Though I didn’t realize it at the time, my life was perfect in October of 1979. I was a sophomore in college and I had an excellent specimen of a ’68 Mustang, one of the coolest and most widely popular cars ever. But perfect is never enough, is it? I was looking for perfecter. And found it.
By this time I had become a big Mopar fan. A theoretical one, as I had never actually owned one of them. My best friend’s father (Howard) had owned several, and I really liked the way they felt when I drove them. And some high school friends had a car that had become one of my very favorites – a turquoise 1963 Newport 4 door hardtop. These older Chrysler cars seemed to have all of the good driving of the newer ones plus a bunch of really cool features besides. They also fed my contrarian streak because nobody in my own family would touch a Chrysler-built car with a ten foot insulated pole.
Beyond the Chrysler-thing, I had spent years reading old car mags and really yearned for a cool old car. Then, on a chilly, cloudy Sunday afternoon, everything came together and I found my automotive happy place as I cruised through the sales lot at Dependable Dodge in Muncie, Indiana.
I went back the next day after classes and saw a salesman. “Nice Mustang” he said. “Tell me about that ’59 Plymouth” I said in reply. They were selling it on consignment, and he gave me the tour. It was a white Fury 4 door sedan with an interior that was kind of a cross between green and turquoise. It had clearly belonged to an elderly owner as the seat upholstery was perfectly preserved beneath the thick plastic Fingerhut seat covers that had been so popular when the car was new. The Fury was in amazing shape for its age, and the odometer on this 20 year old car registered about 60k – a figure that was quite credible given the condition of the car. It was nicely equipped, with a V8, automatic, power steering and brakes. It even had seat belts in the front. Interestingly, it had a clock but no radio – someone had affixed a “Fasten Seat Belts” admonition in the blank space where the radio dial should have been. It even had the fake spare tire on the decklid.
It needed a jump start, but started right up and drove right. The transmission pushbuttons were cool. The interior was cool. Everything about this car was cool. When I opened the glovebox door I saw the thing that sealed the deal: the card affixed to the inside of the lowered door which told me that the car had been delivered to its first owner on the actual day I was born. That was it, the Heavens were making clear what I already knew – which was that I absolutely had to have this car.
I didn’t have much extra money (the Cadillac had seen to that) – but I had a really clean 68 Mustang. I offered a straight trade. Yes, I really did. As an economics major. In fairness, economics is good at teaching you to see the foolish things other people do. But when you are in a hopeless state of infatuation, the kinds of good sense you might normally apply to a situation go straight out the window. The heart wants what the heart wants. The salesman went inside to telephone the owner. Word came back that the owner would do the deal. (Well of course he would! Dooohh!)
I picked the car up on a clear but chilly Friday not long before 5 pm. It needed a jump start but then I was off to the gas station to fill up and drive back to Fort Wayne for the weekend. Problem 1 – as I filled the tank, gas began to pour out onto the pavement. Shit. Problem 2 – it needed a jump start – something that must be done very, very carefully when there is spilled gasoline all over the ground. Older, wiser me would have pushed that car elsewhere before making small sparks from the cable clamps, but I was 20 years old and invincible. Then I was back at Dependable Dodge to chat with the salesman. He got someone to put it onto a lift. Gas was leaking from somewhere at the top of the tank. I became convinced that as long as it was not a rust hole in the bottom of the tank all was fine. Yes, I loved the car. I was ready to go, but it needed a jump start. “A nice drive on the highway and the old generator will have that battery topped off and ready to go” I told myself.
Ninety minutes later I was back in Fort Wayne. Problem 1 (I started counting again from scratch) – settle my mother down. She was highly displeased at my trade. This is a real understatement. She had really liked the Mustang and (not wrongly) considered it a perfect car for a college kid. She had even liked to borrow it from time to time. This ’59 Plymouth was not the same thing at all. She took to calling it Moby – after Herman Melville’s great white whale. It was not a term of endearment. Problem 2 – I needed to buy a battery because mine was (once again) dead as could be.
