When writing about the 1953-54 Plymouth, I wondered whether there could have been a compromise between the practicality of Chrysler head K. T. Keller and the trendiness of his successor, Tex Colbert. Let’s apply that question to the 1957-58 Plymouth.
Even more so than other Chrysler brands, the second-wave “Forward Look” Plymouth was the antithesis of Keller’s utilitarian early-50s designs. The new-for-1957 models were 17 inches longer, eight inches lower, four inches wider and around 250 pounds heavier than their 1953 counterparts.
All that extra metal didn’t come free. The entry-level Plaza two-door sedan listed for $2,009, which was $226 more than the previous year’s model. In contrast, Volkswagen held the line on the base price of its Beetle at $1,495. The growing price gap between the Big Three’s supposedly “low-priced” cars and the imports would prove to be problematic as a recession started in mid year.
But back when the 1957 Plymouths were introduced, their advertising could say with some justification that “Suddenly it’s 1960!” Here was the pinnacle of the brand’s effort to make bigger, glitzier, more powerful cars than its Detroit rivals. Even Chevrolet’s restyled 1958 Impala would look old hat in comparison. And unlike Plymouths in succeeding years, the 1957-58 models had relatively clean and attractive lines.
The 1957 Chrysler Corporation cars had a big influence on the size and styling of subsequent designs from General Motors, but quality issues helped to undercut initial sales gains. Click on ad to enlarge (Old Car Advertisements).
Chrysler gets the attention of General Motors
The 1957 Chryslers were a wake-up call for General Motors, whose domestic market share had risen to 52 percent in 1955 partly by being the industry’s style leader.
GM head stylist William Mitchell acknowledged in an oral history, “We got panicked by Chrysler and made crazy things, and wings, and everything” that he was “ashamed to look at” (Crippen, 1987).
Plymouth’s new look helped the brand regain third place from Buick and generate the second-highest output of its entire lifespan: 762,000 units.
Alas, the 1957 models didn’t quite hit a home run. Plymouth’s share of the low-priced market was only 18.6 percent. This was less than one point higher than for 1955 and slightly lower than the supposedly bad old days of 1953. Why? Sales may have been dampened after the public became aware of quality-control issues resulting from the new design being rushed into production one year early. Peter Grist (2007) stated that this was over the objections of chief stylist Virgil Exner.
The Plymouth “received the most criticism,” Grist reported. “Poor fit and finish, along with under-engineered parts, caused leaks, creaks and mechanical failure. A new sound was heard on the highways of America, the sharp retort of a snapping torsion-bar” (2007, p. 96).
In 1959 General Motors tried to one-up the 1957-58 Plymouth with a new, low-slung body for the Chevrolet that also sported some of the weirdest tail fins of that era (Automotive History Preservation Society).
The promise of the ‘Forward Look’ comes crashing
In 1958 a mildly changed Plymouth didn’t do as badly as one might expect during a recession. Output fell almost 39 percent. However, that was a few points less than the Ford brand and six less than Chrysler as a whole.
The rooster came home to roost in 1959, when Plymouth’s share of the low-priced field plunged to less than 12 percent — a postwar low. Output actually fell below 1954, a year historians tend to talk about in cataclysmic terms.
Chrysler’s attempt to outdo the Big Two failed. Ford likely lost more money on the ill-fated Edsel and 1958-60 Lincoln. However, at least Ford gained six points of market share between 1950 and 1959. This was almost identical to what Chrysler lost over the same period.
Chrysler’s market share fell more than independents
The independents are often pointed to as the biggest losers of the 1950s, but it was actually Chrysler. Although the number of independent passenger-car producers fell from six to two, they ended up with 9.4 percent of the market in 1959. This was only a 1.1 percent drop from 1950.
Colbert couldn’t blame Chrysler’s decline on a lack of resources. Early on he took out a $250 million loan. This was roughly five times larger than what Studebaker-Packard attempted — and failed — to secure in 1956 (Langworth and Norbye, 1985; Hamlin, 2002).
One irony is that the independents may have benefitted by not possessing Chrysler’s access to capital because it led them to stick with modest lineups of smaller and more economical cars. For example, Studebaker came out with an initially hot-selling compact Lark rather than new full-sized cars that shared a platform with Packard and a new Clipper companion brand.
