Chevrolet wasn’t exactly lacking in confidence about the impact its new 283 V8 would have on the automotive world, especially the hot rod scene. What’s that back there, sitting in a cloud of steam? Yes, the Ford flathead V8 did have a propensity towards overheating…
Classy ad! I’ve seen it in a book on the Tri-Fives. Subtract the most distant snow-covered mountains, and the road looks like Skyline Drive (Shenandoah National Park) in my neck of the woods.
I saw that ad on plan59.com (a trove of commercial art from that era) not long ago, but the “truth in advertising” allusion to overheated Deuce Coupé hot-rods never occurred to me. Good one!
I’d rather be making out with my honey while the car overheats than cruising with my nuclear family. 🙂 That Chevy has insanely small tires on its narrow track.
Even as a gentlemanly cad I’d like a little more privacy than a roadster… 😛
Love it! Reminds me of US 50 through the Sierras on the way to Lake Tahoe. Replace the ’57 with my avatar, and it would be me back in the day behind the wheel.
Or…going the opposite way in a 1987 Ford Tempo rental from Lake Tahoe to Sacramento on our 10th anniversary trip that year!
Still…I LOVE old Ford roadsters, flathead or not.
I never can tell whether Bruce McCall was copying these or the other way ’round.
Well, this Chevy’s proportions are quite life-like, unlike some of the other renderings, and of course Bruce’s.
McCall achieved much of his humor by over-exaggerating the already-exaggerated claims and illustrations common from the 1950-60s. The exaggerations grew as time went on, natch (see: “longer, lower, wider”), and eventually ads moved away from illustrations toward photography. Today’s car ads often will have a CG image that looks indistinguishable from a photo.
So you’re correct that the Chevy illustration is “life-like,” but a quick bit of work with Photoshop* shows that the proportions were cheated a little even in this illustration to give the appearance of a wider, lower car.
* Proportions of the photo I used were kept the same, just rotated and skewed to match the illustration. I shifted the photo to the side to better show the difference in fender and roofline heights. The illustrator used a technique called “forced perspective” to enhance the effect which is why the roofline is so much lower in the illustration.
At least they could make it as low as the 57 Plymouth and the 57 Ford in the ads. 🙂 A very subtle change in proportion that would be hard to pinpoint if not for your comparo. I believe that Chrysler Corp illustrators used this trick in the early 50s as well.
I didn’t mean to imply that it was dead-on. But your overlay is a bit too far to the (viewer’s) right. Notice how the right side headlight and the bumper “tit” don’t match up. Let’s get it spot on here! No deceptive art work, please 🙂
As I’m seeing it, the rendering might be a tiny bit wider, and the roofline lower due to the forced perspective. But compared to many of the renderings of the time, this one is relatively accurate.
Update: I just read in your comment that you purposely shifted the overlay to the side. Never mind. We’re quibbling over mighty small stuff here; I better get back to my taxes…
Although it looks like Ed stared by lining up the left front tire. The artists version must be sitting on a 59 Wide Track Pontiac frame. 🙂
Umm, the driver’s side front tire is completely invisible in the rendering, lost in the black of the shadows. Jeez, you Chevy haters will find any excuse….:)
Plymouth owners would have stopped to help. 🙂
As soon as I saw this picture, I had a strong dislike for the Chevy driver.
I’d say Mom was checking on them in the mirror, but there isn’t one, for her OR Dad.
Yes, the polite thing would have been for the Chevy driver to pull over and offer to swap in his 283 motor.
He did, but the gal wanted to enjoy the scenery a bit longer, at least until the engine cooled down! Probably gave him some water, too…
Thankfully seatbelts weren’t mandatory yet, or nobody in that car would be smiling 😉
Even back in the day, my brother and I always had to be in the back seat. We were allowed to stand though, facing forward over the front seat backs. (The ’55 Chevy was tall enough to allow us to do that without our heads touching the roof.)
I grew up riding in a 54 Velox with that feature
I vaguely remember riding in a Chevy conversion van as a kid and thinking how cool it was that we could just walk around in there while on the road.
Wow..the 57! My number one favourite car of all time, bar none. By the time I was old enough to buy a car {circa 1970} they were mostly rusted away. Even then, the nice ones were being scooped up by collectors.
I’m sort of a purist, I don’t care if the numbers don’t match,but I want it to be correct..
That being said, I saw a 57 go through one of the many TV auto auction shows we have now. The builder had put a mid eighties drive train in, with disc brakes,and a few more modern updates. He kept everthing else dash,trim,and the general look of the car original.. Very tastfully done. I can’t remember what he got 60K ? maybe.