After the car would start I investigated the gas tank leak. There was an access hole in the trunk that allowed me to determine that the home-made gasket around the tank sending unit was the source of my leak. A trip to a nearby Chrysler dealer (the part was still being used on new cars) and I was set. I filled up and – another leak. This time it was the rubber hose that connected the filler pipe to the tank. At least this one was a fast drip instead of a slow pour, so there was improvement. Oh well, as long as I kept it under 3/4 full I was fine.
I loved virtually everything about that Fury. I loved the way the car fit me and the way the car drove. It really did drive like the much newer cars I had become used to, and not like something old-fashioned. The torsion bar suspension design really was advanced when it was new and it took the rest of the industry about decade to catch up with its combination of handling and ride. The car was a delight on the highway, feeling smooth and sure at speeds well over the 55 mph legal maximum. I suspected that this one would hit 100 mph, but I never tried it. And in the Plymouth pecking order of Savoy – Belvedere – Fury, it was the top of the line for a 4 door car, as the Sport Fury came only as a 2 door hardtop or a convertible.
The old “wide block” 318 started and ran flawlessly. There was a leak in the brake system, and the brakes pulled one way. I kept a close eye on fluid until I had time to fix it. Adding fluid was not easy with the master cylinder parked directly under the power brake bellows, requiring the job to be done by feel and not by sight. I did a brake job (2 wheel cylinders on each front wheel, thank you Chrysler) and fixed that. Then the brake light switch on the master cylinder kept getting gummed up, causing the brake lights to stay on until I would take it out and spray brake cleaner in it, and all would be fine for another 2 or 3 weeks. Yes, I spent a lot of time with brake hydraulics on that car.
There was a minor but persistent water leak around the front windshield or driver’s front door that made for wet carpet after a rain, but otherwise the car did very well during the cold winter. I had it at school for almost all of my sophomore year and it always started, it handled snow well and had really good heat. The infinitely variable wipers were great too, although they had the unintended effect of never quite being the perfect speed. It had some company in my dorm parking lot – a girl I never met (but maybe should have) drove a baby blue 60 sedan and a guy on my dorm floor had a gray 61 Dodge Lancer.
The interior of my 59 Fury sedan was this exact color and trim level, and was in virtually the same condition, right down to the crack-free padded dash and one of the coolest steering wheels ever.
I loved the way it looked outside – the 59 had always been my favorite of that three year styling cycle that had started in 1957. I loved the way it looked on the inside – this was perhaps the last Plymouth with a really nicely done interior until 1965 or so. I loved how you had to lock the door with the (original) aluminum key. I loved how the “Jiffy Jet” windshield washer used a little foot pedal/squeeze bulb. I loved the sound of the old direct drive starter and how easy the car was to find in parking lots – just look for the vehicular butt that pointed up instead of down like all the other cars. I loved the way both rear view mirrors were completely useless, but looked so cool. The exterior one was way out on the front fender and provided a really teeny field of view. The one inside was on the dash so that anyone sitting towards the middle of the car blocked the view. I loved that someone once asked if that was my Imperial in the parking lot.
Another thing I liked about the car was that it was manly. Meaning that it just oozed of being built by men for men. Like the steering wheel, that was much thicker than what I had been used to, and how nicely it was shaped to fit in my hands. And the seat cushion seemed to be a little deeper between the front edge of the seat to the seat back, a better fit for longer legs.
I did not love it when I broke a brittle plastic vacuum connector when I tried to improve the operation of heater temp cable. Yes, they really used complicated vacuum-actuated controls for most heat/defrost/vent functions in 1959. After that mishap it required a manual push on a rod under the dash to go from defrost to floor heat. I had been trying to fix a temp lever that provided heat in the opposite direction from that indicated by the arrow on the knob, but I should have just left it alone.
