CarBrandLogos archive · Plymouth · 1960

PlymouthValiant

Chrysler's compact answer to Detroit's small-car panic, and it outlasted the panic.

Photo: Charles01 · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Plymouth history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Plymouth Valiant, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Detroit spent the late 1950s watching imported small cars take sales it had assumed were permanent. All three American manufacturers responded for 1960, and Chrysler's response was the Valiant, launched initially as a separate make before being folded into the Plymouth range.

'64 Plymouth Valiant Convertible · Bull-Doser · Public domain

Design and engineering

It was the most technically interesting of the three domestic compacts. It used unibody construction, torsion-bar front suspension, and above all the new Slant Six engine, canted over to lower the bonnet line and built with a robustness that made it one of the most durable engines the American industry ever produced. Virgil Exner's styling was less universally admired, being fussier and more mannered than the plain Falcon it competed against.

1962-1963 Chrysler Valiant sedan · OSX · Public domain

In production

What the Valiant became was Chrysler's global workhorse. The platform underpinned the Barracuda, spread through Australia, South Africa, Mexico and Argentina as the Chrysler Valiant, and stayed in production in the United States until 1976, long after the compact-car scare that produced it had passed. Its reputation rests on the Slant Six's refusal to die, and on a chassis that took a great deal of abuse without complaint. The Volare replaced it, less successfully.

1962 Chrysler Valiant photo-2 · AlfvanBeem · CC0

At a glance