To very many people styling means the front end of the car. Unfortunately for Plymouth, styling remained key to sales. It also proved that unit body construction didn't place serious restraints on the ability of designers to create face-lifts - a problem that had plagued Nash, Hudson, and American Motors. All told, it was a major improvement on the 1960. Latterday critics haven't really given the 1961 Fury a fair shot. Plymouth described the result as "a harmony of motion in sleek steel and bright aluminum," and viewed from the side, it didn't look all that bad! Up front there was anything but harmony, with a criss-cross grille puckered between intruding headlamp eyebrows, bending around from front fender creaselines. Zero to 60 took about 7.5 seconds, nonchalant cruising was possible at over 100 mph, and top speed was over 120.ĭespite the apparent radical face-lift for 1961, the Fury had merely been reskinned below the beltline - the roof and doors were unchanged, with the styling money spent on fenders, hood, and deck. This engine also boasted a one-notch-higher name: "SonoRamic Commando." It sounds like a video game today, but the SonoRamic Commando could fly. New also was the first of Plymouth's now-famous 383 V-8s, packing 330 bhp in similar tune and an impressive 460 pounds/feet of torque. For more information on cars, see:įor all-out performance Plymouth had a bomb: the "Golden Commando 395," which had 361 cubic inches along with a ram manifold and twin four-barrel carbs, delivering 305 bhp and 395 pounds/feet of torque (from which it got its name). Go to the next page to learn more about the design of the 1960-1961 Plymouth Fury. But it was styling that sold cars in 1960, and styling, in the public's judgment, was not the Fury's strong point. The Fury also had two exclusive options: swivel seats that pivoted when the front doors were opened, and the RCA Victor "Highway Hi-Fi" record player. Fury's unit body was tighter than the separate body/frame rigs of the opposition, and so on. Plymouth's TorqueFlite automatic was better than Chevrolet's Turboglide or Ford's Cruise-O-Matic. Every road tester agreed that they easily outhandled the Chevrolet Impala and Ford Galaxie, their counterpart top-of-the-line competitors, thanks to their torsion bar front suspension. Compared to their arch rivals, they were as good in most ways and superior in some. None of which should suggest that these 1960-1961 Plymouth Furys were bad cars. Then on the 1961 Plymouth Fury, the fins vanished entirely, replaced by a rounded shape with a swoopy front end that Motor Trend once retrospectively compared with "a generation of Japanese sci-fi monsters." The public remained unimpressed, and was now also confused: Plymouth sales dropped by 100,000 and Rambler replaced Plymouth as the number three best-seller. Thus, while Ford and Chevrolet increased their combined production by about a quarter-million units in 1960, Plymouth barely maintained its 1959 volume level. ![]() ![]() Worse, Plymouth sales had been skidding since the 1958 recession. ![]() The problem was that the public had grown tired of tailfins by 1960. It had been conceived in 1957, when tailfins were all the rage, and fin-wise it was as good as the best of them. The styling of the 1960 Plymouth Fury didn't. All, of course, used Plymouth's new unibody construction. By 1960, the name was too good to squander on such a small market, so "Fury" replaced "Belvedere" as the top-of-the-line model designation, with a four-door sedan and four-door hardtop joining the previous two-door hardtop and convertible. ![]() Through 1959, the Plymouth Fury had been a limited production performance Plymouth.
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