I also did not love it when a car wash ripped the remote control mirror from the drivers fender. I had trouble finding a replacement (it was 1979 and there was no internet). The source I found through Hemmings sent the wrong one and I had a terrible time getting them to take it back, so I just bolted the old one back on and accepted the gift of one of those old-school mirrors that mounted to the door frame with setscrews.
I had fooled with the gas tank sending unit one time too many and in wet weather the gas gauge would shoot to “full” no matter the fuel level. This was a problem because I could not fill the tank without it leaking and with no gauge I was forced to rely on memory. I figured out that a straight wooden stick would go down the fill tube and hit the bottom of the tank, making for a sort of fuel dipstick. 3 or 4 inches of gas was plenty, but if it was only 1 or 2, I needed to add a few gallons.
One other thing the 59 lacked that newer Mopars possessed was that famously taut structure. This was still a body-on-frame car and it reminded me of an old sailing ship in the way it kind of creaked and twisted a bit on uneven roads. Which was fitting because the Plymouth ship was still incorporated into the Plymouth logo in a couple of places on the car – in the last year or two before the ship disappeared from Plymouth branding altogether.
I drove it over to show my friend’s dad Howard (who had once admonished me that any time I got an interesting car it was mandatory to show it to him and let him drive it). Howard was a Mopar guy, but one who remembered the 57 Plymouth he bought new as the worst car he had ever owned. (“It was JUNK!”) In fact, he had a really low opinion of cars from the late 50’s in general, and was more than a little skeptical of mine. But after driving it, he pronounced it as significantly tighter in its structure than his 57 had been. I later read that Chrysler had expended a lot of effort to make that happen, because the earlier versions had been extremely floppy.
I dug a ton of compacted dirt out of the fender eyebrows and noticed that rust was on the verge of poking through the otherwise unblemished white paint. Really, most of these in my part of the country had been rusted heaps by 1965. I also kept trying to patch the hole in the exhaust Y pipe with muffler tape because I didn’t want to deal with manifold fasteners that had undoubtedly fused themselves together and would snap off at the first twist from a wrench.
The car’s death sentence came when I went to the transmission shop for a fluid change. That had solved my Cadillac’s Hydra-Matic leak, so should also have solved the sort-of-harsh 1-2 shift that was developing, right? “We got quite a bit of friction material out of the pan” was the unpleasant verdict. I loved the car but not enough to make that kind of commitment to it. I was on my way to concluding my third 6 month vehicular love affair. I had become a car philanderer. The kind of guy who would hop into the garage with anything new but who was unwilling to stand by the car when things got a little tough. My repeating cycle of infatuation and disillusionment was nearing its inevitable end.
I learned the hard way that a 59 Plymouth was not as easy to sell in the spring of 1980 as a 68 Mustang would have been. I had already found and bought my new love so the Fury had to go. Someone offered me about $100 less than I had decided was my bottom dollar and I refused. Only to eat crow and take a hundred less than that about a month later. I have forgotten how much – I blanked most of the selling process on that one from my memory years ago. Any large V8 powered car would have been a tough sell in the spring of 1980. Anything built by Chrysler was a tough sale at that time too, although that was probably less of a concern given the car’s age. The car’s allure was no longer clouding my knowledge of economics, especially those basic concepts of supply and demand. Cars like the Fury were in short supply. They were in even less demand, and it took me until mid summer before I could unload it.
Should I have sucked it up and paid to have the transmission rebuilt? Perhaps. Most of the other little problems would have been easy to fix too, or at least live with. It was a really nice car that drove beautifully, but it also had enough small flaws that were going to require more time and money to fix and I guess I just ran out of enthusiasm. I still looked around and saw a whole world of cars I had not yet experienced, so I saw no sense in over-committing to this one. The Fury would have made a great hobby car, but I needed a daily driver that could handle the life of a college student. I might have tried harder to keep it going had it been a more desirable body style than a 4 door sedan. In any case, I am not sure the Fury would have withstood the life that was in store for my next car, so perhaps it was for the best.
