Reader James E. Duvall offered a thoughtful take on our 1966-67 Chrysler B-Body story that deserves more prominence as a stand-alone letter.
While I believe the Elwood Engel’s styling department was on-track and that Lynn Townsend worked out Chrysler’s accounting, real estate, branding and corporate issues after 1962, Townsend NEVER solved the Chrysler corporate warfare between the company’s divisions with their marketing and product positioning. Chrysler’s ladder should have always started with Plymouth, then Dodge, then DeSoto, then Chrysler and then Imperial. I don’t think K. T. Keller had this interdivisional warfare.
While I think the dealer-brand realignment should have been done for the 1957 model year, with DeSoto becoming a sub-brand of Chrysler, i.e. a one-or-two model DeSoto and a two-model Chrysler (Windsor and New Yorker only), by 1960 the war between Plymouth and Dodge was openly destructive to both brands even though DeSoto was a goner! While the 1960-1961 full-size Plymouths were absolutely bizarre in their styling, the handsome 1960 Dodges were then joined the Plymouths for 1961 for styling that retained few virtues and more weirdness.
Frankly, while the 1963 Plymouths and Dodges were mildly cleaned up, the Plymouth more so than the unfortunate Dodges with another bizarre variation of the 1962 front end, Engle finally got things right in 1964 for both the Plymouth and the Dodge. The 1965 Chrysler full-size line up was fully set right and simply carrying the Belvedere/Satellite and the Coronet intermediate boxes from 1964 into 1965 was not a flawed decision, in my opinion.
Chrysler was NOT General Motors or Ford, and was not in a position to heavily restyle everything in the product line for 1965. Even the angling-up for the intermediate Plymouths and Dodges for 1966 and 1967 were tasteful and much nicer than the Ford Fairlane and Mercury Comet/Cyclone. If I did not want a G.M. intermediate in 1966-1967 (Chevelle, Tempest/LeMans/G.T.O., Buick Special/Skylark, or Oldsmobile F-85/Cutlass), the best choices were the Belvedere/Satellite and the Dodge Coronet and Charger.
— James E. Duvall
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Not the conventional view, but my opinion is that Chrysler should not have removed Plymouth from the Dodge dealer network. The competition stemmed from Dodge dealers still wanting a low priced car to sell against Chevrolet and Ford, which led to the 1960 Dart line. Furthermore I think Chrysler would have been better positioned for the 1960s and 70s if it could have concentrated its marketing for compact and intermediate cars on a single line rather than diluting it between Plymouth and Dodge, which it would have been in a position to do had Dodge dealers continued to carry the Plymouth line.
But by the time Townsend arrived the damage had already been done. I doubt he could have reversed course as that would have been very unpopular with C-P dealers.
Chrysler Corporation’s problems with its divisions were rooted in its history and structure. The purchase of Dodge in 1928 had vaulted Chrysler Corporation into the ranks of the Big Three. Dodge had been in existence for a decade before Walter P. Chrysler produced the first car to bear his name. Dodge production facilities were crucial to Chrysler’s future growth (particularly during the early years of the Great Depression). Most Chrysler Corporation top executives before Lynn Townsend had come up through the Dodge Division.
As a result, the division wielded an inordinate amount of power in corporate politics.
But the corporation’s most important division from an organizational standpoint – Dodge – was not the most important from the sales standpoint. Plymouth was the corporation’s best-selling brand. It was one of the “Low-Price Three,” and had regularly held down third place, behind Chevrolet and Ford. During the 1940 model year, Plymouth almost knocked Ford out of second place.
Aggravating the situation was the decision by Walter P. Chrysler to give all three dealer networks – Dodge, DeSoto and Chrysler – a Plymouth franchise during the early 1930s. That greatly increased Plymouth’s retail footprint, but also meant that at both the dealer and corporate level, it was treated as a “companion make” compared to its corporate brethren.
Dodge Division’s influence with the corporation resulted in head-scratching decisions like the 1960 Dart, which was a direct competitor to the Plymouth. But Dodge dealers were furious when corporate management took away their Plymouth franchise for 1960, and they had enough influence within the corporation to demand – and receive – a direct replacement in the form of the Dart.
In a perfect world, Walter P. Chrysler would not have created Plymouth. Instead, he would have expanded the Dodge range into the low-price field. Dodge trucks would have competed with Chevrolet and Ford trucks. This would have given DeSoto and Chrysler more room to grow in the medium-price field.
For all of his later mistakes, Townsend initially did realize that there was too much competition between Plymouth and Dodge. The first Charger, for example, was given to Dodge as a compensation for being denied a version of the Barracuda. Townsend was determined to reserve the less expensive Barracuda for Plymouth. By the end of the 1960s, it appears as though Townsend had given up trying to enforce this separation. He was hardly alone in this regard – from 1971 through 1973, Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac all received lightly changed versions of the Chevrolet Nova, and the 1975 Buick Skyhawk and Oldsmobile Starfire were badge-engineered versions of the Chevrolet Monza.
Remember in this era the car brand name was an important selling point. “Ask the man who owns one” would be relevant in any auto company’s ads. How many times in the 50s would a car salesman say “for only $10 a month more, I can move you up to a Dodge”?