Pete Kaczmarski
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Can a classic Chrysler take you home again? Three friends repeat the epic road trip of their youth to find out
Can a classic Chrysler take you home again? Three friends repeat the epic road trip of their youth to find out
by John L. Stein //
February 04, 2020
I was footloose and feeling free in a castoff 1961 Chrysler Newport convertible, the summer of 1977 slow-rolling past me like a magnificent, wheeling constellation. The Chrysler, 18 feet long and Alaskan White with a turquoise interior and 361-cubic-inch Golden Lion V-8 underhood, had been sitting on a side street in Santa Monica, California, with leaves under its tires and expired tags. It was 16 years old at the time—seven years my junior. Sold, for $365, to this young man with a plan.
For me, at least, the college years were the finest of times, with all the freedom of adulthood and scarcely any of the responsibility. And so, on that summer day four decades and more ago, I jump-started the Chrysler, drove it home and serviced it, renewed the tags, and concocted a road trip with my two best friends, William Metzelaar and Jim Graves. In those pre-GPS days, it was just you and the Rand McNally atlas. The one we had measured nearly two feet across, providing a bird’s-eye topographical view of the wondrous western states, from the sand washes of Arizona to the wind-shaped sandstone of Utah, and from the basalt of Colorado to the sparkling rivers of the Tetons. With three months of liberty and a big American convertible firing on all eight, we were on it like mice on Muenster.
The Kodachrome captures of the convertible and young men you see here are from this 1977 trip, a seven-state sojourn in that back-street Newport. Those who are now, er, tenured will appreciate the vigor and optimism of the time: longhairs in bell-bottoms, loose on the land; the Vietnam war at last over; small-town America still small-town America, bereft of Starbucks and Walmart pollution but offering instead corner markets, mom-and-pop motels, and drive-ins. We didn’t know it at the time, but the times, they were about to change.
After that journey in 1977, I kept the Chrysler through my senior year before selling it for $765, wistful, but knowing it had no place in life’s next chapter—whatever that would entail. It was a hard sell at the time; America was between gas crises. Only oddballs liked huge convertibles with 10-foot tail fins, and few knew or cared that the Newport was among designer Virgil Exner’s greatest works.
William, Jim, and I were certainly not alone in sensing that graduation represented a turning point in life, wherein spontaneity and frivolity are necessarily traded for a pay stub and a career. It was a nagging and hollow moment when I sold the Newport in 1978. In a double bind, I felt compelled to move forward but didn’t want to let the past go. So I kept our trip maps, cassettes, and photos—just not the car.
Evan Klein
His own odometer now rolled a bit, Stein set out to find another ’61 Newport to relive that long ago journey with his friends. You can’t go back, John—or can you?
Memories locked in dungeons have a way of escaping eventually, like a volcanic steam explosion when magma and aquifer meet. In the ensuing decades, I quietly but consistently hoped to find another ’61 Newport convertible—a rare animal since only 2135 were built.
My search switched from idle musings to a dedicated hunt several years ago when a cop friend agreed to run my old Newport’s license plate. It came up “No Record,” disappointingly, and since I hadn’t kept its VIN, that trail went cold instantly. I next joined the Walter P. Chrysler Club and placed a newsletter want ad seeking a ’61 Newport convertible or any information on the whereabouts of my old one. That likewise goose-egged. Periodic Craigslist and eBay searches turned up various 1961 and ’62 Chrysler four-door sedans and hardtops, but no unicorns.
And then, one Sunday morning last spring, like a gift from the car gods, my phone displayed an eBay email about the white ’61 Newport two-door hardtop seen here. The ad read, in part: “This car has been parked in my grandmother’s garage its entire life and has not been driven in 20 years. The vehicle currently does not run. You will need a tow truck.” While absorbing the information, I could scarcely believe it. An original one-family-ownership car, a holy grail for collectors. Fortunately, the grandson answered when I called. After some discussion, I suggested a price, he seconded it, and it was done. It was that easy.
Seeing the Alaskan White Newport was startling because it required jumping the chronological gap between 1978, the last time I’d seen my college car, and 2019. So many years and miles had zoomed beneath life’s wheels during that time—grad school, dating, career, moves, marriage, and kids, to name a few—that easing behind the wheel of what had become, for me at least, a beloved memory was pure fantasy meets reality.
Seeing four particular design elements again really got me excited. One was the canted headlights, used on only a few cars of the period such as the 1958–60 Lincoln, the 1959 Buick, and 1961–62 Chryslers. They were as unique an exterior feature as could be found in the day. Second were the ginormous canted tail fins, which began at the wing windows and extended fully rearward, representing the zenith of flight, so to speak, for Chrysler. (The next year, due to slumping sales that signaled the end of the space-age cars, they were gone, and the ’62s were nicknamed “plucked chickens.”) The third design feature was the elegant, Wurlitzer-like AstraDome array, a lit amphitheater for the oil-pressure, water-temperature, fuel, and amp gauges, plus the 120-mph speedometer. It was American automotive artistry.
Sorry there is about six more pages of article, pictures and readers comments so click on the link.
