The “Skip Year +1” 1958 Dodge

Click on pictures to Z O O M in.

Click on pictures to Z O O M in.

I remember the 1957 Chrysler products. I was thirteen years old but “loved” cars. The Chrysler cars, namely the Plymouth and Dodge were completely re-engineered in 1957, they skipped a year and delivered the 1958 cars in 1957. That’s what I remember and I looked on the Web and found some substantiation for this.

Apparently, Virgil Exner, who was driven far beyond just a take charge individual, used the corporate chaos to swiftly move into his own designs. He had completely scrapped three years of design work that had been spent on the entire line of the planned 1957 models, instead going right to designs that were said to be planned for the 1960 model year. The dealers were told to be ready for the most powerful set of car model designs that Detroit had ever seen.

More Information on the 1957 gamble
This was a great sales year for the Chrysler corporation.

The ads trumpeted: “Suddenly – It’s 1960!” and “1960 — Now, Plymouth is three full years ahead.”
“In one flaming moment,” read another, “Plymouth leaps three full years ahead—the only car that dares to break the time barrier! The car you might have expected in 1960 is at your dealers today!”

More Information on the 1957 gamble
But the gamble only lasted a year, the quality problems nearly brought the company down.

Chrysler had spent $300 million to bring the 1957 models to light, but in the long run they paid a terrible price for their victory. The cars, without a doubt, were some of the best designs turned out by Virgil Exner and his stylists. If they had truly been intended as 1960 models, they hit the showrooms without a full complement of testing. This, combined with breakneck schedules to meet demands, saw

Here is a graph of sales for that period of time.

by Jim Benjaminson. Copyrighted by Jim Benjaminson. Originally published as a printed book by Motorbooks International.

© Fred Winograd copyright 2010