In 1957, Chrysler caught the competition with their pants down with the futuristic “Forward Look” styling of their new cars. So much so that Chevy decided to make their all-new 1958 automobiles one-year-wonders and commissioned new, sleek, finned looks for 1959. This 1957 Belvedere convertible is a beauty and has been restored, but not to stock. A modern Hemi engine resides under the hood now and other custom touches can be found the closer you look. The seller is facing old age and beginning to thin out his toys. From Lawrenceburg, Indiana, this sharp Mopar is available here on eBay where the bidding stands at $39,100. But who knows how much past that is where the seller set the reserve.
The Belvedere was the top-line Plymouth until the debut of the Fury. But that made the Belvedere no less attractive or nicely equipped, such as the seller’s car. The 1957 Plymouths were completely redone, and new styling touches included a wraparound aluminum grid-style grille with a vertical air slot bumper, true tailfin rear fenders, and a more jet-shaped body profile. Parking lamps were set alongside the headlights for a quad-lamp effect, perhaps a nod to the dual headlights that would arrive the following year. Just under 10,000 Belvedere drop-tops were built in 1957, the only model to include that body style.
With a lot of time and money put into this car over the past 10 years, this was the seller’s first Plymouth as he was largely a Chevy man before. It was an original car at the time and stayed that way through two transmission rebuilds. At that point, he decided to throw caution to the wind and convert it into something truly special, a combination of yesterday and today in terms of some of its mechanical elements. A stack of receipts and invoices are available to back up the changes and improvements to this Belvedere.
One of the first big moves was to drop in a 6.1-liter modern Hemi V8 under the hood, which presumably replaced another eight-cylinder motor. It’s paired now with a 5-speed, floor-shifted automatic transmission replacing the push-button TorqueFlite from yesteryear. This transplant occurred with an odometer reading of 39,000 miles and 5,500 have been added since then. But work didn’t stop there as disc brakes were added along with a new gas tank.
The red paint looks flawless, and no mention is made if any rust had to be dealt with before applying it. The white convertible top looks perfect and is said to raise and lower just fine. The interior is equally spotless, and the instrument cluster has been modernized to be compatible with the beast under the hood. The only thing that may not work properly is the radio. A set of matching fender skirts is in the trunk should you want to use them. To me, the car looks better without them, and I would change out the wheel covers which do not look correct to the Plymouth. All-in-all, if you can live with the departure from stock, this comes across as one impressive Forward Look cruiser!
A friend of mine has a twin to this car, but his has the original engine and trans
Very nice car, looks like a sweet build. Best part you can drive this car, yes drive it I know this guy spent a boat load on this car, hey its even got brakes! Don’t hate it because that obsolete drivetrain is gone.
It’s always nice to have perfect original stock, but this one is not bad as it is. Price though, is already out of my league, unfortunately.
The fight over original and modified will never end and there will never be a winner. My vote is always simple, if I like the car, thats all that countds. I like this car!
Oh No!!! Christine!!!!
Christine’s top came off! The sequel.
And a Hemi transplant to boot! Scary!!! LOL
Rated “R”..
Like everything but the shifter and gauges. Cool car.
The contradiction of this car is that this “modern” Hemi is very unreliable and prone to failures as would be compared to the original bullet proof 1957 Wide Block 318, or even a 1957 Chrysler 392 Hemi. For those doubter’s just go to UTube and see all the problems that occur with these new Hemi’s.
Like camshaft failures, ticking lifters, cracks in cylinder heads between the valves? Did I miss any?
(Still like the car, and wouldn’t throw her out of bed for eating crackers.)
This is a Belvedere, so no 318. These had a poly-head 301.
What’s with the “top post battery disconnect”?
Anti-theft.
Greg,
I owned and operated a restoration shop for 30+ years, and have seen first hand what happens when a wiring harness has a short. This typically fries the entire harness, and we tackled several cases where the car had a major under hood & under dash fire. In each situation the owner related how helpless they were when they couldn’t disconnect the battery to stop the short before the car was engulfed in flames.
