For whatever reason, I still remember a cartoon from a long-ago Mad magazine that showed a convertible with tailfins so tall that they poked a pair of divots in a highway overpass as the car thundered underneath. At the time, I thought that was hilarious.
The cartoonist might have been visualizing the Pick of the Day, a 1960 Plymouth Fury convertible, which is described as a well-preserved survivor with one repaint and just 33,000 miles showing on the odometer.
This was the last year that the Fury was endowed with such mighty fins. But what a finale. Those swooping protuberances seem like the epitome of tailfin excess, rivaling those famously lofty fins of the 1959 Cadillac.
Sadly, this one-year-only design was not a good seller for Plymouth as the public seemed to be burned out on giant tailfins as the new decade began. For 1961, the Fury came back completely restyled with a rounded-off rear and not a hint of its befinned past.
So the 1960 cars are relatively rare and collectible. In retrospect, the Plymouth design has transformed into an interesting piece of midcentury artistry. And this Fury is the full-zoot, totally optioned Golden Commando model, which the private seller advertising the convertible on ClassicCars.com describes as “VERY rare.”
“This tall-finned beauty has options such as driver and passenger ‘turn-out’ seats (like the later Monte Carlo’s had) and factory air conditioning, factory-installed black carpet with gold sparkles, power steering, power brakes, polished stainless-steel fender skirts and that famous spacecraft-looking steering wheel with the sparkles in it!” the Tavares, Florida, seller says in the description.
“The only missing option that I’m aware of is the under-dash 45 rpm record player… and you probably don’t have any 45’s laying around to play on it anyway.”
The over-the-top dashboard design is also one of a kind, a nod to space-age fashion and fantastically modernist styling cues. The squared-off steering wheel with its unique horn stalks is a piece of industrial art in itself. The speedometer resides in a “floating” binnacle. And that sparkly rug – the Plymouth designers certainly threw everything in their bag of tricks at this car.
The Fury seems as boldly priced as its styling at $84,900.
To view this listing on ClassicCars.com, see Pick of the Day
