Jim Kennedy’s Car Collection

This Plymouth Belvedere convertible was special-ordered by a gentleman in Bergenfield, New Jersey, as a second wedding anniversary present for his wife, a dance instructor and former Radio City Music Hall Rockette. The couple had looked at other vehicles, including a Chevy Chevelle, before settling on the Belvedere. The Belvedere principally saw use in local town parades and in promotional events for the wife’s dance studio. In the Summer of 1995, the couple and the car relocated to Florida, where the lack of air conditioning made the Belvedere a less-than-desirable mode of transportation. In 2010, the couple sold the car to an acquaintance who owned an auto sales store in Central Illinois.

When I spotted the Belvedere in an on-line ad, I already owned a Plymouth from the 1960s (the 1969 Fury III). While my collection was almost complete, it did not yet include a convertible. I also didn’t have a vehicle from the first year in my lifetime that the Boston Red Sox went to the World Series (and lost—as they always did in the World Series in the 20th Century). And oh, yeah—it was blue, and I like the color blue. As with the 1950s and 1970s, almost any rationalization would justify my doubling up on the Plymouths representing any particular decade in my collection.

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Frey Motors served New Jersey’s Bergen County as an authorized Chrysler-Plymouth dealership, from the same N. Washington Avenue location in Bergenfield, since Otto R. Frey (1911–1989), a native of Sweden, opened his business in 1936. The dealership continued operating into the mid-1990s, then under the leadership of a younger Frey generation, Robert and Kenneth. Its last newspaper advertisement, proclaiming “57 Years of the Best Deals,” ran in the June 29, 1994 edition of The Recorder (Hackensack, New Jersey); by early December, a Nissan dealership occupied the Frey showroom location.

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