It’s easy to see why Fred Whisler refers to his 1955 Plymouth Belvedere wagon as “She.” His rare classic wagon attracts admirers like the queen bee on a honey-sweet summer day.
At a recent classic car show in downtown Fort Myers, Fred and his co-pilot, Lisa Moore, rewound time 64 years for classic car fans of all ages.
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Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
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Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
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Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
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Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
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Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
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Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
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Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
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Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
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Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
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Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
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Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
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Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
In 1955, the dashboard radios in thousands of Belvederes from coast to coast purred out The Four Aces’ silky harmonies on their No. 1 hit “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.” Bill Haley and his Comets made those radios shake, rattle and roll with the rhythm of their chart-topper “Rock Around the Clock.”
Top ticket-selling movies that year included “To Catch a Thief,” “The Seven Year Itch,” and Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp.” Doris Day and Brigitte Bardot inspired rival Saint vs. Sinner fan clubs, but movie fans quickly forgot their differences after the show over 19-cent McDonald’s cheeseburgers sold for the first time that year.
1955 saw the invention of the microwave oven and the TV remote control, which Americans could operate from their den sofas to tune into the top-rated shows of the season, including “The $64,000 Question,” “I Love Lucy” and “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
Although the 1950s are generally viewed as socially conservative, there were plenty of bizarre news events that year, proving that truth can be stranger than fiction. When scientist Albert Einstein died in 1955, the Princeton University doctor who performed the autopsy kept his brain, taking it home for “research purposes.” Decades would pass before he returned it to Einstein’s survivors.
Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
That same year, Dr. Jonas Salk announced his decision to donate his polio vaccine to the human race “for the benefit of all mankind” giving up the rights to $7 million in potential profits.
In 1955 Marlboro did some major gender bending by replacing ads for their “Mild as May” ladies’ cigarettes with commercials starring rugged “Marlboro Country” cowboys with heartthrob cheekbones. Sales puffed up 3,241 percent in one year.
In the 1955 automotive world, Car and Driver premiered its first issue. Later that year, the magazine’s reporters covered the historic Le Mans Disaster when pieces of a crashed race car slashed through the crowd of spectators, leaving 83 dead.
Also that year, teen idol James Dean, who had riveted audiences in “Rebel Without a Cause,” proved to be only human, perishing while speeding on a country road in his brand-new Porsche 550 Spyder. He would have turned 25 on his next birthday.
From Washington, D.C., then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower would launch the nation’s first freeway construction initiative the following year.
Fred still remembers visiting a Pennsylvania car dealership with his father in 1955 and spotting a new Plymouth Belvedere there. The year before, the restyled Belvedere had replaced the Cranbrook as the brand’s top-line offering. Fred remembers that his dad bought a sedan instead that day.
Time passed, as it will, with Fred spending the next few decades working as a mechanic and a machinist before acquiring and operating his own car dealership in Pennsylvania.
He never forgot that new ’55 Belvedere, and he finally saw another one about 20 years ago at the annual Turkey Run at the Daytona International Speedway. It was in good shape with about 70,000 miles on its odometer.
“I knew I had to have it,” Fred recalls. “I said to myself, ‘That’s MINE!’ So I bought it, drove back to Pennsylvania to get a trailer and picked it up the following week.”
Fred worked on the restoration off-and-on for 10 years, handling most of the work himself. His wagon has a number of unique features, including the Chrysler PowerFlite two-speed automatic transmission operated from a slim steel wand attached to the steering wheel.
Fred describes the air-conditioning unit as “a metal cylinder you fill with dry ice and attach to the inside of the window. It’s open at the end, so air flows past the ice and into the car for cooling.”
Two vintage surfboards mounted on the roof of his Belvedere multiply the ’55 wagon’s coolness factor, inspiring questions from a dreadlocked professional surfer visiting from Costa Rica who crossed the street at a recent downtown Fort Myers car show to question Fred about their history.
Fred recalled his surfing days from the 1960s in California during his time in the military and later in Key West.
Andrea Melendez
Fred Whisler’s 1955 Plymouth Belvedere exemplifies the innovation of an era.
“I had these boards for many years prior to obtaining the car,” he says. “They’ve been with me for a long time.”
The 1955 models were the first Plymouths to feature the space-age design theme christened “The Forward Look” by Virgil Exner. Rear tail fins heralding rocket travel began modestly that year, growing dramatically higher over the next several seasons.
In the heart of the trend-chasing public, however, that design detail had a brief shelf life. Exner’s 1960 Chrysler designs were nicknamed “jukeboxes on wheels” and the 1961 models have been labeled by automotive historians as “some of the ugliest cars ever mass-produced.”
But the automobile editors of Consumer Guide strongly disagreed, writing that “the ’55 Belvedere made Plymouth much more competitive with Ford and Chevy. It was a great new car for the young at heart.” The Belvedere name survived until the end of the 1970 model year, replaced by the Satellite. That model evolved into the Plymouth Fury in 1975 when the longer-wheelbase version became the Gran Fury.
In recent years, Fred has seen only two other original ’55 Plymouth Belvedere wagons — one of them on display during the famous Hershey, Pennsylvania, car show.
Fred’s very rare relic of 1955 Americana has won Best in Show and People’s Choice trophies in Pennsylvania and Maryland along with a top prize at a local show this season.
“The car is all original except for the running gear,” he says.
If you see Fred and Lisa with the Belvedere wagon on the road or on display during Southwest Florida’s car show season, step right up and ask them to share a memory or two about this very rare time capsule from a significant year in automotive history.