1978 Plymouth Volaré

Volare, oh oh! Cantare, oh oh oh oh! - Dean Martin

I've been looking for a still-running Volaré since I started this blog. And on this surprisingly summer-like day in May, jackpot!

In the 1970s, Detroit seemed to stagger from disaster to another, and the biggest for deeply-troubled Chrysler was the long-awaited replacement for its highly-popular and durable A-body models, which included the Dodge Dart and Plymouth Valiant and Duster.

From curbsideclassic.com: "Chrysler must have known that replacing the A-team successfully would be a mission-critical task. Boy, did they ever flub it. Their compacts went from being the most durable to the most-recalled in history, up to that time; GM’s X-bodies soon stole that title. It was 1957 all over again, but worse. At least Chrysler had the foresight to call them “F-Bodies”. From an A to an F, without any intermediate stops; what a fail.

Beta-testing new cars on a mass scale is just not a good idea. Build quality was all-round crappy, at best. It went downhill from there: five mandatory recalls covering a variety of ills with suspension, ignition, fuel system, brakes, steering and body. The one that had the highest visibility (literally) was pre-mature rusting of the front fenders. All (Plymouth Volarés and Dodge Aspens) had fenders inspected, removed, replaced and/or galvanized, and repainted to the tune of $109 million. That was serious bucks to Chrysler then, especially since the whole mothership was rusting away.

Lee Iacocca had this to say: “The Dart and Valiant ran forever, and they should never have been dropped. Instead they were replaced by cars that often started to come apart after only a year or two. When these cars first came out, they were still in the development phase. Looking back over the past twenty years or so, I can’t think of any cars that caused more disappointment among customers than the Aspen and the Volaré”. Honest, but easy for him to say, since he wasn’t responsible."

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