Charger Superstar

The 'Hey Charger' television ad in the early 1970s remains one of Australian TV's most memorable commercials - even half a century on. Elsewhere on the box and on the big screen, however, the big Valiant coupe featured only rarely.  Still, those few appearances tended to be spectacular.
The ultimate Charger spin-offs are, undoubtedly, the two Alvin Purple movies, starring Graeme Blundell as sex symbol Alvin and a large number of actresses who had trouble keeping their clothes on.

A red Charger appeared in the first Alvin Purple movie, released in 1973, while a special purple Charger features in the 1974 sequel, Alvin Rides Again. The purple Charger was fitted with fake injector trumpets (obviously stuck to the bonnet) and a double bed in the back which was well-used in the movie.
A double bed was not a listed Chrysler option.
In an early example of cross-promotion, Blundell also made an appearance in at least one ‘Hey Charger’ television ad.
The second Alvin Purple Charger went on a promotional tour at the time and is thought to still be around. There are car chases in both movies but nothing to get too excited about, unlike the one in the 1975 cult classic The Man From Hong Kong, which features an impressive guest appearance by a blue Charger.
This Charger is driven by Asian actor and stuntman Jimmy Wang Yu as he takes on a gold XT Falcon in what must be the wildest chase sequence filmed in Australia - at least before Mad Max set a new standard.
This scene takes place on a quiet back road near Wiseman’s Ferry, north-west of Sydney, with the two cars slamming into each other at great speed. There was no digital trickery back then. A cameraman was seated in the passenger seat getting reactions of Wang Yu as he drove. You can feel the impacts as the cars bash into each other.
This battle ends with the gold Falcon being forced off the road where it smashes through a fibro shack, and then explodes.
“Nobody shoots cars better than the Aussies,” Quentin Tarantino says in the 2008 doco Not Quite Hollywood, a celebration of the trashy Australian movies of this period. Tarantino nominates The Man From Hong Kong (or Bonkers in Honkers, as it was called at the time) as his favourite Australian film, largely because of the brilliant stuntwork.

The movie’s director Brian Trenchard-Smith says he chose a Charger because he drove one himself on the road. The movie car was loaned by Chrysler on the proviso that it be returned in the same condition. After the car chase Trenchard-Smith says it needed $4800 worth of smash repairs to get it back to (nearly) original condition, about as much as a new Charger would have cost...
He also recalled that someone watching the film in a cinema realised that the Charger being trashed in the movie had the same number plate as the one he had bought (brand new) a few months before! The cinema goer complained to the dealer, and they apparently swapped it for a new one.
The Man From Hong Kong was later released on DVD, along with another Trenchard-Smith film, Dead-End Drive-In. This obscure 1982 flick is based on famed Aussie author Peter Carey’s short story about car fans in the future living in a derelict drive-in movie theatre. In the movie the Karboys gang drive a modified graffiti-covered Charger (see main image above). It’s probably the only reason for watching the film.
Chargers also featured in a long-forgotten Australian TV series.
In 1971 Crawford Productions did a deal with Chrysler Australia which saw Valiants of various descriptions appearing in their shows for a mention in the credits.
When a new private-investigator series called Ryan was planned for release in 1973 the Charger was the obvious choice.
This new series was the first Crawford Production to be filmed in colour and the first to be sold overseas.
Locally, Ryan was one of the less successful Crawford shows. Only 39 episodes were made, including one directed by George Miller, better known these days for giving us Mad Max.
Still, those who saw Ryan certainly remember those Chargers. They were XL versions fitted with the 265 Hemi. A tan one, rego LEY-737, is best-remembered by fans of the show.
This car was thrashed, and eventually trashed, by the show’s star Rod Mullinar, an English actor who had done some motor racing before coming to Australia. Like Leonard Teale in Homicide, he only used a stunt driver when forced to. There are reports of at least two Chargers being written off during the series, one by Mullinar on the Tullamarine Freeway.
In a 1995 Crawford’s television special Mullinar said that neither he nor the stunt drivers particularly liked driving the Charger because “it went off the road a lot”.
In another incident, Mullinar was supposed to drive at speed through a creek but the water was deeper than expected and the Charger stopped mid-stream, with Mullinar and actress Arna-Maria Winchester forced to abandon ship in knee-deep water. The Charger had to be winched out.
Perhaps it’s significant that while the series bombed in the Sydney and Melbourne television markets, Ryan was quite popular in Adelaide where Valiant Chargers were made.
The series hasn’t been seen on air since the 1980s but some recorded episodes are now a big hit with Charger fans.
Melbourne TV historian Chris Keating (see his classicaustraliantv.com website for more details on Ryan) notes that towards the end of their cop show period, the Crawford Centre complex in Abbotsford had accumulated a used car yard worth of Chrysler freebies, including several sedans, four or five wagons, utes, a Galant and at least two Chargers.
Recycling of these cars was common. Bluey’s famous maroon VJ Valiant Regal ended its illustrious career by being destroyed in a 1984 episode of Special Squad and Keating suspects that the Ryan Chargers would also have ended up this way. Such is life in the fickle world of show business.
Meanwhile there is a persistent rumour in rock music circles that glam rockers Hush used a Valiant Charger supplied by Chrysler to go on tour in the early 1970s. It’s a nice idea, but former Hush guitarist Les Gock says it never happened. They did hire a Valiant to do a tour of North Queensland but that was the standard model, not the Charger. At other times they got around like every other band back in the day, in a pre-loved Ford Thames delivery van.