'59 Plymouth Forum

Wow... that is the first time I saw the video of the Maywood CA Plymouth Plant. That is wonderful historical film footage and I enjoyed seeing it.

As far as Matthew doing a better job on the IBM card than the Chrysler people on decoding the IBM card, Matthew is right.

He can do a better job on it than the Chrysler people. I sent him my Chrysler Build Sheet IBM card and he spent the morning decoding it an he emailed the option list to me.

I was able to print it out and put it in my documentation binder. Many thanks Matthew for such fast work!

Larry

Dan thanks for the video,that is where mine is from.sold in vegas born in L.A. I noticed the fellow unpacking rubber gaskets and the box was marked Continental Rubber Works ERIE PA.!!!!!!!!!! I know the place and know people that worked there.It closed I think about 25yrs ago.It was in the west county.I love watching that stuff!!! Thanks Mark M

Here's some info about the Evansville, Indiana plant.

I believe it still stands - using Google Maps (or any satellite mapping) you will see a very large building at the southeast corner of Maxwell Ave. and Stringtown Road which themselves are located north of route 62 and west of route 41 as you begin to zoom in. Looks like the right place to me based on other pictures / illustrations that I've seen. Evansville was originally the home of the Graham Brothers Truck manufacturing plant, which became part of Dodge back in the 1920's. After Chrysler bought Dodge in 1928 this plant eventually became a Plymouth plant. During WWII it was known as the Evansville Arsenal, making ammunition and tank parts as I recall. There were a series of small books published after the war detailing Chrysler's war efforts, and the one focused on Evansville is titled "Bullets By The Billions!" You might find it on eBay or other sources, might even be copied and available on the internet. While not making cars at that time, there's certainly enough info and pictures to give you quite an eyeful.

There's also old Graham Brothers ads showing Evansville in an artist's illustration, making it look somewhat different than it looked at the time of our Plymouth's being put together. You might already know that the 1959 model year was the last year of use of the plant for passenger car production, too. Dan's mention above of the video of the LA plant should take you through the enjoyment of watching these cars come together on the assembly line. It's quite a show.

Since my car was made at Evansville, I became curious about it long ago and stored up this info in my head, all except for the street names which I just looked up. But it's all there for the viewing. Anyone ever been to Evansville? Maybe some old newspaper entries can be found on the web from around 1959 - 1960 when the plant was closed, should have been big news in a way.

Good luck searching.

BB

Dan - I click on the link for the Maywood plant and I get a message saying I need a Plug-in to watch the video, HELP.
Thanks,
Dick.

Dick,

When I uploaded that video, I had converted it as Microsoft media type - shame on me! It wants to be played by Windows Media Player. If you go to that page from an Internet Explorer browser, it will play. There is a plugin for Chrome, but 1) it won't work on Windows 8, and 2) it will only work on Windows 7 if you have an older version of Chrome.

So for most folks, this means you can only play it if you use the Internet Explorer browser - until your webmaster gets around to converting everything to standard format. Sorry!

Dan

WDJ40 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 07, 2014 9:32 pm As far as Matthew doing a better job on the IBM card than the Chrysler people on decoding the IBM card, Matthew is right.

He can do a better job on it than the Chrysler people. I sent him my Chrysler Build Sheet IBM card and he spent the morning decoding it an he emailed the option list to me.

Larry and or Matthew - may I have a copy of the build card please?

Dan

Dan,

Can you send me your email address and I can send you a jpg photo of the Build Card for my 1959 Plymouth Sport Fury.

Larry

Thanks Larry - my name is my address: dan at 59plymouth dot net.