Can a classic Chrysler take you home again? Three friends repeat the epic road trip of their youth to find out
Can a classic Chrysler take you home again? Three friends repeat the epic road trip of their youth to find out
by John L. Stein //
February 04, 2020
I was footloose and feeling free in a castoff 1961 Chrysler Newport convertible, the summer of 1977 slow-rolling past me like a magnificent, wheeling constellation. The Chrysler, 18 feet long and Alaskan White with a turquoise interior and 361-cubic-inch Golden Lion V-8 underhood, had been sitting on a side street in Santa Monica, California, with leaves under its tires and expired tags. It was 16 years old at the time—seven years my junior. Sold, for $365, to this young man with a plan.
For me, at least, the college years were the finest of times, with all the freedom of adulthood and scarcely any of the responsibility. And so, on that summer day four decades and more ago, I jump-started the Chrysler, drove it home and serviced it, renewed the tags, and concocted a road trip with my two best friends, William Metzelaar and Jim Graves. In those pre-GPS days, it was just you and the Rand McNally atlas. The one we had measured nearly two feet across, providing a bird’s-eye topographical view of the wondrous western states, from the sand washes of Arizona to the wind-shaped sandstone of Utah, and from the basalt of Colorado to the sparkling rivers of the Tetons. With three months of liberty and a big American convertible firing on all eight, we were on it like mice on Muenster.
The Kodachrome captures of the convertible and young men you see here are from this 1977 trip, a seven-state sojourn in that back-street Newport. Those who are now, er, tenured will appreciate the vigor and optimism of the time: longhairs in bell-bottoms, loose on the land; the Vietnam war at last over; small-town America still small-town America, bereft of Starbucks and Walmart pollution but offering instead corner markets, mom-and-pop motels, and drive-ins. We didn’t know it at the time, but the times, they were about to change.
After that journey in 1977, I kept the Chrysler through my senior year before selling it for $765, wistful, but knowing it had no place in life’s next chapter—whatever that would entail. It was a hard sell at the time; America was between gas crises. Only oddballs liked huge convertibles with 10-foot tail fins, and few knew or cared that the Newport was among designer Virgil Exner’s greatest works.
William, Jim, and I were certainly not alone in sensing that graduation represented a turning point in life, wherein spontaneity and frivolity are necessarily traded for a pay stub and a career. It was a nagging and hollow moment when I sold the Newport in 1978. In a double bind, I felt compelled to move forward but didn’t want to let the past go. So I kept our trip maps, cassettes, and photos—just not the car.
Evan Klein
His own odometer now rolled a bit, Stein set out to find another ’61 Newport to relive that long ago journey with his friends. You can’t go back, John—or can you?
Memories locked in dungeons have a way of escaping eventually, like a volcanic steam explosion when magma and aquifer meet. In the ensuing decades, I quietly but consistently hoped to find another ’61 Newport convertible—a rare animal since only 2135 were built.
My search switched from idle musings to a dedicated hunt several years ago when a cop friend agreed to run my old Newport’s license plate. It came up “No Record,” disappointingly, and since I hadn’t kept its VIN, that trail went cold instantly. I next joined the Walter P. Chrysler Club and placed a newsletter want ad seeking a ’61 Newport convertible or any information on the whereabouts of my old one. That likewise goose-egged. Periodic Craigslist and eBay searches turned up various 1961 and ’62 Chrysler four-door sedans and hardtops, but no unicorns.
And then, one Sunday morning last spring, like a gift from the car gods, my phone displayed an eBay email about the white ’61 Newport two-door hardtop seen here. The ad read, in part: “This car has been parked in my grandmother’s garage its entire life and has not been driven in 20 years. The vehicle currently does not run. You will need a tow truck.” While absorbing the information, I could scarcely believe it. An original one-family-ownership car, a holy grail for collectors. Fortunately, the grandson answered when I called. After some discussion, I suggested a price, he seconded it, and it was done. It was that easy.
Seeing the Alaskan White Newport was startling because it required jumping the chronological gap between 1978, the last time I’d seen my college car, and 2019. So many years and miles had zoomed beneath life’s wheels during that time—grad school, dating, career, moves, marriage, and kids, to name a few—that easing behind the wheel of what had become, for me at least, a beloved memory was pure fantasy meets reality.
Seeing four particular design elements again really got me excited. One was the canted headlights, used on only a few cars of the period such as the 1958–60 Lincoln, the 1959 Buick, and 1961–62 Chryslers. They were as unique an exterior feature as could be found in the day. Second were the ginormous canted tail fins, which began at the wing windows and extended fully rearward, representing the zenith of flight, so to speak, for Chrysler. (The next year, due to slumping sales that signaled the end of the space-age cars, they were gone, and the ’62s were nicknamed “plucked chickens.”) The third design feature was the elegant, Wurlitzer-like AstraDome array, a lit amphitheater for the oil-pressure, water-temperature, fuel, and amp gauges, plus the 120-mph speedometer. It was American automotive artistry.
Sorry there is about six more pages of article, pictures and readers comments so click on the link.
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