Meanwhile, American Motors sales soared in the late-50s by arguing that its compact Rambler was a more practical alternative to the Big Three automaker’s “Dinosaur in the Driveway” (Hyde, 2009; p. 186).
The top-of-line family car series for 1958 was the Belvedere (top image). It was distinguished from cheaper models by a sweepspear and oddly sculpted “cow-catcher” bumpers (Old Car Brochures).
By 1958 Plymouth wasn’t any more of a “dinosaur” than a Ford or Chevrolet. Indeed, it was close to its Big Three competitors in both size and price. The problem was that they all were overshooting the market, particularly with the onset of the so-called Eisenhower recession.
This can be most easily seen when comparing list prices between 1955 and 1958. Whereas the Volkswagen kept the base price of its Beetle around $1,600, all of the Big Three’s lowest-priced models inched up past $2,000 (excluding business coupes).
Purchase price didn’t prove to be the only factor in shifting buyer preferences. The senior Rambler’s base price of $2,047 wasn’t much lower than that of a Ford, Chevrolet or Plymouth. However, the Rambler promised better gas mileage and maneuverability while still offering adequate room for six passengers.
This led to a stunning turn of events: Whereas Plymouth’s sales collapsed, Rambler’s soared. Although production figures can vary among automotive histories, the general pattern is clear: Chrysler’s best-selling brand didn’t begin to get its mojo back until 1963-64, when Plymouth didn’t even offer a “standard-sized” car.
Why not make a more efficient ‘standard-sized’ car?
In the early-60s the Big Three responded to the rise of the imports by keeping their standard-sized cars big while coming out with compacts. An alternative option would have been to shrink their big cars back to their mid-50s footprint. Chrysler did so in 1962, but sales were initially so weak that this strategy was discredited until the late-70s. I have argued (go here) that the problem with the 1962 Plymouth wasn’t its smaller size but weird styling and weak marketing.
As a mental exercise, let’s imagine what a 1957-58 Plymouth would have looked like if it combined Exner’s styling with the smaller size of the 1953-54 models. The photoshopped image below preserved the Plymouth’s basic look but the car’s length was cut by roughly 12 inches. The wheelbase and width were reduced by four inches.
In other words, our fake Fury is around 192 inches long and 74 inches wide. Those dimensions are virtually identical to the 1954 Plymouth.
The fake Fury would not have had quite as much interior room and trunk space as its standard-sized competitors, but the gap could have been reduced through more efficient design.
Our fake Plymouth (bottom image) is still stylish despite its smaller size (base photo courtesy of Old Car Brochures).
The 1957 Plymouth’s body had plenty of fat to cut
In the late-50s each of the Big Three stretched the widths of their cars to roughly 80 inches. Even so, that didn’t translate into all that much extra shoulder and hip room because the doors were thicker.
As a case in point, the 1957 Plymouth was six inches wider on the outside than a 1953 model yet had only one additional inch of front shoulder room. This hints at why it wouldn’t have taken much effort to prune the Fury without sacrificing too much interior room and trunk space.
Our fake Fury also illustrates how a more efficient size would not have required a Rambler-like dowdiness in its styling. Indeed, the excessive qualities of Exner’s design have been toned down, such as the overly tall fins and ungainly bumper tips. The fake Fury looks taunt rather than overdone.
Would a smaller Plymouth have been successful? It’s hard to say how the public might have responded in 1957, when big and glitzy still sold fairly well. In contrast, 1958-59 could have been an ideal time for a smaller standard-sized car. The zeitgeist was changing.
Chrysler’s 1957 lineup was arguably the most ambitious in the automaker’s history (Old Car Advertisements).
How could the car have fit into Chrysler’s lineup?
Perhaps the most difficult question would have been how the fake Fury could have achieved adequate economies of scale by sharing body parts — but without hurting the sales of Chrysler’s higher-priced brands.
The automaker could have continued its practice of using one platform for all of its brands. As usual, the Plymouth would have been on a shorter wheelbase. The biggest question would have been whether other Chrysler brands would share the Plymouth’s unusually thin doors.
If Chrysler had been afraid to go too far upmarket with a narrow body, it could have used a two-pronged approach. All brands could have shared the same inner-door frames, but Plymouth and DeSoto might have used thinner outer-door panels. Meanwhile, Dodge, Chrysler and Imperial could have been given thicker doors.
