There I was in the fall of 1987. I was six months into home-ownership and ready to jump from the frying pan of a new car with payments into the fire that was an old car, with payments that would be less predictable and hopefully in smaller amounts. My benchmark was something around $3k – that amount would buy a good quality car and was also the amount I convinced myself I could afford to waste if the experience went bad. My GTI had cost me that much (just to own) for each of its two years, so another new car would have easily flushed that much money down the drain. Drive it a year and throw it out was my worst case scenario.
For the first time in a long time, I went looking for . . . something.
I was looking for a low mile, well kept old car from the mid 60’s. This was my automotive happy place, the place of almost all of my hard-won experience over the past decade. These cars were 20 years old by then, so the selection was much thinner than it had been a decade earlier when I first went on this kind of trek. But high quality cars of that kind were still out there if I was prepared to be patient and spend some time with the newspaper classifieds.
I mainly restricted my search to 4-door sedans – in my mind, those were the cars least likely to be appreciated as time went on, so I would feel less responsibility about potentially ruining a more desirable model through wear and tear or, heavens forbid, an accident. I recall checking out a ’66 Impala sedan. It was nice, but not nice-nice. Call me picky, but my definition of “nice” is a fair amount higher than it is for many, and I was not in a mood to “settle” coming out of a nearly new car the way I was. The two big rusty spots on the Impala’s trunk floor turned me away from the Chevy – which was OK, because I was not really a Chevy guy anyway. I remember that I also checked out a ’67 LeSabre 2 door that was likewise not up to my standards.
Then I found my car. It was a white 1966 Plymouth Fury III 4 door sedan. V8, automatic, power steering, heat and radio. It lacked power brakes (not really a big deal for me) and air (Hmmm). And the car had 20,000 miles on it. I was a little unsure about the owner’s statement about the mileage – until I saw the car. It was absolutely pristine. The owner was the nephew of a never-married lady who had bought it new, and had aged out of driving about 5 years earlier. The big Plymouth had only accumulated 15,000 miles when this guy got it, and he had added just 5,000 more over the next 5 years. But his family was growing, money was tight, and he needed a truck more than he needed the big white shrine to his aunt out in the garage.
The car was legit. The tires had been replaced once, as had the exhaust system, and that was about it, other than normal tune-ups and batteries. The car was original right down to the belts, hoses and plug wires on the wide block 318 (then in its last year). The turquoise cloth interior was the most perfect 20 year old cloth interior from the 60’s I had ever seen. The dash pad was perfect, the door panels were perfect, the carpet was perfect, the steering wheel was perfect, and even those injection molded armrests that usually split at their seams after a few years of use were perfect.
Outside, the chrome was almost perfect, the paint was almost perfect, and the wheels were adorned with the high-end optional turbine-style wheelcovers usually found on Sport Furys or VIPs. I saw only two problems. First, auntie had backed into something at a very low speed, which had put a small dent in the bumper and a slightly larger dent in the center of the decklid between the two big pieces of trim. More concerning was that the driver’s door would not open.
The owner wanted $3,500 for the Plymouth. It was a little more than I wanted to pay, but then again, the car was gorgeous. And the owner was interested in my F-100. $2500 plus the F-100 and the Fury III was mine. I probably could have worked the deal a little harder, but I was not unhappy with the cost. And I really, really wanted this one.
I asked myself if I was prepared to live without a/c in my daily driver. Two years earlier I asked that same question when I moved into a third floor apartment in an old building. I had air in the car and at my office, so I convinced myself it would work. The second year I broke down and bought a window unit. Now, I had a/c at home and at work, and I spent much more time in those places than in my car. And every car I had owned before the New Yorker had come with “4-60” cooling, so how hard could it be?
The first thing to fix was that door. In one of the oddest body problems I have ever experienced, it seemed that one of the bolts that fastened the latch striker to the B pillar had worked itself loose and managed to punch its way though the door metal, creating a crude, but very effective deadbolt lock. But how do you remove a door panel when the door is closed? I figured my way through that one, but was unable to get the bolt head back through the hole so it was outside of the door and not inside of the door. I finally determined that the only way to solve this was to get a hacksaw blade on that bolt. This required me to remove the left rear door for access to the front latch area. It all worked. Once I cut that bolt the door latch worked as it was supposed to, with the remaining two bolts tight as could be. Re-fitting the rear door was a little harder than removing it, but I got there, and it lined up no worse than most of the ones hung in Chrysler’s assembly plants of the period.
Next up – new tires and an alignment, which revealed the need for some new ball joints. The technician was an older guy and not surprised, offering his opinion that Chrysler had used cheap parts when these cars were built. The drive home was quiet with the car tracking straight and true.
Then it was time for under-hood rubber. The hoses, belts and plug wires all carried the old DPCD logo I had seen on many parts on my ’59 Plymouth, so I knew they were ancient and almost certainly original to the car because that parts logo (which pre-dated the Mopar brand) was being phased out around that period of time. Clearly, if I planned to drive the car, those old rubber pieces would have to go. Finally, the brake system would need some attention, as there appeared to be a slight weeping leak through the master cylinder casting.
