The 1955 model year was a big one for Plymouth, with an all-new car from bumper to bumper. Here’s a detailed look.

For Plymouth dealers, the 1955 model year couldn’t come soon enough. By mid-decade, Chrysler Corporation styling had fallen well behind the times, and Virgil Exner’s exciting new Forward Look was a needed and welcome change. Also marketed as the “Hundred Million Dollar Look” that first year, Exner’s bold styling theme pushed Chrysler from laggards to leaders in exterior design. Plymouth’s version of the corporate design theme, crafted by Henry King, Bud Gitschlag, and crew, featured a full-width chrome grille bar and the most conservative fins of the Chrysler brands. It was a hit: Sales leaped to more than 704,000 cars, an increase of 52 percent over ’54.

Plymouth also rolled out its first V8 in ’55, sporting polyspherical combustion chambers and a choice of two displacements, 241 and 260 cubic inches. (The poly engines were designed to emulate Chrysler’s hemi-head layout at reduced cost.) The trusty 230 CID L-head six was still available, boosted to 117 hp. There was also a new fully automatic transmission, the Powerflite, operated by a petite dash-mounted selector. Exterior colors and interior appointments were completely new as well, and that’s where much of the focus is in this original Plymouth promotional spot. Below, a three-minute tour of the 1955 Plymouth.

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