Why downsize the DeSoto rather than Dodge? Because the DeSoto was redundant. If the brand was going to survive it needed a new reason for being. For example, a two-door model with a long hood and short deck could have resulted in an attractive sporty coupe — and an indirect competitor to the wildly successful four-place Ford Thunderbird.
For 1959 the “mid-sized” Ford Thunderbird outsold DeSoto and almost beat the Chrysler brand (go here for further discussion). Click on ad to enlarge (Automotive History Preservation Society).
This platform strategy would have been more expensive than if all Chryslers shared outer door sheetmetal. However, the extra costs might have been offset by not giving the Imperial its own body in 1957.
Perhaps just as importantly, Chrysler might have avoided the cost of developing a distinct platform for its compact cars for at least a few years. A shorter version of our fake Fury might have sufficed. The strategy would have been similar to that used Ford with its 1966-70 Falcon, which was put on a shortened mid-sized platform but priced similarly to other compacts.
How could Rambler have outsold Plymouth in 1961 when it had a weaker dealer network, a narrower range of products and some of the oldest — and stodgiest — bodies in the U.S. auto industry (Automotive History Preservation Society)?
When will historians start to give Keller his due?
The styling of the 1957-58 Chrysler lineup has been so well regarded by automotive historians that they seem to have a difficult time acknowledging that the cars may have been a bad business decision.
Even if the biggest quality-control issues had been avoided by introducing the new designs one year later, it’s hard to see how the Plymouth would have sold a whole lot better in 1958-59.
At that point consumers were clearly drawn to smaller, cheaper and more practical cars. This is why Keller’s basic approach could have been a better match with the times than Colbert’s. Chrysler arguably moved in the right direction when it downsized the big Plymouth in 1962, but it might have saved itself even more heartache by doing so in 1957 instead.
NOTES:
This story was first posted on February 20, 2017 and expanded on Nov. 13, 2020; Jan. 7, 2022; and Dec. 6, 2024. Market share for brands were calculated from figures listed in Wikipedia (2013). Prices, specifications and production figures for individual nameplates were from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006), Automobile Catalog (2024), Classic Car Database (2016), Flory (2009), and Gunnell (2002). Volkswagen sales figures were from Gunnell (2004). In instances where data appeared to be erroneous, data from other sources was substituted. I was not able to fully resolve variance in brand production figures for 1959-61, so data should be viewed as approximate.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
Hamlin, George; 2002. “The Last of the Marque: The Fifty-Seventh and Fifty-Eight Series, 1957-1958.” In Kimes, Beverly Rae, ed., pp. 622-635. Packard: A History of the Motor Car and the Company.Automobile Quarterly Publications.
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13 Comments
“some of the weirdest tail fins of that era”? The batfin ’59 is a classic, & better looking by far than the ridiculous tall-finned Mopars & Caddys of the era.
In 1954 and 1955, down-sizing the Plymouth was a non-starter. The 1955-1956 Plymouths were the right size, in my opinion. The 1957 trimmed down as in the article is an interesting “what-if”. So is the down-sized DeSoto as the future “Cordoba”. As the future unfolded, the wheelbase of 115 to 116-inches is ideal. But the 1957 Plymouth on a shorter and narrower platform against the 118-inch wheelbase of the Ford Fairlane 500 probably would have suffered in the marketplace of late-1956-1957 !
What if Plymouth had kept the Belvedere, Savoy & Plaza smaller, pushing Plymouth into Rambler territory? Theoretically, this puts Dodge up against Chevy & Ford and gives DeSoto way more room in the medium-priced segment. A smaller “standard” Plymouth would, of necessity, have to result in a smaller Valiant, closer to the Corvair than the Falcon in size. Such a repositioning of Chrysler’s brands might still have resulted in DeSoto’s eventual termination but could also have allowed Plymouth to create their own domestically-designed and built Vega/Pinto competitor (which could potentially have been a much better car).
Or going a step further, having the Savoy and Plaza becoming what the Valiant wass the the Balvedere in Rambler territory. Then on the other side of the spectrum, Imperial is amalgated back to Chrysler and the Imperial is rechristened Chrysler New Yorker more earlier instead of 1976 leaving more space for DeSoto as well to survive a couple of additional years.
