by Mike Dieffenbach

Just over twenty five years ago, America was mired in economic problems, we were battling hostile elements in the Middle East and we had to figure out how to combine good gas mileage with street performance in our automobiles. Not much has changed.
Last summer, during a trip to Carlisle, Pa., and the Carlisle All-Chrysler Nationals, I saw many makes, models and varieties of cars, all combined on the showfield like a timeline through automotive history. Not all cars at Carlisle are the hottest, most sought-after collectible, but no matter what their monetary worth, they are a rare glimpse into the past.
One such glimpse back is the "F-body" Plymouth Volare Road Runner, one of the bright spots of an era in the late 1970s heretofore remembered as "the bad old days."
Ah, remember the bad old days? While not as bad as the Great Depression or the 1980s Rust Belt years, the bad old days of the mid-70s featured oil prices and car insurance costs skyrocketing higher than the fireworks used for America's Bicentennial. There it begins - 1976.
The songs on the radio I remember most from that era were "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" by Elton John and Kiki Dee, "Rhiannon" by Fleetwood Mac and anything off "Frampton Comes Alive." Something called "disco" music had also been introduced to the mainstream. Let's not go there, however.
Another introduction to American culture in 1976 was two new Chrysler Corp. products — the Plymouth Volare and Dodge Aspen. Like everything else in the bad old days, these post-muscle car vehicles were perceived as weak links in the automotive chain when compared to something cool from the 1960s. The ballyhooed days of the Hemi-powered muscle car were over — the Cuda, Charger, Challenger, GTX and Road Runner — all legends, all gone.
In this case, however, the Volare/Aspen was never intended to remind anyone of those famed automobiles. These new models were built to replace the famed "A-body" predecessors the Plymouth Valiant and the Dodge Dart. The death of the E-body muscle cars in 1974 left a gap for performance enthusiasts, a gap the ill-equipped F-body later tried to fill and got a bad rap in doing so. But we digress!

Say Goodbye A-body
Both the Valiant and Dart were also sold in 1976, their final year in production. By developing a new body type, Chrysler attempted to go in a different direction in the face of the famed energy crisis and new emissions regulations. By offering up-to-date styling and luxury in a fuel-efficient compact car, the F-bodies were a versatile package to offer designers and drivers alike different wheelbases in the coupes, sedans and station wagons. Likewise, several exterior trim packages were optional. In 1976-77 the trim packages were considered separate models - the Aspen, Aspen Custom, and Aspen Special Edition, Volare, Volare Custom, and Volare Premiere.
Aspen and Volare coupes had a 108.7-inch wheelbase, while the four-door F-bodies had a 112.7-inch wheelbase. The A-body Dart and Valiant each possessed a 111-inch wheelbase. The F-body four-door station wagon, with it's 112.7-inch wheelbase, was a product Chrysler had in its compact line since the '66 Dart wagon.
The chassis design incorporated a unitized body and chassis, with a newly-designed transverse torsion bar front suspension and a leaf-spring rear suspension. The new torsion bar set up placed the bar anchor near the control arm on the opposite side. The L-shaped bar was situated across the front of the car just ahead of the K-frame. The new suspension gave the car a smoother ride reminiscent of a "luxury" car.
The Aspen and Volare were equipped with 11-inch front disk brakes and 10-inch rear drums. Power steering and power brakes appeared as options. They had 14-inch wheels with standard and optional 15-inch sizes as a part of performance packages.
Underneath, you could find a single barrel 225 slant six with the 318 and 360 V-8 available. In 1977, a two-barrel option was made available for the slant six.
The bad rap these cars took was mainly due to the 1976 models that suffered production glitches. It wasn't the first time this happened at Chrysler, so wisely the company learned from their mistakes and fixed the problems. But the public perception created when recalls were announced dealt a blow from which the F-body never recovered. The car has a great drive train, but the combination of performance shortcomings and early production flaws have been its legacy. The F-body in its many shapes, sold well — 1,847,480 were sold in the United States in its five-year run from 1976-1980.

The Performance F-Body
Over at Ford, they were producing the Mustang II. Introduced in 1974, the new compact car suffered from an inferiority complex much like the F-body Mopars. The Mustang introduced the Cobra II in 1976 in an effort to rekindle the performance spirit of the famed pony car. At Chrysler, this idea was packaged into the Volare Road Runner and the Aspen R/T. It worked to some extent, not when compared to the Mopar muscle cars of the late '60s and early '70s but when compared to the other cars on the street at that time. The Volare and Aspen shared good looks, smooth handling and enough torque when equipped with a four-barrel 360, to make the tires squawk. Because they were the Johnny-Come-Lately of late '70s performance car attempts, the Mopars couldn't match up with the Chevrolet Camaro Z28 or the Pontiac Trans Am in public favor.
Sales declined each year for these "performance" F-bodies until their final year, 1980, when less than 1,000 were sold.
Everyone who remembers the bad old days will remember these cars for what they were, however. They weren't muscle cars, they weren't NOS-fueled compact street rockets. They were the kitschy cousin of both -- the missing link in the evolutionary chain of street machines that had to find a new way to fly in the face of governmental regulation. But in your spitfire orange Volare Road Runner with "Frampton Comes Alive" blasting out of the eight track, you could cruise the strip for hours on a Friday night with five bucks worth of gas chasing cute teenage girls who were wearing hush puppies and Shaun Cassidy t-shirts.