Hey Charger’ was the tagline for Chrysler’s Valiant Charger in the 1970s, and it has remained part of the local vernacular ever since.
The combination of pretty women, Chrysler’s Valiant Charger sports coupe and the ‘V for victory’ hand signal proved a strong selling point.
Actors such as Graeme Blundell (who played the naïve and mischievous Alvin Purple) and Geoffrey Rush (a future Oscar winner) played normal blokes who were swamped by attractive women because they drove a Charger.
‘The unbelievable can happen to you’ was Chrysler’s tagline and, oh boy, did it sell!
Advertising rep Fred Schepisi can lay claim to this successful campaign, and his genius wasn’t a one-off. He later went on to direct The Devil’s Playground, The Chant of Jimmi Blacksmith, Roxanne and most recently, Words and Pictures.
The catchcry and hand signal from the ad continue to be used today when a Charger is spotted out in the street, and has even been adopted by younger generations.
Not only did the ad’s popularity make the Charger a hit, its price of just $2795 brand new (try buying one for that now!) helped. Add to that the fact that its two main rivals in Ford and Holden had gone sedate with their two performance models, and Chrysler’s coupe made the perfect hero model.
The Charger won the prestigious Wheels Car of the Year award in 1971, further elevating its standing among consumers of the day.
Motorsport helped, too, even though Chrysler chose to compete with a six-cylinder motor instead of the V8. The six-cylinder was chosen after hundreds of testing kilometres by Chrysler’s factory team at the South Australian Mallala circuit because its weight benefits outweighed any horsepower deficiency.
An underdog compared to Ford and Holden, the Charger enjoyed some success, including a third-placed finish at the rain-plagued 1972 Bathurst 500.
However, all things come to an end and the Charger’s fate came in 1978 as sales continued to dwindle, leaving Australians with little more than paragrahs in the history books and lasting memories of the ‘Hey Charger’ salute.
