In this man's garage, suddenly, it's 1954 again
Darrell L. Davis, who retired in 2001 as senior vice president for parts and service at DaimlerChrysler, remembers in explicit detail when and how his passion for Plymouths was ignited.
"When I turned 16 on Monday, Aug. 8, 1955, my mom and I went to the local justice of the peace and filled out the form for my driver's permit," he recalled. "We sent it off with special handling, which was available then in Pennsylvania, and I had my permit back on Wednesday, Aug. 10."
Practice at the wheel of the family's 1954 Plymouth Belvedere followed, but did not last long.
"I took my driving test on Saturday, Aug. 13, and passed it on the first try," he said.
He added, with impish delight: "I never rode my bike again."
Davis said his parents were impressed by how quickly he had become proficient enough to pass the test, given how little tutoring he received. It seems they did not know how much experience their son already had.
"When I was about 12 or 13 there were usually two cars at home," he said. "When the family left I would get the keys and drive around the house and up and down the driveway. All were standard-transmission cars -- I was pretty smug about my driving."
Davis, who went on to spend 36 years working his way up the ranks at Chrysler, traces his lifelong love of cars to those practice sessions -- and to the times as a toddler that he rode on his grandfather's lap, steering a 1936 Chevrolet pickup around the family's dairy farm near Sharon, Pa.
Still showing that youthful enthusiasm at age 69, Davis feels little nostalgia for old Chevy pickups. But '54 Plymouths are another matter. Today he is probably the world's foremost collector of those models -- and an enthusiastic keeper of the flame for the defunct Plymouth brand.
In part of his 9,000-square-foot garage here, near Orlando, Davis has recreated a fully equipped Plymouth dealership showroom.
On display are all four body styles from the then newly expanded '54 Belvedere line, an upscale alternative to the Plaza and Savoy models. He has collected the sales brochures and display racks, banners, signs, order books and even the sheets of paint samples and upholstery swatches. All of it is meticulously preserved and presented.
"Nobody collects '54 Plymouths," he said with a chuckle and a chomp on an unlit half-cigar. "I just collect them because I like them."
The Plymouth of 1954 was not a success, despite the availability of engineering innovations like power steering, power brakes and the semiautomatic Hy-Drive transmission. (The fully automatic PowerFlite arrived late in the model year.) The chairman of Chrysler at the time, K.T. Keller, had called for designs that were tall and bulky, because, he said, "a gentleman should be able to wear his hat" while driving.
Virgil Exner, a visionary designer whose background included jobs at General Motors and Studebaker, was brought in to enliven the designs. Though Exner's influence was barely perceptible until the jazzier 1955 models arrived in showrooms, he sprinkled some flash on the '54 models, part of a so-called Hy-Style treatment. Chrome flourishes, arresting paint schemes, colorful emblems and even wire wheels became available.
But it was not enough; calendar-year sales plunged to 399,900 in 1954, from 662,515 units in '53.
The seeds of Plymouth's ultimate demise in 2001, Davis suggests, were sown in 1959 after the bounce-back success of Exner's 1957-59 finned Forward Look models. That's when the Chrysler Corp. decided to separate Plymouth and Dodge dealerships, and at the end of 1960, to eliminate DeSoto. Despite some glory years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Plymouth limped into the 21st century with just a few nameplates.
"I hated to see it go," he said. "But they probably should have stopped it years before they did."
Plymouth began in 1928 as a model within the Chrysler line, and Davis owns a blue sedan from that era. He displays it in a separate room alongside the last Plymouth to roll off the assembly line -- a silver Neon built on June 28, 2001.
His garage is a haven not only for orphaned Plymouths, but orphaned cats that he has rescued. They prowl the place with impunity, using a series of pet doors and secret passageways, keeping him company in the small office where he writes books (13 so far) about Chrysler performance engines of the 1960s. A former drag racer and a technical inspector for the National Hot Rod Association, Davis said he was content to work surrounded by just his cats and his cars.
"I don't need to show it off," he said, gesturing at his collections. "It's just for me."
That does not mean visitors are not welcome. Occasionally local car clubs will stop by for coffee, conversation and the inevitable tour of the showroom or the re-creation across from it of his father's '50s-era Esso gas station.
He also has collected die-cast model cars and airplanes, vintage bicycles and even the 1969 Volkswagen Beetle his wife, Jacque, was driving in college when they met. He estimates that he has owned "a couple hundred cars," including Ferraris, '50s Corvettes and full-size Chevys, and two Depression-era Chrysler Imperials that won their class at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance.
"I only have 14 cars now, though," he said, allowing that at any given moment he might expand or contract his collection on a whim.
Though his cars have won many awards -- as his trophy cases confirm -- he is clearly partial to the 1954 Plymouth.
"My parents' 54 Belvedere sedan, the car that I took my test in, was one year old at that time," he said. "The car was Santa Rosa Coral with a San Leandro Ivory top. The interior was coral and white." The car was traded away, vanishing into history a few years after his successful license test.
The Belvedere sedan in his showroom today is coral and black. He bought it in 1992 from a Plymouth Club member in the Detroit area. About the same time, he found a San Gabriel Green convertible (originally from Pasadena, Calif.), and a San Diego Gold and San Leandro Ivory coupe. Later that year, he found a San Pedro Blue and San Mateo Wheat Belvedere Suburban station wagon.
Thus, the showroom collection was born.
"I've got examples of all the exterior color combinations available for Belvedere that year," he said. Appropriately, Davis' models are all in, shall we say, showroom condition.
Though passionate about Chrysler products, his attraction -- and encyclopedic knowledge -- extends to Chevrolets as well. Four from 1957 -- two Corvettes and two Bel Airs, all with fuel injection -- share the building with the Belvederes. He has owned and sold precious Hemi Cudas as well as the earlier Max Wedge cars that helped to establish Chrysler's reputation on the racetrack.
Though some of those cars passed through his hands before the market for muscle cars peaked, Davis expresses no deep regrets.
"I never bought a car as an investment, or sold one just to make money," he said. "I bought it because I liked it; I save what has meaning to me. I don't need any more out of it than that."