1962 Sport Fury Golden Commando
Early Canadian Muscle
by Patrick Smith
Back in 1962, a muscle car wasn’t an intermediate vehicle with a full size engine and transmission. The brawny beasts with big cubes came in large cars with names like Galaxie and Impala SS. The industry wasn’t completely sold on compact cars. They kept some irons in the fire with the Falcon, Chevy II and Valiant, but the real profits lay in big cars. Chrysler Corporation was in transition with their image. After sensational sales of the their “suddenly it’s 60” line of finned wonders, the new products for 1962 were completely different.
The Fury was Plymouth’s macho performance car during that era. The incredible 1957 model with the dual carbed V8, special paint finish and anodized trim was a knockout and the body style found fame as the star of “Christine” in Stephen King’s novel. For 1962, Virgil Exner had plans to release a series of long, low and wide cars with asymmetrical styling cues. The Fury was one of those models. Then something funny happened. At a car industry meet and greet, a Plymouth executive overheard GM executives talking about a new small, mainline car they were rolling out for 1962. The dimensions were petite and this spooked Chrysler into launching a crash program to redesign their Plymouth Fury and Dodge Polara.
Exner drastically scaled down the cars and the asymmetrical details were tossed to make it look cleaner. It lost eight inches and 550 pounds. The new Sport Fury was short by contemporary standards. When stacked against the 1962 Impala and Galaxie, which were still full size and gorgeous to boot, panic ensued at Chrysler. It turned out the small car those GM boys were talking about was the Chevy II, a competitor to the 1960 Plymouth Valiant.
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