How Stephen King's 'Christine' Made 1958 Plymouth Furies Cool

It never came in red. The 1958 Plymouth Fury was only ever produced in one color: Buckskin Beige, with gold trim. This palette, reminiscent of a butter cream wedding cake, was axed in Stephen King's novel "Christine" for a fictitious shade called Autumn Red, which is much more appropriate for the story's eponymous, killer car. 

At its best, car casting makes a movie better. Christine — a '58 Fury — is a great example. Obsessed with her, high schooler Arnie Cunningham transforms from dork to demon over the course of a few hundred pages — or 110 minutes on the big screen, which is our focus here. If you haven't watched the John Carpenter treatment of the book, go ahead. We'll wait. Spoiler alert: Christine is evil. 

Once you've seen it, the red '58 Plymouth Fury will be etched on the back of your eyelids. It might haunt your nightmares, just as it has ours. It will also seem undeniably cool — which it wasn't really, in pop culture terms, until the film came out.  

For King, this was the appeal. According to a 1984 interview with Lofficier, he chose the Plymouth "because they're almost totally forgotten cars ... I didn't want a car that already had a legend attached to it like the fifties Thunderbird, the Ford Galaxies." With that, the Fury went from invisible to iconic. Today, Hagerty values a Concours example at around $80,000, while one of two locatable survivors from the film, formerly on display at the Rochester Auto Museum, fetched $275,000 at a Saratoga Motorcar auction in 2020. 

Chevrolet produced roughly 1 million of its full-size 1958 coupes and sedans. Christine was a much rarer bird. Around 325,000 '58 Plymouth coupes and sedans were made, in three escalating trim flavors: Plaza, Savoy, and Belvedere. The Fury was a sports package added to the Belvedere. Only around 5,000 were assembled.  

Filmmakers cobbled a number of Christines together from over 20 different Savoys and Belvederes, and a single Fury. Only three original film cars survived: the Rochester car; a restored stunt car, currently on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum; and a third that disappeared after being part of an MTV raffle. The best known parts-built restoration, a Belvedere owned by a collector, has its own Facebook page, travels the country, and has an uncannily macabre build date of Halloween, 1957.

That cult following, combined with the low production volume, is part of what makes the '58 Fury such a cool, desirable collector car. '57 Chevy Bel Airs are iconic and cool, but they're all over the place. '58 Impalas are rarer than those, and arguably cooler, but still pop up frequently enough. If you're looking for a '58 Fury, know that Bring a Trailer has sold one. Hemmings lists none. Belvederes are a slightly better bet, and almost as cool as a Fury.

It's a stunning car. Full stop. In the film, Christine's red paint and now-I'm-angry pitch-black window tint set off the chrome body trim and the wedge of textured aluminum that runs to the modest tail fin. The contrasting white roof floats, and connects delicately to the body on the A and C pillars. The interior is awash in a gorgeous mix of glossy plastics, upholstery, and chrome. Knowing the real Fury only came in beige feels wrong, just like when modern cars deserve a better color palette. 

But the beige works! And the gold trim is also a nod to what's possibly under the hood: Plymouth's optional 350-cubic-inch V8, packing 305 horsepower and 370 pound-feet of torque, called the Golden Commando. What does that name even mean? Does it matter? Never mind that the film actually used engine sounds from a 1970 Mustang 428 Super Cobra Jet. Golden. Commando. And is there a better name for a raging, demonic car than Fury?

The '58 Fury also featured either an automatic transmission with push button selectors, or a three-speed manual; an optional limited-slip differential; and a sophisticated suspension. At the time, Hot Rod called it "the number one full-size road car in this country in our opinion."  

Car collectors are typically up on the rare and underappreciated, and would likely be all over the '58 Fury, with or without "Christine." But Christine is not an underrated movie car, and because of it, a remarkably cool car for its time is now one of pop culture's coolest cars of all time.