(First published 8/1/2013) Do you remember 1954? It was quite some time ago. Billy Joel can sum it up quickly: “Roy Cohn, Juan Perón, Toscanini, Dacron, Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock Around the Clock”. In case some of those names sound a bit too distant (or totally unheard of to us younger crowd) let me make it a bit clearer: “I Love Lucy” was the #1 show on television in 1954. Coincidently, 1954 was also the year that Plymouth introduced the Savoy as its mid-priced line of cars.
I’ve driven by this two-toned green beauty countless times. It’s been sitting at this small used car lot for at least a year now, through the blizzards of February and the scorchers of July.
Plymouth had previously used the Savoy name starting in 1951, as a trim level on its Suburban wagons. In 1954 however, Plymouth promoted the Savoy to a full model line, fitting between the entry-level Plaza line and top-of-the-line Belvedere. Named after luxury prestigious hotels, all three models were new for 1954.
The Savoy was available in three body styles: the 2-door Savoy Club Sedan, 4-door Savoy sedan, and a 2-door Savoy coupe. All three models shared Plymouth’s 114-inch wheelbase and were powered by Plymouth’s 217.8 cu in I6, making 100 horsepower.
Every Savoy came with two-tone exterior paint combinations, as well as interiors that were color-keyed to the exterior colors. I love the backward-tilting shape of the rear quarter window and upper door portion. It’s got a little 2005-2011 Lexus GS thing going on.
Now speaking of the interior, it looks all original here, well-preserved in Marie Barone’s plastic couch covers. Two-tone green interior, now that’s something you can’t get in 2013.
Noticeably absent from the interior are seat belts, which did not become common in American automobiles for another few years. Energy-absorbing steering columns would not be introduced until the 1959 Mercedes-Benz W111. This one here looks like it could be pretty damaging in a high-speed collision.
This Savoy is equipped with Chrysler’s PowerFlite 2-speed automatic transmission, the first fully automatic transmission from the company. On an interesting note, PowerFlite included Reverse, Neutral, Drive, and Low range, but no Park. This required the parking brake to always be used in order to park.
This mid-priced Savoy 4-door sedan was actually Plymouth’s most popular model of 1954, with 139,383 produced. Back in 1954, it retailed for $1,873. In today’s dollars, that would be about $16,258, or about as much as a base 2013 Toyota Corolla costs.
The listed for-sale price is $9,995. Given the time it’s been sitting here, I imagine the seller’s open to lower offers.
Note the gas cap location on the driver’s side rear of the car.
And the chrome “jet wings” on the rear doors, among my favorite of its styling features.
Now when it comes to ’50s Mopar, I prefer the longer, lower, wider trend of the Forward Look cars to the chunkier pre-’57s. But after getting up close and personal, I couldn’t help but fall in love with this green Plymouth. Like a lonely old dog at the pound, it sits, waiting for someone to love it again and take it home.
I recall in the early 1970’s that our local Plymouth dealer advertised that the Plymouth division and country singer Johnny Cash were searching for the nicest Plymouth Savoy still in existence. The “winning” Savoy owner was encouraged to trade their car even-up for a brand new Plymouth.
A couple of our local citizens entered their Savoys in the competition but they did not make the cut.
Johnny Cash wanted to rekindle fond memories of a Savoy he owned in his early days on the road and was searching for another.
The winning car in 1972 was a ’54 owned by an old lady in Tacoma, Washington. She did get a brand new ’72 Gran Fury for her ’54. I would’ve kept the ’54!!
i own it now
Nice! I bought mine in 2010 . The statement about the only coming in 2 tone is wrong though. Mine is all original and is all green. I even have the original title. I love it.
I bought mine in April of 2021. Same color as you describe. I absolutely adore mine as well. 38,000 original miles and runs like a brand new car. I won her in an eBay auction. Her name is Ariel. I have since had her painted and cannot get over how beautiful this car is. Congratulations on yours!
I remember the ads for Johnny Cash searching for a similar Savoy. My 11 y/o self went ‘eww, what kind of name is that?’, since was used to Fury for big Plymouths. Sounded like a detergent or soap name.
“I’ve driven by this two-toned green beauty countless times” – I have heard the 54 Plymouth called many things, but “beauty” is not one of them. This may be the dowdiest, most backwards design job of the 1950s, with the possible exception of the Hudson Jet. There is a reason that Plymouth sales tumbled, and you are looking at the main one.
