Nineteen seventy was the kind of year people in the U.S. auto industry tend to want to forget. Total production slumped by more than 20 percent for the calendar year. The few gainers were Lincoln's Continental Mark Ⅲ, American Motors, and Plymouth. Plymouth's 7.4-percent rise was chiefly attributable to the great reception given to the brand-new Duster coupe born from the compact Valiant. Overall, though, Plymouth's parent Chrysler Corporation was down by almost nine percent. With cash in short supply, Chrysler executives decided their big C-body cars, new in '69, would go basically unchanged for 1971, plans for a mini compact to battle Ford's Pinto and Chevrolet's Vega were scotched in favor of importing the Cricket from Chrysler-allied Rootes Group in the UK, and all-new '72 Valiants and Dodge Darts were killed. However, one thing that management felt had to happen for '71 was the introduction of a new generation of Dodge and Plymouth intermediates for which it set aside $109.9 million.
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