Cars

Photos of '65 Plymonth Sport Fury

As I mentioned earlier, our family didn’t drive new cars. We usually had older models. In fact, I learned to drive on a 1941 Chrysler. It had enough room between the front and back seats to set up a card table if you were so inclined. There really would have been room for another row of seats, but that wasn’t done at the time. It had what they called “Fluid Drive”. The gear shift was mounted on the steering column and it had three speeds. You could shift if you wished, or you didn’t have to. That is where the Fluid Drive came in. It was like a mix between an automatic and a manual shift.

You could shift to all of the gears or just some of them. That is what I usually did. I would start without using the clutch in first gear and then using the clutch to go manually to second gear. This gave you a little more “pep”. If you let it shift automatically it was a bit sluggish. If you really wanted to “hot rod”, you could shift manually through all three gears.

I remember the car was black and it had a purple interior complete with tassels between the front and back seats.

The first car I actually owned was a 1965 Plymouth Sport Fury convertible. I was married at the time and it was our first car. It was beautiful! Even today, I think it was the prettiest car I have ever owned. It was the Indy “Pace Car” that year. It was white with a baby blue top. It had blue leather interior complete with bucket seats. It was an automatic with the gear shift placed between the seats. It even had a button to raise or lower the top. That was a new item at that time. It also had a plaque mounted on the dash proclaiming it to be one of a limited edition of the “Pace Car”.

We paid $3200 for the car new. That was expensive for the time. Most cars were priced in the $2600 to $2800 price range. I certainly wish I had that car today. I expect it would be worth a lot more now.