That said, that interior shows off the attributes of the old, old Chrysler Corporation. Nothing cheap about that interior. And this is a mid-line model, too. I can only imagine what the Belvedere looked like.
This must have been one of the later cars as it has the PowerFlite. The PF was a lot like a Powerglide, but simpler and stronger (it bolted up from everything from this Plymouth to the 340+ horsepower ’56 Chrysler 300B. It replaced the oddball HyDrive that was like a 3 speed mated to a torque converter, and that shared its oil supply with the engine. Verrrry expensive oil changes.
The lack of a Park feature in the automatic was sort of an old-school Chrysler-style engineering approach from the people who stuck with Fluid Drive for so long. Chrysler’s emergency brakes were huge drum brakes that clamped onto the drive shaft. “Why, when you have a brake mechanism on the drive shaft could you possibly need another one (that is inferior as well)?” Chrysler didn’t put a Park feature into the automatics until the early 60s.
A very nice find. Not many of these around, then or especially now. I could almost take this one home and love it like the ugly little puppy that it is. BTW, I am not old enough, but is this the color green that more early 50s cars were painted than any other? It seems like it from what I have seen.
I’m far from an expert here but the paint in the shot of the gas cap looks like it had metal flake in it. That can’t be original, can it?
The darker green paint was in fact metallic. Metallic paints were being used on cars in the ’50s, including Chryslers, but I’ll take a bet that that isn’t the original paint here. I don’t think paint would look that pristine on a 60,000 mile, 59 year-old car, even if it was garage kept for most of them. Also if you notice the 4th picture from the bottom, the lighter green paint has bubbled, which indicates it was probably repainted at some point.
I’m no expert but I seem to recall other makes of the era that lacked a Park position for the automatic. My aunt’s 1955 Oldsmobile was NDSLR as I recall – and you put the car in Reverse to lock the transmission. Olds introduced Park in their Hydramatic in 1956.
I agree about these Plymouths being dowdy and I thought so when they were nearly new during my childhood. My maternal grandfather had what I believe was a 53 sedan (must have been a Plaza as it was really bare bones) and I thought it was a pretty ugly, cheap little car. The 55 was like a blast to the future when it appeared in the showrooms and we all thought Exner was a genius even if we didn’t know his name at the time.
“Meadowbrook” in 1953 was to Plaza in 1954.
Which leads to the question, what was it that led Plymouth to adopt a series of model names based on famous hotels? Plaza, Savoy, Belvedere — they were all hotels.
Which must’ve been annoying for the hotelier when the name of their establishment got demoted to the bottom of the Plymouth model range!
I think we touched on these transmission indicators before, my parents’ ’55 Oldsmobile lacked a “Park” position, but I remember the little indicator needle would disappear when you pushed the transmission lever all the way up to the “N” position. I thought that was so cool, I played with it endlessly.
Our neighbor two doors up from us had a ’54 Plymouth Savoy, two-door coupe, all black. He drove it for years until he acquired his ’62 Galaxie 500 XL coupe, also all black. Quite a change in image, from dowdy to sleek rocket ship. His son took over the Plymouth that year, and we would still see it coming up our hill for many more years, looking all the more ancient as time passed. As others have noted, these era Plymouths were unusually short and stubby appearing, which undoubtedly added to their lack of appeal as “longer, lower, wider” designs took hold. BTW, this pictured car seems to have the ’53 taillights, the ’54’s had a round backup light lens at the base of the red lens.
Sure, it’s “dowdy” . . . . but to a certain extent a 210 Chevy sedan from ’54 was not exactly a “beauty queen” either. Also take into account these are Virgil Exner/Henry King “transition” style cars from the 3-box favorites of K.T. Keller to the ’55 “100 Million Dollar Look.”
Plymouth’s fall from grace in 1954 was specifically due to:
1) The Ford (they started it!) price war with Chevy to which Chrysler Corporation could not match car for car
2) Lack of a fully automatic drive until the spring of 1954 in Plymouth
3) An aggressively marketed and priced Motorama syled ’54 Buick . . . standard V-8 power in a special for slightly more than an averagely equipped model of the “low priced three.”
