Jim Kennedy’s Car Collection

The Plymouth Volaré was introduced in the Fall of 1975 as a 1976 model, and along with its corporate sibling, the Dodge Aspen, was named Motor Trend Magazine’s Car of the Year for 1976. The successor to the Valiant, the Volaré was considered a “compact” car by 1970s standards. In less than a year, the station wagon version had become the best-selling wagon in the country. While critically-acclaimed and popular when first introduced, the Volaré eventually became best known for a wave of defect recalls which nearly bankrupted the Chrysler Corporation. “Volaré” is an Italian word, presumably chosen for its meaning “to fly” or “to soar;” unfortunately, the word can also mean “to fall off” and “to pass quickly,” which seemed more appropriate terms once the myriad defects became known.

My particular Volaré wagon was originally special-ordered as a lease by LeRoy Dominick, a mid-level Chrysler executive whose office was in San Mateo, California. The vehicle was delivered to the Chrysler-Plymouth dealership near his home in San Jose, California, in late 1976, and used as a family car. It traveled on day trips to the beach at Santa Cruz, and on vacations throughout California and the Western United States; on the California journeys, it often towed the family’s 1969 Glasspar tri-hull boat. When Mr. Dominick relocated his family to the East Coast a few years later, he turned in the Volaré at the Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in Daly City, California. That dealership sold the vehicle to William Welch, a retired native San Franciscan, who used the car to run errands for friends and neighbors. He owned the Volaré until his death at age 90, at which time his niece and her husband inherited the car. They maintained the wagon for the next ten years, and in 2010 sold it to an acquaintance, Jeanette “J. Byrd” Hosch, a San Francisco resident and self-described “singing cowgirl.” She employed the wagon to tow her small travel trailer. When she purchased a Ford Explorer to tow her new trailer in 2012, she listed the Volaré for sale online. Although my Plymouth collection already included a 1970s model (the Blue Duster), I did not yet have a station wagon. And once I met J. Byrd and heard the history of the car, I was sold. Nineteen Seventy Seven was also the year I graduated from high school, and the Volaré’s colors vaguely matched those of my alma mater, which I also considered significant: when trying to rationalize buying an old Plymouth, I have found any tenuous connection sufficient to justify a purchase.

Normandin Chrysler-Plymouth, the dealership where Mr. Dominick picked up his executive lease, predates not only the Chrysler and Plymouth brands but the American automobile industry as well. The business began in 1875, when Amable Normandin, a blacksmith and sleigh maker from Montreal, opened a buggy-making shop in San Jose. It began selling horseless carriages in 1906, and in 1915 started peddling a series of brands that included Franklin, Hupmobile, Saxon, and Hillman. In 1933, Chrysler awarded Normandin a DesSoto-Plymouth franchise; the Chrysler brand replaced the declining DeSoto marque in 1958. The fifth generation of the Normandin Family continues to operate the dealership, offering Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, and Fiat products.