Very few of my cars cause the wash of warm and fuzzy feelings that are dredged up by the 59 Fury. That is one car that, if it were to come into my life in roughly the same condition it was when it left me, I would buy back in a heartbeat. Would I love it as much in 2022 as I did in 1979-80? That is hard to say. It would sure be worth a lot more. The car and I met our first people on the same day in 1959 and the car was, in many ways, just like me – an interesting combination of capable and quirky, and one that always made me feel good when I got behind the wheel. At least I felt a special something with that one that I have rarely felt since, especially for something I owned back in my days that were the automotive equivalent of one night stands.
I realized that it was time for some common sense. What I needed at my stage in life was a steady vehicular relationship. I was about to have one.
“… I loved the way it looked outside – the 59 had always been my favorite of that three year styling cycle that had started in 1957. I loved the way it looked on the inside – this was perhaps the last Plymouth with a really nicely done interior until 1965 or so…”.
Replace your 59 with my 57 and your Plymouth with my Oldsmobile, and you have the same “doesn’t-make-sense-now” thinking of why I deserted a reasonably running, though not weather tight, ’53 Chrysler with a big white ’57 Oldsmobile sedan.
V8 power, lots of chrome, fantastic (but light on gauges) dashboard design, big roomy interior, and “Presence”.
I’d love to drive one again, but there’s no room in my life or single bay garage for an outdated single digit gas guzzling Moby Dick.
It scratched an itch, educated the young me, and allowed me to move on.
Seems like it was the same for you.
I did get an education and I did move on, but all these years later I remain under this car’s thrall. Which is probably evident since the 59 Plymouth brochure has been my avatar since the beginning here on CC.
Young love is eternal!
I think that the tack that you’re taking here with telling your COAL story after the benefit of your experience of being an established writer here on CC is quite fortuitous for us readers (same with Jason Shafer’s concurrent series). The way that you’re staging the stories and writing them with a degree of hindsight and specific insight that goes beyond what one would naturally find in a personal history is really really good. You know what’s truly interesting and what is most likely to capture the the reader’s interest. Excellent job.
One nit to pick with something in this chapter…
Actually, it came back, in 1996. For just 5 years before the brand itself disappeared altogether.
You are correct on the late return of the ship on Plymouths – but when writing about Mopars of this era, I have trouble thinking of those 1990s versions as the genuine article. 🙂
It is funny what this process of writing COALS can do for a person – I have now realized that I have tended to not own cars so much as have relationships with them. This is one that I look back on and think that this car was so nice and deserved better than what it got from me.
I’ve never been a huge Mustang fan, given the ’88 IROC-Z in my garage, but a ’68 Mustang for a ’59 Plymouth 4 door sedan, EVEN UP??? Uhhh?
A school friend had a ’59 Fury hardtop 318 circa 1964, but even that……?? Yup, beauty IS in the eye of the beholder!! 🙂 DFO
“EVEN UP??? Uhhh?”
I know, I know.
Not all of us are blinded by the “Don’t tell anyone I’m a Falcon under the skin” Mustangs. In a heartbeat I take the fabulous finned Mopar over the Fixed-Or-Repaired-Daily.
The ship actually came back, a few years before it ran aground and sank for good…
I have to say, my early purchase of the Season Ticket to the JPC Chronicles once again did not disappoint. On a topic (this particular car) that I have basically zero interest in and may not have attended otherwise, it still compels and leaves me wanting another quarter or half or whatever to enjoy and root for it.
I think I can relate to your mom seeing Moby for the first time. It’s likely quite akin to the initial side eye I got from my coworkers after the GTI was totalled and replaced with a Buick. That does not happen in California. Endless explanations…but my car, not theirs…
Thank you sir! Yes, I now understand my mother’s reaction. I once heard someone describe a girl to me as the kind of girl you bring home to mother when mother isn’t home. This car was kind of the same thing. 🙂
The sad wreck of the Plymouth ship…it brings to mind one of my favourite song lyrics, from Robyn Hitchcock’s ‘Star of Venus’ –
“You must have seen it coming.
