Monday, March 3, 2014

1961 Plymouth Fury—Cleaning Up the Details

Late Exner styling had some great "big picture" features, but I've always found the details strange and overdone. For this chop I started with a basic Fury 4-door sedan. I changed it into a pillarless hardtop sedan, a favorite bodystyle of mine. I've straightened out some body character lines, deleted some odd chrome trim pieces, and changed the "microphone" taillights into subtler horizontal units bisected by chrome strips, almost "nerf" bars in appearance. The biggest change was opening up the rear wheel wells. These changes give the car a lighter look, almost European in some ways. Perhaps Ghia's influence on Exner's styling comes through more with my edits.

Not my first stab at reworking a '61 Fury, I rendered a Fury coupe from the front, here.

3 comments:

  1. Beautiful -- if Plymouth had used this exactly as is for 1962, things might have been very different (although i LOVE the 62). These changes would have been much more in line with what was done with the 62 Chrysler, to make it less werid. I really like this.

    Paul, NYC

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    1. thanks, Paul! I love these late Exners too, or I wouldn't be able to stare at them for the 10-15 hours on average that these pieces take, lol. I just like to play around and see what I may have come up with in the studio at the same time the others were working on them. It's really a way to fantasize about the way my life could have been, lol!

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  2. I remembered the copper coupe, it corrected one of my pet peeves of that era (the small rear wheel openings, which is one reason I love the '55 Nomad) now this model corrects my other problem with the design. All my friends used to joke that the designers must have forgotten the tail lights. Nice job.

    Bobf

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