Identify car from picture

[Missouri2758]

hi

First post here

 

I was hoping someone might be able to ident the make a model of this car from the attached picture.

I'm in the UK and have no such knowledge.

The only thing i managed to work out was it was registered in Missouri.

 

Thank you for your time and expertise.

 

 

[TerryB]

1956 Ford

[Missouri2758]

hi

 

Do you think its a 1956 ford  Customline 

[TerryB]

The trim on the side of the car is basic so Customline is probably correct, I’m a Chevrolet guy so I’m not up on all the Ford models ?

[capngrog]

 

What happened to the roof and windows?  Were they chopped off in reality, or cropped photographically?

 

Cheers,

Grog

[Rusty_OToole]

The 2 door body and side trim says this is a 1956 Ford Customline Victoria 2 door hardtop.

 

License plate suggests the picture was taken in early 1960 in Missouri. Confirmed by the snow and muck on the car. Odd stance, dented fender, partly open door  and missing hubcaps suggest this was taken from an accident photo with background and caved in roof cropped out.

Edited May 20, 2018 by Rusty_OToole (see edit history)

[Lebowski]

[keiser31]

1956 Customline two door hardtop. Not Victoria.

[capngrog]

20 minutes ago, Rusty_OToole said:

The 2 door body and side trim says this is a 1956 Ford Customline Victoria 2 door hardtop.

 

License plate suggests the picture was taken in early 1960 in North Dakota. Confirmed by the snow and muck on the car. Odd stance, dented fender, partly open door  and missing hubcaps suggest this was taken from an accident photo with background and caved in roof cropped out.

 

I agree that this is an accident photo that has been extensively cropped.  Judging by the scrape marks on top of the left rear fender, this car may have been rolled over in a traffic crash.

 

The license plate appears to be a Missouri license plate and not a North Dakota plate.   From a quick googol search of 1956 - 1961 North Dakota plates, it seems that all of these plates have the state name, "North Dakota" spelled out across the top of the plate.  The format of the plate on the Ford in the O.P.'s photo follows that of Missouri plates of the period.  For example, typical Missouri plate of the era is shown in the attachment below.

 

Cheers,

Grog

 

 

[Missouri2758]

hi

 

Thanks guys for all the info

 

more than i ever expected

 

thanks

[Rusty_OToole]

Weren't all Ford 2 door hardtops called Victorias in 56?

 

I did correct the state ID after enlarging the photo and seeing it was MO not ND. Something about the tires bothered me from the first, I think I figured it out. The car was upside down on its roof when the picture was taken. That is why the tires are perfectly round and there is no sign of them sitting on the ground.

 

If the car was upside down and gas spilled out of the filler pipe behind the license plate that would explain the stains on the trunk lid.

 

What I thought was snow and frost more likely dirt and dust from skidding and rolling on a dirt road.

 

Still curious about where the photo came from  and what it is about. Maybe the OP will enlighten us.

Edited May 20, 2018 by Rusty_OToole (see edit history)

[Paul Dobbin]

Keiser31 always know make model & serial number!   Probably saw the car in his town last week and photographed it too.  

Thanks Keiser31.

Edited May 20, 2018 by Paul Dobbin
Added some Bull---- (see edit history)

[DLynskey]

I believe the car is on its top in the water. 

 

A Customline Victoria (2-door hardtop without the center post) would be a rare car. More likely it is a 2-door sedan with the center post.

 

Don

[Pomeroy41144]

3 hours ago, Missouri2758 said:

hi

 

Thanks guys for all the info

 

more than i ever expected

 

thanks

 

 

So what happened here?  How about some back story?  

[Guest]

I agree, this is the proper orientation of this photo. There appears to be damage consistent with a roll over. I don't think the right rear tire would be lit so well if the car were photographed upright.

 

On another note, 1956 was Ford's introduction year for the Life Guard safety features including the first double action door latch, to keep doors closed in an accident so occupants were not ejected, which looks to have served it's proper purpose in this instance.

Edited May 20, 2018 by GregLaR (see edit history)

[capngrog]

2 hours ago, Rusty_OToole said:

 

 The car was upside down on its roof when the picture was taken. That is why the tires are perfectly round and there is no sign of them sitting on the ground.

 

If the car was upside down and gas spilled out of the filler pipe behind the license plate that would explain the stains on the trunk lid.

 

What I thought was snow and frost more likely dirt and dust from skidding and rolling on a dirt road.

 

Rusty, I think that you are again correct in your assessment.  Not only are the tires not exhibiting contact load flattening (I just made that term up) as you observed, the suspension appears to be unloaded.

 

That's an excellent observation on the gas spillage pattern, and I think you're right.

 

7 minutes ago, GregLaR said:

I agree, this is the proper orientation of this photo. There appears to be damage consistent with a roll over. I don't think the right rear tire would be lit so well if the car were photographed upright.

