WHY DIDINT ENGINEERS MAKE THE 68 A FASTBACK TO BEGIN WITH ??

[daytonalo]

As important as winning was back in the day , why didn't they just make it a fastback to begin with ? Do you think the car would have not sold as a fastback ??

[A383Wing]

Doubt it. The '67 did not sell because all the people in '66 & '67 complained that the rear seat passengers were getting sun-baked. Also, head room was at a minimum.....seats were uncomfortable. The public was tired of the fastback design....most thought it was ugly.

Bryan  (got 2 '66's and the funny looking purple pointy nosed Charger)

[daytonalo]

The sun thing maybe , but there is no headroom diiff from stck charger and Daytona .

[A383Wing]

.......but there is no headroom diiff from stck charger and Daytona .

Go find a '66 or '67 and you sit in the rear seat for 15 minutes.....you will find they are uncomfortable as hell! You may be correct about the headroom, but the seats are basically sitting on the floor. I can sit in the Daytona's rear seat all day, not the first gen's ones.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled topic...........maybe someone should do a "photoshop" of a '68 - '70 with a first generstion roofline..... 

Bryan 

[Ghoste]

As important as winning was, selling cars was more important and Chrysler styling was typically behind the rest of Detroit just a little bit all through the 60's.  The fastback Charger came out at a time when the fad was passing, the wide sail panel/ C pillar look of the 68 Charger had been done by General Motors two years earlier and their leap into the pony car market happened waay too late.
Doing the 68 as a fastback would have been great in hindsight from a stock car racing perspective but I think from a stying standpoint, they were just trying to catch a styling wave.  Luckily, they caught a good one.

[daytonalo]

I think your missing my point . After they realised that the recessed window is a a problem in the wind tunnel , if they would have known they would have had to out source the car and basically redesign the whole rear of car , they would have just made it without recessed window .


Larry

[hemigeno]

I would guess there were two reasons why:

#1 (and probably most important answer to your question) was that the cars were not designed by Engineers alone - the Styling department had as much say in how the car looked as anyone.  Aerodynamic function would have ranked really low in the mind of most styling guys, they worried about how it looked - and they apparently wanted to make a change from the fastback look of the GenI Chargers for whatever reason.  Read up on the history of the Daytona's development and you'll find that it took high-ranking Chrysler officers (Bob Rodger among them) to keep the Styling department from absolutely ruining the Daytona.  Styling hated it.  They did get to play around some with the Superbird - maybe that's why it wasn't quite as fast/aerodynamic as the Daytona?? 

#2 would probably be the rear visibility issue.  Look out the back window of an aero car and there is no way you'll see much of a car parked directly behind you while parallel parking.  They'd have had to use an all-glass rear plug to keep visibility the same as a regular Charger's, and it could be that they were trying to solve a rear passenger comfort issue as Brian alluded to.

I highly suspect that the angle of the rear glass was established first for driver visibility reasons, and the C-pillar sail panels were added by the styling department to set the car apart from the (other) boxier models.  The side profile is one of the best ever created (yeah, I'm biased I know).  Adding a plug to create a semi-fastback like the C500/Daytona was an unintended benefit of having the C-pillar sail panels in the first place.  How would they have made an aero plug for the Coronet body style?  Ugh...

Good question, but the fault does not lie with the Engineers of the day.  When it came to the Aero program they only capitalized on what the rest of Chrysler gave them to work with.

[Troy]

I think your missing my point . After they realised that the recessed window is a a problem in the wind tunnel , if they would have known they would have had to out source the car and basically redesign the whole rear of car , they would have just made it without recessed window .


Larry

I disagree. Racing was a way to advertise and showcase the brand but the primary purpose of a car company is to sell cars. The marketing department had to predict what would sell and what was the best way to promote the brand. Not everyone cared about speedway racing and I would guess that the drag cars had as much advertising impact as NASCAR and they didn't need the aerodynamic packages. People bought cars based on style/price/utility just like today. Chrysler sold a heck of a lot more Coronets, Satellites, and Belvederes than Chargers simply because more car buyers had family needs and a budget. As for looks, the 68 Charger was a sales success in part because they went away from the fastback style. Meaning no offense to the 500 owners here but look at the reaction to the cars even now. It's either "why is there a funny window and a strange grill that Charger?" or "where's the wing and nose?". They just aren't as popular to the average person. I'd say the limited production does more to boost their value over a comparable R/T than the looks. If the Chrysler bean counters knew this in 68-69 there's no way they'd take that kind of hit to the bottom line. Remember also that when the Daytonas came out it was difficult to sell even the limited number that they had - primarily because of how they looked and the cost but probably due to the size as well. They only had to make enough to get it homologated and if they were sales flops then the net financial effect would be small. Chargers were already premium priced vehicles and it's a lot easier to add cost to the low production, ultra-high end models than to spread it across an entire line. Even today, car companies *can* make more fuel efficient cars but the additional $300-400 price increase would cost them too many sales. That translates to about $25-30 in the late '60s so there was a slim margin between being competitive on the show room floor and pricing cars right out of the market.

I'm making assumptions here... Chrysler chose the best production car for racing. They didn't design a race car and then try to make it streetable. I don't have the rules memorized but I'm sure there were size/weight/body style requirements so that would have pared the options down. If this were the case, then the Charger was already the best of the bunch on the track. Only *after* the car was chosen did the race engineers get to test and tweak it. Therefore, the 68 Charger had to exist first for them to realize that the back window was a problem on the super speedways.

