After a certain horror novel and blockbuster film, interest in 1958 Plymouths ceased to be the preserve of old-car anoraks and the Exner masterpiece became universally admired. This one returned to the road in 2021 after more than 40 years of languishing, and Jordan Warren is the lucky man behind the wheel.
Words: Zack Stiling Photography: AF Photography
It was our bard of Stratford who wrote: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Often, it is misquoted as ‘some men’, but the line may just as well be applied to cars. Cadillacs and Lincolns are born great and the Ford Mustang achieved greatness, but the ’58 Plymouth was one which had greatness thrust upon it.
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It was 1983, when many big cars of the late Fifties were still cluttering up junkyards and lying, unwanted, round the back of used-car lots. Stephen King published his novel Christine, about a demonically possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury with a penchant for homicide. The book was followed immediately by a film, and ever since then the ’58s have enjoyed an enduring reputation for being alluringly sinister.
To give the Plymouths their due, they would have come back into fashion eventually with or without Stephen King. The Fifties decade was destined to become popular again as American cars lost their identity through the Eighties, and Virgil Exner’s big, befinned, ‘Forward Look’ Mopars were among the finest designs to hail from the age of Buddy Holly and Robbie the Robot. Before long, the Forward Looks had their legions of devoted fans, such as James Rawa from New Jersey, who owned this ’58 Belvedere some 20 years ago.
James lives and breathes Forward Looks, and when he stumbled upon this example it had been standing since the Seventies and had done around 40,000 miles. It needed work, but it was no basket case. He offered it for sale and it found a British buyer, arriving here in 2003. It changed hands again, and its owners tinkered a little bit, but no great progress was made until John Bush bought it from Devon in August 2020.
John has inherited his interest in American cars from his father and grandfather, and he says: “Now I can afford them, I’m buying them, doing them up, enjoying them and moving them on.” Clearly, this Belvedere was ideal for him.
“I did a full respray and got the engine running and driving. The brakes needed doing, as did the wheel bearings and wheel cylinders. Metal-wise, it was solid. I did all the interior myself. I had to source a few bits from the States, like the radio plus a few bits of trim. The interior was not the sort of thing I’d done before, but it came out fairly well.
“I was on it every day, since work was slow, what with Covid.”
It was our bard of Stratford who wrote: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Often, it is misquoted as ‘some men’, but the line may just as well be applied to cars. Cadillacs and Lincolns are born great and the Ford Mustang achieved greatness, but the ’58 Plymouth was one which had greatness thrust upon it.
It was 1983, when many big cars of the late Fifties were still cluttering up junkyards and lying, unwanted, round the back of used-car lots. Stephen King published his novel Christine, about a demonically possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury with a penchant for homicide. The book was followed immediately by a film, and ever since then the ’58s have enjoyed an enduring reputation for being alluringly sinister.
To give the Plymouths their due, they would have come back into fashion eventually with or without Stephen King. The Fifties decade was destined to become popular again as American cars lost their identity through the Eighties, and Virgil Exner’s big, befinned, ‘Forward Look’ Mopars were among the finest designs to hail from the age of Buddy Holly and Robbie the Robot. Before long, the Forward Looks had their legions of devoted fans, such as James Rawa from New Jersey, who owned this ’58 Belvedere some 20 years ago.
James lives and breathes Forward Looks, and when he stumbled upon this example it had been standing since the Seventies and had done around 40,000 miles. It needed work, but it was no basket case. He offered it for sale and it found a British buyer, arriving here in 2003. It changed hands again, and its owners tinkered a little bit, but no great progress was made until John Bush bought it from Devon in August 2020.
John has inherited his interest in American cars from his father and grandfather, and he says: “Now I can afford them, I’m buying them, doing them up, enjoying them and moving them on.” Clearly, this Belvedere was ideal for him.
“I did a full respray and got the engine running and driving. The brakes needed doing, as did the wheel bearings and wheel cylinders. Metal-wise, it was solid. I did all the interior myself. I had to source a few bits from the States, like the radio plus a few bits of trim. The interior was not the sort of thing I’d done before, but it came out fairly well.
