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Expert
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Location: New Castle PA | Hey gang, some of you will remember the MANY comments about a car that looked like a 1957 Adventurer, but had the short back window of a Firedome. It was bought and went to (where else?) Sweden. Most comments, including my own, were that the car was a Firedome HT cloned out to Adventurer trim. HOWEVER, the buyer sent for the build card, and guess what, it's an Adventurer! That means that someone along the way cut off the roof and installed a Firedome one! Who would have thought it? |
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Location: The Bat Cave, Fairborn, OH | Seems like a drastic measure. :o I can't think of one good reason why someone would want to do that, but if Chrysler Corporation said it was a genuine Adventurer then it must be the explanation. 
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Exner Expert 19,174 posts. Neil passed away 18 Sep 2015. You will be missed, Neil!
Posts: 19146
Location: bishop, ca | Right....but a BETTER (Occam's Razor) explanation may be that there was some sort of factory-involved
mistake or supply problem which created/necessitated this long-roofed 'Venturer.
Ain't (well, hardly--!) nobody, back-then, would have cared much about this car's slight difference in the roof,
and, IF the dealership knew/cared about the anomaly, they could have easily explained it away by saying
that 'this' car was some sort of "Special Model".....(maybe it WAS Special-ordered, and the recipient of the IBM
card-copy hasn't picked-up on that fine point)....or was "ordered" (by someone/the-Dealer) with the long
roof, which serves to protect/cool the interior AND the rear seat occupants' necks from the sun!!!
The above scenario seems to be a lot simpler than the thought that someone would have cut-off the roof and
replaced the glass, too, and the headliner, and re-painted the car, etcetcetc...
...[about to go from 11-stars down to 3-stars...]
Edited by d500neil 2010-07-05 2:43 PM
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Extreme Veteran
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Location: Grenoble - France | Or even simpler: someone had an Adventurer with a very rusty body, and rebuilt/restored it using a Firedome body that was in far better condition (without looking for a Fireflite body). Swap the VIN and the dataplate, and the Firedome becomes an Adventurer. Unless the car is in a strict original condition, it's hard to tell what really happened ... (a clue would be the way the VIN plate and the Dataplate are attached to the car). |
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Exner Expert 19,174 posts. Neil passed away 18 Sep 2015. You will be missed, Neil!
Posts: 19146
Location: bishop, ca | ..Even simpler; yeah, I accede to Frederic's theory.
The Olde switcherooski on the VIN info.
The VIN tag is very easy to remove (just pop it off) and probably just as easy to install on another car.
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Location: New Castle PA | The guy doing the restoration became suspicious that it really WAS an Adventurer because under the paint he uncovered evidence of what looks like correct Adventurer colors, AND the roof DOES appear to have been grafted onto the body. I have pictures of this same car wearing "Firedome" on the quarter panels, and wearing "Adventurer" on the quarters, and pics with the engine having 2 4-barrels and pics of the engine with a single 4-barrel. Methinks (since I know the car's history) that 2 owners ago the guy swapped out the expensive parts to make a few dollars, and then sold the car with Firedome badging. I say that because THAT owner has a body shop, several custom cars, etc. and I suspect he wanted the "goodies" for a hot rod or something. Does seem like a crazy thing to do, but it DOES appear to have been a real Adventurer that had a Firedome roof welded on, possibly from some damage (like something seriously falling onto the car... |
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Location: Skaneateles,NY(summer)/Port St.Lucie,FL(winter) | Where is Miss Marple when you need her?... |
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Location: Under the X in Texas | So, each of you, in your life time, regardless of how many years that is, how many news stories have you seen on TV where a news crew filmed a tree limb that fell onto the roof of a vehicle during a particularly nasty storm? From 1957 to 2009 what are the possibilities that in the tens of thousands of towns and cities and the countryside of America that a tree branch fell onto the roof of an Adventurer and the local body shop only had access to the short window roof from a Firedome or Firesweep or Windsor or Saratoga and did this deed. And if you were the owner of the car and it was say 1965, weren't you just happy that the insurance company was willing to pay for the repair, and not all that fussy about the shape of the back window? Especially in light of how grandma had continuously complained about the heat of the sun coming through that blasted tall back glass of the original design! |
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Location: DFW, TX | This is true. But you would think an Adventurer owner would know at least one 300 guy with a good steel roof leftover from a convertible restoration.   |
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Expert 5K+
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Location: Williams California | StillOutThere - 2010-07-06 6:01 AM
So, each of you, in your life time, regardless of how many years that is, how many news stories have you seen on TV where a news crew filmed a tree limb that fell onto the roof of a vehicle during a particularly nasty storm? From 1957 to 2009 what are the possibilities that in the tens of thousands of towns and cities and the countryside of America that a tree branch fell onto the roof of an Adventurer and the local body shop only had access to the short window roof from a Firedome or Firesweep or Windsor or Saratoga and did this deed. And if you were the owner of the car and it was say 1965, weren't you just happy that the insurance company was willing to pay for the repair, and not all that fussy about the shape of the back window? Especially in light of how grandma had continuously complained about the heat of the sun coming through that blasted tall back glass of the original design!
My thoughts also, Wayne.
I have sold many roofs due to falling tree limbs, it really isn't too uncommon to have that happen.
---John |
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Location: Under the X in Texas | 57burb - 2010-07-06 9:39 AM This is true. But you would think an Adventurer owner would know at least one 300 guy with a good steel roof leftover from a convertible restoration. :bleh: Was that "from a convertible restoration" or from a convertible CREATION? And then there was a certain guy in SW Phoenix who specialized in Forward Look Mopars and particularly liked Adventurers and I wonder how many convertibles he created over a couple of decades. I'll venture a guess that it was in the neighborhood of two or three dozen. Anyone here that owns or owned one of the Bo Malefor convertible clones? And I'm not saying all convertibles that Bo sold were created. He certainly scoured the country widely enough that he came up with and sold real cars as well. But he couldn't find real ones fast enough to sell so he started cutting down coupes and taking rust bucket convertibles and cobbling the two together anyway necessary to make cars for eBay. I'm not writing anything that any old timer around these cars for more than 15-20 years doesn't already know.
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Exner Expert 19,174 posts. Neil passed away 18 Sep 2015. You will be missed, Neil!
Posts: 19146
Location: bishop, ca | W., your 'story' would make sense only in the first 1-2 years of this car's existence.
The insurance carrier would total-out this car in a heartbeat, if the roof got damaged to the point where it
needed replacement.
The owner would have relatively many options on replacing this car with Like-Kind-Quality, and, current-sentimentality
aside, this car was 'just' another (albeit not-cheap) used car, after it was more than 1-year old.
Now-adays, we'd do whatever is necessary to keep our cars rolling.
THEN-adays, nobody cared about an 'old' used car.
I'm NOT 'buying' any argument about how wonderful this particular car was, so that an owner would replace the ROOF, and/but, WITH... a NON-conforming roof, to 'boot'????
If someone cared "so-much" about his/that DeSoto, that he would have gone to the trouble of replacing its roof, he would probably have ensured that a CORRECT replacement roof was installed!
Frederic has the most-probable theory on how this car happens to have its current body/roof system.
I doubt that even P. Garlick would try to invent such an implausible 'story', about how this car got its
'wrong' roof installed on it.
Edited by d500neil 2010-07-06 6:50 PM
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1957 Adventurer THE JOKE'S ON US (no clone!)