You must have bit your lip.
First the red light,
Then the green light,
Then the whole damn ship.”
Falling for a four-door only to have it disappoint you time and again can certainly take the wind from your sails.
You were smart. You dumped yours after six months. Some people keep their four-door wind suckers for 35 years before selling them.
That said, I did see a ’59 Plymouth four-door a while back and thought of you. However, there wasn’t much other than a forlorn looking shell, so I wasn’t going to bother you about it. But I kept thinking of you and your ’59 when I drove by it.
The Plymouth in the driveway is quite the contrast to your mother’s Pontiac.
Up until the transmission, none of the other stuff got between me and that car. But it had to serve as a daily driver. If I had been sitting on the kind of bankroll I had in high school I’ll bet I would have fixed it. But I think I kind of realized then (what I am certain I realize now) is that these late 50s Forward Look Mopars were really good at entropy.
That’s got to be the most Diplomatic way I’ve ever seen of putting it!
Eh, logical decisions and loving cars are inversely proportional for most of us. You are who you are, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Very true! I will admit to feeling some validation as these Forward Look cars command some fairly serious money today, even the sedans.
Agree that the remote control mirror placement down on the fender rendered it essentially useless. My dad’s ‘63 Olds had an optional remote controlled mirror similarly placed, something all early sixties, Olds, Pontiacs and Buicks shared. Funny thing is that the standard non-remote controlled outside mirror was located up on the door and gave a far better view.
After my experience with a fender mirror viewed through the windshield, I really scratched my head at the longtime Japanese practice of mounting mirrors near the fronts of the fenders. I cannot imagine what utility those offered.
It weeds out near-sighted drivers. I suspect they were required for decades to discourage imports before the Japanese took over the world.
Although we’ve all had many cars in our life time; it seems that for most of us, there is one car of a lifetime, the one that most defines us automotively and becomes our vehicular avatar (Jim Klein excepted :)) It’s our automotive soulmate. It’s the car that will be waiting for us on the other side of the pearly gates (in like-new condition). This ’59 Plymouth is obviously yours.
I might point out that the first post here with your name is a CC on a ’59 Plymouth I shot. I shanghaied you into that, because you had left a long comment on one, and I told you that it was going to be turned into the text for a CC. IIRC, you rewrote and/or augmented the text some, but in any case, it was the first of so many great contributions from you.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1959-plymouth-fury-love-transcends-reason/
Having seen you beaming behind the wheel of Jason’s ’63 Galaxie, I can just see your face and body behind the wheel of this grand finned chariot. You chose well back then.
And thanks again for this wonderful telling of the story as well as all of the many great contributions since that first one on it a bit over eleven years ago. I’d always wanted to hear the story in-depth, and now I have. And it all makes even more sense than ever, including the straight trade for it. The one car of a lifetime is worth whatever it takes.
Thank you, Paul! I think you are right – this is one car that combined almost everything good, or at least everything that appeals to me in a (pre-modern) car.
I now remember that 59 Plymouth you shot, so how fitting that this was also the car that got me involved here. Just like with that old Fury, CC has been a great ride.
Thank you for the story. This is the best kind of COAL, a fascinating auto ownership experience generated by genuine automotive enthusiasm. Yes it’s impractical
but nobody would accuse vintage car enthusiasts as being practical. That would miss the point.
Years ago my father in law advised me to sell all my vintage cars and buy one good car. And by good, he meant a 3 year old Corrola. He, like your mother missed the point. It’s not about economical transportation, it’s about owning a fascinating package of bygone-era marketing , sculpture and style, for the experience
Agreed. That 59 Fury might have made a good part of a 3 or 4 car fleet of old cars that could be used in rotation, but as capable as it was, it was old/brittle enough that it needed the luxury of time off when something needed attention.
I also recognize that I considered the car far too nice to just run into the ground. It was indeed a grand experience, one that I would not trade for anything.
