San Francisco Street Sighting - 1963 Plymouth Valiant V-200

This week I've had an informal theme of 1960s Plymouth convertibles, but so far it's been the big Fury on display. Here's something a little smaller.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1962 Plymouth Valiant

I love Bernal Heights for car spotting. It's a gold mine for old and unusual vehicles, most of which are daily drivers with various stages of patina. Here we have a 1962 Plymouth Valiant sedan. The Valiant was introduced in 1960 as its own brand, sporting a radically styled body and a new slant-six engine. It competed with the Ford Falcon and GM's compacts, intended to provide large car space without the large car dimensions and mileage. The separate brand identity only lasted one year before it was folded into the Plymouth lineup, but the Valiant built a reputation for reliability and toughness.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1973 Plymouth Valiant Scamp

For a while now, one of my guilty pleasures in the automotive world has been certain iterations of the two-door Dodge Dart and Plymouth Valiant. That's right, I'm a sucker for the hardtop coupe (Demon/Dart Sport and Duster) and the two-door sedan (Dart Swinger and Valiant Scamp). The basic body design of both cars is simple and clean without being completely boring. And oddly enough, I've always been a big fan of the Swinger and Scamp's silly rear bumper design which incorporates the car's taillights. Most cars from this era that tried this design motif failed to pull it off adequately, but I think it works on this car. And in the pre-SUV era of the 1970s, I suppose it made sense to have lights mounted that low because most people drove cars that were all roughly the same height or lower.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1966 Plymouth Valiant V-200

I generally have several biases when it comes to selecting which cars are notable enough for inclusion on California Streets. One of these is a general resistance toward Dodge Darts and Plymouth Valiants. Why? The short answer is, they're kind of boring. This is where some readers will point out that I feature a lot of Ford Falcons (and Falcon-based cars like the Mercury Comet) simply because I like them. Mind you, the Dart/Valiant and Falcon/Comet were direct competitors in the cheap, practical compact-midsize segment in their day. The Dart and Valiant also soldiered on long after the Falcon had bloated into a base-model Torino and subsequently been replaced, by the Maverick and to a lesser extent, the Pinto (the latter of which may also have served as a replacement for the relatively unpopular imported English Fords such the Cortina). Basic platforms, tried-and-true powertrains and a simple utilitarianism were the Valiant's saving grace. It was a plain car, but it worked. The slant six would crank up in the morning and the automatic tranny would keep shifting. A V8 engine was available for those who felt they needed more power (honestly, the V8 badge was the coolest detail of this generation in my opinion).

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1968 Plymouth Valiant Signet

In my last feature I commented that the Coke-bottle shape of the 1967 Plymouth Barracuda made the Valiant look on which it was based look like the box the Barracuda came in. After looking at this 1968 Valiant Signet two-door sedan, see if you don't agree somewhat. Now don't get me wrong, I like a lot of late-sixties Chrysler products including several model years of the Plymouth Valiant and Dodge Dart twins. But any way you slice them, they are pretty straightforward cars. These were marketed as "senior compacts", smaller and cheaper than other Mopar offerings and also generally plainer to look at with square bodies and relatively little chrome ornamentation, but better equipped and more powerful than a basic economy car like a VW Beetle. Note the "fanned-out" effect on the taillights and the defiant dogleg crease on the lower body that dare to add some character to an otherwise conservative, blocky car. All Valiants up until 1964 were built with a slant-six engine, then the 273 ci V8 was offered as an option. Then, in 1968, the now-venerable 318 V8 joined the Valiant lineup for the first time.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1962 Plymouth Valiant

An awful lot of older cars are super easy to differentiate between model years because they have defining details that set them apart. No one will ever mistake a 1957 Chevy for a '55, right? Well, that's too easy. Everyone knows what a '57 Chevy looks like.
Do you know what a 1962 Plymouth Valiant looks like? How does it differ from a '60 or '61? That's a good question. Let's find out, shall we?