Still a little out of my comfort zone. But I guy can dream eh?
mikey; where have you been keeping yourself? Long time no hear.
Paul…I’ve been very busy. Life has thrown me a few curves. Some good,some not so good.
Anyway, I found myself lurking here more, and more,and thought it time to make some comments.
Glad to see another escapee from TTAC here. This place seems to harbor a bunch of them.
Like you, I’ve had a few issues. But, we gotta keep on keepin on!
Good timing on this posting … I had coffee this week with a friend in his early 60’s, who’s not a real car buff, but is very interested in the intersection of history, culture, technology and design, and I was telling him about CC. He told me that his father bought a new Peugeot in 1958 (403??) which really disappointed him, as his favorite car was the ’57 Chevy, which he described as the first new car he really noticed, and still remembers. Interestingly, he is now the third person I know whose parents owned a new 403 in the US. OTOH, I honestly can’t remember knowing anyone with a ’57 Chevy (though a few ’55’s and ’56’s).
The Peugeot 403 was a fairly popular import in the late fifties, in certain parts of the country. I’m going to guess this was in the North East?
One in the Northeast, two in Berkeley. My mom tried a 403 before our 1960 new car purchase, but preferred the Volvo 544.
It is difficult to overestimate the influence that the Chevy small block has had on the automotive world. If the VW Bug (original version) was the most modified car ever this motor is probably the most modified engine ever. And probably the only engine to appear in more cars outside of its original manufacturer than any other.
I would say though that probably the most irreverent plug for a car would be from the mouth of Peter Schreyer who once said explaining his new designs for Kia “Now cars for broke people don’t have to look like crap.”
That’s one of the ironic twists of that illustration. Within a very short period of time, the SBC would quickly supplant the flathead Ford as the rodder’s engine of choice, meaning that any old thirties’ era, Ford-based hotrod seen disabled on the side of the road would likely have a Chevy engine.
There’s a new fancy Bel-Air in the work ‘hood. Hope that it’s here for more than a day.
He should have at least offered use of his cell ph….ah, never mind.
Cheeky,I doubt GM or anyone else would be allowed to make ads like this today.I think there’d also be a few complaints about the exaggerated drawings if this went on today
So much great detail in these ads, you can follow the road down the mountain, you can see where the guardrail starts again after the rest stop, very neat.
I loved doing this type of illustration in college. We would sneak in a whole additional scene in the hubcap reflections, for example.
Just like Jan van Eyk’s “Arnolfini Portrait,” right?
National Geographic 1957 Ive seen this ad. I even mentioned my early love of 57 Chevrolets to my father a veteran of the motor trade he said it was a shame people like me and my mates werent around in 57 to buy them as they were hard to sell new. 56s & 58s sold well but the 57 looked old fashioned when new GM ran that body style too long and buyers got sick of it. ME I dont look at tri 5s at car shows I dont shoot them for the cohort, I had my fill long ago.
Not too old-fashioned for some. I just remembered, my late maternal grandmother (b. 1903) kept her blue & white ’57 Bel-Air sedan for some years. That was while I was too young to ask if it was a V-8. Grandpa had a 2nd-gen ChevyVan. She later got a Volare, maybe that’s when her mind starting going (they used to be dedicated Chevy buyers).
Recall that at the end of American Graffiti, it was a lighter ’55 Chevy (driven by Harrison Ford) vs. a Deuce Coupe (Paul Le Mat).
Did you get the forward look Mopars in New Zealand?They made the opposition look staid,although build quality wasn’t a patch on Ford or GM.I’m sure I read the 57 Ford outsold the Chevy but just try to find one at a car show or in a magazine!
I did find a ’57 Fairlane 500 Sunliner at a car show in Kewanee, IL last summer: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/car-show-classic-vintage-iron-in-the-hog-capitol-of-the-world/
Thanks Tom,some gorgeous cars at the show
Ads like these also kept a lot of illustrators in a job. My BIL, long retired from an Art Studio/Ad Agency, used to spend many an hour painting pictures like this for ads. I guess now most everything is done with a computer and photoshop.
I think that those of us who looked at car ads in the ’50s understood that the illustrations were eye candy. The ads were very much in the same vernacular as Playboy centerfolds-no hirsuteness, bad breath or excessive flatulence. My first car was a used ’57 Chevy Bel Air 2dr sedan. I had no delusions as to what the car was all about. The interior was huge but the exterior was still within reason. That would change in ’58 when the Great Bloat began. My girlfriends at the time couldn’t have cared less what was under the hood (Blue Flame Six), only that it was a magic carpet ride away from mommy and daddy.
I would have at least given the guy in the overheating Ford some water for the radiator.