True. My 30 y/o daily drivers produce a problem every 3000 km. Like clockwork. I genuinely enjoy working on them but time is sometimes too short to give the cars the attention they deserve.
Some hobbies, like vintage cars , and motorcycles benefit from having one Good Car on hand, reliable and boring, that can provide transportation when all the interesting finicky stuff breaks. I’ve found, for marital harmony it’s best the spouse gets the Good Car when it’s not needed.
I’m kind of re-living your college driving years now with my recently-acquired 1960 Dodge Dart. And yes, I am appreciating many of the same things your ’59 Plymouth had: the push-button Torqueflite, the excellent Torsion-Aire ride and “modern” feel on the road, the out-of-this-world styling–and it’s a 4-door sedan too! Mine is probably more solid than yours because of Unibody. Luckily, I’m not having problems like you had (so far), because the previous owner poured a lot of money into fixing the bad stuff. I just “turn the key and go.”
Of course I’m wondering if your ’59 Fury still survives somewhere???
I see so many fascinating ’50s cars on Craigslist/eBay that need a home, but there are so few takers (and a lot of takers won’t cherish the cars’ originality and will do the rod/custom thing.) High asking prices don’t help (There’s a mint ’59 Plymouth Belvedere 4-door sedan on eBay and they want $32,000!)
In the endless pursuit of perfection which you know so well, I’m anticipating a big change for the Dart–stay tuned!
Your Dart hits one of the gaping holes in my ownership experience – I never owned anything of that 1960-64 big unibody generation, though I have gotten a touch of exposure through friends long ago.
I have come across more than one of my old cars, but I don’t recall ever seeing that Plymouth again. I hope it was treated well.
How true! The mental gymnastics involved in making some of these car decisions defies any logic. I’m reminded of when I sold my first car for my second car. My rationale was that the newer car (which was a Saab… so certainly not a good choice for a young person with limited resources) would need less repair work.
Among the faults of my older car was that it had some kind of transmission trouble that seemed to be getting worse. Specifically, the syncros seemed to be going on the 1-2 shift. Now, the Saab also had a transmission problem: it made a clicking sound in reverse. But I convinced myself that wasn’t a serious problem because I could simply avoid reverse gear by doing things like pulling into parking spaces where I could drive straight out of. Yes, I really convinced myself of that. Didn’t really matter, since there were a half-dozen other serious problems that surfaced before the transmission had a chance to become critical.
Buying that used Saab (I was 20 at the time) was one case where I wish my parents had stepped in to save me from myself. But instead it became one of those lessons you learn in life only by living the experience.
I’m glad that at least you have generally good memories of the Fury!
This has been a lifelong problem for me. My own cars always have problems, some worse than others. The cars owned by everyone else in the world have no problems at all (I naively believe) and will make my life better in every way.
I can tell that I am making progress. Writing this series has really made me want another car. But I now realize that the two I have are probably in better shape than anything else I can buy for remotely close to the value of mine, if not much higher.
I found myself disagreeing, no you should have kept the Mustang, and by the end I was disagreeing again, no you should have fixed the Fury.
But I’m the opposite of a car philanderer, whatever that is. I keep cars for a long time, often too long.
Here’s a nice 59 hardtop for sale in Edmonton:
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-classic-cars/edmonton/59-plymouth-fury/1623115750?undefined
Oooooo, that is a nice car! But for $35k it ought to be. If mine had been a Fury or Sport Fury hardtop my calculation might have been different. Even then the 2 doors were starting to creep up in interest/price, so it might have been worth doing and then keeping for a bit longer before selling.
I guess I just decided that my Fury sedan was too nice of a car for me to wring most of the life out of it as happens with most normal cars. I tend to be a “preserve it and pass it on” kind of person on nice old cars, and replacing the transmission would have locked me into driving it for quite awhile longer.
…well I waited to let some one else mention CQB 241, but seeing that no one else did, probably because it’s not a ’59 but rather a ’58 and quite different looking inside and out, I’ll bring it up.
