So there we are, quite happily halfway through the middle of the decade of the 1950s. Everything's ticking along nicely, even the Korean War is over and America hasn't yet managed to get wrapped up in Vietnam. The average American in the street is enjoying life and might even be able to afford the poverty-spec version of the latest boulevard bruiser if he puts in a few extra days' overtime. Then, in 1955, everything changes forever. No, we're not talking about the opening of Disneyland in Anaheim nor even the re-release of Rock Around the Clock... nope, on August 8th 1955 the USA announced that it intended to have artificial satellites in space by the newly-announced International Geophysical Year. Russia followed by declaring their same intent four days later. And so the Space Race began.
The International Geophysical Year, 1957 to '58, was grandiosely declared by the international scientific community to herald a new era of scientific collaboration and research the like of which had never been seen. The pure sciences had been cruelly set back by the War in favour of applied science... such as the age-old question "how can I apply this science to blowing up people more efficiently?". The IGY was supposed to reverse this trend. In the event, it did neither... the intransigence of the Cold War ensured there was little co-operation, rather it promoted competition... and the arrival of Solar Cycle 19 of extreme sunspot activity began in 1954 and lasted ten years, with its peak right during the IGY, thus making most study of the cosmos incredibly difficult and misleading.
However, the Space Race gripped the imagination of a generation weaned on superhero comics, Flash Gordon and Dan Dare. The Russians further stimulated the American need to succeed in space by first beating them to the first satellite launch, Sputnik in October of the IGY and then rubbing salt into the wounds by getting the first human into space - Yuri Gagarin in Vostok. The fact that the Russian space vessel was little more than the rocket pack from one of Russia's ICBM missiles with a cockpit rivetted on the front and Gagarin was clearly either the bravest or least imaginative human ever to have lived (perhaps both) was completely lost on the proud and paranoid Americans. Their fever to be the first to the Moon now knew no bounds and there was no antidote to be found and against a background of frenzied suspicion and rampant McCarthyism, the need to beat the Reds infused the very national pysche.
All very interesting social history, maybe, I hear you cry, but what the Sam Hill does all this have to do with cars? Well...
By the end of the decade, American cars were so much a reflection of the national need and yearning toward space that they looked like nothing so much as the type of rocketship piloted by a hundred comic-book heroes and silver screen idols. Proof, if it were needed, can be found in no more iconic or extreme a form than the 1959 Cadillac, sporting the highest fins ever to sprout from a fender. Here are a fine couple by way of example. It wasn't just the fins, either; headlights became jet intakes, tail-lights became spaceship engine exhausts, exhausts became... well, more exhausts
And don't go thinking it was just the shock-and-awe of a top of the range prestige marque like Cadillac who got caught up in it all. Even humble Ford (now that ol man Henry's death-grip on single-model economics had been prized off the reigns) started to space-ify even their blue-collar transport. The Fairlane as far back as '56, for example. Is it a jet intake? Is it an all-American eagle? Is it a rocket? Nahhhh, let's make it all three!
Even Lincoln, choice of Presidents, congressmen and mobsters, were at it. The Premiere ('57), not-so-humbly named, occupied the level just below top-of-the-range (that would be the Continental) but you'd not know to look at it. Rocket thrusters... check. Fins... check. Stars emblazoned all over it...
Buick, as we've already seen, had been mental as a satchel full of badgers for some time, and so it probably should be no surprise when they out-space-ified everyone by giving their range a right going over. In 1957 to '58 everything above the Special got quad headlights, "gunsight" fender markers, "SweepSpear" sidetrim, and most astonishing of all, the "Fashion-Aire Dynastar" grilles. These were made up of around 160 individual metal cubes, all chromed and all with concave faces so that no matter where the light was coming from, they caught it and the whole front looked like a sparkling drift of diamond dust. Or a tawdry club glitter ball, depending on the level of poetry in your soul. How the stylists snuck that one past the bean counters is anyone's guess, but it's fair to say we will never see it's like again
...which Ford then kinda... plagiarised? OK, let's be kind... paid homage to
Of course, every penny counted at Ford and thus they couldn't quite rival Buick's ridiculously excessive use of chrome and stainless mouldings. Because, you see, this particular 1959 Fairlane had the money spent in other areas. It had a special party trick that up until then had literally been the preserve of science fiction... y'see, this one has a special magic word on the B-post that hints at the amazing techno-tour-de-force that lurks within
and LO!
yep, because this particular Ford is a Skyliner. And that meant it was the world's first powered retractable hardtop car. Nowadays it's all passe, of course.. every Merc or Beemer or even bloody Peugeot can do it. But back then it was like... What!? The roof folds away? ON IT'S OWN!? LIKE... A ROBOT!?
