Lamley Daily: ’57 Plymouth Fury Pro Stock (Legends)

Hey all. This is Doomus_RLC. Some of this blogs readers may know me from Instagram and the HWC/RLC message boards. Check out my IG if you’d like. This is my first article for Lamley Group, I will likely do a “proper” introduction at some point.

But on to the goods…

In the late 1990s, Hot Wheels had a line called “Legends”. Now these weren’t your run-of-the-mill Hot Wheels. These were highly detailed replicas, perhaps akin to what Autoworld and Greenlight do today, and better quality than Racing Champions at the time. This was a precursor to the general retail Cool Collectibles and later 100% lines. These sets weren’t cheap, either, I believe at a cost of over $100. There were four 4-car sets: Boyd Coddington, Barris Customs, Vintage Record Holders and 40th Anniversary Of Signature ’57s.

That last set included the following: ’57 Cadillac Eldorado, ’57 Ford Fairlane, ’57 Chevy Funny Car, and this ’57 Plymouth Fury Pro Stock dragster. It was actually modeled after a real Plymouth Fury, built by Al Scheib, some time between late 1988 and early 1992 (it was featured in the July 1992 issue of Chrysler Power Magazine). The real deal actually has an engine from one of the funny cars Parnelli Jones raced in the 70s. Even with that engine, this thing is street legal. Last I knew, it was sitting in the Petersen Automotive Museum vault (captured in a picture from Autoblog), though it had been sold a couple times at auction (once at Barrett-Jackson, and once through RM Sotheby’s for an insanely low price).

This Hot Wheels version of the car is practically perfect to me. For some of the earliest examples at a true “premium” Hot Wheels release, they knocked it out of the park on this one.

The real shame is that the Fury only got used twice: this one shown here, and a 2001 100% release in bright red. But no other idea that HW could have come up with would beat this wine-maroon original.