Yes, brakes. I learned a valuable lesson – when a car is used so little that the brakes don’t wear out in 20 years, the fluid inside the hydraulic system is an ungodly mess Brake fluid absorbs moisture, so every component in contact with brake fluid was a rusty disaster inside. I had always bought kits and honed out wheel cylinders on my own, but the pitting in these seemed beyond that. A new master cylinder and 4 new wheel cylinders were included in my full brake job. After several weeks the rear axle bearings were grumbling due to flat spots from so much sitting. Replacing those made the car fully ready.
I decided that those high-end wheelcovers (that were absolutely perfect and genuinely looked like new after I took them apart and cleaned them) were too nice to keep on the car for a driver. I bought a set of Mopar poverty caps, but got blowback from friends for the looks (this was before that trend got going). I found a set of 14 inch wheelcovers from a’ 68 Chrysler Newport at a swap meet somewhere and bought them. I always intended to find a set of more typical ’66 Plymouth covers, but never got around to it. I must have been maturing because this sort of thing would have been totally unacceptable to me only a few years earlier.
The Plymouth and my garage made for a problematic combination. My house sat on a 40 foot wide lot, and the two-car garage sat behind the house in a way that required a tight 90 degree turn from the driveway. These torsion bar Mopars never had the tightest turning circle, but with some maneuvering I got the nose in – to discover a second problem. Somewhere along the way a former owner had built a little doghouse-style extension out from the back wall to allow parking for a longer car. That extension proved to be almost, but not quite, tall enough for the hard-mounted hood ornament to go under. The fix was to back in. I got quite good at this, backing up the long, narrow driveway – avoiding a big tree on one side, then a smaller tree and a fence post on the other side, then finishing with a tight reverse turn which pointed the car’s tail into just the right spot. The car’s generous glass area and four easily visible corners helped a lot, as did the one-finger power steering.
The lack of air conditioning was a problem that was largely solved before my first summer with that car. About 3 months after I bought it, some friends invited me to dinner at their house. They also invited another friend, and she and I hit it off right away. Where my former girlfriend would have turned up her nose at my ’66 Plymouth (just as much as with a certain green Ford pickup), this young lady did not. She was also just a few months into a new car herself, and in that relationship the Fury III found its place. It was the go-to for 3 seasons of the year, with great fresh-air ventilation that worked well in weather up to maybe the low 80s. In hot weather, we used her car.
The ’66 Fury was also good for the occasional long-distance trip. It was actually a fabulous trip car, except for the overly soft drivers seat. A springtime trip to Philadelphia saw me having to resort to a bed pillow stuffed behind the small of my back for some support. There was not a lot that separated lower priced from higher priced cars of a given size in that era, but the seats was one big one, which my Cadillac and my New Yorker had taught me.
The Plymouth was there for a couple of major life transitions, which both occurred on the same day. On May 5, 1990 the girl I had been dating for awhile became Mrs. JPC. I was just short of 31 years old, but better late than never. We drove the white Fury home from our wedding reception. That was also the day I finally stopped smoking.
I started smoking cigarettes in college, kind of by accident. I quit the first time around 1983, when my father was told that a little spot in an X-ray was lung cancer. Inexplicably, I started up again in maybe 1987, by proving to myself that “I’ll just have one and nobody will ever know” was for me just like “just one drink” for an alcoholic. I spent the next 2 or 3 years knowing that the next pack of cigarettes would be my last. Until the cravings told me that I had really meant the pack after that one. I refused to smoke in the house, but lit up immediately upon getting into the car, without fail. Fortunately the Fury’s old-school vent windows and fresh air vents kept smoke out of the car to the maximum extent possible. They say that the secret to quitting is to change your life. I knew that marriage would be such a change, so May 5, 1990 is also the day of my last cigarette. I have no doubt that the Plymouth’s pleasant personality was a help in getting past that first few months. I never would have made it with the New Yorker.
I owned the ’66 Fury for around four years and put about 40,000 miles on it. They may still be the most trouble-free 40,000 miles I have ever put on a car. I think that a vacuum choke pull diaphragm and a voltage regulator may have been the only things I had to replace after the initial shakedown period. This car was a genuine sweetheart. I still remember how easily it always started, hot or cold – “Na-rayre, VROOM” I also remember that slow, smooth idle that was so unlike 80’s cars. And although I avoided driving clients in hot weather, I did so during the other seasons of the year and nearly all of them loved it.
This car was an excellent tutorial in the differences between big Plymouths of the Forward Look era and the square 1960’s C body versions. I will confess that I preferred the driving position in my ’59, where I sat a little higher in relation to the steering wheel. The older car also seemed to feel a little more tuned to the road. However, the difference in quality was amazing. Both of my big, white Plymouth sedans had been two decades old at purchase. If anything, the higher miles on the ’59 should have worked it its favor. But the ’66 version came with none of the little irritants of the older car, like squeaks, water leaks or the like.
One thing in common with the ’59 was that this newer version was a lovely cruiser. The agility of the GTI had been a wonderful thing when you felt like zoom-zooming, but there was nothing like the relaxed glide of a well sorted-out Mopar V8 sedan when you were not in the zoom-zoom mood.