Did this infamous Plymouth do anything to increase or decrease your automotive-love affair?
I had to look it up, but Christine didn’t come out until 1983. Which makes sense because I never had anyone making Christine references around it. Had I owned it 3-4 years later that would not have been different.
Yes, but the novel is set in late 1978, making your purchase of that 59 in 1979 eerily prescient. JPC is CC’s own Stephen King. Just make sure you never go down a snowy mountain road in a 65 Mustang, that way Misery lies.
Stellar COAL series, sir.
I’ve been enjoying this series. I guess that we might have some things in common. Back in 1979 I was finally finishing up my college run, it only took me seven years, and I was driving a ’57 Cadillac. I also had my ’77 Harley Davidson Cafe Racer.
Like you, in my younger days, I didn’t hold onto cars for too long. That lead to me having an assortment of interesting cars.
The key to having a series of cars is to get rid of them just before an expensive repair will be needed! Obviously, luck has a lot to do with it. In the last twenty years or so, I’ve tended to hold onto my hobby cars a lot longer. Part of that I attribute to having a couple
of reliable late models, as well a busy life where my old car can be conveniently forgotten for awhile. Also I tend to invest some money into the car which makes me hesitant to give it away. A new set of tires for 600.00, a new battery for a hundred, some brake work, and cooling hoses and you’ve got another grand or more, into it.
I’m thinking that I would like to get back into the old one or two year turnaround with an older car that I might find interesting. Most of the cars would have to be from the late 90’s or new Millennium.
Of course getting rid of the old car is always a problem, nobody seems to want the car as much as I did when I acquired it. I’ve almost always sold to private parties, but if I dealt with a car lot I could get rid of the car as a trade in and move on more quickly.
I’m sure that none of this would make any financial sense, but as we all know, the old car hobby only makes money for a select few.
Yeah, a contrarian streak can be something of a double-edged sword. I know this all too well! I could tell a similar tale regarding the 66 Pontiac Catalina I once had. Only the mechanical details are different. A good car when new, but clapped out from years of abuse by the time I got it. Nice paint job, anyway. No car ever looked better while being towed.
Isn’t it just wonderful when a funky old car just fits?
Hey, JP, I’ll trade you my 1992 $10 bill for your 2013 $20 bill. It is a classic and just screams collectible so how bout it?
I used to change cars more than once a year sometimes annually due to inspection failures,
This century something has gone wrong Im keeping cars for years at a time, even the old ones and its the newer car thats facing replacement.
I think it is because when you are a teenager, six months is next door to forever, while at 50 or 60 years of age, five years slip by when you aren’t looking. That’s my explanation and I am sticking to it.
Agreed! The older I get, the more sure I am that the speed of time is not a constant.
Ward & June Cleaver dropped Wally off at the house, told him they were going to the market and would be back in an hour or so..
Ward was driving one of these in that episode.
It amazes me that I have just come to the realization that if you take the fins off the back of a ’59 Plymouth, it looks remarkably like a 1961.
Excellent writeup, this was an important six months of your life that still has a significant place in your memory. If the new owner who you sold it to ever rebuilt the transmission, they could have gotten some more miles out of it.
Nice tribute to your old flame, JP.
That was (is) one of the styling features I love – the small horizontal taillights nestled in that little carved-out alcove over the back bumper. Looking afresh, I can see where someone could think that those fins could have been shaved down by 25% or so and not hurt anything.
Yep ;
These were astoundingly good cars when they were good .
Sadly they suffered from terrible build quality, many leaked like sieves and rattled like morrocas . (SP)
I had a Plymouth Plaza two door , it was one of the good ones and like you said : the road manners for such a large car were terrific .
Sadly it was a poverty spec. model, i6 flathead and two speed slush box, rubber mats, not only no radio but NO HEATER (in 1959 !) .
Off it went, almost was used in Christine .
$600, took me over a year to sell it on .
-Nate
My grandfather had a 59 Plymouth 4 door sedan, a Savoy, with a flathead 6. It was the same green as the car in a couple of your pics, with, iirc, a white roof.
