Final Parking Space: 1963 Chrysler Newport 4-Door Sedan
Please welcome our newest columnist (and junkyard hunter extraordinaire), the great Murilee Martin. He has been writing about cars since starting as a catalog copywriter at Year One in 1995. He became a contributor for Jalopnik in 2007 and has since written for Autoweek, Motor Authority, The Truth About Cars, Autoblog, Car and Driver and others. Murilee has loved going to junkyards since he got his first hooptie car, a $50 Toyota Corona sedan, and he enjoys speculating on the lives led by junkyard vehicles and their owners. His personal fleet at present includes a 1941 Plymouth hill-climb race car, a chopped-and-shaved 1969 Toyota Corona lowrider, a 1996 Subaru Sambar kei van, a 1997 Lexus LS400 Coach Edition and a 1981 Honda Super Cub. -EW
Welcome to this, the first installment of the “Final Parking Space” series! My car graveyard travels take me all over the country as I explore salvage yards and explore the history of forgotten vehicles. Today’s FPS car, however, resides in my home state of Colorado—at a venerable family-owned yard just south of the Denver city limits. It’s a fine example of affordable full-size Detroit luxury from the early 1960s: a 1963 Chrysler Newport sedan.
Chrysler first started using the Newport name on hardtop models during the 1950s, then made the Newport a model name in its own right starting with the 1961 model year.
From that year until Chrysler axed the Newport in 1978, it was the cheapest full-sized Chrysler model available. For 1963, it occupied a spot on the big Chrysler prestige ziggurat below the 300 and the New Yorker.
The MSRP for this car started at $2964, or about $29,937 in 2023 dollars. The Chrysler 300 sedan listed at $3765 ($38,028 after inflation) that year, while the mighty New Yorker sedan cost $3981 ($40,210 now). That made the Newport a steal when looked at in car-per-dollar terms; the decidedly proletariat 1963 Chevrolet Impala sedan with V-8 engine started at $2768 ($27,958 in today’s money).
The Newport post sedan was by far the best-selling Chrysler-badged car of 1963, with 49,067 sold that year. The New Yorker sedan came in second place, with a mere 14,884 rolling out of showrooms.
Under the hood, we find a genuine Chrysler big-block V-8 engine: a two-barrel 361 rated at 265 horsepower. This is a B engine, a member of the family introduced in 1958 and the ancestor of the legendary RB engines that included the 383, 413, 426 (no, not the 426 Hemi) and 440. If you bought the 300 for ’63, you got a 383 with 305 horses, while the New Yorker came with a 413 and an impressive 340 hp. The King of Chrysler Power in 1963 was the rare 300J coupe, which had a twin-four-barrel-equipped 413 that made 390 horsepower. Keep in mind that these are gross, not net ratings, and that there was a certain amount of exaggeration in the automotive marketing world back then.
The transmission here is a three-speed automatic with Chrysler’s distinctive push-button shifter on the dash. The base transmission in the 1963 Newport was a three-speed column-shift manual, however, so the original buyer of this car paid extra for luxurious two-pedal driving.
The factory AM radio has the CONELRAD nuclear-attack-alert frequencies of 640 and 1240 kHz marked with Civil Defense triangles on the dash. Car radios sold in the United States were required to have these markings after 1963, at which time it was presumed that the speed of Soviet ICBMs would render such a system irrelevant.
It’s not terribly rusty and the interior could be revived without too much trouble. So why is it here? Sadly, non-hardtop Detroit sedans of the 1946-1970 period just aren’t worth enough for almost anybody to justify a serious restoration of a car in this condition.
A good message to keep in mind.
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Aunt Jeanette had a baby blue with blackwalls. Ashtray heaped with butts. No mention of the bizzarre square steering wheel?
Very enjoyable article! I look forward to more in this series.
This car would be a great candidate for getting it running and driving and basically do nothing else. Good, cheap fun.
It does look remarkably intact… the big question is does the motor turn
^agree. This looks solid enough to get going without massive metal surgery (the biggest hurdle for most to overcome in old projects). Restored nicely you’d be way underwater –but that is easy to do with most things nowadays.
It’s a nice companion to what Tom Klockau does here as well.
The history/context bits really help.
Welcome aboard, Murilee! Great article!
I’m pretty certain that my Dad had one of these, in black.
You brought back some memories.
Always good to see an article from Murilee. But why show a photo of the pushbutton heater controls when you’re talking about the pushbutton transmission shifter?
We had a ’64 Newport and a ’63 non-letter 300 in the “family fleet” back in the day. Both were solid, reliable cars.
The shifter photo is in the gallery. The heater controls look very similar, so I mixed them up in the thumbnails.
