(My appreciation of what Virgil Exner was trying to do with the 1962 Plymouth has been growing on me for years. I’ll show a couple of images from the early clays after the jump. But this “improved” version by Casey, which originally was posted on 2/27/12, shows its potential. PN)
1962 Plymouth Fury—Re-imagining the great Virgil Exner isn’t a task to be taken lightly. I like to think that in this chop I just removed the awkward production values forced upon him. Besides the new roofline, and a bit of trim removal, the most important thing I did in this chop was to restore the curved sideglass I know was on the prototypes, but changed at the last minute for cost reasons. By moving the bottom of the glass out flush to the bodysides like Mr. Exner originally wanted, the styling makes so much more sense. His early “fuselage” styling is revealed to be the genius it really was. My sloping roofline makes his emphasis on the individual fender shapes and long hood, classic-era touches, really stand out, too.
Here’s the back of the 1962 Plymouth Super Sport concept, with the revised roof. This is of course what Exner and his designers were planning as the basis for the full-size 1962 line, before he was told to reduce them to essentially mid-size.
This is the same version from the front. These are dated 7-22-59. Note the curved glass, which alone would have been a first in its class. And also note how the door curves right up to the glass, in true “fuselage” fashion.
This is the alternate version, with a giant wrap-around rear window. Intriguing, but it’s understandable why the other version was favored for production.
The last image shows the SS in the center along with the other cars being developed for the 1962 line. They would still have been somewhat controversial, no doubt, but their proportions went some way way to making them more palatable. Or have I been drinking to much Exner-Ade?
Well done, Casey. An interesting study of What Should Have Been.
Very nice. 🙂 I saw another “what if?” who focused on the ’62 Plymouth at http://www.whatifcars.com/gallery/What-If-Cars/62_Sport_Fury_NEW
and that artist even go a step further by imagining a ’62 DeSoto
http://www.whatifcars.com/gallery/What-If-Cars/62_Desoto_Adventurer
It could be interesting to suggest another photoshop, the 1960 Plymouth Belvedere/Savoy/Fury got an ackward front end and if it got the front end of the Australian AP3 Royal with stackhead headlights (before Pontiac). Maybe it could had been more attractive.
I at least looks ownable…unlike what was actually produced.
I detect a bit of Jaguar XJS in the roofline.
Amazing what a few relatively minor changes can make. The pontoons don’t look so out of place all of a sudden and actually work quite well. While it certainly wouldn’t have unseated Chevy and Ford from their positions I’m betting they could have moved a lot more metal if they looked like that instead of with what made it to production.
Here is an article on what the 1962 Chrysler line up could have looked like. There are photos of the Chrysler prototypes. Not far from the feature picture.
http://www.allpar.com/history/plymouth/1962.html
Athough the photoshop would have worked (at least better than the aberrations that came out in 1962), I like the Chrysler prototype’s rear/quarter window treatment better.
Wonderful link, thanks. Allpar sure has some great material.
Nice job. My only quibble is that a car this shiny wouldn’t be likely to have dog-dish hubcaps — it would be interesting to see it with some period-appropriate wheel covers, for that showroom floor look.
Nice. Not too far off to Exner’s still-born ’62 Super Sport. The 119″ wheelbase, curved side glass windows certainly made the car’s porportions look right. . .
It looks a lot better than the strange looking cars that were made in 62.Still not as nice as Ford and GM cars for 62,close but no cigar.
I like the production version the best. Why it didn’t sell very well is beyond me.
The downsizing of a full-sized car did not work in competition with the bigger Ford and Chevrolet that were thought to offer more for the money. The “weird” styling did not help (I happen to like it, especially the front end). When both problems were addressed with the conventionally styled and sized 1965 Plymouth, sales took off.
Now, if only there had been a more palatable version for the front of the 1962 Dodge.
It’s unlikely. Apparently, the person in charge of Dodge production is quite a powerful person. Decades later, a Dodge production chief named Dick Dauch, a former football player, actually had the cajones to confront Bob Lutz after a heated meeting. The story goes that he was fired the following day.
Anyway, the Dodge production chief back in ’62 was a fellow named M.C. Patterson. It was at his sole insistence that the warthog nose be put on the ’62 full-size Dodge. Even if the rest of the car had been a true full-size like Exner had originally envisioned, it likely still would have gotten the strange grille thanks to Patterson’s wishes.
It does look a lot better, although I was never ‘opposed’ to the ’62s as they were. The ’61 Fury on the other hand….BLECH.
