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By the 1950s, the Big Three American automakers had taken notice of the popularity of smaller compact cars like the VW Beetle and the American Motors Rambler and started to develop their own. Chrysler’s Virgil Exner designed the first Valiant which originally had the internal name of Falcon, after a concept car Exner had designed. But just before it was to be introduced, the marketing people learned that Ford had registered the Falcon name for their new compact car.
The first-generation (1960-1962) Valiant was introduced as a 1960 model, not using the Plymouth name. In fact, using just the Valiant name, it was sold worldwide in countries including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, South America, Switzerland and others. Road and Track magazine considered Valiant to be “one of the best all-around domestic cars.”
The first-generation Valiant was not as extreme or radical as GM’s Chevrolet Corvair but more daring and controversial in styling than Ford’s Falcon, introduced about the same time. The Valiant came with a newly developed engine called the Slant-Six, which turned out to be one Chrysler’s best engines ever produced. The name came from the fact that the engine was tilted 30 degrees to the right to allow the hood line to be lower for styling purposes.
The Slant-Six had more power and better economy than the Ford or GM models and earned a reputation for being extremely dependable. Not used since the 1930s with the Airflow models, the Valiant platform was “unibody” construction, as compared with the body bolted to the frame. Also new was Chrysler’s torsion bar front suspension that was used until Chrysler started building front-wheel-drive cars many years later.
The more conventionally designed second generation (1963-1967) resulted in a 1963 sales increase of more than 50 percent to 225,056. The 1964 model only had minor changes, like a new horizontal-bars grille and different taillights. Introduced for 1964 was a new 180-horsepower 273-cubic-inch V8 engine that Chrysler would use until 2002.
About two year ago, Lafayette resident Ed Gonzales acquired this issue’s 1964 Plymouth Valiant convertible. The previous owner lived in Martinez and really loved it. It was in good shape with only 54,000 miles on it, and the paint and interior were near-perfect. He bought for it $7,000.
Gonzales powder-coated the rims and added white-wall tires, which were very popular when the car was new. He had relatively minor problems fixed, such as replacing the motor mounts and having the front control arms redone.
“I had to bypass the heater coil when I got it because it was leaking, but that’s pretty much it.”
This Valiant is powered by the famous 225 Slant-Six engine and is teamed up with Chrysler’s push-button, three-speed TorqueFlite automatic transmission. It was the last year for the push-button transmission. There are different theories as to why the push-button transmission was discontinued. One of the most believable was there was an effort to standardize the “PRNDL” gear indicator alignment for customers switching car makes, and the Federal Government demanded that alignment for the their very large fleets. This Valiant wasn’t Gonzales’ first choice.
“I was looking for a ’64 Corvair, which my dad had. I found one in Rio Vista, and I thought I had the deal made with the guy. That was on Monday. By Wednesday the guy goes silent. I never heard back from the guy. I was kind of bummed out, and that Saturday I jumped on Craigslist. I typed in ‘1964,’ and this car popped up. The owner had just got out of the hospital. It had been a family car for years, and they used it for taking the kids to parades and such. The owner had just listed it that Saturday morning. I saw it on Saturday and bought it on Sunday.
“The thing that caught me was the push-button transmission. And I had heard of Slant-Sixes before. In talking to guys at car shows that are into MoPar cars, they say that Slant-Six will go forever. But I felt bad buying it from the family. When I met with him on Saturday, he told me he couldn’t drive it anymore because of his physical condition.
We are at the dining room table talking about selling the car, and his wife comes out. She said, ‘Honey, are you sure you want to sell it?’ He said it was time and she started crying and she brought out pictures of him in the car, she even had a painting done of her dad and the grandkids in the car.”
Gonzales told the couple, “Any time you want to use it, just keep my number, and I will drop it off for a weekend.” But the owner insisted it needed to go to another family.
This is the first collector car Gonzales has owned. But he has the bug. “The next one,” he said, “will be a Nash Metropolitan.”
Have an interesting vehicle? Contact David Krumboltz at MOBopoly@yahoo.com. To view more photos of this and other issues’ vehicles or to read more of Dave’s columns, visit mercurynews.com/author/david-krumboltz.