It was, quite literally, astonishing, and the fact that it took six electric motors, ten solenoids, four lifting jacks and four lock-out mechanisms for the roof panels, plus a total of 610 FEET of wiring was lost on most admiring bystanders. Oh, and trunk space was reduced to a square in the centre the size of a camera case. which was quite poor for an 18-foot long car really. BUT it's still one of the most awesome things ever to ride four wheels
The retractable roof wasn't the only thing that Ford invented in the mid 50s of course. In a country where you had to call your own father "sir" let alone the father of your date, who you practically had to address with the delicacy and caution normally reserved for visiting heads of state, Ford realised that the car offered a vitally important lifeline in terms of personal liberty and freedom. In short, it was somewhere you could take your bird elsewhere with in order to make out. They didn't even try to replicate the little European sportscars so prevalent on the import scene. Instead they took the look of them and gave it an American twist and so the "personal luxury car" was born. Cleverly avoiding the perceived gimmickry, flimsiness and untried techniques that surrounded the early Corvettes, the Ford Thunderbird (this one's a '55) created a niche where none had previously existed... the Beach Boys sang about how wonderful it was and the lust-addled young men of the States finally had somewhere private to try it on with their lady friends
Never ones to know quite when they were onto a good thing, Ford proceeded to screw it all up before even the decade was over. The second generation of T-Bird was already offering twice as many seats... not because it was better as a four-seater but because Ford execs believed it was cutting their market down to only offer a two-seater, thus ignoring that it had kinda been the whole point all along. No matter, later Thunderbirds such as this '59were still an amazing thing to our eurobox-anaesthetised glamour glands but it just wasn't the
same, y'know? Amusingly enough, some of the suggested names for the original T-Bird at inception - once the usual swoopy speed metaphors were exhausted (Eagle, etc) - included "Hawaiian", "Tropicale" and most bemusingly, "Beaver" and even "The Hep Cat". Oh, I soooooo wish they'd called it the "Hep Cat"
Oldsmobile had done things differently .... their own way... for decades. As we previously mentioned, Ransom E. Olds' Curved Dash was the first real mass-produced car anywhere, ever. They used nitriding in cylinder bores decades before F1 made it sexy. They produced the first post-war OHV Vee-eight motor. But even this grand old icon of science and dependability was getting all giddy in the mid-50s and frisking about like a young colt with a flea in somewhere indelicate. Just check the hood ornament on this '55 Super 88. Oof! Take that, Chevy! Not sure why it has a shrunken head hanging from the mirror, though... maybe that was the last fella wha' trespassed into this here our morass
Over here in ol' Blighty, we were not yet the 51st State of America we've since become, but we couldn't help but have some of their influence rub off nonetheless. This extended to our cars. In 1959 the humble Ford Anglia received a re-design to uplift it from the humdrum utilitarian pootler it had hitherto been. The body was wind-tunnel scuplted, with an impressively low CoED. It had a very American roofline (albeit with a very French swept-in rear screen), sloped bonnet with chrome (American) full-width grille... and most excitingly a new crossflow engine of a rip-snorting 997 very real cubic... errr... centimetres. Hang on, this thread's all about cubic
inches isn't it? That... like.. about 60 CuIn! Or 1¾ pints. Not even a quart! The Yanks wouldn't get milk in that size, let alone engine displacement.
Alright, calm down. For your information, a little brave new 105E Anglia was taken to the Montlhéry speedbowl near Paris and set six speed records for its class, including running non-stop for seven days and nights at over 88mph! Soooo... it's got bold new styling, brave new engine and appealing everyman design. This one... has none of these things
OK, enough silliness! Back to FoMoCo of America, leaving their Dagenham cousins behind... or more accurately, Mercury. Edsel Ford, Henry's son, had created (or taken credit for it anyway) Mercury as a mid-table player to fill the white-collar sales battleground between Lincoln and Ford... a direct opponent to GMC's Buick line, if you will. So many of their products were one or the other in a different set of clothes. Sometimes, something truly spectacular would drop out of the clotheslines on washday though.
Such as this, surely the most inappropriately named vehicle of its era? Even back in 1959 when this preposterous behemoth hit the roads they weren't empty enough to justify calling it a "Commuter"? Commute? You could do house removals with it, and still have room for three generations of descendants inside. And their dogs. And Granny's budgie. And Cousin Cleetus' favourite goat. Rocket thrusters still very much in evidence, you'll note. Wind-down rear tailgate glass is a great touch. Basically, this is a Monterey wagon... as if they weren't big enough to begin with. Superb!
Chrysler, of course, never had the proverbial pot to pee in and thus often had to sit at the sidelines and watch GM, who had the brands and the money to throw around on grand designs, and Ford - who did too but refused to spend it if they could help it - hog the limelight. Poor ol' Chrysler were like the fat kid waiting to be picked at football.... oh, all
right, you can be a defender then... but once in a while they found enough in the coffee pot they saved the coppers in to produce a whizz-banger. And when they did, it had to spread itself across all marques with the minimum of changes. Thus the designers got expert at hiding a cars' identity from Chrysler to Dodge to Plymouth using only minimal trim levels and a clever bit of badging. The downside of this is that when you get a car like this excellent '59 Dodge Coronet now and it's missing trim pieces, your chances of finding replacements are about as good as that fat kid's chance of scoring the winning goal at Wembley
As if by way of proof that the poor ol' Mopars had to muddle along incetuously, we have a great example of the most forgotten of American marques. The brilliantly-named DeSoto Firesweep was the sister car to the Fireflite and Firedome models. Yeah, they went with the Fire motif... Sad that by the end of the '50s the once-proud DeSotos were essentially Dodges with some funky tinsel draped over them, especially since these were the originators of one of the most legendary names in automotive history. Chrysler had developed a special engine during the War for the Republic P47 Thunderbolt fighter plane, and the engine was so efficient and powerful it soon earned a nickname, derived from the hemishperical shape of its combustion chambers. The Hemi was born, and legend is not too strong a word. Initially when brought to its car endeavours, the Chrysler model was called the Firepower V8... and the DeSoto version was the FireDome. Which powered all the range, including the FireSweep. So yes, it might be a warmed-over Coronet, but they don't look bad either, do they?
Coming up in our next enthralling installment, we leave the 50s behind and enter probably the most exciting decade the worlds' ever seen in terms of sheer enthusiasm and horsepower. Stay tuned, Hep cats!
