2025 Greenwood Car Show: Chrysler-Dodge-Plymouth

Perfect weather for this year's Greenwood car show, and it was bigger than ever! Let's kick it off with my favorites: Chrysler-Dodge-Plymouth.

 

For the fourth and last year of the Dodge Super Bee, 1971, it was made an option on the Charger; sort of a budget Charger R/T. A very rare car.

  

 

I've written about the 1966 Plymouth Satellite pictured above as far back as the 2018 show. I'm sure most people don't realize that this plain-looking car is one of the show's most valuable entries. The 426 hemi was available only from 1966 to 1971, and the 1966 edition is considered the best. This car is certainly worth six figures.

Pictured below the hemi in yellow is a 1967 Plymouth GTX. The GTX was a new premium edition of the same car as the Satellite, but standard with the 440 "Super Commando" V-8 rated at 375 hp. You could order an even more powerful 426 hemi in the GTX - for about $600 more than the 440!

  

 

Even this little 1966 Plymouth Barracuda came with a V-8. In this case the 273.

 

 

In 1970 the Dart was Dodge's cheapest car. But like everything else then, you could option it out with a pretty ferocious engine. In the case of this Dart GT, a 340 V-8 rated at 275 hp.

 

Between 1951 and 1958, full-size Chrysler products were equipped with the company's original hemi-head engines. These are so popular today that even very ordinary DeSoto sedans are being restored. This 1956 Fireflight coupe has the 331 hemi with dual-quad carbs rated at 255 hp.

 

 

 

Time was when cab over engine trucks like this were seldom seen outside of junkyards. But trucks like this 1955 Dodge COE K-Series are starting to show up at a lot of car shows. They're just cool.

 

I love the old business coupes, like this 1950 Dodge. That's an awful lot of car for a single bench seat.

 

 

This 1935 Chrysler Airflow was ahead of its time. But they didn't sell many. The public thought it was just too weird.

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1950 Dodge Wayfarer

Believe it or not, there used to be a market for full-size cars with only one row of seats. Traveling salesman bought them. This was probably the cheapest car you could buy from the Big 3 automakers. You might call it The Willy Loman Special, except that Death of a Salesman specifically mentions Willy driving a Studebaker.

This car had Chrysler's Fluid Drive. This was a hydraulic fluid coupling placed between the engine and an otherwise totally conventional manual clutch and transmission. From a practical standpoint, this meant that if you were stuck in traffic, you could just put it in second gear and drive it like an automatic.

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1969 Dodge Coronet 440

I doubt that whoever bought this car new thought of it as a future classic, but pretty much anything built by Chrysler between 1965 and 1970 is now a collectable. The model number '440' does not mean that this car was sold with Chrysler's biggest engine - there was also a 'Coronet 500'. Most of these were sold with the 318 V8 and it could be bought with the 383.

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1984 Chrysler LeBaron convertible

In 1981, you couldn't buy an American convertible. Chrysler brought back the ragtop in 1982, and GM and Ford quickly followed. These cars were unfortunately not designed and built as convertibles. They were instead finished coupes that were then sent to third-party companies who cut the tops off and added a few pieces of metal to strengthen the frames. So cars like the LeBaron pictured here as well as the Ford Mustang and Buick Rivera convertibles were quite expensive and not very durable. To Chrysler's credit, the next generation LeBaron introduced in 1987 was factory-built as a convertible. 

I've certainly never before seen one of these with an aftermarket "continental kit" on the tail.

 

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1984 Chrysler Town & Country Station Wagon

Some things get better with age. Chrysler's Town and Country models of the 1940s, cars with beautiful wood bodies, are highly-desired collectibles. On the other hand, cars with fake wood paneling made out of plastic and vinyl? These are not cars that turn heads; at least not in a good way. This car wasn't attractive when new, and now that time has had its way with it, well, the results speak for themselves.

In the 80s, Chrysler attempted to gaslight the public into believing that it's K-car platform could be adapted to pretty much anything. For example, the goofy-looking Imperial of 1989, with a limousine body grafted onto a too-small front-drive platform.

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1925 Chrysler B70

The oldest car I've seen on the street in Seattle, and the oldest ever featured on this site. This car allegedly has a top speed of 70 mph, but I wouldn't test it.

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1986 Chrysler LeBaron

In 1974, Chrysler made an Imperial LeBaron that weighed two and half tons and returned single-digit gas mileage. Times change. The K-car, introduced in 1982, is said to have saved Chrysler. There was a lot right about those cars, and a lot wrong too.

This LeBaron weighs half as much as a '74 Imperial. I guess the adorable thing about it is the way Chrysler tried to retain the styling cues of a big luxury car on a tiny compact. The upright grill with hood ornament. The padded half-roof. Rest in peace, Lee Iacocca.

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