The Great Mirror Mystery

[Faulkner]

I received this email from Don Claybaugh, new owner of Allen Faltus’ '59 Sport Fury:

@Donald Claybaugh

…I’m going to add the fender mirrors and rear dual antennas like the one i had in 59. On your website is there a template to mount the mirrors on the front fenders? I have a template for the placement of the rear antennas.

This is an interesting question that we were discussing at Carlisle…

We noted that some of the '59’s had dual post mirrors, and some had the single post. The same was true of '57’s and '58’s we saw on the field! We speculated that perhaps the mirrors were installed by the dealer, and they would use whatever they had in inventory – old stock, or new stock – and perhaps this accounted not only for the type, but the placement. At the dealer, they could slap the mirror on wherever it seemed convenient, without a template. And in some cases where there was a front antenna installed, the antenna placement could affect the mirror placement (if dual mirrors were installed).

At Carlisle, Dick Whelan mentioned that even mirrors ordered from the factory were not installed at the factory – they were put in the trunk and installed at the dealer (to reduce the possibility they might be broken off?). This snapshot from the Maywood plant seems to substantiate that claim, as do other snippets of the film I’ve looked at…

What do you think? What can you contribute to the Great Mirror Mystery?

Dan

[Matthew_Keij]

The owners of the cars on the film didn’t took the mirrors option?

[Nighthawk]

As a retired GM employee, I can tell you that things like that such as putting the mirrors in the trunk for the dealer to install were quite commonplace, i started in the 1970s and in those days we would supply in a plastic bag inside the vehicle items such as the hubcaps,license plate brackets and so on, which is still common today, so it wouldnt surprise me at all if Chrysler did that with the outside mirrors at that time…

[Faulkner]

@Don Claybaugh

Dan
My friend in Michigan said,Mirrors and radio antennas came in the trunk.Which is the way i remember it.Templates came with them so they were installed in the right place.I still have the big drill to put the hole in the fender for a radio antenna.Now for the 64 dollar question.I ,and my friend agree that dual 4s on the 59 plymouths were not a factory option and were not available in Lima,Ohio as a dealer installed option.It seems to me i read somewhere that dealers who had the a dual quad set up left over from 1958 installed them on 59s.Probaby in 1959 if you wanted a dual quad set-up you could have most likely ordered it thru the parts counter and had it installed on a 59.It seems these were then rated at 320HP.
Hope this sheds some light on the subject.
Don

[rogerh]

I defer to the guys who worked at the dealerships and factories.
I never thought to measure fender mirror location on the various 59’s I’ve owned. My belief was that the single struts were after-market, possibly installed by owners, whereas the more elegant and expensive dual-strut mirrors (including remote-controlled ones) would be professionally installed, either by dealer or factory.