Assessing

Had the exterior sheetmetal not been reasonably straight and solid, this would have been relegated to a parts car.

The dash was rusty and all the stainless was badly pitted. I suppose I would be smart to look for better parts, but my labor is cheap, so I'll try to salvage most of it.

The steering wheel is a throw-away, but I planned on an aftermarket column and wheel, so it's not an issue.

A serious case of headliner sag has left me with a decision to make. I could have an upholstery shop try to make a pattern from the old one and salvage the bows, or I can fabricate a fiberglas shell similar to what modern cars have and glue a modern material on it. I'm leaning in that direction.

The car came without an engine or transmission, so the choice is wide open. It originally had a Poly 277 with a manual transmission and overdrive. My plan is to install a mid-80's 318 with a floor-shifted automatic...preferably an overdrive unit from a truck, but nothing is set in stone. Some have suggested a big block, while others can see a generation III Hemi sitting in there. It will likely depend on what I can get when the time comes, and more importantly...the price. I've been thinking about mating a Dakota frame to the Plymouth frame from the transmssion mount forward. If the frames are anywhere near matching in the cut area,it would solve a lot of problems. I could buy a Dakota for parts and have a modern suspension, disk brakes, and a complete engine/transmission mounting setup. It also makes the drivetrain decision simple.

I already found a source for a new windshield, but not a moulded gasket. I can find the straight rubber channel, but would need to cut and glue the corners...or maybe they will begin producing them again before I reach that point...RIGHT!! I'm not looking forward to that task.

The floor in the back seat area isn't too bad, and could be repaired, but I'll probably replace the entire floor and trunk with patch panels, since they are all available now. However, who knows how long that will be, so I'd rather make the basic body structure sound while I can find parts.

The Goal

This is what I hope mine will resemble. The tentative plan was to have the car on the street sometime during the summer of 2012, but a mild stroke and a brutal hot summer meant the car sat for much of 2011. Now it appears that a move back to the Denton area will further delay progress, but the new heated and cooled workshop I'm building should speed things along. For now, I plan to have it running in late 2013, but with all the body work to do, that might be wishful thinking.

The car in the photo is light turquoise, while mine will probably be light blue, but this is the closest photo I've found to the end result I'm shooting for.

I like this color also, but since my '64 Valiant is medium turquoise, having a similar colored car might be overkill.

The Project

I bought the car based on this photo. It didn't look too bad, and the price was right, but first impressions can be deceiving. The owner even offered to deliver the car from the Little Rock, Arkansas area to East Texas, so I was hooked.

Why a 1956 Plymouth?

The first new car I ever drove was a 1956 Plymouth Belvedere that my dad bought just a few days before the '57 models were introduced. While he was shopping, the salesman showed him photos of the upcoming '57s, but dad decided that he preferred the looks of the '56, so he brought home a yellow and white 4-door sedan that had been sitting in the dealer's showroom. Dad wasn't too fond of the bright color, and the dealer offered to re-paint it for cost, but thankfully dad never took him up on the offer. The yellow looked exceptionally nice on that model.

While I wished it had been a 2-door hardtop, I wasn't terribly disappointed that the new car was a sedan. At least it had a 277 cid V8 engine and an automatic transmission, and that was cool enough for a 16-year-old, car crazy kid like me. It also had a search tune AM radio that added a cool factor.

The 2-speed cast iron case automatic transmission was called a PowerFlite, and for the 1956 model year the shift lever had been moved from its one year location on the dash above the ignition switch, to four pushbuttons mounted on the left side of the dash. Though Mercury, Edsel, Packard, and AMC cars would later get pushbutton shifting, Chrysler products were the only cars with that feature in 1956.

Ever since the first night I drove dad's car, I've loved '56 Plymouths, and I decided that one day I would own one. Well, it took fifty-four years, but I finally have one, and it will be a long, difficult, restoration process to get it on the road again.