In 1951, Plymouth joined the Motor City’s pillarless hardtop craze with the otherwise extremely conservative Cranbrook Belvedere.

It’s interesting to reflect that when the pillarless hardtop movement swept through the Detroit auto industry starting in 1949, the automakers often chose special names for the trendy new body style. Rather than simply a hardtop, at Buick the name was Riviera. At Ford, Victoria. At Chevrolet, Bel Air, and so on. It suggests the automakers saw the new body style as glamorous and exotic in a way we might not totally appreciate today.

Plymouth embraced this naming convention when it introduced its own contribution to the hardtop craze in 1951, the Belvedere—Italian for “beautiful view”. We wouldn’t be the first to note that Chrysler products of the early ’50s featured tall and stiffly conservative styling. Accordingly, here the pillarless roof and greenhouse don’t have quite the same impact as on other makes.

At the Chrysler Corporation, the starchy design philosophy worked from the top down. K.T. Keller, president  from 1935 to 1950, held some firm opinions on automotive styling. Mainly, he didn’t think much of it. In his strictly utlilitarian view, a man should be able to wear a hat behind the wheel; that was the important thing. Reportedly he once declared, “We build cars to sit in, not to pee over.”

For 1951, the Belvedere was offered only on the top-of-the-line Cranbrook model, and like the other Detroit hardtops, it featured special upholstery and interior appointments, including rear armrests and a small courtesy lamp in each interior C-pillar. Due to the limitations in glassmaking at the time, the backlite was made in three pieces. Introduced on March 31, 1951, almost three months after the rest of the Plymouth line, the Belvedere was priced at $2,114, a fat $318 more than the two-door post Club Coupe and only $108 less than the convertible. Still, it sold in reasonable numbers.

The Cranbrook Belvedere was continued for 1952 (below) with few changes of note but for one: an unusual “Saddleback” two-tone paint scheme in a limited number of color combinations. Plymouth styling wouldn’t really hit its stride until 1955 with the Forward Look theme, when the Belvedere name was expanded from a body style to a full product line that included sedans, a convertible, and a station wagon.