It was at about the 4 year mark when I finally decided that it was time to move on. For one thing, the air conditioning issue was becoming more of a problem. I still remember a really hot day when I had to drive downtown for a court appearance. I recall being more than a little disheveled from the heat, and I probably carried a bit of an odor from it too. None of the other lawyers suffered from this, and I realized that there was really no reason for me to suffer it at this stage of life either. It is true that a/c kits were being offered for older cars, but I could never convince myself to invest that much money into a car that I knew would be a temporary situation for me. By then, I had gotten four really, really good and satisfying years from that car, but knew that cars of this era did not last forever in normal use. I had sprung for a Ziebart treatment when I bought it in the hopes of giving it a fighting chance against rust, and four years on, no rust was visible – but I was realistic about this, and knew that rust would not stay away forever if the car remained in service.
We were expecting our first child by this time, so it was time for me to grow up (again) and get something a little more practical. The Fury III had clocked about 60k altogether, and cleaned up really nicely when I advertised it for sale. It sold to the first guy who came to look. He was probably in his early 60s, and was looking for a fun old car to enjoy with his wife. Where I saw a car that had deteriorated in some very small ways, he saw the nicest car he had looked at up to then, and remarked that it was the first car that had been accurately described by a seller.
Marianne and I had discussed what would be a reasonable price for the car, and this fellow offered more than that right out of the gate. She wisely kept quiet as I countered with something a little higher yet, and a car changed hands. My counter-offer strategy that turned a good price into a better one was taught to me my an older lawyer. “If you take the guy’s first offer, he’ll spend the rest of his life wondering how much less he could have paid.” So I did the guy a favor and we were both happy. I got right about what I had paid 4 years earlier, so my experiment came out as a success. New VW GTI: 2 years of depreciation and interest, $6000. Twenty-year-old Plymouth Fury III: 4 years of depreciation and interest, $0. It’s hard to improve on free, especially when the car was so enjoyable.
Actually, I think I will eventually make a little money from that experience, because I still have those four turbine-style wheelcovers wrapped up in my garage. It is probably time to break my pack-rat tendencies and let them go, because I don’t think I will be buying another C body Plymouth any time soon.
My white Fury III was one of the best cars I have ever owned, but while I really liked and respected it, I never loved it with the intensity that I had loved some of my earlier ones (the ’59 Fury in particular). Also, I will confess that I always suffered from a bit of envy with this one, wishing that it had come with a 383 V8 and air conditioning. And it being a 4 door hardtop would not have hurt it either. But I also realized that “almost perfect” was really a very nice state of things, so my envy never got out of hand. Anyway, I would soon find an effective way to combine automotive love and good transportation. It would just take more than one car.
And of course this 1966 Plymouth Fury was sold in Australia, in1966, in right hand drive form as the Chrysler Australia ‘top of range’ luxury car and badged as a Dodge Phoenix.
Australians of ‘baby boomer age’ would see this car as being a 1966 Dodge Phoenix and wonder it is wearing ‘Plymouth’ badges.
Nevertheless, regardless of how the car is badged, to appeal to me it would have the four door pillarless body (no ‘B’ Pillar). I actually like 4 doors but hate ‘B” pillars.
…with real rear turn signals, even, as shown here.
Great ‘pick up’ Daniel!
You do have to ask why Chrysler in the USA did not use these Chrysler Australia export production ‘amber’ rear Dodge Phoenix turn signals on its US domestic Plymouth passenger cars.
Using a RED tail / stop light as also a turn signal will never be as safe as a completely seperate AMBER turn signal as used on the Australian production Dodge Phoenix.
Would not be difficult to fit these amber turn signals to a US production ‘66 Plymouth.
The amber turn signals weren’t used in the US because at the time there were still some states requiring red for all rear lights (except the reversing lamps), and federal vehicle safety standards—including the one allowing rear turn signals to be either red or amber—didn’t exist until 1968. Even if that hadn’t been the case, the Australian signals still wouldn’t’ve passed muster for two reasons: turn signals (and tail and stop lights) have to be mounted on a fixed part of the vehicle body, not on the deck lid. And reversing lamps have always had to be white here; the Australian amber turn/reverse lamp has never been permitted.
But you’re right; red rear turn signals are just plain the wrong way to do it.
Beautiful car; certainly a contrast from most of the Plymouths that were around when I was coming of age, which were either K-car derivitives, Horizons, or rebadged Mitsubishis. And I’ve very much enjoyed your entire COAL series.
In the last photo of the rear end, is that the dent in the bumper you were describing? If so it definitely gives the car some character in its parting shot.
Yes, that was the dent. It always bothered me, I knew that trying to repair it or replace the damaged bumper and decklid would probably create compromises of their own, so I left it alone.
And I agree with your first statement – after spending quality time with a couple of big Plymouth Furies I was sad to watch the line decline from a full range to just a couple of models.
I’ll DuckDuckGo it so the rest of you don’t have to.
What does “a 4-60 cooling system” mean in the following context?
“It’s always hot. No aircon in the 58’ Chevy – only a 4-60 cooling system.”
Answer: 4 windows rolled down and 60 miles an hour. (Quoted from a novel Anthills, Elephants and Other Fascinations by Rina Flanagan)
Wait what? All you people already knew this?
