“America was ready. So was Volaré. The right car at the right time at the right price!” Who am I to argue with a 1978 Volaré brochure, especially when it paints such a rosy picture of these cars? This 1978 Plymouth Volaré is listed here on eBay in Ellensburg, Washington, there is no reserve, and the current bid price is $1,025 with three days left on the auction.
As a Plymouth Valiant replacement, the Volaré may not have been the best if you read the comments that usually come up, but they’re interesting cars. The Volaré and its sibling, the Dodge Aspen, were made from 1976 through 1980 and came in a four-door station wagon, two-door coupe, and four-door sedan as seen here. They replaced the Plymouth Valiant and Dodge Dart, and came before the Plymouth Reliant and Dodge Aries – the K-car series.
The seller says that this car was an estate find and it had been sitting for a decade in a central Washington state garage. It appears to have some surface rust on the edges, which the seller acknowledges, and they say that everything works as it should. This is cheap entry to almost any vintage car show, despite it being a dreaded four-door sedan. I like the design of the Volaré/Aspen four-door sedans. I wish that they would have offered a two-door sedan.
Cloth seats would have been nice here, but these all-vinyl bucket seats look almost perfect, other than a couple of small flaws. I’d take them out and change out the carpet, and in a very rare varying-from-stock move, I might have the seats redone with fabric inserts from SMS Auto Fabrics, just for something different. It isn’t like this car is destined for the preservation class at Pebble Beach. The back seat looks perfect and the trunk looks good if a bit unfinished. Maybe for a base-level car, it looks normal.
Most buyers would likely want a 318 V8 here, but this one is a Chrysler family 225-cu.in. OHV slant-six, which would have been factory-rated at 110 horsepower for models with the three-speed TorqueFlite automatic transmission. Everything on this car is said to work as intended and for this money, it’s hard to argue with this 45-year-old car, four doors or not. Any thoughts on this one?
One of the local sheriffs departments bought a fleet of these-set up for COP CARS. Seems that even the USAF Security Police at a nearby base didn’t want them either and a nitwit city administrator thought they were “a great deal” and saved gas besides..
Word got around the area pretty quick that if you went to that county and got chased all you needed to do was go up one of the highways into the Sierras where there were no radio repeaters and you’d have a better than even chance of getting away. The deputies assigned to them said they’d shit off the overhead lights and siren to gain 4-6 MPH going uphill anywhere!!
A commuter, maybe, a new drivers first car, perhaps, a taxi back in the day but nothing worth giving up good money to buy..
😳😱“…they’d SHUT off the overhead lights..”
What a difference a “u” makes. 👌
One of the local sheriffs departments bought a fleet of these-set up for COP CARS. Seems that even the USAF Security Police at a nearby base didn’t want them either and a nitwit city administrator thought they were “a great deal” and saved gas besides..
Word got around the area pretty quick that if you went to that county and got chased all you needed to do was go up one of the highways into the Sierras where there were no radio repeaters and you’d have a better than even chance of getting away. The deputies assigned to them said they’d shut off the overhead lights and siren to gain 4-6 MPH going uphill anywhere!!
A commuter, maybe, a new drivers first car, perhaps, a taxi back in the day but nothing worth giving up good money to buy..
That is a Super Six, meaning it has a two barrel carburetor, giving it a bit more pep, but still just an A-B car, with soft seats, no A/C, and to my surprise in a 1978 car, no power brakes. Most of these rotted away, but were pretty reliable in their day. I’d pass.
Not as much of a surprise to me. My ’76 Volare and my sister in laws ’75 Fury were both slants with auto, ps and manual brakes. You really have to lift your foot off the floor to get on the pedal. None of this using your toes to stop.
Maybe because I had one I still have a soft spot for these sorry azed cars. Mine was a tank.
Had one in high school! Needless to say I was the coolest kid in class.
Not bad for what it is and the money just leave it and most people with their fancy cars will stay away in parking lots for fear of door dings and even being 45 years old it has a better build quality than a Tesla
As Dean Martin would say..
Volare! Oh no!
Junk car yea! No no no no!
When new you were up in the clouds
Surrounded by admiring crowds
You basked in the glow of the bright auto show
And buyers all eager to sign
But you left them confused and all disillusioned as Chrysler fell further and further behind
With Corinthian Leather its only big seller
A bailout it had to find!