In 63, we made an epic road trip with it, from Kalamazoo to Kansas City, Phoenix, San Diego, LA, Vegas, Grand Canyon, and back. About three weeks in all.
The Savoy yielded to a 66 Belvedere II. iirc, gramps commented that the Savoy was quickly rusting to bits. I noticed oil stains on the floor of his garage. Not just under the engine, but a trail of dribbles along the centerline of the car, from the puddle under the engine, about to the rear axle. Though the oil slick could as easily have been the leavings of the 52 Champion that preceded the Savoy, or the pre-war Terraplane that preceded the Stude.
This was a delightful read! I suppose the aphorism “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” may have prolonged your experience with this car.
I have never had the pleasure of buying a nice old classic, although I had one (and currently own another) that were bought new or nearly so, and then kept for more than 20 years. Neither though would catch the eye like your ’59 Fury in 1979-80!
I like most of the Forward Look cars, but I don’t think I’m 100% happy with the looks of any of them. If they weren’t so expensive, it would be fun to play mix and match.
In the case of the Plymouths, I think ’58 has the best look overall, but ’57 taillights were nicer, and that ’59 dash is much better than the earlier one.
I always thought it was a bit interesting, how Plymouth cheaped out a bit on the rear of the ’58, with the small round taillights, and a single backup light in the middle of the bumper, but then for ’59, it almost seemed like they over-compensated for that cheapness, and came up with a rear-end that almost looks too expensive for the rest of the car!
The ’58 will always be my favorite, followed by the ’57, but I still appreciate the ’59. They seem like they’re better-built in general, and more nicely trimmed than the earlier models.
I have the 1959 Annual Auto Issue of Consumer Reports. The magazine listed the changes that Chrysler Corporation made to improve the structural rigidity of its cars. The changes did make a difference, to the point that the magazine specifically commented on it.
Everyone should own at least one vehicle that is bought because of love, as opposed to practical considerations!
The photo of your Plymouth parked next to your mother’s 1974 Pontiac LeMans is interesting…the roofline of the Pontiac shows more similarity to the roofline of the Plymouth than one would think, given the 15 years that separate the cars.
My grandmother’s neighbors owned a 1959 Plymouth Surburban well into the early 1970s. It was finally replaced by a 1968 Chrysler Newport four-door sedan. That was the only 1959 Plymouth I remember around our town.
The one place it was common to find 1959 Plymouths was on HO train sets. A company made miniature, plastic 1959 Plymouths station wagons for train sets. The same company also offered a set of 1961 Chrysler Corporation cars for HO train sets. Needless to say, by the early 1970s these cars were looking very dated.
That’s a good point about how the GM Colonnade sedans had a similar greenhouse to the 1957-59 Mopar sedans.
I found a source with some press materials for these, and it noted that Plymouth was making a big push with station wagons – wagons seemed to account for a significant percentage of 59 Plymouth production. Sidney Poitier drove one in the 1963 movie Lilies of the Field.
If I recall correctly, during the 1950s, Plymouth ranked among the top marques for percentage of total sales that were station wagons. Undoubtedly a holdover from the days when the Suburban was the first all-steel station wagon.
In heaven, my dad is driving his COAL – 1959 Buick.
I think that what we experience in cars is what binds them to us. They are like music. When an old hit song is played, you are transported to the age you were when it was popular. When an old car appears, you are transported to the time you had an experience with it.
This is why we love CC. We are reminded of a time in our youth when the CC was on the road, in our garage, or in our lives in another way.
My 1980 ride was a Plymouth Valiant, so naturally I would have been obsessed over your 1959 Plymouth. I would have spent lots of time cleaning and waxing every unique part of that car. As a librarian without OCD, (a rarity), I would have approached your Fury like a museum curator, documenting every mark. The fact that it was able to run, would have been a huge plus. There is so much to admire and enjoy on that car. What would have kept me from buying it was poverty.