Plymouth was the first American brand to field an all-steel #stationwagon, the 1949 DeLuxe Suburban, but all of Chrysler’s vehicles suffered in the early 50s from their tall, dowdy styling. Chrysler Chairman K.T. Keller had wrongly bet that people valued interior comfort and size over styling at a time when longer, lower, and wider were better, sexier, and more profitable. But he and Chrysler President Tex Colbert had begun taking steps almost immediately to fix their predicament (hiring stylist Virgil Exner, setting about rationalizing the dealer network), and when the 1955 Mopars debuted, they were a dramatically different bunch - longer, lower, sexier - and Plymouth was the volume leader. Dubbed the “100 Million Dollar Look,” the major restyling of the entire corporate lineup was reported to actually have cost $250 Million, and while Exner is given the overall credit for this refreshing change that took Chrysler to style parity with Ford and Chevy for the first time since the thirties, the work on the Plymouths was mostly done under old timer Henry King. It’s the brash Chrysler 300 that gets all the attention from this era today but the Plymouths were very slick cars compared to their predecessors, all fins and chrome - the advertising proclaimed “Here’s the Jet Age on wheels!” with various hardtop Plymouth coupes parked next to Air Force jets. It probably felt like a Jet too, compared to what went before - 1955 was the first year of V8 Plymouths - at 241 or 259-cid (expanded in '56 to 270/277/303). With all of Detroit’s cars getting a regular restyle every year, the ’55 Plymouth line was expanded in 1956 - the basic Plaza stayed much the same but the mid-level #Savoy gained a hardtop coupe and two wagons; the top-spec Belvedere was joined by the first Plymouth Fury. This ’56 Savoy Custom 2-door Suburban is one of the rarer ‘56s, with 9,489 built for the year. Two-door wagons did fairly well with budget customers and tradesmen in the mid-50s but fared less well on mid-level or top-spec trims, where family customers preferred four-doors, but #Plymouth customers kept buying them into 1961, much later than some other brands. #ForwardLook #wagonwednesday https://www.instagram.com/p/BnWWCkAHDI-/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=9puad9nemudr