Volare! Oh no!
Junk car yea! No no no no!
Your memory makes my heart sting
Your engine’s perplexing sharp pings
Your creaky torsion bar springs
And your rusty rear quarters
Bad front control arms
And hood latch that rendered me blind…
Still better build quality than a Tesla and no waiting for it to charge
Eh..I don’t know. These were notoriously pretty shoddily built and very rust prone. I’m not saying Tesla is the pinnacle of manufacturing quality here, but I think our standards are quite a bit different now than in the ’70s. So the Tesla, if I had to guess l, would be considered (much) better built
Weird Al’s got nothing on you, bro! Right on!!
Had a wagon back in ’97. My inlaws
bought it for us to use on our paper
route while our Chevy Cavalier was in the shop. It was an up level Premiere
with all the bells and whistles you could get on a volare back then. And
to my surprise most everything worked on it too. It didn’t take much
work to get it running right and the car looked great except for the pinholes of rust on the hood. It ran
and drove so well that I considered
restoring it until I opened the tailgate
and found that the tailgate itself had
rusted off it’s hinges and the roof had
terminal cancer. No body shop in town would touch it so we drove it as it was and used it for a backup car
after we had a new engine put into the Cavalier sedan we were driving back then. Wound up gifting it to a
young couple who had just gotten
married and couldn’t afford a decent
car. Here in Florida, a run down beat
up used car can sell for as much as a
new one. Both the car and my wife
are now gone, but the memory remains.
Good luck passing smog in Calif.
Just register it in Idaho then you don’t have to deal with it
Having actually owned one of these, I can tell you that these are a lot better cars than how they are portrayed. These cars are comfortable and ride very well. The main problems were with the 1976 model cars, especially in terms of rust. They got better in 1977 and later. However, this one does seem to have quite a bit of rust on the doors, which is a concern to me. This has the Super 6. This is the engine option you want to have! It has a 2 barrel carburetor, larger exhaust pipe, and slightly different ratio in the rear axle which all works well together for much better engine performance than a regular 1 barrel Slant 6. Having owned a Super 6 and a 318 version, I can say that the Super 6 is as good a performer, but its fuel economy is better than the 318. I think they should have dropped the 1 barrel Slant 6 and only offered the Super Six. You could only get this option in 1977, 1978, and 1979 for some reason. This one also appears to be the mid-level Volare Custom, judging from the interior. It doesn’t appear to be the top level Premier. Except for the fact that this does not have a/c or power brakes, I find this pretty appealing. If you are using it to just drive around in, and are not looking for a show car, this should be a good driver. Had Chrysler just done a little better job with these initally, they would have continued to sell in large numbers.
Why not enjoy driving a bit of Malaise Era history? Just keep a spare ballast resistor in the glove box.
Amen to that!!
I actually like these cars a lot. Back in 1980 my girlfriend’s Mom had a 1978 sedan and she let us use it. I loved the way it drove and I really like that cream color whatever they call that paint shade. Also a neighbor had one of those and it lasted her until she passed away in 2002. Her son uses it now. Personally if I had the extra money I would try to grab that. Rebuild the engine for reliability and have a transmission shop go over the transmission. New tires, brakes, maybe some body repair and new paint. Clean the interior up good and drive it everyday from April to November. Tuck her away for the Pennsylvania salt months. Fun cars in my opinion.
I had a Premier wagon back in the day. Loaded with options and really pretty nice choice for a young family (read living on a shoestring). Durable BUT possessed by the Lean Burn Demon “no, I wont start – you will sit and wait until Im damned good and ready”
There was a 2 door Aspen/Volare. It wasn’t as stylish as the 4 door and not as practical either. By 78 the kinks had been ironed out and these were good, if pedestrian, cars. Good value for a 3 season driver with no AC.
A real shame the tissue paper they used to construct the car wasn’t a better quality.
Our mechanic used to sing volare chryslers sorry
I had a ’76 that was my college ride in the 1980s. It was a Volaré Premier, silver with a maroon vinyl top. Power stearing, brakes, front buckets and windows, AM/FM cassette player too. And a 318! Yeah, baby was plush….. But I still missed the 2 door Valiant “Scamp”, slant 6/3 on the tree with factory AM and A/C. The Volaré was pretty but the Scamp had style.
Auction update: this one sold for a mere $1,575!