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Exner-Era Finned Finery (& 2 TV Ads That Sold It)

1957 Plymouth, 1959 Plymouth, the magic of videotape
Posted September 2 2011 07:00 AM by scott_ross 
Filed under: Miscellaneous, SCOTT ROSS

While digging around on the Web, we found some late '50s Plymouth TV ads that you might enjoy looking at, if only to see how those cars were sold back in the day.

Come on in for more about these spots, which were produced (& aired) live...


...and were likely part of Lawrence Welk's Plymouth Show, which aired on Wednesday nights on ABC-TV for a couple years in the late '50s (along with Welk's Saturday-night show on ABC, which was then called the Dodge Dancing Party.)

The first one is for the 1957 Plymouths, and it gives viewers (& potential low-price car buyers) points to compare vs. the other low-priced ‘57s. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA0Pg2Qnju8&feature=related

Thankfully, it doesn’t mention the high-iron-content steel which Ma Mopar used that year, which led to fast rust-throughs…or the overall (lack of) build quality of the ‘57s, thanks to them hitting the market at least 6 months before they were ready.

By the time the '59 model run rolled around--and thanks to lots of  engineers working lots of overtime--the quality glitches were pretty much solved in the production cars (& the upcoming new 1960s incorporated a lot of these fixes from the get-go.)

Plymouth was still sponsoring the Wednesday night Welkfest, and this next spot aired during one of them.

Instead of a fairly dry commercial with an announcer (usually Lou Crosby) giving the pitch, the Welk "Musical family" put together a 2:43-long production number for the '59 Plymouths, though the "Plymouth factory" seen in it doesn't look anything like Lynch Road Assembly!

Look for Welk-show regulars like "Big Tiny" Little in this spot when you copy-and-paste this into your browser: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssQ0tcIHifg



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