Some Saturday What's it, Big 3, Mopar Madness.

[Gunsmoke]

Pulled these off my FB page today, thought they were all interesting. The first shows the dominance of the Big 3 in mid '50's, the second shows the utter madness of MOPAR in late 1950's when lipstick and earrings sold cars.

[dustycrusty]

The local Chevy dealer musta been having a year-end blowout sale on '55s!

 

Luckily for the leader of this parade, when he gets to the levee on the outskirts of town, it will be dry...

[TerryB]

The 1955 Chevrolet was a huge sales success as seen in the photo.  I had some 1955-56 car magazines and they heaped praise on the 1955 Chevrolet and it’s new V8 engine.  The 1956 magazines liked the redesigned front on the Chevrolet over the 1955 offering and some other minor changes that were made.  As a gas station jockey I hated the gas filler on the 56, it always developed an air bubble in the tank and shot gas back at you.

 

The Chrysler tails in the late fifties seemed like excess to me back then and still do on some of those makes today.  The 1957 Chrysler had a decent but large integrated fin, the others were just odd in a Chrysler kind of way.

[Gunsmoke]

I've always been puzzled by the sheer extravagance and frivolousness of the MOPAR rearends of the time, who was in charge of sketching out and developing these obviously expensive yet impractical concoctions. Since all such contraptions were typically one year (and even one model) only, the specialist shops making all the chrome and glass pieces must have been kept pretty busy. such foolish excess. Must be a real challenge to restore any of these.

[The 55er]

Another good argument for buying that special car that was already restored in the past vs. trying to restore a deteriorated long-term basket case project today........some of those little gingerbread trim pieces on the 1956 Dodge D500 alone (tailfin pic, center row left) might be unobtanium.........and then there are the left and right sides, front & rear plastic emblems etc. Surely even more challenging to find for the limited production Imperials, 300s, Furys and the like. 

[TerryB]

Knowing how much tooling and manufacturing time and effort went in to a one year only design does seem strange today.  VW pushed its lack of major change as a selling point.  My favorite example of one year rotation is 1957-1958-1959 Chevrolet.  The 1958 sure was different.

[30DodgePanel]

Thank Virgil Exner for that.

 

Virgil was hired specifically to create cars ahead of the competition for dramatic impact and a break from the past and it worked. The tooling and manufacturing extentions were surely a welcome sight by some in the field (if you can put the other hat on for a second), while it's true some conformists must have hated it...  still Keller wanted to get away from the no-nonesense approach in everyway possible. We also have to remember that along with dramatic styling changes, the power Hemi power plants were making an equal splash even as it ruled Nascar during that era. 

It is a love hate relationship when it comes to any excess styling and big fins. Folks either love it or hate it. 

 

An exerpt from a Hemmings article on the lead designer.