The “Mayhem” in “Matchbox Mopar Mayhem” is there for alliterative purposes only. I couldn’t help myself.

This little video was fun to do, but was more complicated then I planned. It tested my ability to get close-ups of tiny objects. I found that my phone did a reasonable job, but there is some weird artifacting - a matrix of small circles - happening in the close-ups of the packaged cars.

There a few things I was wrong about:

1. I went back to the Walmart and discovered that the cars are only 87₵ not 97₵ as I stated. At that price they will fly out of the store. And they did! Most of them were gone. The ones that cost $2.50 and up (some were $6.00!) still filled their racks.

2. And I discovered they still make Superfasts.

3. And I said my Superfast was a 1965, it is actually a 1961. I knew that, but my mouth kept saying ’65.

Chrysler design soared in the second half of the ’50’s and crashed in a flaming mess in the early ’60’s. The designs for the 1961 and 1962 Chrysler products were affected by Virgil Exner’s (the head of design) heart attack. And there were a lot of other issues that swirled around the design decisions of the 1962 models. They are one of those great “What if . . .” moments in automobile history.

If you have the stomach for it, you can see some great photos of the clays for the 1962 Chrysler line up at:

https://www.shannons.com.au/library/n...

The author of the article hates the designs. But rather like them and I think they had great potential. But a lot of the decoration is questionable. And the Chrysler signal lights are pretty bad. But I’m certain the ’63's would have ironed out those problems.

Music:
"Opportunity Walks" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...