The 1960s were a weird and wonderful time to be a car enthusiast. In addition to serving as the beginning of the muscle car era, this decade brought bold and colorful new styling to all of the "Big Three" American car brands. Arguably, the Dodge and Plymouth Mopar cars were at the forefront of this movement with head-turning High Impact paint colors and more unusual options like the one we'll be discussing today. The Mod Top option added one of three vibrant floral print patterns in place of a solid-color vinyl roof, and could even be extended to the interior upholstery.
Photos courtesy of Mecum Auctions
The first sentence of this 1969 Plymouth ad said it all: "Feel your wheels are sort of square?"
For the 1969 and 1970 model years, Dodge and Plymouth offered this wild vinyl option in an attempt to target hip young buyers who didn't want a plain vinyl roof like the one on their parents' car. The goal was to entice buyers with a visual feature that was immediately expressive and impossible to miss.
Initially referred to as Pop Print vinyl, it would also be called Mod Top (for Plymouth) and Floral Top (for Dodge). These brand-specific names mirrored the alternative names for High Impact paint colors — Dodge's Go Mango was Plymouth's Vitamin C.
There were a total of three vinyl patterns, each with a corresponding Vinyl Top option code:
Above: Hemmings published a great article that showed how one owner restored the Mod Top vinyl roof and interior on his 1969 Satellite.
In addition to the vinyl top option, this same material could be applied to the seat upholstery and door panel upholstery via separate option codes. However, this was only available on Plymouth models, since Dodge's green and blue vinyl top was always paired with a solid-color interior.
Above: This 1969 Barracuda features the V1P yellow and black floral top, as well as F6J floral interior with green vinyl accents.
Above: Dodge's green and blue Mod Top vinyl pattern was significantly rarer than Plymouth's, as it was only selected on an estimated 218 cars between 1969 and 1970. (Photo by Randy Bolig / Hot Rod Magazine)
While we won't call Mod Top a flop, it clearly wasn't as popular as Mopar's leadership had hoped. Over the two model years when it was available, only 2,876 cars received the Mod Top option (2,658 Plymouths and 218 Dodges) according to Mopar Muscle Magazine and the Mod Top Registry.
Barry Kluczyk of Hemmings wrote, "[Mod Top] was an unequivocally distinctive design statement, but one that ultimately missed the mark... it was a little too out there, even for the psychedelic Sixties."
For more details on these rare Mopar cars, check out the video below from Rare Cars on YouTube:
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