“I was on it every day, since work was slow, what with Covid.”
And that was it. After a fairly straightforward restoration, keeping it nice and original, John got it registered and it was on the road. ‘Original’ in this case means a 318cu in V8 with three-speed Torqueflite automatic and air conditioning from new, but no electric seats or windows, or anything like that. The Christine colour scheme of red and white is believed to be original. After taking the Belvedere out to a few shows, John decided it was time for him to move on to something different – something completely different – in the form of a 500bhp supercharged ’71 Chevy Nova. He has another Plymouth, a ’57 two-door hardtop, in the pipeline for restoration this winter…
Jordan Warren is another lifelong car enthusiast who happened to be walking around the Super Nationals in 2021 when the Belvedere jumped out and caught his eye. There was just one catch – it wasn’t for sale then. Jordan just had to go away and dream about it, until he caught up with it again at the 2022 NSRA Swap Meet at North Weald Airfield in March, this time with a big ‘for sale’ sign in the window. He spoke to John and a deal was agreed.
While John had done a lovely job of restoring it, there remained some finishing touches for Jordan to do, as he says: “The car had no fusebox so I went through all the wiring in the engine bay and behind the dash, gave it a general once-over and swapped the cross-plies for radials, but that was it.” It’s still early days, really, as Jordan has only had the car for a few months, but all seems to be going well. “I use it a bit and plan to take it to a couple more shows this year, but I have a small collection of cars I also use, so I don’t use it all the time. John did a good job, so I just plan to enjoy it really.”
Since James Rawa is a full-time Forward Look fan, John Bush has just bought himself another and Jordan Warren is loving this one, it’s obvious that the Christine-shape Plymouths have enormous appeal, and it isn’t hard to see why. Although Plymouth made the lowest-priced offerings under the Chrysler umbrella, for ’57 and ’58 they were undoubtedly also the best looking. While possessing all the American styling staples for their era – huge fins, chunky chrome bumpers and two-tone side sweeps – they had a lightness and grace about them which wasn’t so apparent in other cars which were excessively ornamented and weighed down with chrome for chrome’s sake.
Compared with its low-priced rivals Chevrolet and Ford, Plymouth’s ’57 could boast the lowest waistline and the highest tailfins. The slogan ‘Suddenly it’s 1960’ was prescient, since fashions would follow Plymouth towards lighter cars and less cluttered styling. Also making their début in ’57 were the top-of-the-line 318cu in V8s producing 290bhp and the three-speed automatic TorqueFlite transmission.
By this stage, the concept of built-in obsolescence was so normalised that everyone expected and looked forward to seeing each marque introduce a whole new look year after year. For 1958 Plymouth bucked the trend – its ’57s were so popular and well-regarded, and so far ahead of their time, that there just was no need to change them. The year’s facelift consisted only of installing an extra headlight where previously there had been a sidelight, changing the grille below the front bumper and making the most minor alteration to the tail-light arrangement. The mid-range Belvedere (above the Plaza and Savoy but below the Fury) sold new in four-door sedan form for a base price of $2440. With 49,124 built, it was the most popular body style but it has been common for owners to turn them into two-doors by welding the rear doors shut, so it’s good to see that this one has survived as it should have done.
Forgetting the Christine connotations, it’s difficult to imagine a better colour for the ’58 than the bright lipstick red that Jordan’s wears. The solidity of the colour combined with the almost improbable lowness of the car give it a more exciting appearance than you’d ever expect to see in real life; it looks like it’s driven off the pages of a pulp comic.
The interior doesn’t disappoint, either – the colours and the decorative metalwork are reminiscent of a mid-century diner, and there’s the famously futuristic Mopar push-button transmission to finish it off. Christine may have been evil, but as far as we can tell Jordan’s Belvedere is as sweet and well-mannered as any a car ever was. Best you don’t get too close, though – she might still try to claim your soul.
