It was a cold, blustery night in Auburn Hills, Michigan deep in the winter of 1958. The kind of night that the wind is like a knife that cuts you to the bone and the snow is swirling in front of your face so much you can’t feel your nose.

Three random strangers dressed in expensive suits with skinny ties are sitting at the bar in a smoky dive called Rochester’s, where they’ve ducked in to get out of the storm. Because fate is a mistress with a wry sense of humor, Virgil Exner, John Glenn, and Dean Martin end up talking and drinking together although they’ve never met before.

Glenn looks over at Exner who has a dozen different napkins spread out before him, each covered with shapes and lines drawn in black ink. “What are you working on?” he asks Exner.

Exner glances over, “The ’61 Plymouth. I pulled out all the stops for the ’60. Don’t know how I’m going to top it.”

“Show me what you’ve got,” Glenn tells him.

Exner shoves the napkin over to Glenn who gives it the once-over. “This is the space age, man. You need to ratchet back the outside and rocket up the inside. Raise the back of the driver’s seat and make him feel like he’s about to blast off. Throw enough buttons, knobs, and pods on that dashboard to make John Q. Public think he’s on his way to the moon, not the supermarket.”

“You think?” Exner says.

“Trust me.” Glenn shoots back.

The whiskey continues to flow.

“Give me that.” Martin looks up and says. “What it needs is a record player. Right there under the dash.”

“It’s a Plymouth, not a jukebox!” Exner snorts.

“Two things give you a shot with women,” Martin slyly shares. “Your car and your music. Combine those two in just the right way and women will consider childbirth a pleasure.”

Exner sketched in a Hi-way Hi-Fi.

“And kill the fins,” Glenn said. “The P-38 was a decade ago. This is the Jet-Age. Make the back end of that thing smooth as cream gravy.” Exner scratched the fins off. “That’s it.” Glenn said. “Now put a silver rocket on each side of the backend to hold a taillight.”

“Seriously?” Exner said.

“Here. Give me the damn pen,” Glenn said. And he sketched in rockets for taillights while Martin started singing ‘Fly Me to the Moon’. It gave him an idea.

“What if you make the back window go all the way up into the roof so a couple in the backseat could gaze up into the heavens to set the mood?” the crooner questioned.

Exner went to work.

Three mid-century icons, three sheets to the wind, waiting out a snowstorm had just knocked out the new Fury faster than a scalded cat.

“I’m still not sure of the front end,” Exner mused.

Leaning in to get a closer look, Martin spilled his whiskey all over the napkin, causing the ink to run and the shapes to all meld and blend organically.

“That’s perfect!” Exner shouted. “Like nothing else on the road!”

For some reason, it was a one-year-only design.