1961 Plymouth Fury Design Tweak

Refining One of Virgil Exner's Last Masterpieces

For this week's design tweak, I chose a 1961 Plymouth Fury 2 door hardtop. While I find the original Exner design stunning, its contemporary buying public didn't agree. Many automotive hacks wracked their brains trying to colorfully describe this car—The Car that Ate Tokyo—a riff on the Japanese horror flicks of the day, comes to mind, and they still do to this day in classic car magazines. The "pinched" grille and dramatic headlight placement seems to be the car's main issues, although the suddenly finless body was referred to as a "plucked chicken" by Exner himself. My main issues are with the details. There are fussy chrome doodads, fussy side sculpturing and an abundance of shiny chrome slathered in the front. Ironically, Lexus is just now introducing its new "spindle" grille across its entire lineup, and it's almost exactly the same shape as this '61 Plymouth. See the BTW sidebar at the end of this post. Let me describe how I "fixed" it to my own tastes.

T H E   C H O P — First I "radiused" the rear wheel wells. This means I opened up the fenders to reveal the entire wheel and tire. The original had a very low wheel opening which didn't really relate to the front wheel well and made the rear end look like it was dragging. I think this change did the most for "lightening" the look of the car. I resculpted the sides, continuing the front fender shoulder all the way to the back of the car instead of ending it at the front door. I also eliminated the ornate trim behind the front doors, and lowered the entire car about 3 inches so it sat closer to the ground hugging the tires more. At the front, I blackened-out the grille, which simplified the look of it, and made the dramatic "swoosh" around the protruding headlights work better. I added a satin chrome "header" above the now-black grille, with P-L-Y-M-O-U-T-H letterspaced across it. This serves to "rationalize" the grille shape, giving more prominence to the horizontal aspects of it, rather than the angularity of the opening. The front bumper was simplified too, deleting the rather baroque center section with its five raised ridges, and I raised it a few inches so it wasn't so close to the ground.

The original photo of the '61 Fury. Note the odd way the front fender shoulder sculpturing stops at the front door cutline, though the chrome trim continues. Also, just behind the front door is a set of chrome hash marks that seem really out of place, though they do serve as a start for a small sliver of white paint, matching the two-toned roof. The rear of the car seems to drag, a combination of the now-finless rear fenders and very low wheel well opening.

BTW: 

Exner has the last laugh after all, as Lexus introduces its brand new "Spindle" grille on its entire lineup. I call it an updated '61 Plymouth grille!


U P D A T E :  For some reason my chop wasn't enlarging from the thumbnail. Now it should be.

Lincoln MK/LS—Return to Rear Wheel Drive

Lincoln MK/LS hybrid sports sedan—Lincoln's long-awaited return to the rear wheel drive luxury sector, this is the second of my Lincoln chops to use my modified naming convention. While I'd love to see a return to full names, I think the shorter alpha and alphanumeric nomenclature is hear to stay for the foreseeable future. This sedan not only recalls the last LS midsize sedan, it's a full "Bells & Whistles" Luxury Sedan, hence the MK/LS name. Rear wheel drive (with optional all wheel drive), hybrid-assisted drivetrains, electronically-assisted suicide doors, 22 inch wheels and a rounded chrome license plate surround that evokes the sparetire "hump" of classic Lincoln Continentals, signify this car's top-shelf status. Hybrid and Twin-Turbo versions would be available from the start, identically priced, as is Lincoln's recent pricing strategy.

B T W :

The fine art of using Photoshop® to create images of new cars, "chopping" as it's called online, can't be any better illustrated than this Lincoln. I started out with the image of the Lexus LF/A sports coupe, above. I don't think there was much left unchanged besides the angle of the windshield from the donor image, lol.

The Rat Pack's Luggage Carrier

1961 Cadillac Esprit de Ville Sportwagon—Yes you're right. Cadillac didn't make any factory station wagons in the 1960s. Or 1970s. Or 1980s. And they certainly would never have made a 2-door wagon like this pillarless hardtop. But that's what Photoshop is for! 

