No one was more surprised than Chrysler executives when the 1970 Plymouth Duster became a runaway best seller.
The Plymouth Duster is one of the great Cinderella stories of the Motor City. As the 1970 model year approached, the bulk of Chrysler’s product development funding was handed over to the E-body Plymouth Barracuda and Dodge Challenger, with only $15 million—nickels and dimes by Detroit standards—carved out of the budget to create a sporty coupe verson of the Valiant.
The small Duster styling crew, led by Milt Antonick, Gene Weiss, and Neil Walling, was also forced to work within the tight constraints of the existing Valiant package, from the front-end sheet metal and cowl to the rear bumper location. Yet despite all these limitations, they managed to create one of the best-selling Chrysler products of the ’70s.
The Duster’s identifying feature was its sloping roofline, not quite a full fastback but still sleek and distinctive, while curved side glass and generous tumblehome accentuated the look. A Valiant from the firewall forward, the sporty compact somehow presented a totally different vibe. While the boxy Valiant promised plain, economical transportation, the Duster offered style and excitement, when in fact they were essentially the same car. In fact, the Duster was intitially marketed as the Valiant Duster.
For performance enthusiasts, Plymouth offered the Duster 340, which included the potent 340 cubic-inch V8 with 275 hp and chassis and appearance upgrades. With its excellent power/weight ratio it was a serious performer, good for quarter-mile times in the 14-second zone. And with its $2,547 base price and small-block insurance rates, the 340 was the deal of the year for the muscle-car crowd. Hedging its bets, Plymouth also offered the Twister package, which combined the 340’s appearance items with the standard powertrains, including the base 198 CID Slant 6 with 125 hp.
The Duster was introduced on September 23, 1969 with the rest of the Plymouth line, and not even the Chrysler brass was fully prepared for what happened next. The Duster racked up more than 217,000 sales in its first year, including nearly 25,000 Duster 340s. The Duster not only outsold the Valiant sedan by more than four to one, it was the volume leader of the Plymouth division by a mile, accounting for nearly 30 percent of the total. Dodge was soon clamoring for its own version, and its Demon appeared in 1971. The Duster remained a solid seller for Plymouth through 1976, when it was finally supplanted by the Volare, a Chrysler F-body compact.
Plymouth Division’s biggest home run, sketches to tooling in just six weeks! The palace intrigue behind Duster’s 45″ radius curved side glass is the stuff legends are made of.
The 340 Duster would spank a 351 Mustang Mach 1 and any Chevy 350 Super Sport. Spend a few hundred bucks on Hustle Stuff at your friendly Plymouth dealer, follow the the instructions on Mother Mopar’s Race Bulletin #42, add a pair of slicks and the Clark Kent of muscle cars could reward you with an eleven second time slip in the quarter mile…
Actually the budget they were given was to be used to update & refresh the Valiant itself, not to design a new model. The same was done with Dodge that year, for the Dart. Plymouth ignored the directive to freshen up the Valiant & used that money to create the Duster, leaving the Valiant as is, while Dodge did freshen up the Dart with their money. 30 or so years ago, Collectible Automobile did an in depth article on all of this, with insight from many involved, verifying all of this, including the following.
Dodge got caught flat footed & pitched a fit, & soon got their own variant of the Duster, the Demon, later renamed the Dart Sport. They used the Dart front clip on the Valiant body. Never mind that the Dart front wheelwell & the Duster rear ones did not match up at all.
I love this site & it’s typically very informative, but this article could have used more research.
Oh, & the slotted tail lights the Demon got were actually earmarked for the Duster for 1971. Plymouth lost those when Mopar approved the Demon.
The article doesn’t say anything different. Rather, it was limited in length. Jeff Godshall’s piece in Collectible Automobile was several thousand words, while this piece is a few hundred.
I understand space limitations, but at the same time, some mention should have been made of that, to more properly place things in context. That made your article appear to gloss over or ignore an important aspect of the car’s history. The planning team were worried that by spending all of the refresh money to create a new car could have gotten them in hot water.
I’m not trying to be critical, & over the years I’ve learned much from your articles & love reading them, but you did leave out valuable info that could easily have been covered by a paragraph or two, at most. You’ve often included such info in the past, which was why I found it unusual.
I’m satisfied with the piece as written. I do indeed gloss over lots of things in these articles.
The Duster was a handsome car for what it was, and quite successful among my young crowd. Three owned Dusters, one had a Nova, and no one drove a Maverick. Plus there were two Dart Swingers. Mopar was riding high in those days. It’s a shame they couldn’t refresh the Slant Six. That had a lot of devotees.
The first Duster I remember was my classmates’ older sisters’ Duster. I was very young and found the cartoon graphic appealing.
It’s ironic that Chrysler finally found their mass appeal answer for the sporty/affordable market just as they released their new E bodies. Although intended for different markets than the E body, was the Duster the car they needed to respond to the original Mustang all along?
I never understood the lack of popularity for the original Barracuda–particularly the ’67-’69 models which to my eyes are much more appealing than the Duster. Was it price? Marketing? A flaw in packaging? I find it especially odd given both cars were built on the Valiant chassis.
Thanks for the Duster summary.