SUDDENLY IT’S 1960!
Chrysler gambled and got the jump on the other members of the big three, Ford and General Motors (GM), when the launch of its third generation Plymouth/Dodge/DeSoto line-up for 1957 ushered in its dramatic ‘Flight Sweep’ styling. Chrysler hammered home its bold move with advertising campaigns announcing: “Suddenly it’s 1960!”
Gone were the big upright Chrysler bodies of the early 1950s, replaced with dramatic rising rear wings armed with banks of tail lights mimicking jet exhausts. Up front, twin headlights shielded in dramatic slanted eyebrows crested lower and wider front guards with full-width stainless steel grilles, and massive chrome bumper bars. High-tech spaceship-style wraparound front and rear windscreens complemented the leaner and lower look, emphasised by lower, thinner rooflines.
FLIGHT FRIGHT
The long and low theme stranded the car makers persevering with more conservative and upright styling. Just as in 1934 when it introduced its dramatic ‘Airflow’ models, Chrysler had again led a major change in styling direction for the US auto industry, ushering a new battle between the teams led by Virgil Exner at Chrysler and GM’s Harley Earl. Ironically, it was Earl who, borrowing aircraft thinking, had introduced rear wings on 1950s concept cars for stability at speed. Exner and Raymond Loewy had already combined at Studebaker a decade before to bring in the bullet noses and
