1950 Plymouth Deluxe Fastback
VIN.: 18109531
Engine: P20 (inconsistent with the serial number/VIN) (6-cylinder)
Exterior Color: Black
Interior Color: Gray
Assembly Plant: Detroit, Michigan
Assembly Date: October 30, 1950
Ship Date: November 1, 1950
Dealership: Bishop, McCormick & Bishop, Mineola, New York
Original Purchase Date: November 16, 1950 (Delivered November 20, 1950)
My Ownership: April 2011–March 2021
Backstory
Plymouth entered the mid-twentieth century heralding its “Beautifully New Plymouth” lineup for 1950. Late in the calendar year, a Long Island Beach, New York, resident, Morrison T. Hankins, celebrated the start of his fifth decade as a lawyer by special-ordering a new 1950 Plymouth DeLuxe Fastback from the Bishop, McCormick & Bishop Dodge and Plymouth dealer in Mineola, New York. With his $500 deposit, he specified a black two-door Deluxe, with directional signals, overdrive, and a heater/defroster, for delivery “as soon as possible.” When Mr. Hankins placed his order on November 16, the car that would be his was already in transit, having been built on October 30 and shipped from Detroit to New York on November 1. Mr. Hankins took delivery of his Fastback on November 20, 1950.
The car itself is a bit of an oddity: the serial number and wheelbase identify a P19 base model; however, the engine number, some of the interior trim, and the $1,720.95 purchase price indicate a P20 long-wheelbase version. Chrysler Archives has no explanation for the discrepancy, other than that it was assembled so late in the model year that perhaps only P20 stamped engines were available.
A native New Yorker, Morrison Tenbroek Hankins traced his American lineage back to 1689. Born in Hempstead, Long Island, in 1882, he attended public schools in Boston and returned to New York in 1898, where he worked as a stenographer for American Telephone and Telegraph Company while attending night classes at Brooklyn Law School. He graduated in 1908, earned a Master of Law degree in 1909, and became a lawyer for the AT&T legal staff. In 1915, he joined the New York law firm of Hervey, Barber & McKee, where he
practiced trademark and patent law for the next 45 years. He and his family were among the first residents of the western end of Long Beach Island, where he lived from 1919 until shortly before his death, at the age of 82, in 1962.
Mr. Hankins drove his car for almost 10 years, and then transferred title to his son, Samuel, a U.S. Air Force officer stationed in Texas and later residing in Westfield, New Jersey. In 1991, Samuel transferred ownership to a nephew in Ogdensberg, New York. The nephew sold the vehicle in late 2000 to a retired Marine Corps officer, who transported the car by trailer to his home outside Cincinnati, Ohio. The new owner performed a complete restoration and then sold the re-born Plymouth in late 2009 to an Oregon resident, who after a few months of ownership offered it for sale. I purchased the Fastback in early 2011 from a Jaguar dealership in Portland, Oregon.
Bishop, McCormick & Bishop was once one of New York’s largest and oldest automobile dealers, with showrooms in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jamaica, Long Island City, and Mineola. Founded by Eli Bishop in 1904 to sell Maxwells (which became the foundation of the Chrysler Corporation), the firm sold Fords in 1906 and became a Dodge dealer when the Dodge Brothers started their company in 1914. After Chrysler purchased Dodge in 1924, the dealership continued as a Dodge dealer and later added Plymouth in the 1930s. The company dissolved in 1954.
