Maybe they’re not trying to deceive us. I’m not really sure. But it’s not often I’ll find an old brochure photo that’s in a location I know exactly and have been before, so I was excited, you see.
Also, I want to note how strange it is to see such an aggressive name like “Fury” rendered in that wedding-invite script up there. But 1970s typography loved that crap, especially for car badging. That’s just about extinct now. Also note the no-break-a-nail bit in the text there, too. I guess that was once an issue? In the interior shots, it’s the location that has been pasted in. They cut out the background of whatever studio they were shooting in, and pasted the train station into the door and window openings. Honestly, it’s super-duper common. Maybe half of the vintage car ads shown in Cold Starts here use some cutting and pasting. It’s just much easier to do your shooting in the studio (or in the lot out back, if you want some tree reflections on the hood of the car) and then use a stock photo for whatever location you want the car to be in. The 318 and 360 mentioned in the brochure were good engines, though the 400 was less popular. The 360 (5.9-liter) went into a lot of trucks, but there was a special 4-bbl 360 that was available in the police package for the Dodge Diplomat; the option code for that was E58. I can feel my thighs sizzling on that green vinyl after a day at the shore. Also, seeing Fury in fancy script reminds me of our wedding invitations, which also looked incongruous with our reception venue’s name–The Yellow Brick Toad. The little girl. She’s going to kill them all. How’s that for a shocking twist? Call me, Netflix. Dukes of Hazard, Hill Street Blues, that kind of thing. And I think it was in the shopping mall scene in The Blues Brothers. I would LOVE to drive one, just to see what it was like. My goodness, the malaise era was strong in those Chrysler B bodies.
