Plymouth came to market in 1959 with an advertising slogan that, considering the over-the-top styling, might cause many to scratch their heads today.

Sport Fury Hardtop 

“Certain people have it. Certain things as well—that sense of rightness we call good taste. You recognize it at once when it is there. It is there in the ’59 Plymouth, the look, the lines deliberately designed with flair, with restraint. For a car neither stodgy nor bizarre. It is not conspicuous, nor is it anonymous. It does stand out—but handsomely. This year, many people of good taste are responding… particularly for them—the ’59 Plymouth.” Or that’s how the magazine ads read, anyway, with the header, “Good taste is never extreme.”

Restraint is not a word that normally comes to mind with the Forward Look cars of Virgil Exner, vice president of design at the Chrysler Corporation. Exuberance is more like it. The ’59 Plymouth was in the third year of a design cycle that began in ’57 with cars that shook the Motor City to its core. And for ’59, Exner and his team, including Plymouth studio chief Hal Pilkey, gave the towering tailfins a twist, adding a reverse camber at the trailing edge and flaring them outward. Certainly, you could call the result extreme without encountering too much objection. We leave it to others to define just what is good taste, but the look was exciting, and exciting brings buyers to the showrooms.

Sport Fury Hardtop 

The model lineup was given an overhaul for ’59, too. The base model Plaza was discontinued, dropping the Savoy to the bottom trim level, while the Fury line was expanded to include a four-door sedan and a four-door hardtop. At the top of the line was the jazzy new Sport Fury, offered only as a two-door hardtop or a convertible. Standard in the Sport Fury were Swivel Seats, a Chrysler Corporation innovation for ’59, and the Sport Deck with its bolt-on, stylized continental spare tire. Nicknamed the “washing machine lid” or “toilet seat” by the styling crew, the gimmick was borrowed from the Imperial and a some earlier Exner idea cars. While it was standard on the Sport Fury, the Sport Deck was a $103 option on the rest of the Plymouth line.

In 1959, Plymouth was still using a traditional ladder frame, with the addition of 14-inch wheels and torsion-bar front suspension in 1957. The Chrysler Corporation’s Unibody construction would be introduced one year later. Drivetrain choices included the two-speed Powerflite and three-speed Torqueflite automatics, the familiar 230 CID L-head six, and two 318 CID poly-head V8s. But the ultimate V8 was the B-series 361 CID V8 with a Carter AFB four-barrel carb, a 10:1 compression ratio, and 305 hp. Called the “Golden Commando 395,” the biggest V8 sported gold-painted rocker covers and a torque rating of 395 lb-ft.

Sport Suburban 

While the mid-range Belvedere four-door sedan was the best seller in ’59, the new Sport Fury turned in respectable numbers as well—nearly 24,000 cars with list prices right at $3,000. Nearly two-thirds of Plymouth buyers chose automatic transmissions, while around 39 percent opted for the familiar flathead six. The Plymouth division produced almost 460,000 cars in the ’59 model year, a slight improvement over the previous year, but still far behind its competition in the low-priced three, Ford and Chevrolet.

Lynch Road plant