Paul Niedermeyer stopped by Indie Auto to share his current thinking about the downsizing of the 1962 Plymouth and Dodge. This is a response to a story we ran almost two years ago entitled, “Did a rumor cause the downsized 1962 Plymouth and Dodge?”
I feel somewhat foolish for not connecting the dots earlier, but now it’s overwhelmingly obvious to me: What William C. Newberg heard at the garden party (or golf course) in the summer of 1959 was not about the ’62 Chevy being downsized, but of course that it was the 1961 Chevrolet that would be “downsized,” which of course it was, along with all the full-size General Motors cars. It wasn’t exactly a radical downsizing, but all the big GM cars got new bodies which did lose some length, width and weight. Chevy made a point of it in their advertising for the ’61s, calling them “Parkable Size!”
This is so overwhelmingly obvious. Why did Newberg think it referred to the ’62s? Either he heard/got it wrong, or maybe he just assumed that even if the model year hadn’t actually been spoken by Cole or whoever the source was. It makes zero sense of the GM source to have said anything about the ’62s, since they were just going to be a quite minor refresh of the ’61s. And it being about the Chevy II is utterly out of the question, as it wouldn’t be even contemplated until very late in 1959.
Given that the photos dated July 1959 all still show the large S-Series cars, and the ones dated February 1960 clearly show the downsized Dodge and Plymouth, the timeline is quite logical and obvious.
The rumor that triggered this would have almost certainly happened in the late summer of 1959. As to whether the rumor was the sole cause of this abrupt change, we will probably never know unless we can get access to Chrysler’s board minutes or such. My guess is still that the rumor was one factor, that there was already serious concern about the size and cost of building these large and extravagant new S-Series cars given Chrysler’s financial weakness as well as the massive decline in large car market share starting in 1958, and which continue unchecked until 1963 and 1964, before continuing their terminal decline.
As stated before I cannot accept the notion that Newberg heard this on the weekend and came in on Monday ordered the downsizing without either considerable previous thinking and planning for alternatives to committing to the whole S-Series development and production. It’s just too far out there. And as to first-hand accounts from the stylists, let’s keep in mind that major program decision were never made by the stylists; their job was to come up with designs for a new vehicle program whose basic parameters had been largely/totally determined. So it’s not surprising that this downsizing decision appeared to them to come out of nowhere; that’s just how it’s done, realistically.
So if the decision to downsize Plymouth and Dodge as made in August or September 1959, with very clear size/width parameters, then the basic program was already set, by the planners and engineers. So yes, it’s not surprising that the stylists felt ambushed after having created a full line of S-Series cars. And of course it’s only logical that they were unhappy about having to do this, as large cars inevitably tend to look “better” than smaller ones. And given the time table and the investment in the S-Series cars’ styling, it also made sense to utilize key aspects of their design for the smaller cars, although realistically, the changes were not inconsiderable.
So just how instrumental the leaked info about the ’61 Chevy was in Chrysler making this monumental decision, we’ll almost certainly never know unless documents from the time exist and can be accessed. But my thinking is that there was already serious discomfort with the S-Series, which had been undertaken before the collapse of the big car market. And that alternatives were already being considered, conceptually. And that the work in creating the full-unibody Valiant created a very real option, to develop another version in a somewhat larger scale, something that was not going to work for the S-Series/existing large Chrysler platform.
So nothing major has changed in my mind, except that I can more fully embrace the reality of the garden party “leak” given that it refers to a somewhat smaller Chevy due in ’61, and that leak almost certainly played some roll in the downsizing decision, even if it was just to strengthen the argument for ditching the S-series.
— Paul Niedermeyer
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcaradvertising.com: Plymouth (1962)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Chevrolet (1961); Dodge (1962); Plymouth (1961)
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Okay, I accept this timeline account as realistic and the most probable. The only 1963 car that vaguely resembles the “S”-car designs and clays are the 1963-1964 Chryslers which were unveiled in late 1962. The big Dodge for 1963, the “880”, was a “plucked-chicken” 1962 Chrysler Newport. I maybe a voice of one and only one, but I think the downsized Dodges and Plymouths of 1962, an exciting design. After all, Ward Cleaver drove one !
I enjoy reading Indieauto because it is based on data and verifiable sources of accurate information. Yet this thing about one Chrysler executive over-hearing someone high up in GM downsizing a whole line of cars and then, singled-handedly, running in to suddenly downsize Chrysler’s lower-priced line reeks of red herring.
Much has been written about the trend in the late 50s cars were getting excessive so the market was ready for 1960s intermediates and that’s what was rolled out. I get the impression Chrysler was trying to one-up the competition by bringing out most of the Dodge and Plymouth line much smaller but still offering roominess with more realistic proportions. However, as Mr. Niedermeyer pointed out, we will not know if that was the plan unless we have access to the board minutes and such.
In the end, it wasn’t what the mass market wanted and sales showed it. On a side note, it certainly didn’t help that Exner’s styling was a quirky precursor to Captain Kirk’s Starship Enterprise.
So in light of the misstep Chrysler executives, again my presumption, wanted to save face so they blamed an opportunistic exec who was canned for personally profitable dealings with suppliers.
Putting all the blame on the guy who can’t defend himself is hard to pin down which is what makes red-herring tactics effective.
Bill, if you haven’t seen Indie Auto’s take on the 1962 downsized Dodge and Plymouth, go here. It’s probably getting time for an update. Thus far I’m not finding Niedermeyer’s new hypothesis more plausible than others I’ve discussed, but I want to do another round of research before saying much more.
This was a really interesting time period. Lots of churn was occurring — which made it harder to predict the direction of the U.S. auto industry.
Agree, to figure out the truth more digging is needed, without it a Machiavellian summation makes sense. My goal was to call out the elephant in the room to see if maybe that would redirect research in a new direction rather than discussing how we can make a “garden party” theory more plausible.