "slant six" making all of 101 horsepower and 155 pounds of torque. Those are SAE gross ratings too so real world numbers are even less. If cars today are only considered amply powered if they can go from zero to sixty in seven seconds or less, imagine one that struggled to hit sixty in more than twice that time if not more. That's not to discount the engineering marvel that was Chrysler's first overhead valve six cylinder engine canted (or slanted) 30 degrees so it could fit under Valiant's hood, but still, 101 horsepower even in the early to mid 1960's was not a lot of go.

Our subject can't win for trying either. It's another example of how most sedan based convertibles don't work aesthetically top up or down. And that's to say nothing of how the chopped top makes the car shake and rattle on the road, the added weight of additional bracing impedes the performance of an already under-powered car and the swirling wind with the top down beats the daylights out of driver and passenger(s). Like I've said time and time again, people like the idea of a convertible but in reality they make miserable daily drivers and are best as weekend cars or even better, as rentals. 

Being the son of "Greatest Generation" parents, I was reared on the "Bigger is Better" axiom that "The Big Three" took to the bank for the better part of twenty years after World War II. Coming of driving age during the height of what is referred to as "The Malaise Era" as well, I looked at small cars with contempt - not hard to do given what they looked like back then regardless of the fact they were, relatively speaking, actually pretty good cars. 

But they weren't good enough. With questionable designs and even worse execution, it's not hard to see why the Japanese  have dominated small cars sales in the United States for the last sixty years. Also no wonder that they have done so well in the midsize market. You could argue that today, in general, American cars are the equal or better of imports and that's great and all but they've done so just as consumer tastes have shifted to "do it all and do everything well" cross over sport utility vehicles. A vehicle segment that continues to boom and is also dominated by imports. 

2019 Honda Accord - To CVT or Not To CVT...THAT Is The Question

When I was between jobs I'd taken a part time job working for a company that works with new car dealerships to move cars around. I'd be called to shuttle cars around at a dealership as well as between dealerships and even going to auction to pick up for sale what the dealership bought for later sale. For a car guy like me, the fringe benefit was the considerable wheel time with brand new cars. Fun. Well, that actually got old working exclusively with one dealership and for the most part, save for the time I went to the auction, one line of cars. In my case that was Honda's.

After several weeks schlepping Honda CR-V's, HR-V's, Accords, Civics and Ridegelines (I never got to drive a Pilot or Odyssey although I'm sure they ride and handle very similar to a Ridgeline), I have come to two conclusions. First, if you drive older vehicles like I do, you're missing out on a lot. Cars today, even the biggish Honda Ridgeline that I drove, are magnificent. Overall they perform at levels that would have been considered "sports car like" ten years ago not to mention twenty years ago. However, and I knew this beforehand but now I'm 100% convinced, my feelings about "constant velocity transmissions", or what are referred to as "CVT's" has been cemented; they are the bane of the modern, mostly Japanese, automobile. And depending on the application, Honda's turbocharged 1.5 liter 4 cylinder engine is simply over matched by just about everything they drop it into save for a Civic with a six speed manual.

That's a shame too considering how splendid most other aspects of the Hondas I drove where. Oh, and styling. Nothing Honda makes stirs my drink but that's beside the point. Folks who drive Honda's aren't buying them for their flashy looks. Anyway, oye, those damn CVT's.

I'd find it hard to believe that even the most clueless of drivers would not notice that some thing's askew with, for instance, a Honda Accord "EX-L" with a CV-T. The EX-L I drove yesterday was loaded to the front grill with every modern contraption available today on a car. Adaptive cruise control, lane change monitoring, emergency braking, 700 air bags and who knows what else. The one thing it wasn't equipped with was the optional 2.0 liter turbo engine making 252 horsepower and backed up with a god's green, earth, gear driven, 10 speed automatic. Funny how when it comes down to a vehicle that is supposed to be performance orientated they use a conventional transmission. And one with 10 forward gears. However, Honda uses a CVT in a 306 horsepower version of their venerable Civic Si so I believe Honda is eventually going to use CVT's across their entire lineup.

So, what is a CVT? Well, rather than bore you with a whole bunch of blah-bitty blah-bitty about pulley's and ratios and how CVT's differ from conventional transmissions with gears and fixed ratios, and you can read more about the damn things here, the idea behind a CVT is that they're supposed to enable a vehicle's engine to operate at peak efficiency all the time. Ok. I get that. But that comes at the expense of overall drivability. Especially in a heavy car that doesn't have enough motor; like the new Accord with the turbo 1.5.

For starters, you'd think a modern car with allegedly 192 horsepower would move off the line with some sense of urgency. Nope. Not an Accord with the 1.5 turbo and a CVT. It's almost as if the car's power train is distracted. "Oh, sorry. You want to move? Ummm, ok. Let's see...revs have to hit 3,000 rpm before we have enough torque to really go and...oh, here you go". That unresponsiveness is also accompanied by an engine drone, more like a moan, that if you didn't know better, makes the car sound and feel as though there's something wrong with the car.

There's an "S" and an "L" selection available on the shifter, I assumed they were for "sport" and "low" but putting the shifter in "S", for instance, while it did help improve "pick up" or what is referred to as "step in", RPM's jumped up more than 1,000 no matter how fast I drove the car. So much for efficiency. To get the performance you'd want your wallet gets slapped. This is progress?

On the open interstate and with the little 1.5 spinning freely, a stab of the gas does give you a pleasant push and the car passes eagerly but there's no mistaking the car for a Camaro SS - not that the Accord is supposed to be that but you get my point. As far as I'm concerned it's the mid 1970's all over again with still bloated hulks were saddled with performance robbing catalytic converters, low compression, smog gear saddled engines and microscopic axle ratios. Buyers back then had to be sold on "slow" being a good thing since a slow car was supposed to be good on gas.