Agree on the Chevy comment. The ’53-’54 Chevy is not one of my favorites and looks almost as bad as the Plymouth. Both had two-speed torque converter automatics by then, but Chrysler stuck with the flathead six way too long.
I’ve got a 54 ply. savoy 2 door with the hy-drive set-up. bought it in 2015. did a rebuild of engine,tranny,brakes, & new radiator core. love driving this car & it started drawing trophys this year. I’ve never seen another one at any of the car events i’ve gone to.
I have an all original 54 savoy. I love it. And it does look like Kermit the frog with the full wrap around braces,I’ll give you that.
Chrysler week has been a wild one for me, since I had fairly limited exposure to Chrysler products with family and friends growing up, yet the cc posts keep covering the Chrysler corporation cars that actually were in my clan, including the 1971 New Yorker, the Plymouth Volare and now this.
As per my comment in Plymouth: In Memoriam, one of my mother’s aunts was a loyal Plymouth owner and repeatedly bought them, starting in the 1930s. While I only knew her Plymouths in-person from the late 60s on, I did ask her to detail for me the ones she had owned over the years. One of those was a 1954 Savoy sedan, undoubtedly much like this one. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if hers had been green as well, since she always had either a medium green or medium blue car. I wish I knew which transmission she had, not sure if she would have sprung for the PowerFlite. I do remember that even in the 1970s her Massachusetts cars never had air conditioning for example, a completely foreign concept to a boy from Louisiana.
Another interesting period tidbit from another era: the Plymouths were the “second” car in their family and for my Great Aunt’s use. Her husband drove Chrysler brand cars and “his” car was always the primary. When he died in the early 1960s, she stuck with Plymouths. I think the Plymouth suited her image, as she was Swiss born, lived in New England and enjoyed frugality by choice, not necessity. Interestingly, she was a photographer for the newspaper (pretty unusual for a woman at that time) and would drive her Plymouths all over for her shots. Surely she didn’t want anything too flashy for that duty.
I have never seen a 1954 Savoy in person, so these detailed pictures are the closest to an “up close” look I’ve ever had. I do hope the right person adopts this poor little puppy. If this dumpy dog has survived this long in such good shape, in the Northeast to boot, it really deserves to find a great home.
Also you have to love the 1954 brochure cover art. The creative license taken with the image almost makes the car look … hy style!
And to think then Chrysler Australia menaged to upgrade the design of the 1953-54 Plymouth with the Aussies Plainsman and Royal until 1963. Here a couple of pictures http://www.flickriver.com/groups/1957-1963australianchryslerroyals/pool/interesting/
The Aussie Chrysler Royal was an amalgamation of body stampings: ’53-’54 Plymouth roofline, ’56 Plymouth from the beltline down; an adaptation/hybrid of a ’55-’56 Chrysler and Plymouth dash “mirrored” over for right-hand drive. All on a Plymouth chassis with a flathead six (initially).
The tail fins on the ’60 Chrysler Royal look like ’56 Packard’s tail fins.
OOPS meant to type ’58
This Savoy is as stylish as the white shoes middle-aged nurses wear. And what kind of name is Savoy anyway? That’s right up there with Belvedere for I-don’t-have-sex-anymore imagery.
My favorite Chrysler of all time is the 1955 300C which sat between this one and the Forward Look cars. It was even more beautiful than the ’56 Continental.
Savoy was named after the famous Savoy Hotel in London. Likewise the Plaza was named after the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the Belvedere after the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore.
Yes thanks. I was curious where those names came from and for how long they were used. So I Googled them and learned as you said they are hotel names. Never heard of the Savoy and “Hotel Belvedere” I seem to remember from old black and white movies.
I never made the connection, they were just old sounding names like Carlton, Mildred, etc. I am a west coaster and found most of the east coast Chrysler names a bit stodgy.
Oh wow you said that right in your article I missed that the first time I read it, sorry. It’s just bizarre they would name their entry level line after something like the Plaza. It wouldn’t be too many years later that they used Cricket.
I guess if they were honest, they would have been the Travelodge, the Motel 6 and the Holiday Inn.
You could’ve been stuck with a 1953 “Cranbrook,” “Cambridge,” or “Meadowbrook” . . . .