I also remember once a old story of Collectible Automobile about the low-price three of 1959 mentionning then Chrysler was also hit by strikes in 1959 and they amalgated briefly Plymouth division with DeSoto as “Plymouth-DeSoto division”. For strikes, there was one at the Pittsburgh Plate Glass who forced Chrysler to do more inhouse glass from what I saw at that old headline of the NY Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1959/04/01/archives/chrysler-will-make-about-half-of-glass-needs-in-detroit-plant.html
Maybe the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press might have old archived articles about this.
Steve, I like the fact that you are shaking up conventional wisdom on the ’57 Plymouths. Am not sure a more slab-sided appearance would deliver a satisfactory appearance, might look more like the large ’55 Nash in that the windshield would almost be as wide as the body.
A different approach would be to simply narrow the vehicle by 3-4 inches and leave the body curvature alone. Personally, I’d also leave the OAL alone too even though it would have been a bit longish. The fins are my biggest dissatisfier, too tall and splaying outward. Would replace them with subtle fins that continued the feature line that begins aft the coupe’s doors and extends to the beginning of the large fins.
Other decisions that might have helped Plymouth would have been to launch them in 1958 rather than 1957 to ensure quality, and keep them in production through 1961, replaced by the familiar unibody mid-large ’62 Plymouth, though on that car I would connect the fore and aft side flairs, get rid of the kick-up above the rear door sills, and maybe add nice integrated skirts.
I don’t think Chrysler had enough money to tool a substantially different Plymouth body from the rest of the line. Indeed, Colbert’s decision to put all brands except Imperial on a common body was seen as an innovation and was copied by GM in 1959.
Given that constraint, maybe a different solution to the problem you identify would be to bring back a restyle 1953-54 body for Plymouth in 1957 instead of sending it to Australia to be the AP1 and to let Dodge compete with Ford and Chevrolet in the new large full size sector. Though the AP1 Aussie type product might not have been competitive without also receiving a wraparound windshield.
I don’t think it would be a complete retool. It could be based on the 55-56 architecture. At first glance I didn’t care much for the altered Plymouth. I think if you shorten the greenhouse 2 or 3 inches the proportions will improve. You’ll have something looking like the 57 Chevy.That was a classic coming off the assembly line.
“Suddenly it could have been 1962”, by a coincidence on the cover of Motor Trend October 1956 issue, below the mention “win a 1957 Plymouth” there’s a picture showing a car that’s five year ahead as MT titled, the Citroen DS. https://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/motor-trend#i47
I know hindsight is golden, but when you think about, G.M.’s 1957 Fisher bodies for the larger cars (Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs) were evolutionary from the 1954 C-bodies but by how much ?. G.M.’s 1958 B-bodies were variations of the C-bodies and Ford’s cars were set for 1958, with “new” Lincolns, a larger Mercury and an Edsel hybrid (Ford-Mercury). All I can figure is that L.L. “Tex” Colbert made promises to the bankers that forced his hand and left him no choice to put Exner’s next generation of “The Forward Look” into production. One more year would have allowed the time for Chrysler to work out the bugs by testing further developing the torsion-bar suspension. Do any photographs exist of Exner’s post-1956 cars that Exner wanted for 1957, before the in-development 1957’s were ordered into production ?
“some of the weirdest tail fins of that era”? The batfin ’59 is a classic, & better looking by far than the ridiculous tall-finned Mopars & Caddys of the era.
In 1954 and 1955, down-sizing the Plymouth was a non-starter. The 1955-1956 Plymouths were the right size, in my opinion. The 1957 trimmed down as in the article is an interesting “what-if”. So is the down-sized DeSoto as the future “Cordoba”. As the future unfolded, the wheelbase of 115 to 116-inches is ideal. But the 1957 Plymouth on a shorter and narrower platform against the 118-inch wheelbase of the Ford Fairlane 500 probably would have suffered in the marketplace of late-1956-1957 !
