I’ve always been sort of fascinated by the Plymouth car model name “Fury.” It’s a very evocative name, and, unusually for car names, carries with it a lot of negative connotations, too. It’s anger, it’s wrath, it’s rage. Those emotions also have within them more positive connotations suggesting power and determination, and I suspect that’s what Chrysler’s naming brains-in-bubbling-tanks intended. When combined with “wagon,” as they are here in this 1975 brochure, the end result feels strangely, I don’t know, metal to me. Like you can imagine a Viking war chariot called a Fury Wagon pretty easily, right? That’s very much not what these cars really were, but it is a great name to say. Everyone in the Fury Wagon! Off we go, to conquer the Queen of Dairy!
This brochure is from a sort of low ebb for the Fury; in 1975 the full Malaise Era damp blanket was covering everything, and power was down, quality wasn’t great, handling was like shoving a mattress on four overripe cantaloupes down the street, all that.
But these were plush and opulent cars, in wagon form or coupé or sedan, in that deeply ’70s way! I mean, just look:
Look at how well those outfits match the car! This is a good example of the “pose” type of car brochure photo; often they strove to have people looking casual, pretending to be unobserved, and sometimes they just went for the stiffest, Sears Portrait Studio-type of stand and stare at the camera kind of posing. This brochure has both.
For example, here’s a less-posed shot, where the dashing couple is…emerging from the darkness of the forest? Where are they trudging out from, dressed like that, in what looks to be a dirt path in the wilderness? The hell is going on here?
If you look carefully at the Valiant (this brochure covered those, too) in the woods shot up there, you may notice some little chrome dealies on the fenders; these were turn indicator tell-tales, tiny little lights on the fenders you could look at to see if your signals were signaling. In this era Chrysler gave them a second job, or at least the driver’s side one: they made it into the “Fuel Pacer” warning light, which basically just came on if you stayed on the gas pedal too much.
It was a supremely half-ass approach to improving fuel economy, just a little light that went on when engine vacuum levels hit a certain point. I suspect it was almost universally ignored.
What you can’t ignore are the wonderful color options you had for your Fury or Gran Fury’s interiors. Look at that fresh-liver red, the mossiest of greens, the most butterscotchic of yellows, the blues, so indigoing or turquoised, and the earthy stripey goodness. Fantastic.
I also really like how showing tilting steering wheels always seemed to end up in these abstracted strange images that evoked the work of Italian Futurists, or paintings like Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase.
This description of the Gran Fury is amazing, too, because it seems to be saying that the size of the car looks like the size of the car?
Quick, what’s different in the middle and right images? This one took me a moment.
And finally, I miss the days when pretty much anything could be considered a viable tow vehicle. I think these things could pull between 2,000 and – if I’m reading this right – 7,000 pounds! What? What a world.
I play in a band called The Bovine Fury (Mad Cow was taken by at least 20 other bands) and love using old Fury photos/flyers to promote our band, so thank you for posting these!
I would gladly read an entire article about the font that was chosen for the speedometer.
If Spaghetti-O’s was a font
My first car was my grandmother’s sky-blue 1966 Fury III sedan sometime around 1971. It served me well for several more years.
Of it has a tow bar and moves under its own power, it IS a viable tow vehicle says I.
I’ll never forget the excitement of driving myself to Grimsley High in our baby blue ’75 Fury wagon for the first time. Previous owner had touched up nicks ALL OVER the car with slightly lighter blue spray paint, but the 360 felt fast at the time and the Sparkomatic cassette deck had both auto reverse and a graphic equalizer, and what more did one need in life?
Those gentlemen in these pictures needed to be reminded that “Hell hath no FURY like a woman scorned” and they better be careful.
They could end up losing their Plymouth and much more if they “do her wrong”.
The Plymouths must go to Heaven when they die, because Hell Hath No Fury.
I’ll see my self out…
Add some shag carpet, fuzzy seat covers, drop an “R” into the name, and we’ve got a Furry Wagon.
It’s been done.
https://jacobbarlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Screenshot-397.png
Totally unexpected image. Thanks for the LOL!
If anyone has the chutzpah to release a Cannibal Corpse Coupe or Mötorhead Motorcycle, I’ll buy it day one no questions asked.
If there are engine problems, I will endlessly shamelessly joke that I’m looking for Evidence in the Furnace, or if it’s running rough that maybe something is wrong with the Intestinal Crank. When they realise a shittied up version with a CVT, it better be called The Wretched Spawn.
The in dash chronometer must be a Dethklok. Any badging or branding should be unintelligibly distorted font. The drive modes should be Iced Earth, Loose Soilwork, Rotted Body Landslide, and Comfort+.
Let’s take the Murdercycle.
That 120 mph speedometer is awfully optimistic
At 60 mph the needle points straight up.
You mean 12o MPH… what were they thinking there?!
