Something was in the water at Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge in the early 60's. Nothing else can explain the strange designs from that period.
One such vehicle is the '62 Dodge Dart (top pic). Only was produced one year, it was the last full-size Dodge Dart. However, with it's double headlights and strangely swooping body it seemed like two cars in one. It almost seems Virgil Exner-ish, but it doesn't actually seem cohesive enough.
Next down is a Dodge Lancer, which going from pictures seems to be basically a more attractive re-skin of the same design. Dart wagons looked like this but with the front from the top pic (all Dart wagons I could find images of were abandoned).
Last up is the 1960 Plymouth Valiant, which again uses a similar blobby bodystyle, but this time with a large, angry looking grille (most likely inspired by the 300 series).
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1960 and part of 1961 marked the end of the Virgil Exner era. He, at least, gave us all the beautiful 1957 Chrysler 300-C, and ushered in, almost singlehandedly, the tailfins. However, everything else after that was pretty strange! Tailfins, believe it or not, were actually marketed as "speed-stabilizers"! Maybe.
The era between 1961 and 1963 marked the time that Elwood P. Engle took over as the chief designer, after being hired away from Ford. Engle's main accomplishment while at Ford, was the graceful and elegant 1961 & 1962 Lincoln Continentals, the ones which incorporated very clean lines and quite a few of the "Bullet-Birds" Thunderbird styling cues.
Engle went on to shepherd great desginers like Milt Antonick (second-gen 'Cuda designer), Dave Cummins (XY2 and SuperSports originator, and one of the musclecar's and pony-car's main idea men), John Sampson, John Herlitz, Jerald Thorley, Irv Ritchie and Richard McAdams (Studio Chief for Plymouth) as well as many unnamed others who designed some of the most pleasing and elegant lines ever seen on musclecars of the mid-to-late Sixties, and even into the early to mid Seventies.
Unfortunately, the transition time between Exner's and Engle's realms had some "odd-mods" going on. Dodge-Chrysler-Plymouth lines also had an identity crisis during this time, too. Thinking there would be a demise of the "full-sized" 122"-126" wheelbase, they shifted to the "intermediate" sized cars, (and the accent was still on compacts, as Ford's Falcon was selling at quite a strong clip!). This approach did not sell well at D-C-P through 1961 to 1964, and for 1965, things got back to normal and sales flourished! The period from 1960 to 1963 was filled with desings not yet fully of Engle's reign. Once those were incorporated, Chrysler enjoyed some of its best years until mismanagement pushed them to the brink of collapse in the late Seventies and early Eighties. Ironic that those crappy K-Cars helped to pull them out of the fire! Looking back, it is sure easy to see that the K-series (including those amazingly popular "mini-vans") were just about "pure profit"! The mechanicals sure were NOT there! K's ushered in the era of "Disposa-Cars"!!!
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