1971 B bodies were supposed to be 1970?

Many years ago I recall reading somewhere that the 1971 B bodies were intended to be introduced for 1970, but were put back a year because of a labour strike. As I recall, they had to revamp the 69's for 70 year instead of Introducing the all new B body because there wasn't time to get the new car developed in time.
Does anyone have any information about this?

I recall hearing/reading something like this many years ago...if true?, 1970 was the best model year for B bodies in terms of options, styling, etc, esp the 70 Charger, because 71 was a big let down styling wise for the Dodge B body camp

Sort of correct. Here's the story
http://www.roadrunnernest.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9

Hmm. Interesting article written by someone with a preference for the 71 body style. Needless to say, the sales of the day and the popularity today say otherwise. 68-70 Chargers are way more popular and valuable than 71-74.

I am glad they held off. Somehow, I wound up with now owning (4) 1970 cars over the years & have owned many more. My favorite year for most all Mopar & even most brand X musclecars also

You can see the soon-to-be 71 influences in the RR/GTX grill. It has the same basic outline as the 71's front bumper. And then you have the one-year-only pistol grip shifters.

Considering the 71 Charger out sold the 70 Charger by a wide margin, I'm not sure this is real accurate. While I agree that 1970 was a fantastic year for all Mopar styling, at the time, buyers wanted the brand new styling of the 71's

71 Chargers out sold the 70 Chargers, and the 73 Chargers were a huge sales success. ever look at the production figures for Cordobas? Massive. Sales then, don't reflect values and desirability now.

Personally, I love the 70 Chargers and 71 Chargers equally. Both awesome cars, with totally different styling. The pinnacle of the two series.

Pinnacle???

Pinnacle, you say???

True the 71 were supposed to be the 70 models My friends dad was a regional zone manager and told me that when asked

IMO 70 year b-bodys where a let down from the 68-69 models, Charger was ok, Plymouth, ugg and Dodge was hideous. Trying to spruce up an already great look and failing. 71 and up just went the wrong way too, took a few years to grow on you. Working at the Dodge dealership I was able to see these cars before they came out each September, most all my car buddy's and salesman felt the same way, they felt they had really push to sell them whereas the 68-69 sold themselves. After 72 when the engines went away, just got worse each year, sticker and decal time.

I always thought the 70 chargers were a big gaudy. The chrome mouth bumper and the door scoops on the r/t only served to clutter up a nice car. The 70 plymouths are my favorite. The cat eye coronets are a bit of a mixed bag too. All-in-all still better looking than the 71+ stuff.

That is certainly debatable...



'71 styling cues FAR ahead of its time...

Still present today...

Sorry, but what years and trim was the pistol grip available in the b body?

The pistol grip arrived for the 1970 model year in the performance B bodies. The pistol grips for '70 were a one year only style.

For '71, the bucket seat B Body performance cars got the same handle that the E bodies had. Plus, they got a unique handle for the bench seat B body cars.

I am not sure what the last year of the pistol grip was. The B body as we know it ended in 1975. Did the pistol grip make it that far?

If any of this is inaccurate or incomplete, I am sure it will be corrected.

Yep - pistol grips 70-74. B&E bodies.

71's are my favorite. I am glad they delayed them and if you're ever driven a 71-72 you know how solid they feel, quiet they are and how well they handle. I think the extra year made them a much better car than the rushed to market 70 E-bodies.
This way we got the 70 B-bodies with the long in the tooth body style but with the cool goodies like 15X7's and pistol grips and then we got the 71's as well. Sort of a bonus gift as it were.
I was there in the fall of 70 and the 71 B-bodies were huge news at the time, people were very excited about them.

Pretty hard to top that! Gorgeous

while it had a "performance" image, the pistol grip shifter was STANDARD (or included) in every 1970-1974 B & E-body with the D21 - 4-speed manual transmission 318 2bbl to HEMI (2 door - 4 door - convertible - station wagon).

I guess I miss spoke about the sales figures new. The circumstances of the buying public back then were complicated. Look at the Thunderbirds. 55-57 were not very good sales for Ford. The sales took off with the 58 up. Now look at what years sell and which ones goes to the scrapper.
Looking on the Charger board want adds, there are 56 adds wanting 69-70 Chargers and 1 wanting a 71. Not one add is for 72-74. Sales figures don’t mean much 40 years later.

They usually don't...although some like to use them as a "gauge" for popularity or rarity among today's enthusiast or an excuse to validate their choice of vehicle

Kinda like a 57 chevy vs a 58 chevy, although the 73/4 Chargers have come up slightly compared to the b-body plymouths. One limiting factor would be the availability of aftermarket parts, and you also get into the iso-k years (73-74 E-bodies are not plagued by this and they seem to be holding their own).

I just wanted to recap since the link may not be available in the future. Essentially the 69 C-bodies did not meet sales expectations so the "fuselage styling" was held up for one year so that the Bs and the Es could take greater advantage of platform sharing. Smart move for a company that had different floor pans depending on which exhaust you ordered.

(The Plymouth 'equivalent'...

Anyone have a good pic of a 71 Sassy Grass GTX with a white half top?

That's gonna be tough...

Makes me wonder about what was like my fourth car, aa 71 RT EV2 with black interior and orange seat inserts, it had a ton of options and I recall two fender tags but back then never had a reason to even look at them other to recall there were two. But still the one website with production figures show just by color/motor/trans if accurate was one of twenty three.

One I wish I had kept, but we still have Uncle Rico on here it seems.

I am the first to admit that the 68-70 B body style is more popular
with most folks. I like 'em myself, but I am more attracted to the
71-74 "fuselage" body style...I love the wrap-around front bumpers/grille styling on the B-bodies (esp. Chargers)!! That body style to me, looks like it's going 100 MPH standing still! And, after looking at
the Sassy Grass paint on Mopars lately...I really wanna paint my Duster in that hue someday.

I think all 70 B body 2 door sales went down, not because of "long in the tooth" styling....it was more due to the new Cuda/Challenger E bodies competing in house.

If you were a bachelor and didn't really need a back seat, the choice would be pretty easy to make. Also if you wanted a 2 door Dodge in 71, it HAD to be a Charger, you couldn't get a coupe or 2 door sedan Coronet like you could prior.

How many more 68-70 Chargers would they have sold if there were no Coronet coupes, R/T's or Super Bees to buy (add those numbers all together and compare Vs 71) and instead they just made less expensive Base model Chargers (like they did in 71?) . Interesting to think about but direct comparing 70 to 71 is kinda "apples and oranges".

I like (but by no means "prefer") the 'new' styling of the 71 B's, but for driving personally I hated the interior doors and the helicopter landing pad hood...the window sill was too high to hang your arm out the window comfortably!! 66-70's were the perfect cruising cars, especially the 66-68's that had the door lock button in the back. (it was only moved to the center of the door in 69 to make them harder to break in to, btw) on the 69-70's we used to have to cut down the stud and put the tapered buttons in to get them flush with the sill...for driving comfort so it didn't poke you inside the arm. I'm sure I'm not the only person that did that!

I've had several B and E bodies over the years, my favorite to look at is the 68 charger but my favorite to drive are any of the 70 B's because they had the high back buckets and the pistol grip. plus it was the first year for the high impact colors.

My favorite RR is hands down the 70, make mine a 440-6 black post 4 speed non console with the magnum 500's and the Roadrunner swirl stripes down the sides. I had a triple black 71 RR, loved the styling but really prefered the 72 bumper/tail. And to me all of the 72' and later A/B/E's suffered from those hideous generic "Northern Hydraulics trailer reflector" side marker lights.