The Plymouth Valiant (first appearing in 1959 as simply the Valiant) is an automobile which was manufactured by the Plymouth division of the Chrysler Corporation in the United States from the model years of 1960 through 1976.
It was created to give the company an entry in the compact car market emerging in the late 1950s.
The Valiant was also built and marketed, without the Plymouth brand, worldwide in countries including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and Switzerland, as well as other countries in South America and Western Europe. It became well known for its excellent durability and reliability, and was one of Chrysler's best-selling automobiles during the 1960s and 1970s, helping to keep the company solvent during an economic downturn.
In May 1957, Chrysler president Lester Lum "Tex" Colbert established a committee to develop a competitor in the burgeoning compact car market which included the popular VW Beetle, the new American Motors Rambler and upcoming entries from GM, Ford and Studebaker.
Design chief Virgil Exner created a car that was smaller and lighter than a full-size car without sacrificing passenger and luggage space.[2] Originally named the "Falcon" after Exner's 1955 Chrysler Falcon concept car, the vehicle was renamed the "Valiant" (which means "having or showing courage or valor") honoring Henry Ford II's request to use the name for the Ford Falcon.
The Valiant debuted at the 44th British International Motor Show in London on October 26, 1959.
It was introduced as a 1960 model and was officially considered a distinct brand,[5] advertised with the tagline "Nobody's kid brother, this one stands on its own four tires." For the 1961 model year, the Valiant was classified as a Plymouth model.
The 1961–62 Dodge Lancer was essentially a rebadged Valiant with different trim and styling details. For the 1962 model year, the Valiant returned without Plymouth branding but was sold only in Plymouth Chrysler, Chrysler Dodge, or the rare standalone Plymouth dealerships.[citation needed] For model year 1964 and onwards the car was sold in the United States only as a Plymouth Valiant.The Valiant displayed distinctive styling including a raked rear window
The Valiant was less radical in configuration than General Motors' compact Chevrolet Corvair, which had an air-cooled rear-mounted engine, but was considered more aesthetically daring than the also-new Falcon and Studebaker Lark compacts, which had more conventional looks; the Valiant boasted a radical design that continued Exner's "Forward Look" styling with "sleek, crisp lines which flow forward in a dart or wedge shape".
The flush-sided appearance was a carried-over feature from Chrysler's Ghia-built D'Elegance and Adventure concept cars which also gave the Valiant additional inches of interior room.
The Valiant's styling was new, yet with specific design elements that tied it to other contemporary Chrysler products, such as the canted tailfins tipped with cat's-eye shaped tail lamps and the simulated Continental spare tire pressed into the trunk lid that were thematically similar to those on the Imperial and the 300F. According to Exner, the stamped wheel design was used not only to establish identity with other Chryslers, but to "dress up the rear deck area without detracting from the look of directed forward motion".
The Valiant debuted an all-new six-cylinder overhead-valve engine, the famous slant-six. Its inline cylinders were uniquely canted 30° to the right (passenger side), permitting a lower hoodline. The water pump was shifted from front to alongside, shortening engine length. And an efficient long-branch individual-runner intake manifold was fitted, an advance that benefited from Chrysler's pioneering work in tuned intakes.
The slant-six produced both more power and better economy than similar American made economy straight sixes, and it soon gained a reputation for dependability. Project engineer Willem Weertman and his team had designed a simple yet robust workhorse, from its four-main forged crankshaft to a simplified "mechanical" valve train.
Block and head castings were unusually thick because both were intended to be cast in either iron or aluminum with the same tooling. Although volume casting techniques of the era could not yet reliably produce complex head castings in aluminum, over 50,000 die-cast aluminum-block versions of the 225 cu in (3.7 L) engine were produced between late 1961 and early 1963 and sold as extra-cost options.
The 1960 Valiant exemplified Chrysler's leadership in aluminum die casting. While the aluminum slant-six engine block did not enter production until 1961, the Kokomo, Indiana, foundry produced a number of other aluminum parts for the 1960 Valiant, all instrumental in reducing the total weight of the car.
The 1960 model contained as much as 60 lb (27 kg) of aluminum in structural and decorative forms, with the majority of the material used in cast form as chassis parts.[8] These parts included the oil pump, water pump, alternator housing, Hyper-Pak (see below) and standard production intake manifolds, all-new Torqueflite A-904 automatic transmission case and tail extension, and numerous other small parts.
These cast-aluminum parts were roughly 60% lighter than corresponding parts of cast iron. A cast aluminum part had the benefit of reduced section thickness where strength was not a vital consideration. Section thickness of cast-iron parts were often dictated by casting practice, which required at least 3⁄16 in (4.8 mm) to ensure good castings.[8] Exterior decorative parts stamped from aluminum were lighter than similar chromium-plated zinc castings. The entire grille and surrounding molding on the Valiant weighed only 3 lb (1.4 kg).[8] If this same assembly had been made of die-cast zinc, as many grilles of the era were, it would have weighed an estimated 13 lb (5.9 kg).
An estimated 102 lb (46 kg)—about 4% of a Valiant's total shipping weight—was saved with the 60 lb (27 kg) of aluminum parts.
The Valiant A-body platform utilized "unit-body" or "unibody" construction (not used by the Chrysler Corporation since the Airflow models of the 1930s) rather than "body-on-frame" construction. Instead of a bolted-in forestructure used in other unibody designs, the Valiant incorporated a welded-in front understructure and stressed front sheet metal. The fenders, quarter panels, floor and roof contributed to the stiffness of the body shell. A unit wheelbase comparison showed the Valiant to be 95% stiffer in torsion and 50% stiffer in beam than a 1959 Plymouth with separate body-on-frame construction.
Dynamic testing showed that high structural resonant frequencies were attained, indicating greater damping and reduced body shake.
The front suspension consisted of unequal length control arms with torsion bars, while the rear suspension used a live axle supported by asymmetric leaf springs. Chrysler used this design through the entire production of the Valiant and other A-body models, with revisions to the suspension components themselves for the 1962, 1967, 1968, and 1973 models.
LINKS E SITES IMPORTANTES