I find these little Plymouths more attractive than the 1952-54 Fords, and I’m usually a Ford partisan. However, those Fords were completely uninspiring. This car is rather cute, especially in this color, and it’s full of thoughtful little quality touches. I like it.
True, I like it the way it is. I would want something with a little more pep than the 100 hp I6. This car in retrospect now looks stately and matronly. Seems like the sort of car you could drive to a family funeral if you wanted to remind everyone that you’re not the hell raiser you were in your younger days.
Actually, the Powerflite equipped cars got the 230″ Dodge engine and were rated at 110 HP. As to this particular car, the rear is incorrect; that is a ’53 rear end and taillights. The ’54 had a raised chrome fin about 3″ tall.
Yes- The tail light assemblies shown above are ’53….The “tail fins” were an option on the ’54 Savoy model- standard equipment on the top-line Belvedere.
Just ran across a childhood picture that had a similar vintage dodge or chrysler in the background. We had what we had and I’m satisfied to have been born when I was. I recall that these plymouths with the manual transmissions could just be slapped into second gear. They were much faster on the 1-2 shift than the fords or Chevys. Nobody had the money to be running sbc’s when I was in high school but there were a couple Olds that ruled the roost. Btw my powerglide doesn’t have park either but it was made with one. I chose to have reverse over park and use the parking brake. I would think it has to be linkage. If it comes back to life it will probably have a th350 anyway.
There is something about this style that still appeals to me. Something about a flathead six as well. I’ve owned two and if you aren’t in a hurry they work just find.
Right on about the 1-2 shift. When put in low, the lever returned to the same plane as 2nd & 3rd, meaning there was no “H” gate to maneuver through, you just crammed the shifter straight up. It was so fast to do that if you were a dumb 17 year old like me when I drag raced my dad’s 1953, you could keep your gas foot on the floor and go from low to second with almost zero lag. I managed to bend the gearshift lever doing this! That quick shift allowed me to out drag some other cars that were otherwise quicker.
Much like Blue Flame Sixes in the day, Plymouth Flathead aficionados got multi-carb setups, higher compression cylinder heads; headers and/or split exhaust manifolds to run true duals. Light weight and mods did make these pretty good performers, or, as I remember an older cousin who came of age in rural Missouri told me, his ’52 Plymouth Cranbrook business coupe had a ’50 Chrysler Royal engine (L-6) in it and he said it “ran like stink.”
I had dual carbs and a split manifold on my ’50 Dodge, later transferred to a ’53 Cranbrook when it was passed down to me. The dual carbs made a huge difference, especially when it came to highway passing.
Our family had a 1954 Plymouth Savoy. Dad traded our 1941 Chrysler toward it. As a kid, I was impressed that we were actually getting a 1954 car in 1954, although it was a used car. Very used, in fact. It was a retired Portland, OR taxicab.
I don’t know why this particular taxicab company bought Plymouth Savoys instead of the El Cheapo, strippo Plaza model. They also had invested in the HyDrive transmission. Like the article says: very expensive oil changes!
The car was black with a pale green “cap” on the roof; the pillars and door frames were black like the main body. When he got it home, Dad repainted the roof and the pillars and the door frames into a slightly richer looking green. It finally got traded for a 1957 Chevrolet station wagon, which was like the Plymouth Savoy in that it was the midline model, a Two Ten.
I feel very fortunate; I just googled 1954 Plymouth Savoy for the first time and thought they were talking about my car. I also own a green two-tone 1954 Savoy, model p-25. What’s more remarkable is that the car has not even reached 40,000 miles due to past owners health and circumstances. I was told, I am the fifth owner, I’ve had it for three years and driven 2,000 miles with it. I had the rust below the doors and inside the trunk finished, been tuned-up, a new set of tires and a paint job (kept the original colors). Runs like a champ, I’m a very proud owner. I’d only give it up for 20,000 dollars. It will be worth that someday. I keep it stored over the winters.
I don’t think all Savoys were two-toned, but Chrysler did push two-toning in ’54 in an effort to move cars off the lot.
I think it was a toss up as to which car Howard Cunningham would drive. This or the DeSoto. I like it however. We had these in Australia before the Valiants arrived.
The older I get the more I like these. The interior is just wonderful. I love the conservative striped fabrics that were common in cars of that era.
Agree!