Furry wagon, sound like a purposeful wagon i prefer to miss.
I’m imagining the dog grooming truck from Dumb and Dumber.
Here, this should explain. Don’t worry, it is SFW.
https://youtu.be/7ynZYlQ8bpA?t=90
You could get those Light Package indicator telltales on an early Omni/Horizon. In that case, no Fuel Pacer. I wonder if that has to do with the fact that without crowned fenders the telltales functioned as other-traffic-visible repeaters and having one come on as a vacuum warning would be ambiguous or for some other reason.
The tailgate glass is up in the far right photo and down in the middle.
Took me a second to see it. Dad’s ’85 Colony Park had the same tailgate and window operation.
I’d always wondered why they didn’t build smaller Plymouths called Huff or Snit.
I want a Plymouth Pique.
Oh Torch, you naive waif. What would a young couple be doing coming out of the dark woods? Why, they just finished eliminating their human counterparts and hiding the pods that they themselves emerged from. Now they’re headed back to the car to take over their counterparts’ lives.
I’m absolutely certain they created the justification they’ll have to swap that Scamp for a T115 minivan in about 1985 or so.
You’re overthinking. It’s the 70’s, so they were just in the mood for a nature shag.
There’s more than one way to get lost in the bush.
heyo!
My parents bought a 1970 Plymouth Gran Fury station wagon in mettalic dark green brand new when we moved from Manhattan to the burbs.
that car was an unmitigated POS.
in 6 years and 60k miles:
the _only_ good thing about that car was the pre-emissions 318.
When I was in art school, we had an assignment where we had to make a 3D representation of a painting. I picked Nude Descending A Stair.
I made the base of mine from foam insulating sheets I hot glued together and sanded into shape. I did all the work in my living room on a big tarp. My cat came in while i was working and sat in the foam dust.
A few days later, most of the fur on his butt fell out.
Thus endeth the non sequitur.
I think they were saying that the car is full-sized but plain, i.e. not afflicted with the rococo twaddle present on their overwrought and probably landau-bar-equipped competitors.
Claiming “Rococo Twaddle” as a band name.
If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it!
In 1975, the Fury was considered a “midsize” car — so I think the idea was that it LOOKED like a full-size, but wasn’t.
To make things even more confusing, the full-size Plymouth that year was called the GRAN FURY. Not “grand”, but “gran”.
It was a deeply weird time.
I think I’ve posted about this before here … but at our wedding last December, our priest, knowing what a car guy I am, began his homily by joking that God owned a Plymouth — because of the passage in Genesis in which He drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden in His Fury.
The priest also gave me a Hot Wheels car, which was pretty rad.
Must be the best priest ever!
Came here to make this joke.
Searched for “drove” to see if someone already made it.
Left disappointed.
Like many others of the time, Jesus rejected the oversized Yank Tanks of his father’s generation. He preferred the practical, humble efficiency of a Honda sedan. It was a very nice car, but being Jesus, he never boasted about it.
“For I did not speak of my own Accord” John 12:49
I like how Detroit often loves “Gran” in situations like this.
“Grand” is too staid and upright (more befitting use on say a large farm truck-like conveyance…), but Gran is sexy, a little Euro, and seems to connote speed and quickness.
“There’s no time for the ‘D’ here, people!”
Gran is what we call our grandmothers in my family.
Edit to add: they were all very euro, but I don’t think the rest of that applies.
When your Fury won’t run is that a Gran Mal?
My dad used to pull a 24′ Chris Craft with his ’75 Regal and a marlboro hanging from his lip. None of those sissy side mirror extenders either. Frankly, I’m amazed that we survived those trips.
In other news, every time I see one of these 70’s brochures (especially for the “grown up” cars), it always looks like the couples are about ready to head out to a key party.
The reason why they were called “Fury” is that is the emotion you experience when you realize that you bought an oversized, underpowered, good-for-nothing rust bucket. Yet somehow, it even managed to make you jealous of your next door neighbor and their fancy, schmancy “Le Car”.
Wrong, early Furies were big, opulent full-sizers with 413 Max Wedges, for way less than the competition. Filled part of the gap left by the demise of DeSoto.
The earliest Furies were hardtops with 318s
Sure, the strippers. But a couple of hundred bucks and you had a near-Newport.
It may sound metal, but it is marvelously malaise. Sorta like the band Uriah Heep with their Abominog album cover. Cool as hell album cover, you think it’s a pre-cursor to Slayer. But boy, are you wrong.
I’m completely enamored by the printed on zipper pull from the two steering wheel photos. Yeah, I know that’s not actually a zipper pull, nor it is a print of a zipper pull, but given the design of the wheel, at first glance, it’s too hard to not see that.
Unzip, stash your hash, rezip. The ultimate in stealth convenience – only in a Fury.
Is it just me or does the steering wheel center look like a thong?
It does.
Change the cover, and you have a Dodge Frazog