 

Greg, that looks to be close to the real orientation of this photo.  It also explains the further fuel staining of the trunk lid apart from that immediately beneath the fuel filler pipe. 

 

Good detective work guys.  I think that the NTSB is hiring.

 

Cheers,

Grog

[keiser31]

I stand (sit) corrected on the Victoria designation. Thanks for the lesson.

[capngrog]

Just to add another guess to this puzzle, I think that the rollover was to the right, judging from the scratches on top of the left rear fender and the position of the door indicating that the roof was displaced to the right.  This could have occurred when the car was first rolling 180° from its initial upright orientation.  I would guess that the car rolled at least 1-1/2 times and came to rest upside down (per Rusty's and Greg's comments).

 

Maybe, maybe not ...

 

Cheers,

Grog

[Guest]

capn,

             Now you got me looking a little closer at this image and I see something I'd missed before.

I wonder if this isn't a crash test car? It appears to have the tire markings front and rear exactly like the test cars of that era had.

However, that doesn't explain the standard issue license plate.

[capngrog]

52 minutes ago, GregLaR said:

capn,

             Now you got me looking a little closer at this image and I see something I'd missed before.

I wonder if this isn't a crash test car? It appears to have the tire markings front and rear exactly like the test cars of that era had.

However, that doesn't explain the standard issue license plate.

 

Greg,

 

I was wondering about those marks myself but forgot all about the practice of making such marks on crash test vehicle tires.  I was thinking that maybe due to unusually high sideways forces, the tires contacted a part of the frame ... or sumthin'.

 

Maybe not.

 

Cheers,

Grog

 

P.S.  The bottom (color) image looks like some plastic model car that someone selectively and skillfully melted.

[Rusty_OToole]

Tire markings and lack of hubcaps combined with crash damage suggest a crash test car. But license plate and gas in the tank argue against.  Also the lack of checkerboard markings on the side of the car and the amount of dirt argue against a controlled crash. Then there is the fact that this is a flash photo taken at night. So, maybe the did some very peculiar crash tests in Missouri in 1960 or maybe there is some other explanation. The OP could provide details of where the photo came from but apparently he blew as soon as he got his answer.

[SC38dls]

Let’s do a tv version. The driver that crashed the car stole it from the test site and put plates on it to fool the police. The fire department had to cut the roof off the car to extricate the victim. The police photographer took a flash picture and when he popped the bulb out of the flash it landed in the spilled gas setting the scene on fire, destroying all the evidence of the crime. Dan Matthews (Broaderick Crawford) of Highway Patrol walks away mad ! 

You have a better idea? 

Dave S 

[Guest]

Best explanation I've heard. ?

[Missouri2758]

hi 

I wanted to spare you the gory details... Its from a photgraph that was the source for an Andy Warhol piece of art. 

 

Hers the source picture

 

To me it all looks a bit odd ..so i'm trying to track it in newspapers

 

[mike6024]

Great. Love it.

 Orange Crash car 14 times 1963

http://www.moma.org/collection/works/79223

 

In 1962 Warhol began to cull images of tragic frontpage news stories. He silkscreened this image of a fatal car accident fourteen times. Warhol's distance from the work’s making parallels his diffusion of this gruesome image through repetition and deterioration. 

 

 

 

Andy Warhol  –  Orange Disaster, silkscreen , 1963

The above painting is part of the ‘disaster and death’ series by Andy Warhol. It’s a screen print from a photograph of a fatal car crash. The whole death and disaster series includes paintings that range from car crashes to suicides and the famous electric chair prints (below). Warhol took these pictures from tabloid newspapers and police records, the series wasn’t well recieved initialy because of their disturbing subject matter.

 

http://coralhnd.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/warhol-death-distaster/

 

 Warhol, himself obsessively fixated with the fragility of existence, here scrutinizes the public face of a private disaster and questions why anonymous victims are elevated to celebrity through their appointment with death. 
Within the painting, the corporeal indications of five bodies are discernible: the man and woman emerging from the car's windows at the right of the image; the woman staring starkly out through the car's rear windscreen; the rear view of a body's trunk behind her; and the ominous hand drooping behind the car's rear wing at the left of the image. The undercarriage and main chassis of the stylized two-tonne automobile are cleanly silhouetted against the night sky. That this metallic expanse seemingly remains largely unscathed emphasizes the vehicle's massive form and accentuates the crushing effect of its weight on its mangled window frames and occupants. Intertwined with the deformed metal superstructure, jointly sprawled across the asphalt concrete, are the twisted human bodies: man and machine fused through mundane catastrophe. Thus one of the great symbols of 1950s and 1960s America, a facilitator of individualism and a key signifier of social mobility, the automobile, becomes the devastating spectre of indiscriminate fatality. As Neil Printz relates, "the car crash turns the American dream into a nightmare" (Neil Printz in: Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, Menil Collection, Andy Warhol: Death and Disasters, 1988, p. 16). 5 Deaths reveals the flipside of the consumerist ideal and shows the version that the advertising campaigns don't mention.

