Let’s try something new here. As most of you know we have the CC Cohort where readers (or anyone) can post pictures. Sometimes we grab them and write about them, unfortunately however not every car is one we can necessarily write about or perhaps we aren’t personally that interested or knowledgeable about whatever the subject may be. But we currently have about 52,000 pictures in there just waiting for their day in the spotlight. So I’m going to grab a picture (or batch of pictures if there is more than one of the same car) every day and post it here without any text beyond a credit to the photographer. I’m going to let you, the readers and other contributors, fill in the whole blank piece of digital paper. It’s a scroll, there’s lots of space, we won’t run out. Love the pictured subject? Hate it? Know it? Owned it? Want it? Whatever, let everyone know. Today’s pic(k) is above, only one image of this one, supplied to us (with my gratitude) by canadiancatgreen who seems to do a ton of walking around and snapping photos. Thank you.
I saw this one on the Cohort. I couldn’t decide if I liked the black paint on the trim around the windows or not. Body color paint made these sedans look cheap, and I don’t think Plymouth offered chrome or stainless on the C body sedans (but could be mistaken because most buyers of C body sedans were tightwads).
I always found the curb-side keyhole in the trunk odd. I was used to seeing them centered. I just chalked it up to Chrysler being Chrysler.
Fury III, Sport Fury and Fury Brougham got the thin inner window frame chrome trim. Retail buyers usually sprang for the III or higher. I’d agree with Jason below that this is probably a I or II.
Put a set of Mopar’s road wheels on this and it would almost look like a modern retro. I like it.
There was just one Mopar on our block of twenty homes when I was very young, a green ’71 Fury III with that curbside trunk lock. I thought it curious too, but I suppose it could be useful if someone parked too close behind you.
I’m assuming this is just ‘artistic licence’, or did the Sport Fury sedan really have a lower roofline?
The two doors on this body were some of the best looking cars ever built. All hood and trunk. It’s still amazing that once normal Americans could buy such extravagant cars, and put 440s in them.
My dad was a Chevy man who kept his cars for six years. He went from a 1954 Bel-Air to a 1960 Parkwood (we were now a family of four children) to a 1966 Impala four-door hardtop. Unfortunately the 283 burned its valves at about 80,000 miles, so since we had a neighbor who worked at a local Chrysler-Plymouth dealership he bought of the lot (a first for him) a gold Sport Fury hardtop with a brown vinyl top. It had a 383 matched to a Torqueflite trans mated to a 2.73 rear end. Even with a two barrel carb and that high gearing it moved. It also had a front bench seat with a fold down armrest that resembled buckets but the armrest could be folded up for a sixth passenger or more interesting activities (I was in high school at the time). I think one of the reasons for the curbside trunk lock was that thieves who gained access by punching out the lock soon realized that even it you did you could not gain access to the trunk.
If the keyhole on the side would’ve been done by a foreign car manufacturer it would’ve been a stroke of genius.But because an American manufacturer (especially Chrysler) did it it’s derided as being oddball…..Who cares?Everything Chrysler built was different….They had the least amount of money of the Big 3.They had to be innovative or have good engineering in order to survive…..Who installed curved side glass first?….Chrysler did.Who installed an alternator first?…..Chrysler did.Who installed a gear reduction starter first?…..Chrysler did….Who made electronic ignition standard on a car first?…….The list goes on and on.
Great idea Jim! I like it!
Most fuselage Fury III’s were hardtops since they were considered near the top of the line, just under the Sport Fury. A vinyl roof was also a very popular option at the time.
http://www.fuselage.de/ply71/71ply06b.jpg
A plain Jane sedan version like above is a rare find. The blacked out B-pillar must be a custom job.
If a person looks at the brochure, the tail lights indicate this as being a Fury I although the fender emblem says Fury III. I almost wrote this car up the other day and researched it before opting not to do so.
I’m going with this being a rebadged Fury I (fender replacement, perhaps?).
IIRC, the tag next to the trunk key hole would also identify the model.
