Christine

Not “Christine.” (Photo by Dan Lyons.)

—Actually the car pictured above is not “Christine,” which was a ’58.
The June 2017 entry in my Tide-mark “Fab ‘50s” car-calendar is a 1957 Plymouth Fury two-door hardtop.

Supposedly the actual “Christine,” i.e. not one of the many destroyed making the movie.

The “Fury” was a special high-dollar performance version. It had better-looking side-trim than standard ’57 Plymouths, which lacked that rear upsweep on the fin.
That upsweep became stock on the ‘58s.
I stopped including car-calendars in my Monthly-Calendar-Report, but I keep noticing this Fury.
I keep thinking of Christine, but it’s a ’57, not a ’58.
Plymouth no longer exists. Like Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Mercury, it was a victim of the Japanese car invasion.
Also poor marketing. Detroit manufacturers acquiesced to their dealers desiring a version of every car Detroit made. E.g. an el-cheapo Pontiac or Buick that stole sales from Chevrolet.
There were Dodge versions of Plymouth models. Even Cadillac now sells what I construe a truck.
1957 was Chrysler’s first foray into its so-called “Forward-Look.”
No longer were Chrysler cars plain-jane turkeys.
Sweeping styling and fins became de rigueur.
My wife, deceased, learned to drive in a ’57 Plymouth. Her father bought it planning a cross-country drive — all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Biggest V8 available to flatten mountains.
Learning to drive with such a barge was intimidating. Especially to someone, like my wife, who was “automotively challenged.”
I think part of that may have been her mother, who was all-too-happy to criticize my wife.

Only two headlights on a ’57. (This looks like same same car Lyons photographed.)

This ’58 has FOUR headlights.

For 1958 Plymouth made this car look a lot better.
Those headlight-surrounds, which look like they were for four headlights, now had four instead of only two with parking-lights (turn-signals).
It’s like for 1957 Plymouth held back what shoulda been available until its 1958 model = four headlights.
The parents of one of my first high-school girlfriends had a ’58.
By then (1962) it was an older car, but still in excellent shape.
My wife’s parents’ ’57 started rusting almost immediately. Salt-slush accumulated in its crannies.
My girlfriend’s mother, who thought me wonderful — her father didn’t — would dump my junky RollFast bicycle in the car’s gigantic trunk, to cart me and my bicycle back home.
I had ridden perhaps four miles to her house. We’d sit on her outside porch in the dark and talk. Her house was near a large horse-trotting racetrack. The sky was aglow with light.
“Christine,” for those unaware, was a movie. “Christine” was possessed, and repaired herself when damaged.
Who knows how many ’58 Plymouths got trashed making that movie? Self-repair was crash-damage reversed.

• RE: “Automotively challenged......” —My wife had difficulty driving. She had difficulty processing inputs; also difficulty predicting whether-or-not others were threats. Her father had more-or-less the same problem. If she were driving, with me along, I was driving too from my shotgun seat: “Keep going! You’ll pass before he merges.” She never was able to master standard-shift. All of this was incomprehensible and exasperating at first, but after a while I understood — and therefore accommodated. She had no sense of direction at all: “The sun goes down over there!” “What if it’s cloudy?” “I know where the sun is supposed to be. I been here before.”