And I thought I was well read.
Haha, I thought only the youngest readers would have trouble with that one.
There were other variations, such as 2-80 air conditioning for coupe drivers who liked to go fast. 😉
This post caught me by surprise, JPC, because it’s been a long time since you’ve mentioned this car. You sure landed a beaut! An older couple that were friends of my parents had one of these in a rich maroon color. This was in the early 70s and the car was always garaged, so it was in really great condition. Pity that 10 or 12 year old me wasn’t able to appreciate it more.
“Armstrong Steering” is another term I always assume everyone knows but many don’t.
I’m like living in a parallel universe; your prior car was an ’85 GTi, a year later I bought my ’86 GTi..likewise, I bought my first abode in 1984, and my house (where I’m still at) in 1986). I kept my GTi a bit longer though, I had it through 2001 (brief overlap with my current ’00 Golf). My ’86 did have armstrong steering, which I regretted after I broke my collarbone, 2 ribs and scapula in a bicycle accident (a car hit me)…the ’86 had then wide 60 series tires, so it was a handful in tight parking lot..and a 5 speed, so I couldn’t have a much worse car while recovering. My ’86 was my first car with air conditioning, which was mandatory in that I’d since moved to central Texas a few years prior, and suffered without air conditioning in my prior ’78 Scirocco.
I also had a new ’59 Plymouth Fury…though mine was a pedal car (and a fire chief’s vehicle)..though no “real” Mopar.
As for smoking…never tried…my Grandfather passed away due to miner’s asthma way back in ’66 so I was pre-averted. My Dad (my Mother’s Dad was the miner) briefly smoked a cigar back in the 60’s but gave it up when his Father got throat cancer in the late 70’s (he also smoked cigars). Combined with allergies, I guess I figured I couldn’t take breathing for granted, didn’t need another challenge maybe making it more difficult later on.
My Dad’s first car right out of college was a new ’56 Plymouth Plaza (stripper)…he only owned 2 other Mopars, something I’ve never gotten around to owning (except for the pedal car) myself.
Your Plymouth is virtually a mirror image of the new 1965 Fury III I took my driver’s training in back in summer of 1965 in Indiana. White four-door sedan, even the blue seats appear to be the same. No A/C but power brakes was an included option. The other half of the class got a new red 1965 Impala Sport Sedan with A/C.
I remember many of the same attributes of the car that you praise. The big greenhouse made for good outward visibility, a benefit in learning to drive in traffic and park. One quality defect was the shift quadrant indicator that did not line up correctly – annoying but not unusual at the time, especially given that it was the first year that Chrysler abandoned pushbutton transmission controls and returned to a shift handle. I hold great affection for that car because the training class enabled me to get my driver’s license a few months earlier and it was pleasant to drive and comfortable to ride in. It was absent the glamour and comfort of the red air conditioned Impala but at least it was a cool white and had the vent windows we all used to such great advantage back then. Glad you got to enjoy such a beautiful example a couple of decades later.
I will confess that I always kind of wished mine had been a 65 – I consider them equal in almost every way, but I preferred the rear end styling of the 65. It was a little more anonymous, but the twin trim things that contained the taillights that tapered from thicker in the center to thinner at the edges bothered me a little. Also, the block letters spelling PLYMOUTH that were individually bolted to the top edge of the bumper looked silly – they were almost invisible, but the styling gave nowhere else to put a nameplate.
Also, you remind me of the shift lever. One mystery on this car was that the shift lever was a newer style with the black plastic piece on the end, and not the one with the thin chrome end. There was nothing about the car that gave any indication why it would have been replaced, but it clearly had been at some point. And those Mopar levers always had the most delightfully smooth-but-precise action of any of the era. The Fords always felt a little spongy and the Chevys had such long travels.
Over the years I saw enough ’66 Valiants and Darts with the all-chrome double-angle automatic shift lever and enough of them with this what was on your car that I’m pretty sure it was an early-built/late-build thing; the single-angle lever with the black plastic knob was a midyear ’66 introduction.
This final-edition ’66 factory parts cattledog seems to confirm that; the plastic-knob type is marked as a new listing not present in any previous cattledog. The all-chrome type is marked as a change because there were two variants of it. The early-early type was a two-piece item, same as I had on my ’65 D’Valiant, with a long chrome knob on the end of the chrome lever. The late-early type was a 1-piece chromed lever with no separate knob.
This solves an old mystery for me. It is interesting how they changed the shift lever but not the turn signal lever.
Yeah, that (highly agreeable, IMO) ’65-’66 slim chrome turn signal lever stayed right through to the end of ’66 production. I think ’68 was the first year for the revised plastic shift lever knob with the concave-conical turned-aluminum insert, which they kept through ’83—I mentioned it in this post, and I’ll rhapsodise about it again in another post coming soon.
It’s great when an experience and a story turn out so well. It sounds like you got a solid deal on the car originally, it treated you well, and when the time came you moved it along an another buyer who was looking for just this thing. All essentially for free to you. Perfect.