Truth be told: a ’54 Chevy 210 or ’54 Ford Mainline wasn’t a beauty queen either.
Cars that I sneered at in my 30’s have become quite appealing to me in my 60’s.
Automatic tranny AND power steering!
Talk bout an effortless “cruiser”!
This mid-range interior looks SO much more plush and high quality than even the top of the line new car interiors of today.
Add on a “period correct” hang down, below dash “knee knocker” A/C unit (with modern under the hood components) and I’m a “gone pecan” for this car!
What model year did Plymouth start with the power steering option?
Didn’t Plymouth have electric windshield wipers before Chevy and Ford??
I know that Chrysler got power steering in 1951 and DeSoto in 1952, but that’s all I’ve got. I suspect a stroll through the old Plymouth brochures would answer this question. On the wipers, I suspect you are right there also, but this would be a guess.
The car’s location is in Edgartown, MA?
Curbside has sort of “danced around” this car for years (I apparently missed the original post), but finally they did it. “Profiled” the 1st car I was allowed to consider as mine. My 54 Savoy was this car, minus 2 doors, and with a light 2 tone blue/grey paint scheme.
The 53/54 Plymouth is, in my opinion, THE ugliest Chrysler product built from the early 50s until the early 70s. The interior may be comparable to any other 54 car built by any other car company, with a better instrument panel (almost no idiot lights). And that Powerflite gives Powerglide a run for it’s money, but that styling? Give me a 54 Dodge or Chrysler.
BTW, that $10K asking price? Talk about wishful thinking.
Agree on your BTW.
A 40% (at least) price cut would be realistic.
Although this ugly duckling appeals to my off-the-wall mind; most/many buyers wouldn’t even notice it.
It’s not like it’s a lousy Chevy or Ford…….
I think my value on the car pictured here is a bit biased. I would not own one of these if you paid me $10K.
That said, I noticed this morning that there is a 50 Plymouth on my local Craigslist for $7,500.
I also realized after I started my previous comment that the only 54 car I think looks decent is the Mercury.
This particular car would make for an excellent “location shot” car, to be parked on the streets of any movie set location with the plot line in the 1950’s or 1960’s.
That ‘Hy Style’ ad for the `54 Plymouth seems to be of another age, even for it`s time. Evokes memories of those glamourous musicals of the `30s and 40s, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
I’m kinda partial to the ’54 Plymouth Belvedere Savoy convertible-based Sniper Hot Rod designed by Chip Foose and built by Troy Trepanier https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ClD0CC5AhRk
My parents purchased a 1954 Plymouth Belvedere late in the summer of 1958. It was equipped similarly to this one, including the Powerflite automatic. This was the first car my parents owned with an automatic transmission and I suspect that my mother had gotten tired of shifting gears and put her foot down. I do know that they hadn’t owned the Plymouth’s predecessor (a 1950 Ford) for very long, and my father tended to keep cars until all of the usefulness had been extracted.
The Plymouth was long gone by the time I started driving circa 1968. It ended up being sold to the daughter of a neighbor, a single mom who needed some cheap wheels. She drove the car until 1970 or so, at which point it was so rusty that it was no longer safe to operate. I will leave it to others to discuss the relative attractiveness of mid-fifties Plymouths; I should note that many cars of that era were similarly challenged in the looks area.
I was in the ninth grade in 1954. We had this very dapper, slicked back, math teacher who, for a number of weeks would share with us his plans to buy a new car. We, of course, were all car crazy and chimed in with our recommendations.
He ended up buying a ’54 Chrysler in this exact color combination.
I was very happy with his choice.
I like it. Looks very ’50s European, like a ’59 Hillman Minx, except for the chrome. Automatic and power-steering too. For 6-7K I’d be tempted. I even have a couple vintage under-dash AC units that could work here.
Happy Motoring, Mark
I had a mint green 53 Plymouth Cambridge, used to drive it back and forth to work in NJ. Great car.
Nice Car – THANKS A+
Nice car, Chrysler was confusing here in the 50s we got CKD Plodges and Deplotos locally assembled by Todds also some US models privately imported and we had the Australian Chrysler Royals which were the old Cranbrook body restyled and built into the early 60s, Plenty seem to have survived though not in the condition of the featured car, it is mint and triple the price would still sell.