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Question of the Day: What’s the Most Oddly Cool Car Ever Produced by Detroit?


Question of the Day: What’s the Most Oddly Cool Car Ever Produced by Detroit?

In the coming days you’ll see a big feature on a truly wild diesel powered monster that we hung out with last weekend. During said diesel power session we had an unexpectedly awesome side bar in the form of a 1962 Plymouth Sport Fury. This car has less than 800 original miles, still wears the original tires, and has one of the finest interiors we’ve ever seen in a factory 1960s sedan.

The early 1960s offerings from Chrysler were some of the weirdest most unique cars to ever roll out of a domestic automobile plant. Virgil Exner was the man behind the designs and the odd looks are not entirely his fault. Chrysler jacked with the dimensions on the cars after Exner had penned the designs and instead of allowed an edit from the design department, they just shrunk his ideas down and the result was some odd duck iron.

While the looks of the early 60s Chrysler products were a bit left of center, their performance was not. This car has a 361ci wedge engine which was not considered a high performance mill but these could also have been had with the truly hairy 413 Max Wedge engines and they dominated the strips until that power was usurped by the next generation of Chryslers equipped with the dominating Hemi.

We will have a more in-depth look at this car later in the week, but until then, answer today’s question:

What’s the most oddly cool car Detroit has ever made?


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11 thoughts on “Question of the Day: What’s the Most Oddly Cool Car Ever Produced by Detroit?

  1. jack pine

    The more I see about these cars, the more I like. To the extent that I’m taking the very grille and headlights from a ’61 Fury to update the front of my recently-acquired ’65 Dodge D100. Here’s a link to Tavis Highlander’s rendering of how a Fury grille can make a butt-ugly truck front end move into respectable territory:

  2. Remy-Z

    That is a huge improvement over stock, I like that!

    As for odd cars, I’m going with the ’75 Fury/Roadrunner/Coronet series. It’s a personal thing, but they can be done well, usually don’t suffer a vinyl top, and can eat any engine Chrysler ever made.

  3. TheSilverBuick

    Oh, I do like the push button transmission selector. If I could adapt that to my ’67 Thunderbird I would! Which brings me to the actual question, I do like my odd Thunderbird.

  4. tigeraid

    Yeah most of my list would have to be the early 60s Chrysler cars… Hideous, but in such a cool way that they’re worth owning.

    AMC Gremlin X, anyone?

  5. Lee

    The 1970 Coronet/Superbee. It had that hideous split chrome front grille that somehow over time seems to look cool.

  6. Dick Sappington

    I’m still fond of the three years (’60 – ’62) of Chrysler’s “Road Toad” Valiant & Lancer body (R & S models) that preceded the “A” body boxes, particularly their wagons.

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