2 random observations… One, the dealer badge/sticker on the rear. I could imagine that would have driven me crazy if I’d purchased the car new and they stuck that thing on it. I know it was basically done without question back in those days (the 1960s, etc.), but I’ve always resented the idea that ones car needed to carry free advertising for the dealer, for life. That said, once the car gets to be vintage, it’s kind of cool to see old dealer markings. I just though can never get away from thinking that someone at Plymouth thought hard about designing even the parts of the car that came down to trim and badges…and did they really want the dealer slapping a red sticker above the “Fury III” badge?
Second, I know about aftermarket AC units, but did you ever look into what it would have cost to find a factory air setup and install that? I know if it had been my car, I would have pondered that endlessly (and then probably never moved beyond the pondering stage). I would have never installed one of those below the dash, on the hump, systems either…but it’s probably really not that much more trouble to add on the real thing on cars from back then.
Pretty car, excellent story.
The sticker annoyed me a little, but as you say, it was old enough that I was OK with it. Now that you bring it up, I wish I could remember which dealer had originally sold it. It had come from a small community somewhere in the central part of the state, but I no longer even the name of the town.
The idea of finding all of the factory a/c parts did occur to me, but I never invested the energy into trying to create a shopping list, let along going ahead with it. My idea was simply to find a car with factory air for next time.
I can be kind of stupid, so it took me two very costly, difficult, unsatisfactory times to learn that retrofitting factory A/C is a very costly, difficult, unsatisfactory and stupid idea.
Dealer stickers – on my first new car they had put the dealer sticker up on the lower edge of the trunk lid, dead centre. Apparently during dealer prep, another guy had left the trunk lid raised, and the sticker guy came along and slapped another dealer sticker on the rear panel, dead centre. So I got not one, but two dealer stickers, one right under the other. I tried to make them take one (or both) off to no avail. I should have gotten money off the deal, or nixed it altogether.
All of my cars, new, used and even beaters have had any stickers on them immediately removed by either the dealer or me.
I never had a dealer lose a sale because of refusal to de-sticker a car.
I just could never stand them. Don’t care for plate frames but I’m not as picky with those.
Indiana never requires front plates so those frames are always off in a hurry.
I am easy going with most things but with my own car I am REALLY stubborn.
California dealers never affixed an emblem. All used license plate holders, which were easy to remove. When I picked up grandma’s Buick in El Paso to drive home for my mom, that was the first time I saw a dealer emblem. Unfortunately, it was metal and two holes were drilled in the trunk lid. First part of the car to show rust at the seacoast.
I’ll grant you that my ’62 Lancer came new from J.E. French (in SF) with a plate frame and not an emblem, but all California dealers using plate frames and none using emblems is a pretty steep claim; how do you know?
It’s not, Ellis Brooks Chevrolet in San Francisco used metal emblems at least into the 1970s and likely beyond that as well (as well as frames). They were very much an outlier though and perhaps the last or one of the last to use them, it’s still surprising to me how much dealer advertising a car has on it outside of CA. Here for example there’s the plate frame, then these days usually a dealer sticker of some sort (replaced the metal, then plastic emblems) near the nameplate, and many also have a decent sized vinyl text banner across the rear window usually with their website on it. And loads of people never remove any of it.
Looks like reverting to type was quite rewarding. This Plymouth looks amazing and I’m guessing you took these pictures shortly before selling it.
It also appears this particular Plymouth was the recipient of some of its goodies thanks to ala carte optioning.
You got an exceptionally good one with this Plymouth. Your enjoyment and appreciation of it springs through the screen.
I am pretty sure I took most of the pictures after one or more of its periodic clean-up sessions. Back before the online era, pictures like this were not much use for selling an old car unless the buyer was long distance and wanted them mailed.
The optioning was really pretty standard for the era, except for one thing. Manual brakes were probably not that common and the turbine wheel covers were not that common, but to find them both on the same car was really strange.
This also reminds me of how I never really minded the AM radio one bit. It worked fine but there was not a lot of music being played on the AM band by then. I was actually happy to just soak in the satisfying sounds of the car.
Non power brakes were quite common in the drum brake era, especially with the low-priced makes. Our Impala didnt have them and we never missed it. Steering was the excellent Saginaw power unit. My ’71 Chevy pickup had front discs without power assist, 10 series and one year only. Did require quite a bit more pedal pressure, but still stopped fine. No power steering on the zero option truck.
We should all be so lucky to drive a gem like this for essentially free for four years.
Speaking of seats, the first time my long-suffering back flared up was when I had to drive our ’65 Coronet wagon most of the way home from Colorado to Towson because my dad was sick. It’s one thing to be a (young) passenger and be able to move around and change positions, but having to sit there and drive for hours on end is another. On the last day (of three) my lower back was screaming, and it affected my hip, so that pushing the accelerator was excruciating. No wonder I use cruise control whenever possible. PTSD.
Those seats were slabs, and after a few hours they became miserable. It’s when I realized that my long back needed lumbar support, and I took to having a little pillow in most of my own cars. The Corvair’s buckets were pretty good. My two Beetles (’64 and ’63) were bad, until I swapped in some ’66 seats in the ’63, which were a new design and had vastly improved lumbar support.
Modern seats are so drastically better in that regard. These old bench seats were pathetic.
Your first line says it all!
