Photo: Rocket Restorations | YouTube
This 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Convertible was salvaged from an abandoned dealership in Iowa. It was sitting on the showroom floor missing an entire front end and several other components. Someone hauled it home and is now trying to put the pieces back together and rebuild the car.
Tom Hergert, a Mopar rebuilder and owner of Rocket Restorations and a YouTube channel, purchased this 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Convertible, which is, as he says, a giant jigsaw puzzle. It’s missing body panels and several other components.
But Tom has the fenders at home. The donor for those is from a 1958 Plymouth Savoy. He found another closed dealership that had a pretty impressive stock of parts for the 1958 Fury and 1958 Savoy, which are a perfect match.
Tom took those fenders on his last trip to California last year. Now, he can only hope the rest of the pieces are piled up in the back seat. They're not just from this car, though.
Among them he also finds a Plymouth Fury badge, along with a Fury grille. He can't use them on the Belvedere puzzle, so they'll most likely end up on eBay.
Photo: Rocket Restorations | YouTube
The 1957 Plymouth Belvedere was parked in an abandoned dealership that closed in 1972. But the car probably hadn't been out since 1968.
The first thing he puts back together is the front end, along with the fenders. He also has several sets of headlights to complete that front fascia. He will need to find the radiator grille in the parts pile. He also has the front fins that are located on the top side of the fenders. The Savoy taillights are next.
The 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Convertible was powered by a 318-cubic-inch (5.2-liter) V8 engine, which produced 230 horsepower (233 metric horsepower) and 340 foot-pounds (461 Newton meters) of torque in its North American specification. This was enough to propel the car from 0 to 60 mph in 8.6 seconds and cover the quarter mile in 16.4 seconds.
Tom says he'd love to keep the Plymouth for himself. But he has other projects coming up. The next thing he'll be working on is a Plymouth Superbird. So, the rebuilt car is now for sale through Rocket Restorations in Olympia, Washington.
A Plymouth of this type usually sells for an average of $53,900, according to classic.com. However, a well-maintained, low-mileage example can fetch as much as $68,000. That’s not the case with this 1957 Belvedere Convertible, though.
The model is a far cry from the one that rolled off the assembly line 67 years ago. For starters, it has the fenders of the Plymouth Fury and the taillights of the Plymouth Savoy.
