1971 Plymouth Fury - A Perfectly Wonderful Way to Start the Day

When I was very young my father worked as an executive for Burlington Industries based in Greensboro, North Carolina. He rarely talked about what he actually did save for a time or two that he joked about someone as color blind as he was being in charge of ordering bulk amounts of fabric in varying color shades. 

He work out of their Manhattan office and decades before "Zoom-calls" could even be imagined, at least once a month, sometimes more, he'd fly to Greensboro for meetings. He'd cab it to LaGuardia or Kennedy and sometimes Newark from our home in Baldwin, New York and most often times he came back so late at night it was easier if not safer for him to rent a car. One of the more memorable "company cars", as he called them, was the time he came home in a block long and block wide, dark green Plymouth Fury convertible just like this blue and white one here. Seeing my father left Burlington in 1972, chronologically my memory of that car syncs up. I'd guess that "company car" was a 1970 or 1971 model. 

After the Plymouth's return to "full-size" convention for '65 and subsequent lovely reboot in '67, they came with these brutes that even a big car lover like me was like, "what is this"? And that was more like  "what the hell is this" as oppossed to, "what is, this?"  

That big Plymouth was part of Chrysler's 1969-1973 "fuselage" look. The fuselage look was allegedly a subtle cylindrical shape reminiscent of an  airliner. That doesn't even become readily apparent even after that's directly pointed out, does it? To me these hulks looked as though the designers made only peripheral changes to a huge block of clay and called it a day. These cars made even early '70's full-size Ford's look like GM designs in comparison. 

All Chrysler full-size models on the Chrysler C-body chassis got the fuselage treatment. My father's "company car" Fury riding on the "shortest" wheelbase at 120 inches. The Dodge Polara rode on a 122 inch wheelbase, Chrysler s on a 124 meanwhile the Imperial had a 127 inch long wheel base. To make maters worse, all big Chrysler's looked so similar, save for, arguably, the Dodge Polara, it was hard to tell a Plymouth from an Imperial. 

That wasn't that unusual seeing that as far back as the late '50's Chrysler advertising highlighted that all  Chrysler's were, more-or-less, simply trim levels of the same basic design. 

As a wee-nipper all but living for the mornings when I'd see a "company car" in front of the god-forsaken Ford "Ranch Wagon", the time my father brought home that gigantic Fury was a morning I'll never forget. 

It was a beautiful, sun-splashed fall morning with a little bite in the air and my father was to drive my brothers and I to school. My brother Kevin is ten-years-older than me and sat up front with dad meanwhile I shared the back seat with my younger brother, Chris. Sitting in the back seat of the foreboding Plymouth, I puckishly asked my father if he would put the top down. 

Amazingly, seeing how little time we had for such frivolity and how chilly it was that morning, my father obliged. He and my older brother undid the latches on the windshield, my father flicked some switch and a cacophony of motors, gyros, servos and leprachauns started whirring and the top lifted towards the sky. I was delighted. 

Only problem was, my dear old dad never saw a detail that he paid attention to. No sooner did the roof start to go up that it got snagged on a tree limb; the motors fighting against the tension of the big branch. When my father realized what was happening he went to put the roof back down but the branch cracked and the canvas roof jerked up past it; the branch dropping not only sticks and twigs into the car, but what was left of its dewy leaves and who knows what other "tree-crap". Amazing that the roof didn't get punctured. With the broken tree limb hanging over the center of the car with the canvas top half open, my father had no choice but to put the top all the way down and move the car out of the way. 

With the top down, I was memorized how different the world looked sitting inside a car with the roof off; everything was different and was somehow...better. The sun was shining more brightly, the leaves on trees more colorful. I asked my father if he'd drive us to school with the top down and he ignored me thus snuffing out my joy. Now he was running out of time and with a car full of tree junk he'd have to clean out before returning the rental and it being so chilly he had to get the top back up. Problem was when the roof came back down onto  the top of the windshield, the roof was out of alignment and wouldn't latch down. Seemed the convertible top's frame got bent when it got bound up against that tree branch. 