Re seats: I can relate. I’d love to get different seats for my C10. Due to the fuel tank location, it’s not an easy swap (finding factory buckets in good shape would alone be a miracle, not 100% sure they’d be much better, though). I keep a support cushion like JP described. I’m miserable without it.
I put Taurus LX seats in my 1995 Taurus, with the little built-in air bladder lumbar support. It works wonders on long trips. (I also drove a 1993 for years, I was lucky enough to find matching grey 1986 LX cloth seats for it in excellent condition, they also had lumbar support and were the best seats I’ve experienced in a Taurus, pre-2010).
I figured I was not alone with these seats. I once briefly drove a 66 New Yorker when I had the Fury III and could tell the difference in the seats within the first 10 seconds. And I agree that on the whole, modern seats are a vast improvement, especially on less expensive cars.
One might reasonably think so, yes, but many was the time I thought I’d seen the latest-production part with it, only to come upon a later one, designed and tooled long after the end of DeSoto. And even once the round logo went away, some new-design/new-tool parts were still coming through marked “DPCD” well into the late ’70s/early ’80s. I suspect it just sort of became a tradition.
That surely looks and sounds to have been a really nice car. ’66 was a particularly good year for driveable Mopars; there were improvements to the carburetors, chokes, and ignition systems which, as you experienced, tended to make for consistently fast and easy startups.
Congratulations on kicking cigarettes, too, and keeping them kicked. I gave them the ol’ college try, myself, and consider myself dumb-lucky they didn’t gain any traction with me. I have friends and loved ones who give a grievous and graphic demonstration that cannot stop is a real thing.
Yes, that 66 Fury III was the mechanical opposite of my 77 New Yorker in that everything about the running gear was as right as rain the entire time I had the car.
You must be one of the lucky ones who could smoke a cigarette here or there then put them down without drama. I am not one of those people. I still have dreams that I have started smoking again and am fearful that I won’t be able to quit this time. It’s a good thing they are just dreams, especially with what cigarettes cost these days.
There was (probably still is) a tobacconist strategically located in the arcade of a shopping centre right across the street from the middle of UMichigan’s central campus. It was configured; lit, and decorated to feel posh and exclusive, and it had that smarmy little rhyme framed above the counter—”Tobacco is a noxious weed/it satisfies no normal need/etc/etc/etc/AND I LIKE IT!”—to stoke rebellion in the kids coming in. From that shop I bought an expensive pack of dark brown Nat Sherman cigarettes, figuring I should start at the top if I were going to try this what I had long fully well known to be hideously bad for all of the reasons. I smoked them at will, got no psychoactive effect off of them, felt no particular pull to smoke more of them, bought another pack of them anyhow, and about halfway through that pack I noticed myself noticing they weren’t all that gross, so I dunked the remaining ones in water and threw them away. That was 26 years ago, and I’ve never since had any desire to touch a cigarette.
That was my second experiment with tobacco; the first one had been a couple of years before when I tried some spit-tobacco. About three minutes in, I felt like fifty extra mental horsepower had kicked in. About four minutes in, I felt desperately seasick on dry land—with a supersize side order of chills and sweats. Uh…no, not again, ever.
The third and final one was a couple months’ dalliance with a pipe, a couple of years after those Nat Shermans. It was multiple kinds of a fussy damnuisance; I got no benefit from it, and I felt like a pretentious twit, so I ended that late one night by squirting a great deal of Ronson lighter fluid into the mostly-full foil pouch of pipe tobacco (bought from that same aren’t-you-a-posh-rebel tobacconist I mentioned), waiting til the tobacco soaked up the fluid, turning off all the lights, holding the pouch at arm’s length out the window, and flicking a lighter with my other hand before dropping the pouch from my 15th-storey apartment. It made a nice little bonfire down there in the street, and I cackled to hear some drunk kid going “WHOAHHHHH…FIIIIIIIIIIRE!!!!!”. This stupid stunt didn’t cause any deaths, injuries, or property damage; my dumb-kid luck held out (as it did for all my wing-stuff-out-the-high-window episodes except one, which backfired on me in perfect cartoon fashion).
Before and after those experiments, I was and am firmly in the NOPE camp: Not One Puff Ever. Given how hard it was for me to kick caffeine (over a decade’s worth of quitting and relapsing), I am quite sure I would’ve been a can’t-quit case.
Yours is far from the first account I’ve heard of smoking-dreams long after quitting.
It is funny that I can smoke or not smoke a cigar at will, and I still have a fondness for old men smoking pipes. Marianne tells me that I am free to smoke all the pipes I want, should I outlive her, but not before. Perhaps the difference is that I don’t inhale the pipe or cigar.
As much as I kind of like either at the time, the 3 days it takes this nonsmoker to get the aftertaste out of my mouth costs me more than the enjoyment I get from the actual burning part.
In high school a friend gave me a cigarette and coached me on smoking it. It produced instant nausea. My friend said that if I stuck with it, it would no longer nauseate me. I was like, “And why would I want to do that?”
That is a fine ride you had there, JPC. 4 years of minimal repairs.