I absolutely love the way this chop turned out. The original Coupe de Ville I used as a base photo was white with a gray interior, but I made "mine" Fawn Metallic with red leather and cloth, a very striking and elegant combination. Besides the wagon body, I added ribbed stainless steel rocker panel trim and painted the center of the wheelcovers to match the interior color. 

I can just see Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and their luggage, cruising all night to Vegas in this Esprit de Ville for a hot poker game on the Strip. I can also see Lucille Ball or Angie Dickinson using this wagon to pick up a few items on Rodeo Drive!

B T W : 

This little Rat Packer would have loved to have been in the back seat for that middle-of-the-night  trip to Vegas! (Yes, this is me, in 1962...)

Cadillac's Flagship Coupe—XTC V12

The XTS V12 luxury coupe, with a high-torque, ultra-quiet V12 featuring 450 hp. Click images to enlarge.

C H O P S — Cadillac could really use a flagship model to compete with the Mercedes-Benz S Class, BMW's 7-Series, Audi's A8 and similar über luxury machines. Cadillac has recently shown a large sedan called the XTS Platinum, but it's front-wheel drive and will replace their medium-sized cars, the STS and DTS. There have been rumors of a larger rear wheel drive car being developed, but it's quite far down the pipeline if it really exists at all. 

I've used a photo of the XTS Platinum concept sedan to create this larger pillarless coupe model, the XTC. That longer hood would now house a bespoke V12 in two states of tune: a "normal" rating of 450 hp, and a V-Series sport model with twin superchargers and 600 hp. The V-Series would take on Mercedes AMG division, and take the CTS-V's stellar performance image even further. The interiors would feature beautiful matte- or gloss-finished woods with V-Series featuring either polished carbon-fiber or piano-black lacquer trim.

My naming choice might be a bit confusing, as this large coupe would be placed above the front-wheel drive XTS sedan, but I just couldn't resist the XTC moniker—I'm sure the owners will be in ecstasy behind the wheel, lol.

The ultra-high performance model, the XTC V-Series, featuring a twin-supercharged V12 with 600 hp.

B T W : 

For those of you that aren't quite sure what I do to create my cars, this is the photo I began with. I use copyright-free publicity shots of cars, and then manipulate them in Photoshop to create the cars I wish were available today. You'll notice that besides having 4-doors versus 2-doors, the hood of the real car is much shorter than mine. That's because the XTS sedan has a V6 front wheel drive drivetrain, versus my V12 rear- or all-wheel drive platform. I've also changed the roofline/C pillar and many other details to make my coupe all casey/artandcolour.

Buick Invicta: LaCrosse-based 4-Door "Coupe"

Adding a high-style and trendy four-door "coupe" might be a good next step in Buick's climb to Lexus-like status. The quality of Buick's current cars is rapidly approaching the big "L" and if you ask me, their styling is already superior. This LaCrosse-based Invicta would just step it up a notch. 

The doors are accessed by "hidden" handles—slim, chromed vertical handles, situated along the window line. Slip your fingers inside the handle, applying just a slight pressure as if to pull the door open and the electronic power mechanism actuates, opening the doors. Closing them would require just a slight pull or tug; the doors would then be softly powered closed. They could also be opened and closed via the electronic key fob. 

A slim, full-length chrome molding, tying the headlights and taillights into the bodyside "sweepspear," adds a touch of old-world class to this new-world automobile.

B T W :

Before I finalized the black Invicta at the top, I was working the design with a two-tone paint job, a classic Charcoal-over-Dark Copper. I'd like to see a return of creative and contemporary two-tone paint jobs. This image lacks many of the details from the final version at the top of this post. You'll notice these changes in the car as well as the background. I'd say an additional two hours of work went into the final, black version, for approximately eight total hours.