Jim, are there any additional photos????
This is the only picture. Canadiancatgreen found this Fury on a car lot in Edmonton, I believe.
Chrysler Corporation quality control wasn’t the best during the 1970s, so it could very well be a Fury I with a Fury III badge on the front fender.
I remember seeing brand-new F-bodies that were Aspens on one side and Volares on the other.
Fury I and Fury I Is were never offered in 4 door hardtops in any year. White wall tires and full wheel covers were optional even on Fury III. Sport Fury had full wheel covers as standard.
I kind of like the blacked out frames. Nothing wrong with a sedan, but this makes it look a little classier.
I found the picture interesting due to what’s around the subject as well. A Caddy with skirts and a Mustang on the other side with a Mercedes R107 beyond the fence. I’m assuming it’s a used car lot of some sort but who knows since the cars aren’t really facing the customer but the fence and street way beyond.
I was just a young teen when these prowled the earth, but to me these Furys conveyed an aura of power, authority, and wealth.
Power because drag racing (on a five mile stretch of as-yet-unopened-but-completed Interstate I-79 near my hometown) was a big thing in 1970, and in my hometown Mopars ruled. Two specifically, a 1969 Hemi-Charger which ran on Mickey Thompson slicks, and a particular 1968 440 Roadrunner who owner said he’d open the hood for anybody who beat him… and never had to.
Authority because the State Police drove Plymouth Fury’s…. with the ‘Police Package’ engine. They’d catch you. “ The 1969 Polara [read as Fury, the Polara’s sister] Pursuit, with its 375 bhp 440, sleek new “fuselage” bodystyle, and standard 3.23 axle, could do 0-60 in 6.3 seconds, the quarter mile in 14.3 seconds (at over 99 mph), and run out to a top speed of (or, by some accounts, above) 147 mph.
Wealth, because well, our rich next-door neighbor (whose other cars which I remember at various times included a 1962 Imperial, a Citroen Goddess (DS) and 356 Speedster) bought a 1970 Plymouth Sport Fury GT. His son, became a local legend by drag racing that car when dad was out of town and consequently blowing up the engine…when the car was only a week old.
So, yeah… I have very powerful memories of lusting after these cars. I still remember a vivid dream of growing up enough to drink whiskey, smoke cigars, and drive a Gran Fury coupe with the 440 that growled through dual exhausts.
“Top of the World, Ma!”
I have a 69 Polara Conv 383 2b auto trans. Its not a screamer but it does get up and go when I want it to..
It is a classic car dealership — I was able to find the location on Google StreetView (link below and screen shot attached):
https://goo.gl/maps/RTALoHW1bZP2usSTA
Looks like an interesting place; unfortunately the dealership has no website to check their inventory, but browsing on StreetView is interesting nonetheless:
Yes, it’s The Little Lot. Father and son aren’t into using social media. They are located in Edmonton’s west-end on Stony Plain Road which runs east-west.
They shutdown during winter so don’t expect to see much stock at this time of year. And…the subject car is more than likely a Fury I because it is so basic. I also think it was rebadged.
Reminds me of my second car. Paid $300 in summer of ‘80 for my ‘71 Fury II wagon. Same color, same black steelies, same poverty caps. I couldn’t recall if mine was a Fury I or Fury II, but looking at this pic nails it as a “II”. The only chrome adornment my car had besides the bumpers and handles was that side molding. Jim has identified this as a “III”, but I think it’s a “II”; I just can’t fully make out the call out on the front fender.
Mine was a retired Florida DOT car which still had the police special spare tire on the original blue painted rim. I bought it from a buddy who got it from his dad. I will say there’s nothing like the feeling of a huge wagon fishtailing around corners. Mine was powered by the 318-V8 with a 2:74 gear. Not much take off sitting still, but it’d accelerate nicely once under way. Got it up to 122mph one night (had a certified 140mph speedometer), it had more to go, but the tires were bald and it was raining. I will say fuel economy was atrocious. Sadly, or maybe for the better, I only had it a couple months as it was always broke down. I finally had it and let it go with a broken water pump for $120. Nobody liked riding in it, anyway; looked like a “narc car”. Haha.