Whats up with that weird tutone treatment behind the rear wheels? Looks almost as tacked on as the front fender tutone treatment on the ’60 Fury…neither makes any sense at all.
Agree this is an improvement… And check out Casey’s version of the 61 Fury too: http://artandcolourcars.blogspot.co.at/2014/03/1961-plymouth-furycleaning-up-details.html
Personally I like them without the mods Chrysler tried the styling with the Valiant to see if it would sell, it did so they upsized it and let Exners designs out into the light, I was a little kid noticing cars walking to school with my dad asking him what they all were and in my home town was one Dodge Phoenix 63 or so it was a near new car RHD it lived opposite a guy who had a Studebaker coupe and a Plymouth Savoy, those cars stuck in my mind.
Exner Koolaide ~ Mmmmmmmmmmmm.
Every time I look at a styling buck with one side one way and t’other side different , it makes me wonder .
-Nate
I see nod to the Lancia Flamina in that roof. Too bad Ex didn’t get the message sent by that fine design and the Florida that inspired it. I’ll never forget the first time I saw the planned ’62s that we’re killed by management. Outside of the Imperial that morphed into the ’63 Chrysler, they were just ugly. I love Ex, but there’s no way to sugarcoat the fact that he really lost the plot after the ’57s.
I think these cars are pretty sad and bizarre looking, even after the photoshopping. My mom’s New Yorker didn’t stick around long, she just hated looking at it, so after a year or so, dad get her a Cadillac Sedan De Ville, baby blue (Yuck!!). For years, she denied remembering it, until I found a pic of it parked next to my dad’s #2 T-Bird POS, and then it was like, “Ohhh, that thing, it was just so ugly!”. The icky green color, kind of like corroded copper didn’t help much either.
Friends of my folks had a 61 Fury 2 door hardtop that I thought was kind of cool….but I was a kid, so what did I know? It turns out the guy bought that Fury because his brother had recently bought a small town C-P dealership.
As bad as the 61s were, to many people, there’s no getting around how….strange the 62s looked. However, I don’t think the Super Sport corrects the oddball styling any and part of the reason why is that it looks a bit like an Edsel or Oldsmobile. Curved glass would have helped the design that was produced and would have given Chrysler another “first” to crow about. But let’s face it, unlike Ford and Chevy, Plymouth and Dodge designs from the early 60s were “all over the map”. There was no consistent design “language” that was honed from 1 year to the next. It appears that while the production cars were fairly bizarre, the “rejected” designs went even further beyond bizarre,
Cars I MIGHT buy from this period? A 61 Fury and a 64 Dodge (though I prefer the 64 Plymouth instrument panel).
I’m seeing a little 4th gen Malibu coupe in that roofline.
I’m pretty fond of the ’62 Plymouth as it is, but I really love that original Super Sport design from ’59 (sans wraparound rear glass). Casey’s revision is a good compromise between the two – amazing how much better it looks with just a slightly faster roofline. Looking at all three together, I think that’s where the production ’62s really failed.
Here’s a side by side:
Some of the finer points of the actual version, IMO:
I think they really missed the boat with that dashboard; it looks too much like the one in my ’62 Lancer.
I love this dashboard, the instrument panel is one of my favorites from the era – that shape is sooo 1962. But then again, I like the Valiant/Lancer dash a lot, too.
My 62.
Love it! I’ve developed a major crush on these, and would love to have one, but they’re so hard to find, except the ones that have all been turned into hot rods and such.
And if you were to send me a set of pictures, I’d love to do a proper write-up on it.
Whatever the truth is behind the downsizing of the ’62 Dodge and Plymouth full-sized cars be it the oft-repeated story of executive Bill Newberg overhearing talk of the Chevy II and misinterpreted it as downsizing of the full-size Chevrolet, or other factors that prompted the move, I actually like what the company did with the cars. I can understand the mentality of the early 1960s American buying public buying cars like beef (by weight), which is a trend that lingers to this day with SUVs and pickups reaching absurd sizes, these vehicles looked rather taut, and obviously had the benefits of weight loss in performance and handling. The 1963 Savoy/Belvedere/Fury/Sport Fury are smart-looking cars and have a desgin that reminds me of the the same model year Buick Riviera (forward slanting prow, turn signals in the front fenders, crisp roof, etc). Actually, I think they look better than the comparable Ford and Chevrolet models of the same year. The CC article querying the hypothetical best choice of vehicle for use as a taxi in 1963 conveys how good a design this was for the purpose of workhorse sedan. At the risk of sounding smutty, it is true “It is not how big it is but how you use it.”