The Chrysler Corporation’s founding car brand received a complete makeover for 1965 with a new chassis and a crisp exterior design directed by Elwood Engel.
Newport Hardtop Sedan and Convertible
While Elwood Engel became vice president of design at Chrysler in November of 1961, moving over from Ford to replace Virgil Exner, he didn’t get a full swing at the corporation’s full-sized cars until the 1965 model year. With $16.2 million dedicated to a full makeover of the Chrysler division’s ’65 exterior, full-sized mockups were ready by early 1963, and they were a clear departure from the Exner era. Reportedly, Chrysler president Lynn Townsend wanted to bring the carmaker’s styling “back into the mainstream,” and Engel was willing to oblige,
300 Four-Door Hardtop
While the 1965 Chrysler doesn’t resemble Engel’s 1961 Lincoln Continental in a serious way, it does share some Engel features, including the slab sides, flat hood and deck surfaces, and sharply creased fenders and quarters, further defined by thin strips of bright metal trim. It’s not clear who devised the tempered glass headlamp covers, but they’re an elegant touch that was no doubt less costly than conventional hidden headlamps. Unfortunately, they trapped condensation and made aiming more difficult, so they lasted only a single year.
Newport Two-Door Hardtop
There was a new Unibody platform under the ’65 Chryslers as well—the previous chassis was a unit-construction adaptation of the 1957 ladder-frame setup. This new C-body, built on a two-inch longer 124-in wheelbase, followed the pattern set by the 1960 compact A-body and 1962 B-body, but with a bolt-in subframe to isolate engine and front suspension noise from the passenger cabin. Suspension was standard Chrysler practice: longitudinal torsion bars in front and parallel leaf springs at the rear. One more big change for ’65 on all Chrysler products was the elimination of the push-button gear selector for the automatic transmission, a signature feature since 1956, replaced by a conventional column-mounted shift lever.
Newport Four-Door Sedan
The four trim levels for ’65 included the base Newport, the midrange 300, the New Yorker, and the letter-series 300L. Standard in the 300L was a 413 cubic-inch RB-series V8 with 360 hp, but by now, performance had taken a back seat to luxury and this proved to be the final year for the letter cars. On the plus side, this same engine was available in all Chryslers for ’65. while a 383 CID V8 with 270 hp was the base engine in the Newport.
The complete makeover for ’65 certainly had the desired effect, as production and sales for the model year rose to more than 206,000 cars, a solid 35 percent increase. Thanks to its low list price down near $3,000 and special promotions for even less, the Newport was the biggest seller, claiming 60 percent of the volume. This same basic package would remain in production through 1968, when Chrysler’s fuselage era began.
New Yorker Hardtop Sedan 
The ’65 Chrysler New Yorker is a particularly vivid memory of my childhood. My mother’s sister (my Aunt Mary) lived her life as housekeeper for Sts. Cyril & Methodius Church in Lakewood, OH. Her employer, Msgr. Francis Dubosh retired in 1965, and the parish made him a gift of a new Chrysler New Yorker four door sedan in metallic green with a green brocade interior. Still have vivid memories of that car parked in our driveway (the Monsignor and two of the assistants spent a lot of vacation time at our house in Pennsylvania).
That was probably the last of the true glory years for Chrysler. At that time, Chryslers were a huge status symbol for the high end clergy in the Catholic Church in our part of the country. Cadillacs, Lincolns, and Imperials would have been unseemly for someone in that position, and for some reason a Chrysler was more desirable than an Oldsmobile or Buick.
Most likely that would mean the Chrysler – Plymouth dealership owner was a church member and Oldsmobuicks were sold by Protestants.
The green sedan is the “six-window” Newport Town Sedan, not the base sedan.
We had a neighbor with a 65 Newport Town Sedan and a W108 M-B 280SE. The Chrysler didn’t look out of place in his garage. What an elegant car.
Chrysler brand sales exceeded 200,000 fir the first time in 1965. You could actually order our awesome four speed stick shift with console and tach as a zero cost option in any New Yorker, 300, Newport or Chrysler station wagon in ’65.
Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), created under the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 (implemented 1/1/67), set mandatory safety regulations like FMVSS 209 for seatbelts. All manufactures knew that for ’68, FMVSS 108 would standardized headlights, prohibiting external glass or plastic covers over sealed‑beam lamps, effectively killing Chrysler (and Imperial) glass covered headlights…
Not to mention the ones VW had been using since day one. They were on their way out even in Europe so the Type 3 never had them, Beetles lost their glass covers for the ’67 model year and the bus when the second generation came in for ’68 and that led to their phaseout worldwide.
Our local Chrysler Plymouth dealer was 5 or 6 blocks away from home and my dad wanted to look at the new 1965 Chrysler Newport with its “no blind spots greenhouse “. The dealer offered little for dad’s 1955 Plymouth… and the new Chrysler cost too much. Dad ended up with the out-of-style used 1960 Chrysler Windsor for just $750 with his 55 Plymouth trade-in. The Chrysler’s 383 Golden Lion was fast and the ride was “luxury”. Many well off professionals and families in the neighborhood owned those mid 1960s Plymouth and Chrysler sedans.