The smoking thing got me. “When properly motivated, man can do anything!” I occasionally mused. Just before my 25th birthday and right after the Great American Smokeout, my moment of reckoning came when a Girl I really liked did to my ego what I usually did to a spent butt outdoors–drop it on ground and grind it until out. I was in grad school and surrounded by mostly non-smokers (budding health professionals) and even for 1984 smoking was already drawing dirty looks and comments (being a serial axe murderer would have been more socially acceptable it seemed). So I stopped, finished out my pack of Marlboro menthols, right before midterms, right before Thanksgiving and the holidays. Since eating and drinking was behaviors that re-enforced smoking, I went on a drastic diet and cut out the latter for three months. It was after that I lost count of the days hours and minutes since my last cigarette, and my body revolted for a time. Five months later I met the best Girlfriend I ever had, who was militantly anti-smoking. [It didn’t work out for us after 18 months, but it was among my happiest times.] And now, I sort of miss the habit (more like the ritual: “a pipe gives a wise man time to think, and a fool something to stick in his mouth”–both were applicable to me), but not the smell, taste, ash, costs, compulsions, and mostly the nasty stares and lack of places where one can actually smoke. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt (Marlboro Man), but don’t miss it. My wife would have never talked to me had I smoked when I first met her in 1996. Mom, OTOH, was a chain smoker and drove the world’s largest ash tray (the legendary ’65 Dodge Dart); she died of lung cancer at age 64. Mrs. JPC was a positive influence on you.
Nice car, they sold those in NZ but as a Dodge phoenix, I cant remember if Todds assembled them or they were from OZ, not many arrived and even fewer remain.
Bought a discounted left over ’66 demo just as the ’67s were arriving for $2970. 383 Torqueflite, air, power steering and brakes. One of the best cars I ever owned and I’ve owned quite a few over the years.
Ooooh, that’s nice! Your photo reminds me – I wonder why I never looked into finding a pair of fender skirts for mine. I always liked these Plymouths in skirts.
I wanted to ask you that question. Our 1965 Fury III driver’s training car had the skirts and they looked great.
A near identical 66 Plymouth Fury III is listed now on Hemmings, even in my home state of NC…hmmm.. You found a really nice one, and I love that you chose it not just for occasional pleasure but as your daily. That would be like me choosing a 2002 or so as a daily, and that is not far out of the question. But unlike the vast changes in styling cues and performance from 66 to 86, I find little difference between an 02 and a 22 unfortunately.
On a side note, I have really enjoyed this COAL series. I was fortunate enough to find it way back at Chapter 1.5 and have looked forward to it each week. Interesting and applaudable choices. Very well-written too! A happy side item was somehow finding J.P.’s Blog, which I have enjoyed as well.
It is true that a 20 year old car in 1979 or in 1987 was a whole different thing than a 20 year old car now.
Thanks for the kind words on the blog. I recall writing there about how a summer spent in my daughter’s 20 year old 1998 Civic did not make me feel like I was driving an old car at all.
In that same vein, the oldest vehicle I’ve ever had in my personal fleet includes the one I’m driving now — a 1998 Nissan Frontier that was purchased nearly new from my former employer in August 1998.
But it doesn’t look and feel old like a 1956 car would have in 1980, and certainly no one asks me about taking photos of it!
“I must have been maturing because this sort of thing would have been totally unacceptable to me only a few years earlier.”
Been there. It’s funny how perspective changes things. And its weird when some friends *don’t* mature with you.
Not the only similarities. I didn’t start dating until my early 30s (but didn’t really “settle down” until my later 30s). I quit smoking shortly thereafter (for good, and at my own decision with no influence from my partner, other than I knew I had found “the One” and I want it to last as long as possible, in essence, I have someone to live for besides myself and that’s what influenced me).
I love the Plymouth. I’d have certainly driven it and loved it, too. I’ve enjoyed buying older cars when I can afford better, just to enjoy them. I’d rather drive my ’74 C10 than my/our much newer cars on many occasions (especially when I’m physically up to it, but even given how its set up, it isnt too bad on me, especially away from traffic where I’m not constantly shifting, etc), in the deep south with no factory air conditioning. Getting thumbs up from kids and adults alike, having people make comments at gas stations, etc is just a side benefit, lol, but I do enjoy an interesting old vehicle. Nobody gives us thumbs up in my partner’s 2011 Honda Accord, haha! I’ve seen people taking pictures and videoing the truck before.
I’m glad your experience proved successful and you enjoyed your car at apparently just the right time. And congrats on meeting your One. You knew you found something special when she liked the ’66, and that’s another similarity, as my partner loves my old pickup as much or more than I do.
Great story! Thanks for a fine read.
About a mile or two from here, there’s a ‘66 parked in front of a barn.
I’ve always wanted to stop and ask the property owner what the story is behind it.
Do it. One day, it’ll be gone, possibly crushed.
I keep seeing (and reading articles) about perfectly good old cars taken to the scrap yard after someone dies or goes into the nursing home. Aunt Jenny keeps her 1963 Comet in perfect condition, and you just haul it to scrap or the junkyard? Why? Why not throw it on craigslist or Facebook for a grand? Give someone a chance who would love it. Or someone who just needs it.
