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.
***
Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.
This isn’t my first Hagerty article, by the way. I wrote one in 2009 (which is in the process of being updated and republished as we speak) and shot the photos for this 2018 article about the “It’s a Wonderful Life” 1919 Dodge: https://www.hagerty.com/media/buying-and-selling/auctions/george-baileys-wonderful-life-dodge-isnt-getting-wings-but-it-may-soon-have-a-new-owner/
My Dad had a’63 wagon until he sold it for a’74 Imperial LeBaron. This article bought back a lot of memories from those times. We even put a Genuine Mopar parts decal on rear side glass lol! Thanks for article.
Murilee, I enjoy your junkyard finds (I’ve been to your website!).
One piece of advice: NO NEED to hide or obscure the VINs you post!!!! It is of no consequence and it is not secret information.
A neighbor had a new ‘63 with a 3 speed manual transmission. The shifter was located on the floor, not the column.
C’mon; this was a boring granny 4-door when new, and now is a hulk of so little restored value that anyone chump enough to invest in a real resto (or even just getting it decent and street-worthy) would be upside down permanently before it turned a wheel! Granted, you don’t see stuff this old in mainstream wrecking yards anymore, but that does’nt make it worthy of a think-piece, even a nostalgic one. I was a high-school junior when this big ole’ thing came out, and driving a ’55 Chevy Delray ‘post’ two-door with all the good stuff, and though it might have been competitive for four phone-poles with my PowerPak 265, it wasn’t anybody’s idea of a good ride — ‘cept for maybe granny! Can’t we dream better? Wick
“… anyone chump enough to invest in a real resto (or even just getting it decent and street-worthy) would be upside down permanently before it turned a wheel!…” REALLY?!
Talk about permanently upside-down! What about the bubble-shaped ‘things’ (I would NOT call them styled!) that are offered as new vehicles these days?! How many thousands of buyers think nothing of plopping down over $50k for the look-alike blobs that litter our roadways and parking lots?
This old Mopar could have way less than $10k spent, to restore dependable operation and provide a better pay-back than any current dealership offerings, worldwide. This Newport might even have standard Power Windows and an Automatic Transmission like most 2023 vehicles do, but this old girl would never let its driver down when one of their dozens of ‘modern’ Controllers takes a crap and needs a scanner tool to diagnose, for a quick hundred bucks. If trouble happens, it can just roll to the side of the road and be fixed right there.
Of course this Newport would lack many of the items installed on late-model vehicles. You know, those things that everyone seems to need these days. Items that require ALL that extra effort involved to adjust the Seat and Mirrors; to actually drive the vehicle, controlling its path within one’s own lane; to slightly alter the right foot position for varying traction conditions. And let’s not forget that this Newport wouldn’t (COULDN’T) be constantly tracked by on-board communications sent back to its manufacturer and those government entities who want to compile a personal file of your driving habits… the way current vehicles are.
I say fix it up, enjoy a nice ride and use the huge amount of money NOT wasted buying a Sinfully Ugly Vehicle on gas, low registration/license fees and insurance costs.
Welcome, Murilee, junkyards rock! I gotta say, though, I’m glad you swapped the heater controls photo for the pushbutton shifter buttons. Seeing them would have reminded me of how on icy nights in Cleveland, the reverse button on my 1963 Plymouth Belvedere sedan beater car would freeze in the pushed-in position. The only remedy was to remove part of the dashboard and shoot it with WD40. By the way, my Belvedere was last parked at a Cleveland wrecking yard. Rest in pieces.
Many many years ago there was a junkyard full of decaying 1940s cars on I-695 near my home. It always made me sad when we passed it. Who drove them? What families prized them? I see this Chrysler and think the same thing.
There were singing commercials emphasizing the 2964 price. Good times!
3 speed was on the floor, not the column. Had one. Got it w 50K, drove it to 129K and sold it. Ate throwout bearings.