62 Plymouth, the car you hate to love

I find this an interesting YouTube channel. Adam’s car interests and collection focuses on a lot of the big 3’s full size and 4 doors of the 60s and 70s. This video features a coworker of his’s 62 Fury and goes into a lot of details of the design hits and misses.

I love those things!

Me too - I've always liked them and would love to have a Savoy 2-door.

i like them as well, but prefer the B-body dart of 62.

I would rather have a 70 Coronet

Without a doubt one of the ugliest cars Mopar ever built. What were they thinking? I'd buy a FORD before I bought one of those (and that's just one step above walking).

As the "finned" era was ending, the big three appeared to be searching for styling direction. All three made some big mis-judgements and there were several one year only cars. To me the '62 Plymouth looks about as good as the GM,s & FoMoCo's. .

You have got to be kidding me.

The 62 Chevy and Pontiacs look better than the Plymouth, imo.

The Pontiacs look as long as an aircraft carrier out back, but the styling is decent for the era. Like the bubble top roofs on all of them, but all that glass has to be toasty on a hot day.

1962 Dodge styling is more 'out there' than the Plymouths were.

Considered very ugly for many years but now some people are starting to like them again. Kind of like Edsels. Edsels were considered too ugly to even own for most of my life but lately I see them starting to pop up at hot rod runs and stuff. Same thing with some Studebakers and Ramblers. Stuff that we used for target practice when I was a kid are now starting to have some popularity.

I liked the video because the owner who I believe said he’s an automotive designer gave a lot of insights on the design Exner developed for the car.
I’m starting to broaden my automotive interests beyond anal details like what are the proper head markings for a bolt holding a 70 E body parking brake cable in place type stuff to overall history of what was going on in the automotive industry from the 50s through the 80s and even to some extent until today, so I’m really eating up videos like Adam’s. Car design evolves and there are so many pieces of the puzzle going on through the years like the economy, pop culture, government regs, and the top executives and designers over the years.

They're like fungus, they grow on you. My second car was a nothing special crew cab 62 Dart 440. I've been looking for another one but the ugly doesn't seem to have affected the prices on any I've found.

Kevin.

62 Savoy low 10 second quarter mile car

I owned a 1962 Plymouth Fury two door hardtop that had a 361 single four barrel engine in it when I bought it along with a complete Max Wedge exhaust system on it
it was double ugly
1962 was the first year Dodge and Plymouth converted to uni body construction, it was the first year De Soto weren't made also
It was the first year Mopar made and sold the Max Wedge engines in the Dodge and Plymouth lines also
I ended up buying and racing two 1963 Plymouth Max Wedge Belvederes, a hard top and a sedan that ended up setting the NHRA A/SA record several times after I sold it the second time. That was a really god car, I won a lot of races wit it

interesting top on the intake manifold.
it would be nice to see what was done internally, compared to the factory casting.

Cab, have you ever built a 440 and used the crossram maxi intake for street use ?
you may have discussed this before, but i don't remember.

I love them! They definitely grew on me and I appreciate the unique styling of Virgil Exner and you can keep those slab sided boring Phords and Chebbies.

I've ran them on street cars with 426W and 440 short blocks with the M.W. top end with the 1964 750 CFM Carter carbs
If you get the right cam installed correctly they perform very well
The bigger the C.I you make the more power you will make with that top end
My first M.W. car I bought and ran had a smaller than stock cam in it due to the owner letting some one else talk him into a new cam when they were freshening the motor after he had spun a rod bearing in it with the stock air sucking swinging stock oil pickup and stock oil pan.
I replaced that oil pan and pick up with a 1966 to 1969 street Hemi pan and oil pickup and added the windage tray, work good, lasted a LONG TIME
They will outrun most stock street hemi cars without much effort
Good cars

My very good friends ‘62 he has owned from @‘67 that he bought from a friend who I believe was the original owner…this car rocks and is a blast!

A '62 Plymouth Savoy is on my bucket list.

Light weight, no frills and big power with the Max Wedge setup.

My '63 330 would find a new home if I could find the right '62 to drop my drivetrain in.

