I hadn’t seen this ’61 Chevy Impala clay before, and it’s quite intriguing. The front end is just like how it ended up, but from the middle back, it’s a whole different animal. The roof previews the Colonnade coupes somewhat, with that big B pillar. Of course the rear window is a wrap around. And those hips; they had to wait until 1965. Of course the ’63 Sting Ray had them, thanks to Bill Mitchell’s 1959 Stingray Racer. I suspect he wanted to save them for the ’63 Corvette. Looks like the definitive version is off to the left.
And this clay reminds me a lot of another clay, but at a very different studio:
This is one side of the proposed 1962 Plymouth Super Sport coupe, at Virgil Exner’s studios across town. The obvious similarities of the roof and B pillar are remarkable, and even some details, like the front fender character line ending mid way in the front door. And the Chevy’s vertical hips are now horizontal hips. Hmm. For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure the Chevy is the older of the two, but maybe not by much. And it was even called Super Sport, a name that the Impala would make famous starting in 1961.
There’s also a lot of influence from the very advanced 1957 Corvette Q, which Was Zora Arkus Duntov’s very ambitious proposal for a radically new Corvette.
Reminds me of the Ford Fairmont Futura or Mercury Zephyr Z-7
Good looking concept, but I’m not sure how I feel about that rear end. What actually came out in 1961 was a very beautiful car, and it’s pretty hard to top that.
You linked JPC’s turquoise example in yesterday’s Impala post, and that car seemed just about perfect to me.
The back end of the Plymouth looks a lot like a 1960 Oldsmobile.
+1
That rear end screams Plymouth to me.
Neither is to my personal taste so I’m just as happy they didn’t make it to production. If they had, can you imagine trying to find replacement glass for the backlights today?
The 58 Impala glass is comparable, and it’s available new today.
The shape on the Chevy is intriguing, but it is not as nice as what was actually built. The roof looks like the 75 Camaro to me. I think my biggest issue on the Chevy is that there is no continuity between the front and the back. There isn’t on the Plymouth either, but the Chevy’s front half seems to plead for some kind of continuity where the Plymouth’s doesn’t.
It seems that about once ever generation someone goes on a styling jag that involves a coupe with a hefty B pillar and lots of glass behind, starting with the 47 Stude Starlight.
A little styling studio espionage going on here? Paid the cleaning lady with the tiny camera on her cleaning supply cart, did we?
Legend says the GM stylists didn’t know about the stunning 57 Chrysler products until they were actually rolling off the assembly line in late 1956. That caught GM at a costly disadvantage. I’m sure GM took measures never to be surprised like that again and made it a point to know what the competition was up to.
Agree…some stylists were jumping ship and moving between companies in those days…Some ideas went with them
If you remove the Impala rear window, you’re left with an interesting El Camino concept in profile, albeit with a shallow bed.
The Chevy has framed door windows, unlike the later colonnades; those little “vents” on the B pillar are really annoying. The Plymouth at least has curved side glass, like the other Chrysler design studies of the era.
I’m glad these didn’t advance. In each case, there was evidently a consensus that buyers of coupes with rear seats liked to have four side windows that rolled down. But by the mid-’70s, even coupes with no B pillars often had fixed rear quarter windows; by the early ’80s both GM and Chrysler were producing cars where only two windows rolled down even on four-doors (the GM intermediates; the first several years of the Aries/Reliant).
(actually the first year only of the K cars, 1981. 1982 K cars got roll-down rear windows, perhaps because the LeBaron and 400 were new that year and had standard vinyl roof extensions covering the quarter lite area, which would have meant they wouldn’t have even had those consolation pop-out vent windows the Aires, Reliant, and GM A/G bodies had).
Interesting that in front of the car we’re discussing in the top photo is another car that looks like the production ’61 Chevy. Wonder which came first…
At oldcarbrochures.com, there are brochures that show the 1982 Aries and Reliant with the narrower flip-out windows in the rear doors. Perhaps the change took place later in the model year?
It would be hard to top the production 61 Impala coupe, one of the most beautiful as Paul showed in yesterday’s story.
My mother, being the frugal type, didn’t spring for the Impala in 61; she bought a Bel Air 2-door sedan much like this one, without the whitewalls.
I was thinking Dual-Ghia L 6,4.
The rear styling immediately made me think of the ’62 Plymouth; the hips resemble the side bumps on those more than on the ’65 Chevys (both full size and Corvair). I do see a bit of ’63 Corvette in the rear half of the car, and even a hints of ’65 Barracuda, ’53 Studebaker Starliner, and Avanti if you chop off some of the excess trunk. But sometimes simplicity is better, and I much prefer the actual ’61 Chevrolet to the early clay. It looks like the real car would be a more pleasant place for rear seat passengers as well, thanks to extra headroom and windows that roll down.
What an interesting find; the B-pillars and the rear window remind me strongly of those on the ’63 Corvette fastback and the ’70 Carmaro and Firebird. The bulge on the top of the rear fender looks almost identical to the one used on the ’65 Impala. Initially I was not too fond of the ’61 Chevrolet but in retrospect I think it’s the best looking Impala until the downsized ’77 models appeared. The bubble roof on the ’61 was nice, much better than the more “formal” roofline used on the ’62-64 full sized GM cars. Unfortunately after the ’61 it was longer, lower, wider and heavier.
Had exactly the same reaction re: the Plymouth Super Sport. And that rear tuck-under on the Chevy foreshadows the actual ’62 Plymouth as well. The whole design seems so weird and disjointed, you wonder what they were thinking.
Very glad they didn’t do this, the 61 is my favorite big Chevy And the 64 Barracuda is my least favorite Plymouth. I don’t want them combined! I do see a lot of Corvette too, besides the hips the vents in the pillar are almost carryover.
It is definitely interesting though, GM was working this far back on the big back glass concept, that would live on through the C6 Corvettes. It took a lot of massaging to get it just right, as even the 63 Corvette wasn’t quite Committed to the look, having fiberglass form the remainder of the boat tail to the beltline. It only truly came to full fruition on the 75 F bodies and 78 Corvette, with much more fitting proportions. That’s the difference between design studios, GM wouldn’t blow their wad the minute they had an idea, they’d keep it in the rafters until something more fitting calls for it. Chrysler on the other hand looked for the first opportunity they could to use it, hastily grafting it onto the Valiant
I forgot to mention the 1957 Corvette Q (which almost got built for 1958 or 1969). Lots of influence from that.
Holy cow, I had to do a double take to make sure that wasn’t a photoshop of the original 1962 Plymouth Super Sport. With all the intrigue surrounding the 1962 Mopar downsizing, these two look way too similar to be a coincidence.
That’s one I hadn’t heard of. Thanks for the article.