Now, a car with a CVT with a really powerful engine, like the Nissan Altima I drove last Christmas, is a different story. That Altima moved with all the verve you'd expect out of a car with an absurdly good power to weight ratio and I was surprised to learn the car had a CVT. No surprise since Nissan finagled that CVT in the V-6 Altima to perform like a gear driven transmission. The CVT was seamless however, that overpowered red lump got only about 24 miles per gallon. Big deal. I have to ask again why so much time and effort is spent on CVT's in the first place. Especially with these crazy, eight, nine and ten speed automatics available today that really deliver on two attributes that years ago were mutually exclusive; performance and economy.

Mercifully, the Big Three for the most part have eschewed the use of CVT's. Ford used a CVT on their "Five Hundred" they peddled years ago, Jeep used one on older Compass' and Patriot's. Saturn used one has well on a smattering of makes and models. Domestics with CVT's have been (mostly) "captive" or rebadged imports.

I find that amazing seeing how for years now The Big Three have looked to Asia and Europe for hand holding on how to design, engineer and build automobiles. That's not a bad thing either but you'd think that CVT's would be coming to a domestic automobile near you in the very near future. But...there appears to be no sign of that. And that's a good thing as well.

As far as foreign makes and models go, well...to CVT or Not To CVT...THAT Is The Question. And I'll pass.

1976 Dodge Charger - Would a Cordoba By Any Other Name Smell As Sweet?

 

The Chrysler Corporation certainly took their time responding to the personal luxury car juggernaut in the 1970's, an epoch that evolved out of the muscle car fad of the 1960's. Like a sophomore coming late to a keg stand, when they finally arrived in 1975 they came with four personal luxury cars simultaneously. All of them following General Motor's recipe of a long hood and short decked automobile built on a mid size chassis; Chrysler using their ancient but rugged mid size "B body"  chassis that could trace its roots back to Chrysler's ill fated downsizing of 1962. Chrysler, the division, had the most popular Chrysler personal luxury car with their Cordoba. A lot of the Cordoba's sales success was that it was hawked magnificently in a series of TV commercials by a pre "Fantasy Island" Ricardo Montalban. 

 



 

Across the showroom floor in Chrysler-Plymouth dealerships, Plymouth recycled their "Fury" moniker this time gluing it to a rather handsome hard top. They even peddled, for 1975 only, a "Road Runner" version with a "heavy duty" suspension and a standard 318 cubic inch V-8 with a two barrel carburetor. Somewhat more powerful engines were available than the 135 horsepower 318 but none them came anywhere near the fire breathing MOPAR powerhouses of even just five years prior. By the way, love the hardtop on this car and yes, those rear quarter windows rolled up and down. The 1975 Plymouth Fury was also available as an ungainly looking four door sedan. Oh, and starting in 1975, buyers were asked to not confuse the mid size Fury with the full sized and hold the "d", "Gran Fury".

 

 

Stand alone "middle child" Dodge got two personal cars for 1975. There was the Coronet coupe (above) that not only looked a lot like Plymouth's Fury coupe, the four door version was all but indistinguishable as well from Fury four door sedan. The big difference between the Coronet and Fury lines for 1975 was that Dodge also built a Coronet station wagon. 

 



 Curiously, Dodge also got a personal luxury car that sure looked like a Chrysler Cordoba. Well, for all intents in purposes, it was a Cordoba with save for a different front grill, tail lights and interior door panels. Some versions even had the Dodge trident logo on the steering wheel. To add insult to injury Dodge stooped so low as to call it "Charger". The pain. Oh, the pain. Would a Cordoba by any other name smell as sweet?

 

 

To say the 1975 Dodge Charger was not an attractive automobile is to say the say thing about the Chrysler Cordoba; and you know how I feel about the Cordoba. However, as they say, "what's in a name?" Well, in most cases it means nothing but in the case of Chrysler's four personal luxury cars in 1975, their 1975 Cordoba/Charger (and Coronet/Fury)  was the embodiment of badge engineering gone completely and utterly wrong. In comparison, General Motor's personal luxury cars had a familial resemblance but they were all distinctively different automobiles.

 

 

 

Legend has it that Richard Petty hated the new Charger so much he refused to drive it in NASCAR races. Instead, he drove a 1972 based Charger until, per NASCAR's provincial rules allowing discontinued makes and models to be raced for only three years after its body style is discontinued, 1978. Dodge, perhaps taking a note from "The King", redesigned what was the Charger for 1978 and rechristened it with another famed MOPAR moniker, "Magnum". Mattered little to Mr. Petty. He disliked that car as well and in 1978 switched allegiances to Pontiac and their new "Grand Prix". Taste, as always being like armpits and if nothing, being on the taste buds of the beholder.

 

 

Unfortunately, while 60% of Chrysler sales in 1975 were purportedly Cordoba's, and that success could be directly tied to marketing, Chrysler's quadruplicate of personal luxury cars did little to stave off the company's financial ruin and eventual near death. Cordoba sales dropped precipitously in 1976 and 1977 before a fairly extensive redesign of the original in 1978 that did away with a lot of what made the 1975 model distinctive. Again, that mattered little since they had issues larger than what a phalanx of niche targeted two door sedans could possibly remedy.

 

 

No doubt Chrysler's shameless badge jobs on these cars were due to their being strapped for cash after nearly two decades of bad decisions, horrible quality, bad timing and bad luck. They hardly had the resources to design, engineer and tool up to produce four distinctively different automobiles for their myriad divisions like GM was able to do.