I’ve been living in Colorado for 12 years now, and I’ve found that the junkyards here have plenty of both the rust-free Japanese cars you’d find in California yards and the late-model Detroit machinery of the Midwest yards (the liquor stores here also stock the watery yellow beers of both the Pacific Northwest and the Upper Midwest, great news if you’re throwing a Denver party that requires both Rainier and Hamm’s). The one thing that really sets Colorado car graveyards apart from those elsewhere (besides all the Scouts and edge-case 4WD cars) is the huge numbers of pre-1960 American vehicles that end up in the U-Wrench-It-type yards here. Here’s the latest, a 1949 Plymouth Special Deluxe sedan in a big self-service yard between Denver and Cheyenne.
In fact, that yard has three Chrysler products of the same era in the inventory right now, parked side-by-side. Over in the GM section, they’ve got a pair of 1940s Chevrolets plus a Frazer. I see the same thing in the other Front Range yards, too.
I think the reason so few of these pre-1960 cars get intercepted and rescued by enthusiasts is that the Front Range is something of a car-freak island, thanks to geography. To the west, it’s a 10-hour tow over one forbidding mountain range to get to Salt Lake City and a 20-hour tow over two ranges to get to the big West Coast population centers. To the north and south, it’s sparsely-populated desert for the most part, and your tow to the big Midwestern cities will take a couple of days. Everyone here who wants project cars has all they can handle, and it’s not worth hauling a rough 70-year-old Detroit sedan to a place where it will be worth $900. So, cars like today’s Junkyard Find end up in The Crusher, sooner or later.
This one has a fairly solid body, but it’s very rough inside.
Can you smell the rodent poop, decaying horsehair, and High Plains desert dust through your screen?
With the single-digit humidity and the high-UV solar radiation you get a mile up, the interiors of cars stored outdoors turn to powder as various critters raise generations of families inside. At least there’s no mildew and no snakes hiding inside water-filled old tires.
If the windows are broken or open, the winter snow gets in and rots the floors.
Plymouth was riding high in 1949, with an all-new design finally replacing the prewar models (Ford and GM had introduced their postwar designs a year earlier). The Plymouth still had a split windshield, but so did most of the competition that year. Better than a half-million ’49s rolled out of Plymouth showrooms, with about half of those being Special Deluxe sedans.
Chevrolet topped a million cars sold in 1949, as did Ford, but the car division named after a rope company was still a major player that year.
Chevrolet had been putting overhead-valve straight-six engines in cars since the 1920s, but Ford and Chrysler were still flathead devotees in 1949 (Ford introduced an OHV six for 1952, while Chrysler didn’t dump the valve-in-block design for cars until the 1960 model year).
If this is the original engine (which is possible, though nowhere near certain), it’s a 218-cubic-incher rated at 97 horsepower. Chrysler used this type of Carter carburetor into the 1970s.
The only transmission available in the ’49 Plymouths was a three-on-the-tree column-shift manual. If you wanted a heater, dual sun visors, turn signals, or radio, that stuff cost extra. Hey, if you wanted bells and whistles in 1949, you bought a Dodge!
These cars weren’t luxurious, but they were cheap and reliable transportation. The sticker price on this one started at $1,629 (about $19,840 in 2022 dollars), while the stripped-to-bare-minimum short-wheelbase 1949 Plymouth Deluxe Business Coupe sold for just $1,371 ($16,700 now). Those prices were a bit cheaper than the corresponding Ford and Chevrolet models, though you could get the wretched Crosley two-door sedan for only $866 ($10,545 today) and a new Volkswagen Beetle for $1,280 ($15,590 in 2022).
For links to more than 2,200 additional Junkyard Finds, please visit the Junkyard Home of the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™.
[Images by the author]
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What a find! The body is relatively rust and dent free with the paint being more of a desert tanning. This would make a good donor car for a restoration but as you stated there is not much demand from collectors for these and you can get a well preserved Mopar of this vintage for less than it takes to restore. These were simple and durable cars that could run for years. My first recollection of the family car was a light green 51 Dodge 2 door sedan with the mohair interior which my father put vinyl seat covers on which was later traded for a new 57 Chrysler Windsor 4 door with push button drive. Thanks for featuring this car it brings back memories of that time and of family members including my parents that owned them.
Yeah, most cars of this vintage are on the wrong side of the nostalgia curve. The people who developed a liking for them when they were younger, are now either deceased or had their license taken away. The remaining trickle of demand is satisfied by the cars that were restored 20-30 years ago.
If I was younger and more talented I would certainly consider opening up a restoration shop in that area. Get these ‘rare’ vehicles ‘cheap’. Restore them nearby rather than transport them. Then auction them. Or lease them to film/tv/commercial advertising companies.
A retired police officer in Ontario now makes his living renting ‘survivor’ vehicles for film/tv shoots. The mundane vehicles like the original Mavericks, Ford and Plymouth sedans/station wagons being rare are in high demand for filming.
At the age of 18 my mother bought a used Plymouth ‘Business Coupe’. Nearly 70 years later she still talks about how much she liked that car and the independence that it provided her.
“the car division named after a rope company”
Fascinating link – thanks!
My uncle had one of these, bought new after his “grand tour of Europe”, 1944-47. For New England weather, he sprang for the heater, but not much else. He claimed he never got stuck in snow, since second gear and the low torque output prevented the tires from spinning. He said he’d just creep over the snow – as long as it was less than 6 inches. It wasn’t fast – zero to sixty in about 20 seconds, but said it got him where was going, eventually.
The Car Wizard bought a nice all original light blue 54 Plymouth 4 door sedan with the 3 on the tree and flathead 6.
A ’54? That’s the next body style, with the hopped up, 100 HP six, unless it had the later “big” six, with 110 HP. I wonder what Chrysler was thinking, when even the bottom of the line Chevy 1500 had 115 HP sixes. I might be wrong, but the small sixes Chrysler put in as base engines in the 1950’s date back to the early 1930’s?
No the 53 was the next body style then the 55 offering a V-8 as an option. The first Fury was made 1956 MY which was a 2 door only and a special trim of Belvedere and 1959 was the first year for the 4 door Fury. The 1957 was the Virgil Exner all new Mopars with the “Suddenly its 1960 design” which swept the market in sales and caught both GM and Ford off guard and caused GM to rush a quick redesign of all their cars for the 1959 MY. The 1962 Mopars lead to Virgil Exner’s firing with the full size Plymouth and Dodge being both downsized due to a false rumor that GM was downsizing their full size cars and the polarizing design of those cars. Of the 50s Mopars it would be the 57s and 58s that would be the most desired by collectors especially the 57 and 58 Fury.
As for Ford 1949 was Ford’s first post war redesign for Ford (shoe box Ford 1949 thru 1951) and Mercury (popular later with customizers especially chopping the roofs). The 1949 Chevy and all GM divisions were the first post war redesigns as well. 1949 was the magic year for redesigns. Studebaker beat the Big 3 in redesign with the all new 1947 MY.
Too bad the junkyards don’t have lists of contacts for marque-specific clubs and enthusiast sites for when something like this shows up. There looks to be lots of unobtanium parts on this that’ll just go into the crusher!
Those ribbed bumpers are highly sought after by customizers, and could probably sell for a couple hundred dollars each.
Here’s a whole thread on them:
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/49-plymouth-bumpers-on-ford-49-51.466346/