We installed a quick-disconnect like the one in this Plymouth on every car we did work on, unless the customer said no, or already had one on the battery. Only a very few owners said no after we explained why.
Allen L points out it makes a good anti-theft device as well. Some insurers will give a discount if the car has one too! And consider your vintage car sitting in a garage that is attached to your home. Do you really want a 50 year [or older] car sitting there with the battery connected?
Most car clubs or antique car shows that have judged classes don’t take points off for a non-permanent battery post disconnect, as they understand why it’s there.
And lastly, if your car depends on a small amount of current to maintain a computer or keep the clock running, you can always attach a battery maintenance charger to the positive battery wire [on the harness side of the disconnect] so there is just a small amount of current to keep the car’s 24/7 electrical needs working. That maintenance charger won’t have the amperage needed to destroy a harness if it has a short. You can also run a 24 gauge short jumper wire over to the battery to keep it charged as well. If a short does happen, it will quickly vaporize that small diameter copper jumper wire and isolate the battery.
About 40 years ago I investigated a car involved in a fire in the owner’s 4 car garage. The insurance company wanted to know how the fire started in the 1959 Cadillac Coupe DeVille. I traced the shorted wire thru the wiring harness under the dash, thru the brake light switch, and all the way back to the brake lights. My finding was the brake light switch was at fault, as it remained on all night long. While major damage was confined to the 1 car, the other 3 cars had smoke damage, as did much of the garage and contents. A $2 disconnect would have prevented the fire.
Once again, your forensics background well illustrates common sense.
Thank you for the info, Bill.
Nevada,
Thanks for the compliment. If I can save but one car [and perhaps a garage] because someone read what I wrote and spent $10 on a battery disconnect, I’m happy. And we’ll never even know because nuttin’ bad happened!
Bill, I would question the repairs/restorations of a shop that feels they must install a battery disconnect to protect the car’s electrical system after one of their builds. Maybe hiring competent technicians would be a good starting point. Having worked in the automotive repair for 50+ years, I have seen plenty of shoddy repair technicians. I just made it my point to not be one of them.
Greg,
We rarely made the wiring harnesses, and while some of the manufacturers made high quality products, not all were of the best quality. And many of the cars we worked on were not restored by us. Our shop did regular service work for old cars, from oil and lube, as well as frame-off restorations. We occasionally were asked to sort out a recently installed wiring harness with problems, and I can attest to some shoddy work performed by others [shops and owners]. I am proud to say that on cars we restored, they often garnered local prizes at shows, and we even completed a couple cars that took a “Hershey Jr. first”, their first time out.
I bought those disconnects by the case, and sold them cheap as part of our attempts to provide customers [many who didn’t know how to work on their cars] with a better level of safety. Your suggestion that our restoration quality and staff abilities were so low as to need the disconnects, was a bit “below the belt’.
I have a beautiful female cousin who owned a car like this in purple. It was a drop top as well with 318 poly and push button shift. She let me borrow it a few times and I just loved putting the top down and cruising the highway. To me losing the push button destroys the authenticity of these car.
God Bless America
Johnm,
I agree the push button shifter should have remained. We serviced a DeSoto Adventurer hardtop that had a more modern drive train [44o/Torqueflite] that still had the push buttons and they worked fine. We didn’t do the conversion, but as I recall they had attached a bracket to the transmission that held the shift cable. It placed the gear shift points exactly as original. To handle the parking brake, it had a later MoPaR parking lever actuator from a Plymouth, it was added to the left side of the quadrant, just like the original Plymouth in ’63 or ’64.
Seeing the shiny blanking plate where the original push button quadrant was, kinda makes it look cheap in my opinion, and that floor shifter simply looks out of place, like it was an after thought. Hopefully the new owner might elect to perform the work to return working push buttons to their rightful place on the car.
Sweet Christine’s top less sister
No such thing as a wide block 318. It’s the same dimension that the later LA 318 is. It’s only because the poly engine had bigger heads that make it look like a wider engine.
