Quick History: Customizing

Prettying up a car doesn’t seem all that Roadkill. Even so, in the ’50s, the customizers did some really far-out things, and car owners were letting them do it to brand-new cars. Witness Marvin Lee’s ’57 Plymouth Fury, which came from the factory with the stunning Flite-Sweep styling from Virgil Exner’s design department—one that set GM scrambling to scrap the ’58 model after just one year and design an even more space-age ’59 Chevy. Marvin needed Exner times two, and had his fins heightened and elongated.