So I got my top-down drive to school. Froze my butt off too but for those few fleeting moments, I was living high on the hog. My father mumbling sarcastically under his breath that it was a perfectly wonderful way to start the day. 

As far as I was concerned it most certainly was. 

1965 Plymouth Sport Fury - Upsize Me

Imagine if by 1980 General Motors had abandoned their 1977 down-sizing efforts and instead "up-sized". That's what Plymouth, a long-defunct division of Chrysler did, ostensibly, after downsizing in 1962 and then up-sized in 1965. Above is a 1965, up-sized Plymouth Sport Fury. And for the record, Chrysler did the same with Dodge. Chrysler (the division) and Imperial models were were spared the ignominy of smaller designs in 1962. Imperial was a separate Chrysler division from 1955 through 1975.  

The only tangible difference being if in 1980 GM upsized and kept their 1977 full-size models around as de-facto mid-sized models like Plymouth essentially, although unofficially, did. Speaking of which, that's exactly what 1977 was like at GM dealerships (save for Cadillac) what with the new full-size models rubbing bumpers with the old "mid-sized" models that were quite close in size. That all changed come 1978 and GM eventually did up-size their 1977 (vintage) big cars in their early '90's...but I digress. 

Of course the circumstances behind Chrysler's 1962 downsizing and what GM did in 1977 were completely differently. GM shrunk their wares because upon rolling out their elephantine 1971 full-size models, and subsequent bloated mid-sizers in 1973, someone, thankfully, came to their senses. That and the 1973 gas-crisis spurring eventual governmental madates for gas-mileage. Makes you wonder how big cars would have become if either of those circumstances hadn't occured. It's not as if GM full-size models weren't oversized before 1971 either.  

Chrysler downsized in 1962 because, forgive me if you've you've heard this before, sometime in either the late '50's or very early '60's, they misinterpreted intel about General Motors downsizing Chevrolet models for '62. In an attempt to beat them to the punch, just-like-that, Chrysler scraped their planned 1962 Plymouth's and Dodge's for significantly smaller models that were built on an elongated chassis (A-body) that underpinned the compact 1960 "Valiant by Chrysler"; the new designs also looked like stretched out 1960 Valiant's as well. 

Meanwhile, back at Chevrolet, they weren't downsizing but instead introducing a new line of compact  cars for '62 that would be known as the Chevy II. Whoops; hate to be the Chrysler executive who bore the brunt of that bad news. 

Sales cratered at Plymouth (and Dodge) for the new "B-bodies" and Chrysler scurried to alter 1963 and 1964 models to make them, for the lack of better terms, less weird looking. Personally, I think the '62 "big-little" Plymouth's are fabulous looking; then again, I also like Edsel's. Taste being like arm-pits and all.  

The '65's like our Sport Fury here were clean sheets known as the "C-body" and featured a new full-perimeter frame, interiors and exterior styling drawn up by the talented Elwood Engel and his team. If anything, they were far more mainstream and contemporary looking than even the 1964 designs and, as designers and design trends often do, appeared to be quite similar to the also new for '65 big Chevrolet and Ford models. 

Product planners smartly deduced that what was known as the Chrysler B-body would make for a pretty good if somewhat oversized mid-sized automobile. The "B" going onto underpin a host of famous Chrysler products including the 1968 Plymouth Road Runner\Dodge Charger and lest we fail to mention, come 1975, the Corinthian-leather lined Chrysler Cordoba. A short wheel base "B" known as the Chrysler E-body was the chassis for the 1970-1974 Plymouth Barracuda and Dodge Challenger. 

Chrysler would build a Plymouth Fury of some ilk on a number of different body designations, including the "B-body" for a time in the late '70's, through model year 1989. 

The story of the Chrysler C and B-bodies of course, didn't end well. Both slogging through the 1970's suffering from poor product planning, derivative "me-too" styling, and a lack of developmental funds brought on by the company's improprieties of the 1960's and poor overall sales in the '70's. In retrospect, not hard to see why and how Chrysler faced bankruptcy, ahem, for the first time as the '70's melted into the 1980's. Makes you wonder if they had they not downsized in 1962 if they would have faced the same myriad issues in the late '70's.