One thing I always remember about this car, and I assume it applied to all Chryslers of this vintage, was regarding the tires. In the owners manual, Chrysler did not recommend the use of radial tires. Something about the car was engineered for bias-ply tires. Anyone know about this?
I have heard that putting radials on a car with suspension designed for bias-plys can make it ride rougher, because the tires are “giving” before the suspension has a chance to go through it’s motions properly. I found this to be true at least once, on a ’68 Cadillac.
Peugeots from the ’60’s – ’80’s were renowned as much for their ride comfort as for the great quietness of that ride, an aspect noticeable in these old things even now: there’s a distinct feeling best described as if a blanket is rolling out continuous under the car as it goes along. The company had put much effort into engineering the suspension around standard-fit Michelin radials on the 404 design during the ’50’s, and worked out that certain amounts of fore/aft compliance is a huge key to making radials ride quietly. Jaguar greatly admired their results, and incorporated the same tuned-bushing compliance into their ’68 XJ-6, to famously good effect. Cross-plies are much less harsh over the road, beyond my pay-grade as to why, sorry, but along with TheMann here, I can tell anecdotally of fitting radials to my ’66 Falcon, and it instantly felt as if had concrete tyres. Certain harsh impacts at speed felt as if they were causing rubber to hit metal in the suspension, and it quite probably was – they weren’t designed to take the direct blow the harsh radial sent through the system.
So Chrysler was probably making sure a buyer didn’t break things beneath by fitting radials, and though it doesn’t speak well of their engineering prowess in not allowing for far, far superior tyre tech, they were likely being sensible!
What we have here was a very common government car. Fury was a popular choice because of its ride quality, roominess, price and speed. In many ways, this Fuselage Fury continued the close ties between Plymouth and squad cars across the US. So, I believe that we are looking at what was originally a fleet car that has survived because during its first decades, it was parked in lots and used sporadically.
It probably has a fleet car interior as well. What it did not have in luxury touches, it more than made up for in size. Three adults easily sat abreast in either the front or the back.
Maybe this is another car from that classic cars for sale used car lot. Nice pic!
The black window frames are an improvement, and something I’m surprised wasn’t a more common owner treatment to low spec models since it effectively makes them look like hardtops. Virtually every modern car, SUV, crossover and even pickup uses this trick to the same effect. Could you imagine how they’d look with their frames and pillars in body color? The 4-door and crossover “coupes” certainly would lose their pizazz.
Speaking of black, and this is a question for those who lived it, were steel wheels with poverty caps ever commonly black like this? Now a days I see black all the time on hot rods and the like for a stealthy appearance, but weren’t they originally painted body color if so equipped?
I’d say black was most common. Body body colored wheels seemed to show up one some cars in the ’50s. Chevy may have done some body colored wheels through about ’65.
Your buddy Earl Schieb (“I’ll paint any car for $99.99!”) routinely painted the wheels body color, which helped identify a used car with a
cheapinexpensive repaint.“includes wheels and door jambs”
My memory of Mopar poverty caps of that era was that they went both ways. Through the late 60s I remember wheels being body color on hubcap cars (but black on wheelcover cars). My mother had a friend with a stipper 69 Valiant, green paint, green wheels. But the total strippo 74 Charger a friend’s dad bought with 10 k miles on it in 1978 was different, with red paint, black wheels, probably due to Mopar’s relentless cost cutting by then.
It is possible that the heavy duty cop wheels were all black, but I don’t think civilian ones were until some time into the 70s.