What if Plymouth had kept the Belvedere, Savoy & Plaza smaller, pushing Plymouth into Rambler territory? Theoretically, this puts Dodge up against Chevy & Ford and gives DeSoto way more room in the medium-priced segment. A smaller “standard” Plymouth would, of necessity, have to result in a smaller Valiant, closer to the Corvair than the Falcon in size. Such a repositioning of Chrysler’s brands might still have resulted in DeSoto’s eventual termination but could also have allowed Plymouth to create their own domestically-designed and built Vega/Pinto competitor (which could potentially have been a much better car).
Or going a step further, having the Savoy and Plaza becoming what the Valiant wass the the Balvedere in Rambler territory. Then on the other side of the spectrum, Imperial is amalgated back to Chrysler and the Imperial is rechristened Chrysler New Yorker more earlier instead of 1976 leaving more space for DeSoto as well to survive a couple of additional years.
Hmm, sacrifice Imperial for Desoto… I’m sensing you might be a Desoto fan 🙂
What if the 1957 Tulsarama Plymouth had shrunk instead of rusted ? Then, it would have been, “Suddenly, It’s 1962 !”.
I also remember once a old story of Collectible Automobile about the low-price three of 1959 mentionning then Chrysler was also hit by strikes in 1959 and they amalgated briefly Plymouth division with DeSoto as “Plymouth-DeSoto division”. For strikes, there was one at the Pittsburgh Plate Glass who forced Chrysler to do more inhouse glass from what I saw at that old headline of the NY Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1959/04/01/archives/chrysler-will-make-about-half-of-glass-needs-in-detroit-plant.html
Maybe the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press might have old archived articles about this.
Steve, I like the fact that you are shaking up conventional wisdom on the ’57 Plymouths. Am not sure a more slab-sided appearance would deliver a satisfactory appearance, might look more like the large ’55 Nash in that the windshield would almost be as wide as the body.
A different approach would be to simply narrow the vehicle by 3-4 inches and leave the body curvature alone. Personally, I’d also leave the OAL alone too even though it would have been a bit longish. The fins are my biggest dissatisfier, too tall and splaying outward. Would replace them with subtle fins that continued the feature line that begins aft the coupe’s doors and extends to the beginning of the large fins.
Other decisions that might have helped Plymouth would have been to launch them in 1958 rather than 1957 to ensure quality, and keep them in production through 1961, replaced by the familiar unibody mid-large ’62 Plymouth, though on that car I would connect the fore and aft side flairs, get rid of the kick-up above the rear door sills, and maybe add nice integrated skirts.
Re: last comment, Dodge would share with Plymouth while Chrysler would use Imperial’s body. DeSoto I DuNoto.
I don’t think Chrysler had enough money to tool a substantially different Plymouth body from the rest of the line. Indeed, Colbert’s decision to put all brands except Imperial on a common body was seen as an innovation and was copied by GM in 1959.
Given that constraint, maybe a different solution to the problem you identify would be to bring back a restyle 1953-54 body for Plymouth in 1957 instead of sending it to Australia to be the AP1 and to let Dodge compete with Ford and Chevrolet in the new large full size sector. Though the AP1 Aussie type product might not have been competitive without also receiving a wraparound windshield.
I don’t think it would be a complete retool. It could be based on the 55-56 architecture. At first glance I didn’t care much for the altered Plymouth. I think if you shorten the greenhouse 2 or 3 inches the proportions will improve. You’ll have something looking like the 57 Chevy.That was a classic coming off the assembly line.
“Suddenly it could have been 1962”, by a coincidence on the cover of Motor Trend October 1956 issue, below the mention “win a 1957 Plymouth” there’s a picture showing a car that’s five year ahead as MT titled, the Citroen DS.
https://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/motor-trend#i47
I know hindsight is golden, but when you think about, G.M.’s 1957 Fisher bodies for the larger cars (Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs) were evolutionary from the 1954 C-bodies but by how much ?. G.M.’s 1958 B-bodies were variations of the C-bodies and Ford’s cars were set for 1958, with “new” Lincolns, a larger Mercury and an Edsel hybrid (Ford-Mercury). All I can figure is that L.L. “Tex” Colbert made promises to the bankers that forced his hand and left him no choice to put Exner’s next generation of “The Forward Look” into production. One more year would have allowed the time for Chrysler to work out the bugs by testing further developing the torsion-bar suspension. Do any photographs exist of Exner’s post-1956 cars that Exner wanted for 1957, before the in-development 1957’s were ordered into production ?