 

Edited May 21, 2018 by mike6024 (see edit history)

[Spinneyhill]

It looks staged to me. The man and woman appear to be up on their elbows, the woman looking to the right (her left) and the man looking back under the car.

[Bill Harmatuk]

Has anyone noticed the serrated edges of the body where top was.? Also notice the area with the |__|--|__|--|__|--|__.

Looks like the picture and not the metal was cut.

Flattened tail pipe.?

Scratches on top of the left rear tail fin.?

Tires do not match front to back. It was not new. Was a driven vehicle.

I think the right front of the car was torn off by the looks of the left front damage.

 

My 2 cents.

 

Bill H

[Missouri2758]

hi

 

This is all very exciting

Is there a way of researching the number plate. here in the uk you can request documents applying to your classic car. It lists previous owners and things like that

[Mark Gregory]

Does anyone see the Policeman's hand on the left side of the car and his polished shoes ?

[mike6024]

Here's how the photograph was supposedly found:

 

United Press International (UPI) photograph that served as the source image for the Five Deaths paintings Archives of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
 

The source for 5 Deaths was an 8 by 10 inch glossy black-and-white photograph distributed by United Press International, and discovered by Warhol's assistant Gerard Malanga amongst piles of news agency photos in a bookstore on 7th Avenue and 23rd Street. Despite the horror of the scene before him, the photojournalist has intuitively cropped the image through the view finder to engender narrative and provide an aesthetically satisfying picture according to compositional convention. 

 

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2008/contemporary-art-evening-auction-l08022/lot.26.html

[keiser31]

Well....one other thing that we see is that the car was a two-door post model.

[mike6024]

3 hours ago, Mark Gregory said:

Does anyone see the Policeman's hand on the left side of the car ... ?

 

Yes, policeman is kneeling and checking for a pulse on the woman's arm, and also that is the four fingers dangling.

 

"; and the ominous hand drooping behind the car's rear wing at the left of the image."

 

But maybe it was a Los Angeles car crash according to this source, even though the license plate says MO.

 

 The appropriated photograph depicts a Los Angeles car accident, the overturned car weighing down upon five victims, two of whom appear to still be alive despite the painting’s title alluding otherwise. 

Edited May 21, 2018 by mike6024 (see edit history)

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Spinneyhill said:

It looks staged to me. The man and woman appear to be up on their elbows, the woman looking to the right (her left) and the man looking back under the car.

If this is a staged scene, and I think it might be as well, it would certainly explain the painted tire markings.

[Lebowski]

Here's another weird fatality accident photo from the last page of a car magazine from the '50s. (I don't remember which one.) The photo speaks for itself and is meant to remind their readers not to race, drink and drive, etc. I don't think it's staged but it is pretty hard to believe that the driver could have ended up where he did....

 

 

[mike6024]

Were tires ever marked like that, other than for crash-test vehicles?

[Guest]

I've seen them marked at race tracks as well.

They used do it at the drags. They'd film the launch then watch it back in slo-mo time to see how much slippage or tires spin they had. It was easy to read with a wide paint mark on the tire, similar the marks on the OP's Ford.

[Missouri2758]

hey  

Lebowski

any idea at all which magazine thats from.

Warhol used a similar image for another one of his disaster series

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Car_Crash

 

I can confirm the Newsweek article but am yet to find it in the newspaper archieve

 

 

[JACK M]

Staged? Maybe, as one of the victims seem to be looking at the camera.

 The cop behind the car is obviously stooping down with one elbow on his knee (hand showing) and checking pulse of what looks to be the girls wrist.

She has a coat for her head in place and seems to be noting the camera.

However she has the look of nobody home in here eyes.

And who would climb into that car with that fuel spilling out of the fill?

The two climbing out confuses me as they do look staged being beside each other, but they have a look of bewilderment on their faces. They also look to be crawling over what may be the windshield rubber but no glass around. Also no glass from the rear window.

Still a mystery I guess.

[AURktman]

On 5/22/2018 at 12:45 PM, JACK M said:

Staged? Maybe, as one of the victims seem to be looking at the camera.

 The cop behind the car is obviously stooping down with one elbow on his knee (hand showing) and checking pulse of what looks to be the girls wrist.

She has a coat for her head in place and seems to be noting the camera.

However she has the look of nobody home in here eyes.

And who would climb into that car with that fuel spilling out of the fill?

The two climbing out confuses me as they do look staged being beside each other, but they have a look of bewilderment on their faces. They also look to be crawling over what may be the windshield rubber but no glass around. Also no glass from the rear window.

Still a mystery I guess.

If you look just above the head of the girl, it appears to be someone else next to her on the left.  It looks like a male sitting upright (upside down if in the car if it were upright) and he is a bit squashed by the car. I believe it’s his arm that the police officer is checking the pulse. 

It looks pretty real, but I doubt there were 5 fatalities unless they all died at the hospital.