It’s really confusing, almost all of the restored musclecars use body color on the wheels with the dog dish hubcaps, which lines up with that. It makes sense that they’d be black with wheel covers too. I just wonder if mixing and matching was common. Like it wouldn’t be unreasonable for that 74 Charger to have originally come with the basic full wheel covers and the original black wheels and been changed to dog dishes for whatever reason, I can’t imagine why though. Or in the case of Police and taxi fleets they may have come painted in body color originally but later get painted black for practical reasons(interchangeability, easy touch up). I see many police package M bodies with the ventilated steel wheels/dog dish hubcaps in body color as well.
Most automakers were body colored wheels with hubcaps
That changed around 1970 . 71
I remember the duster had black wheels with dull looking very plain hubcaps and blackwall tires
My dad said that that was their way of telling the world that you were a cheepskate also it had to be cost effective to paint all wheels black just as they are now all silver
By far the majority of these in my area were black and white. With a badge on the side and lights and antennas on the roof. The only two civilian Mopars I recall on our block in my youth were a first gen Valiant and, much later, a Córdoba.
I like the car, but this car is a bit too vanilla for me. I’ll check again tomorrow!
“It’s got a cop motor, a 440-cubic-inch plant. It’s got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It’s a model made before catalytic converters so it’ll run good on regular gas.”
Ok, wrong year, specific make, and model name… but you get the idea.
The movie connection I always make with these early seventies full-size Plymouths is the lunatic redneck in the jacked-up Fury hardtop with a trunk full of rabbits in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.
For me it’s “Keep going partner, because my top end is unlimited!”. Though I think that was a fuselage Polara.
“Hey, what’s wrong with this wreck? We’re getting gassed back here!”
I like every year and every make and every model of the Chrysler fuselage cars….all big, strong and beautiful! From Plymouth to Imperial – not a bad one in the bunch.
The below link has brochures of the Chrysler fuselage period. Great resource.
http://www.fuselage.de
My grandmother had a ’71 Fury II in that ubiquitous and hideous 70s gold. On a visit to New Hampshire in 1974, we borrowed it, and the damn thing was already falling apart. Our 10-year-old Impala with nearly 100,000 miles on it by then was much more solid.
I found the hubcaps sitting on her porch. They had been removed so they wouldn’t get stolen when going to Boston to pick us up at the airport. I never understood that bit of logic. It’s like stealing your own stuff, and of course, made the car look even more like the POS that it was.
My mother absolutely loathed it (including the off-center trunk keyhole), but the use of it was free. Still, when we visited in 1981, we used my other grandmother’s car, a ’72 Valiant. That car was much more solid and pleasant. Kind of explains why Chrysler’s compacts continued to sell well while its full-size cars were dead in the market.
I shot a picture a few years ago of a very similar car. Looks like the same year and model, from a similar angle!
The one I found was in Iowa and is accordingly rather rusty, but it looks more original. It was probably a lightly used survivor before being pressed back into daily driver service. I would hazard a guess that the black wheels are original, per the conversation above.
On the white car, I don’t care for the black painted window frames and tinted windows in this car, but low budget modifications on old Mopars is a grand tradition so I can’t knock it. In general, I love any 60’s/70’s Chryslers, especially cop cars. This probably isn’t a police package car, but it certainly has that look.
This one is actually a ’70 model Fury II, I think the featured car is a Fury II as well.
These cars were quite numerous on the roads back in the day. Most of them were higher trim, but many government or other fleets used the plainer models. They were solid cars overall. They ran and drove very well, but the fit and finish often fell short compared to the competition. I wonder if things have not changed much since then…
Good idea Jim, I am looking forward to this series. There are plenty of photos and plenty of stories to be told.
I love my 68
Always loved the ’68 Nader Eyes (side marker lights).
CC Effect in action again: last week drove past a gold w/black vinyl roof Fury III in Pittsburgh’s Bellevue neighborhood, very nice shape. Will cruise past and look for it to snap a shot.
Had new PA state inspection, am guessing it was a recent acquisition. Would like to hear that distinctive starter motor whine again!
White wall tires and full wheel covers/wire wheel covers installed and I would be good-to-go.
I’ve always equated these Fuselage Plymouths as taxis. Moreso than police cars.