1958 Plymouth Belvedere

The motor is long gone, but a legitimate Fury would pack the Dual Fury V-800 eight-barrel 318 or the new-for-'58 305hp 350 Golden Commando big-block wedge, again with dual quads. Also technically available was the Bendix Electrojector EFI system, but only a handful were sold.>

Not to be outdone by Miss Belvedere, the crunchy '57 Plymouth famously unearthed last summer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, here's a look at a similar '58 Plymouth hardtop that got rusty the normal way-through exposure to the elements for five decades. Discovered in a sleepy salvage yard in Sheffield, Massachusetts, the white and gold two-tone paint scheme-especially those gold side spears-tells us it could be a super-rare Fury.

In case you didn't know, before Plymouth started slapping Fury emblems on station wagons and four-door family sedans beginning in 1959, the Fury name was used exclusively on Plymouth's limited-production high-performance model. The party started in 1956 with a Fury-only 303-cube four-barrel motor with 240 hp and a factory-issue in-dash tachometer. It was Plymouth's first musclecar. In 1957 and 1958 a dual-quad 318 with 290 hp and massive fins arrived on the scene, and Christine was born. But don't be fooled by the movie car's red paint: All '56-'58 Furys were delivered in Buckskin Beige with gold side trim. So is this hulk a real Fury? Let's explore

Pow! Our dreams are shattered by the ghosts of Belvedere emblems on the rear quarter-panels. If this was a Fury, the Belvedere emblems would be replaced by Fury script, positioned lower in the gold side spear.

Even though the special gold-thread Fury fabric is missing along with the seats, hope abounds. The push button pod is missing (the hole to the left of the instrument cluster), but the wide brake pedal tells us this is a TorqueFlite automatic car, as were most Furys.

A peek inside the trunk fails to turn up any Electrojector or dual-quad goodies, just lots of rust.

Groovy Factoids
* Mayflowers, not Bow Ties. The 350 is a founding member of the Mopar low-deck big-block family that includes the 361, 383, and 400.

* The 1958 suggested retail price of the Touch-Tone transistorized AM radio was $106.20. For just $2.70 more, much better music was supplied by the optional $108.90 350 Golden Commando dual-quad V-8.