And a Hemi transplant to boot! Scary!!! LOL
My Mom had a 57 Belvedere. It wasn’t bullet proof in any way. The engine coolant wouldn’t stop rusting out the freeze plugs. It broke both a front torsion bar and a rear spring. My Mom loved it but my Dad hated it because he had to get it fixed. Replaced with a 62 Valiant that ran until rust killed it in 68…Slant Six was bullet proof.
Yeah, my brother had a similar Valiant and he said the same about the slant 6. Unfortunately, the rest of the car fell apart before that engine did.
If the radio starts playing ‘Little Pretty One’…….I would advise exiting the vehicle promptly ! ha
Immediately I see this, and the opening Mancini theme music from “Peter Gunn” goes off in my head!
Bill, you were the one bragging about installing a disconnect on every car you worked on and if the customer didn’t want it you would sell them to convince them of there merits. Having done drivability and electronics repairs for 30 years or better, I have one of those in my box that I install to quickly locate a draw on a system. Using one of those with a #194 bulb in-line so the lamp lights with a draw when the switch is open can be very handy. Using one for an anti theft device is a good way to have your car get stolen if they want your car, do you think they won’t open the hood? A more effective way is to open the hood and swap your coil wire with any plug wire in the cap. The car will crank and sound like it’s trying to start but it won’t, unless it can run on one cylinder.
Can we still be friends?
Bill, you were the one bragging about installing a disconnect on every car you worked on and if the customer didn’t want it you would sell them to convince them of there merits. Having done drivability and electronics repairs for 30 years or better, I have one of those in my box that I install to quickly locate a draw on a system. Using one of those with a #194 bulb in-line so the lamp lights with a draw when the switch is open can be very handy. Using one for an anti theft device is a good way to have your car get stolen if they want your car, do you think they won’t open the hood? A more effective way is to open the hood and swap your coil wire with any plug wire in the cap. The car will crank and sound like it’s trying to start but it won’t, unless it can run on one cylinder.
Can we still be friends?
My friend Greg,
I also have disconnects in my tool boxes for uses like you discuss. [I’m a tooloholic and have 18 top, middle, and bottom tool boxes!] As for the anti-theft, the disconnects we provided had the round green knob that unscrewed all the way, & would come out in your hand. The car owner can hide it either in the garage or the car, somewhere a thief wouldn’t bother to search.
Of course if we’re talking about someone determined to steal a high Dollar car like a ’67 Hemi Charger or a 428 Mustang Cobra with the drag pack option, then the owner will need more than just a disconnect device to thwart a determined thief!
As for pulling the coil wire* or even having a hidden ignition cut-off switch under the dash, far too many of my customers didn’t have a clue how to do those things. My shop was in a fairly wealthy area, and a lot of my customers didn’t know which way to turn a screwdriver.
*Pulling the coil wire: When I used to go to the wholesale used car auctions or insurance write-off auctions looking to buy much older cars, I always had several coil wires behind my tow truck’s seat, because a common way to keep people from bidding on a running car was to take the coil wire before the auction. I often stuck a coil wire in my pocket before checking vehicles. Junkyard operators in my area were notorious for pulling the coil wire off a car they wanted.
In the late 1970s, as the military bases were beginning to close down, I learned to watch for ex- military police AMC Matador sedans offered in military surplus auctions at Ft. George G. Meade. Those with missing coil wires were usually good running cars, often with under 75,000 miles because they were only driven inside the base area. I would buy them at scrap prices, put a coil wire on the engines, slap a transport tag on the back, and we’d drive them home.
I worked with a buyer that had immigrated to the USA from Somalia, who would buy almost any MP Matador I brought back to the shop. He would repaint them orange and add underdash A/C to the cars, then put them into Taxicab service. Back then if someone hailed a bright orange cab in suburban Maryland [just outside DC], and the door opening areas of the body were still OD green, I probably bought & sold the car.
Greg, almost forgot to mention; my education is electronics and electrical engineering, so I understand your points. I had a FCC radio & TV 3rd class broadcast engineers license by the time I was 14, and the 2nd class during my junior year of high school.
Any other color, like the A-team, Scooby Doo, and the Dukes of Hazzard the Christine thing has been overdone.