Troy

[Troy]

Dangit, I spent all that time writing that mess and Gene beat me by 45 seconds (with better information).

Troy

[hemigeno]

Another point to consider...

It was only during the wind tunnel testing for the Daytona program that they discovered a Semi-fastback profile was actually better than a full-fastback profile.  The 66-67 cars had a huge problem with being too aero-slick on the back end, making the cars way too loose.  If the rear lip spoiler hadn't been allowed, there's no way David Pearson would have won the Championship in '66.  Cotton Owens had said that the '66 cars were so light on the back end (due to no downforce) that if they hit a decent sized bump on the straightways the back tires would break loose and spin.  They had a really difficult time negotiating the corners.

Could be that the Engineers did not realize that going to the other extreme like the notchback would actually create lift putting them back in the same (too-loose) boat.  In other words, even if the Engineers could have overruled the Styling department, would they have foreseen the aero liability present with the notchback?  The '68 Charger was Chrysler's first notchback so they probably didn't have any practical experience with the high-speed characteristics of the car.  It sure wouldn't have made much different at street/highway speeds.

It wasn't too long after the '68 Charger hit the track that they started envisioning ways to make it better.  The Charger500 was developed LONG before the '69 model year, and they made such a big deal about it from a publicity standpoint that Ford/Mercury had ample opportunity to prepare their own Aero answer in the Talladegas and Cyclones Spoilers.

[hemigeno]

Dangit, I spent all that time writing that mess and Gene beat me by 45 seconds (with better information).

Troy

Good points all around though...

[learical1]

As important as winning was, selling cars was more important and Chrysler styling was typically behind the rest of Detroit just a little bit all through the 60's.  The fastback Charger came out at a time when the fad was passing, the wide sail panel/ C pillar look of the 68 Charger had been done by General Motors two years earlier and their leap into the pony car market happened waay too late.
Doing the 68 as a fastback would have been great in hindsight from a stock car racing perspective but I think from a stying standpoint, they were just trying to catch a styling wave.  Luckily, they caught a good one.

I don't know about this.  68-69 Torinos and Cyclones were available as a true fastback or a notchback, and I believe they sold fairly well as the fastback.    Now the flatback 71-73 mustang is a whole 'nuther matter. 

[Ghoste]

A very good point.  Perhaps the overall styling of the 66-67 Chrysler line was a little behind.  There are a LOT of Fords around where I live and I would undoubtedly have to agree that the fastbacks hold a numbers edge over the formal roof cars.  I wonder, and purely speculation 40 years out here, if the limited choices for Ford fans in 68-69 would have much to do with it?  If you weren't a Mustang fan, the intermediate choice was pretty limited and the fastback looks a lot more aggresive than the other.
Hmm, good point Learical, I think I would have to concede to you on that one.

[69_500]

I was going to say that the actual first of the fast back 2 gen Chargers was designed well before the rest of the 69 model. But with the popularity of the 68 Charger in sales terms, there was absolutely no reason to change the rear window for the rest of the production cars. When you think back look at the sheer increase in sales numbers from a 67 to a 68 Charger. I think its something along the lines of 10 times as many units sold. If its selling that good, no reason at all to make drastic changes to the back end of the car.

[pettybird]

No one's mentioned the stupid short trunk lid.  None of you have loaded anything into the trunk?

[Aero426]

Styling controlled the design portion of things.   There was little to no input from the circuit racing side towards what they put on the street for '68.

[wingfan]

The sail panels with recessed back glass just look better than with flush glass.  A similar design was used on the 1966-67 GTO.  Styling sells cars.  I doubt that "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday" ever sold that many.  Just my $.02

[Magnumcharger]

The sail panels with recessed back glass just look better than with flush glass.  A similar design was used on the 1966-67 GTO. 

Also used on all 66-67 two door hardtop 'A' body Chevrolet ,Oldsmobile and Buicks.

[Ghoste]

No one's mentioned the stupid short trunk lid.  None of you have loaded anything into the trunk?

That applies somewhat to the 1st gens as well.  We have the fold down rear seats and the folding trunk divider to give us a huge storage area back there but the actual trunk opening is more like a slot.  Better than the 500 and Daytona but not as large an openeing as something like a 69 GTX.
The original Chargers were great for the drive-in though. 

[69_500]

The hole on a Daytona is horrible for putting anything of size in. The 500 is a little better, you can swing stuff in, towards the sides but those wing braces stop that idea on a Daytona. That and you lose floor space for a second jack.

[FJMG]

The tunnel port entry to the trunk on the aero cars is probably why some owners put plywood on the roof and wing, NOT to carry plywood but to create a platform to carry the luggage that wouldn't fit in the trunk! a flip-down rear seat would have made it real easy to remove the spare tire wing nut!

[daytonalo]

Wonder if anyone ever carried a Latter on a wing car I'm sure it has been done !

[Troy]

Wonder if anyone ever carried a Latter on a wing car I'm sure it has been done !

I thought I'd seen one like that. Ok, I found the story:
"I also added a trailer hitch and used it for hauling-including 28' 10" steel bar-joists on the roof and wing!"
http://wwnboa.org/specfeatbh.htm

Troy

[Red Ram]

No one's mentioned the stupid short trunk lid.  None of you have loaded anything into the trunk?

Have you seen the trunk opening on a 87 Monte Aerocoupe?     

[Magnumcharger]

Those were very cool cars. That and the Pontiac 2+2.
Built for the exact same reason as all of the 60's aerocars.