My cousins did this with my aunt’s (admittedly high mileage) 1993 Lincoln Town Car and early 1970s LTD that had been restored to factory original no less than 10 years before and given to her as a gift at her retirement by a doctor she had worked with. Both cars ran and drove just fine, in fact, they were driven onto the trailer. I had no idea until it was done. I was told that a couple of guys bought them from the scrap yard. I’m glad someone got them, at least they’re not a Whirlpool washer by now.
I was waiting for this one; what a delightful read! One thing about getting married later and having a good job while single means you can find and enjoy an older car as a daily driver.
I think that a four-door sedan would be the most likely to have low miles and been owned by an elderly driver. A side benefit is that the sedan body style is much tighter. I remember my aunt’s 1961 Oldsmobile Dynamic Dynamic 88 bubbletop developed rattling side windows after about 5 years.
You don’t really need power brakes with drums. I don’t recall having any issues with the manual brakes on my mother’s 1967 Chevy Bel Air; however power steering would have made a big improvement.
Thanks. The 4 door sedan is my least favorite body style (or at least the one I find most dull) but it has been the pick of the old folks who are gentle with their cars.
That’s interesting. I’m guessing that there’s probably at least one lengthy discussion specifically of 4-door vs. 2-door body types here on CC, but I have to say that I’ve nearly always preferred 4 doors. The only exception is on classic American cars from the 60s and 70s (so I guess that would encompass your 66 Fury!) and decidedly small European sporty cars. Nearly everything else – which includes nearly everything I’ve owned – I prefer 4-doors. Maybe that’s not surprising given my overall preference for the wagon version, if it exists, of most cars.
I’ve owned exactly 2 2-door cars (trucks don’t count). One, the Nissan SE-R, kept me wondering throughout my ownership if it would someday be possible to take that engine and transplant it into a 4 door Sentra body. The other, the MINI Cooper…which ultimately BMW made into a 4-door (thereby destroying all of the MINI character, IMO, but that’s a different story).
An anticipated installment.
There was at least another of these sedans around in the Midwest. Probably 1985, a coworker at a supermarket I worked at during college also acquired a ’66 Fury sedan in remarkable condition. Silver, blue interior. I recall it had the optional fender skirts, no idea if it had Airtemp. Odd, I never looked for the famous Airtemp sticker I’d been aware of since kindergarten.
Never did ask how he acquired it. He was a bit of his own cat. Same age as me, very into nutrition and fitness, his thin frame probably carrying all the muscle his genes were going to allow.
You went the opposite I would have with those turbine covers. My ’72 Grandville came with standard covers and a set of Pontiac wire covers probably last offered in 1970. Base Poncho covers were exceptionally bland in the early ’70s, and the wires did a lot for the car.
A bit worse for wear, I still have those wires on my garage wall, still wearing a light coat of dirt from when they were last on the Poncho. Maybe I should go out and clean them, it’s a warm and sunny afternoon!
There are few things more satisfying than making an old set of wheel covers glisten and gleam in the sun. Mrs. JPC might disagree, but then she has not attained my lofty car-nerd rank.
Some wear skirts well and some don’t. I had them on my ’61 Fury and took them off. Thought it looked better without them.
’65, and the similar ’66 were the first Plymouths in quite a while (ever?) designed with fitting skirts in mind. I thought they looked pretty good.
These cars were a peak for the full-size Plymouth. My father’s cousin had a 1966 Fury III convertible, bought brand-new, and it was in regular service through 1977. It was then traded on a used 1973 Fury III hardtop sedan.
There were a few 1965 and 1966 Plymouth Fury four-door sedans used as daily drivers in our town through the late 1970s.
Unfortunately, quality on the C-bodies started to slide in 1967 – and really began the downhill slide with the debut of the 1969 fuselage models.
I would have kept those high-end wheel covers. I’ve always thought they looked really sharp. They added a note of distinction to the car.
“quality on the C-bodies started to slide in 1967”
I always thought that the 67 and 68 C body cars were still pretty nice. But for the company as a whole, the easy sales gains after the awful years of the early 60s were starting to plateau by 1967 and certainly 68, and Townsend’s fixation on production numbers put more pressure on everyone to shove cars out the door.
Another sweet ride and good story to go with it .
I too preferred sedans when I was young as I’d drive everyone everywhere, now I just sold my coupe and am back to a foor door sedan and loving every moment behind the wheel .
-Nate
Your first child–would that be your son who was ordained a priest last year?
Yes, that’s the one.
Wow, what an experience. Beautiful car, reliable transportation, zero depreciation. I’ve had that experience with motorcycles but never with an old car.
I’d say you were lucky, but you shopped wisely so luck didn’t have that much to do with it!
Great story
Due to internet problems, couldn’t reply in a timely manner, so, late to the party, here is my 66 Sport Fury that I bought for $725!! Unlike JP, I preferred the 66 over the 65; it just seemed to look longer and sleeker. 🙂
I had a beautiful green one, bought it for 100.00 back in77 took the motor out of my 66 Charger. It was a 383/2barrel with a 727 trans. Manual brakes and steering, I miss that car till this day so much fun to drive and so powerful. Traded for a 74silver Monte Carlo but I will never forget my 66sport fury🥲
The FuryIII 1966 Plymouth has been the best car I have owned along my 81yo ever! I miss it till today.