My latest acquisition, I've had it for ~6-8 months. Plan leaving the body/paint as is but dropping the 413 I have in it.

Love this car!!!

Here's one I should have kept: https://www.volocars.com/vehicles/11852/1962-plymouth-savoy

Love it!

I agree, that's nice. Based on their asking price (WAS$39,998 NOW $38,998) I have to think it sold a while back.

Awesome car. That would be an amazing car to drive around causing havoc

Yeah it sold several years ago. I have no clue where it is now.

Dad bought a white Fury 4 door hard top with red interior demonstrater in 62. Ended up being my car in 67-68 for 5 years till I t-boned a 59 Chevy wagon at 60 mph. So flexible you found the open a door when changing a tire.

At 31-63436 the '62s were the first year we had ... after having been a Simca dealer, Chrysler offered us a chance to move up, we sort of backed into a Chrysler Plymouth franchise.

I have thought for years they were pretty desperate, our 62 Plymouths were um slow sellers, The nearest Chevy dealer was pumping out full size Chevies as fast as they could get them in.

But I fell in love with our 300 demo car, a black/red interior 2dr, what a nice car that was. Dad liked it so much he kept it to himself for a long time.

The 63s came in early, so we hid them at our camp property outside of town, and I washed and sort of prepped a few of them, one of the first was a red Belvedere HT, what a redesign job! And of course they ruined the 300s. Though I liked the 64.

BUT, I loved the 64 Plymouth, and have had I think around 17 of them, in most all flavors except 6cyl and max.

Yeah people today might say they like the '62 but I would've hated being a Mopar dealer in 1962 and have to sell against the much better looking Chevy and Ford cars! Kind of like trying to sell '57 Fords against the '57 Chevy!

Ford actually sold more cars in '57.
The Chevy certainly more iconic today though. I was never much of a Ford man but always liked the '57's.

57 Ford 2 door sedan has tremendous looks.

A friend of mine sold this convertible recently. He had a matching red coupe but sold it several years ago. He sort of lost interest in the cars when his wife passed as they'd hit the local shows. The new owner loves the car and treats it as well as Pat did. Except he drives it on occasion.

I picked up this four-door recently. It was being rebuilt, then ended up being sold and used as a parts car to a guy who was, surprisingly, restoring a black over red Fury convertible. I bought the remains as it's such a solid car and nice runner. No clue when I'll ever get to it. I need a passenger fender, so if anyone has one....

Have owned numerous 57 Chev two door sedans... and I agree, 57 (and 58) Ford two door post cars are awesome looking.

See, this is why we don't all have red Camaros, or whatever...
To my eye, the '57-'58 Fords and Mercurys are some of the ugliest things ever created.
Gratuitous and disjointed shapes, lines & details, and the '57 Ford headlight area has always looked weird to me.
In that period, the '57 Mopar styling was well-received.
There was a lot of weirdness going on with '58-'60 GM designs, too, and Chrysler's stuff in '61 is still odd to me.
Fact is, we don't all see shapes & details the same way, or correlate the details of vehicle designs as a whole entity.
But the debate is amusing and fun, and adds spirit to the hobby.

That would be 1960.

1962s developed a bad reputation based on folklore. Rumor is that a Chrysler exec caught wind of GM downsizing its cars, so the corporation went on a crash course modifying what already was planned. To boot, Exner was recuperating from a heart attack, so he wasn't really involved with the downsizing. Nonetheless, he was blamed.

And it's this story why the 1962s stand out in many people's minds, but the truth is that the 1961s were truly the ugly ones. The contrast between the Chrysler Corporation and GM and Ford is even more profound, yet history has a way of turning things upside-down because a 1961 Plymouth has got the kitsch factor in spades.

Me too

As God is my witness I'd take a '62 Plymouth over any Ford or Chevy including '57 Chevy or any other including a Vette or any other you can think of and that's no lie. I LOVE MOPAR.

I'm almost positive that the 1960 Dodge Phoenix had a full frame, not unibody
Are you thinking of the 1960 A bodies being the first unibody Mopar's?
I agree on the 1961 B bodies being uglier than anything I can think of other than Joe Biden and Nancy P