Welcome to the community Murilee, you will find you have a knowledgeable audience. A great first article. Surprised there are still bone yards still around. All I see in my travels are CoPart yards.
Many years ago there was a great junkyard just off I 75 in Tipp City OH–Dixie Auto Parts (because it fronted on US 25, Dixie Highway). Lots of prewar and early 50s, even in the late 70s. The one I remember was an essentially intact 1940 Cadillac 60 Special–with a factory metal sunroof. Often wondered what happened to it
Alas the site is now a Menards home improvement store. Another nearby yard had a 39 Crosley Covered Wagon truck, and a 54 Hudson Hollywood. It’s now a subdivision. Sigh…
My dad had this same car with green interior. He traded it in 67 for another newport…than again for newports in 72, 75 and 78.
Is this the yard that is on south santafe south of c470? If so maybe I’ll pay a visit…I’m about 20 miles from there.
I live in Denver, I along with several friends could have used parts of this and the Marauder 4dr hardtop. Too bad you put these articles up long after the cars crushed and no one can get valuable parts off them….
You can use https://row52.com/ to check for new arrivals in your area, its pretty comprehensive (aside from LKQ yards which operate on their own system)
I had never heard of this website!
Spread the word. Classic car peeps need to know.
Same here until a few years ago! And I’ve considered myself a semi-pro junkyarder for almost 30 years now :). Here in Phoenix, there’s only 1-2 chains of yards that use it, but it’s still handy.
This car is still at CAP right now. I was just over there.
Is cap Colorado auto parts on west Radcliff?
I do my best to get posts for rare/interesting/old junkyard cars published as soon as possible for that very reason, but I write so many that this is not always possible. On top of that, sometimes my editors will hold a post for weeks or months before making it go live. As other commenters have recommended, Row52 is your friend if you’re looking for a particular vehicle, though it appears that U-Pull-&-Pay vehicles don’t show up there now.
LKQ Pick Your Part has their own notification system that you can set up– the interface is clunky and frustrating but it works.
For Littleton U-Pull, which often gets interesting stuff, you must check their online inventory regularly.
Colorado Auto & Parts has online inventory, but it is updated infrequently and the really old stuff doesn’t show up there. You need to go there in person or call and ask.
Andersen’s in Greeley (and their yard at what used to be Martin’s) has no online inventory, so you need to call them up. They’re helpful but they aren’t always sure of exactly what they have, so in-person visits are a good idea.
If you follow the Murilee Martin Facebook and Instagram accounts, I often post interesting Front Range junkyard vehicles on the day I find them. If you’re a 24 Hours of Lemons racer (or want to be), the Colorado Lemons Mafia Facebook group gets a lot of posts from locals who find good junkyard stuff, along with cars for sale in Colorado and adjacent states.
I hope all this is helpful. I try to do my best to help folks get junkyard parts before the cars get crushed, but the task is a difficult one sometimes.
In Lynbrook USA there is a men’s clothing store called Murlee’s. The two original owners were Murry and Lee. The son of Murry took the store over for his aging Dad. Harry Levin is a car collector and had a 455 Olds Cutlass convertible. I am not sure what he drives now since he retired and moved to Florida. I am not sure who runs the store now.
Anybody else miss Svigels? Went there for almost 50-years. Walking into the “new” parts area (actually, NOS) was like walking into a ’50s speed shop.
Welcome! Love the concept of this column. Looking forward to more!
My grandfather had a silver ‘63 Newport. I took my date to my junior prom in it in 1967.
Welcome to Hagerty. Great article, but I have one small correction. Chrysler did not axe the Newport in 1978. There was a new slightly smaller Newport that came out in 1979 and lasted until 1981. Either way, great article.
I think the Newport name should be revived for use on an EV. After all, it’s a new port.
My parents had this same car they bought used in the late 60’s. They passed it to my oldest sister to buy a used 69 New Yorker(my pops had a thing for New Yorkers having owned a 59 prior to the 64) which felt huge compared to the 64. My sister proceeded to run it into another parked car shortly after she got her license damaging the driver’s front fender beyond repair as I helped Dad put on a new fender. I thought the push button transmission was pretty cool!
Welcome Murilee/Phil! Glad to see your longer form articles here with more detail than your FB posts.
My buddy had a 62 Newport he picked for $100 around 1980. He beat the living s…t out of it for two years, on and off road. Went to another friend who drove it back and forth to Idaho from SF several times. No one ever thought to change the oil and it became a thick sludge. Eventually ended up at my friends ranch in CA gold country and sat for a couple of years. His dad said to get the thing outta here. We abandoned it on the side of the highway. The next summer, we saw it take first place at the Amador County Fair demolition derby! Then kept seeing it on the road for years. A tough machine it was.
An interesting find. Like the story on this car.