This is a photo of my older brother and sister and me (the little guy in front) circa 1963 in front of the family’s 1959 Edsel. There’s a lot to unwrap in this photo.
First, I don’t know who took this photo (presumably my mom) but I don’t think they intended to make the fin on the adjacent unidentified car look so menacing.
Second, in 1963 my dad, a union plumber, had just bought his first house (the house I grew up in) in small town Minnesota, and so on top of having three small kids, a new 1959 Edsel must have been quite a stretch. But my parents saved money where they could (note that I have fully grown into the hand-me-down “outfit” I’m in while my brother still has a few good years left in his jeans), and we had the sort of solid middle-class lifestyle that a blue collar job used to provide.
Third, an Edsel? Yeah, my dad was, and is still, a free-thinker. He had a company pick-up for work which back in the day was driven only for work because what hick wanted to be seen driving a pickup around town? Hence the Edsel, big, luxurious, hip I guess. Polarizing looks I suppose, but it didn’t bother my dad, who, by the way, passed the “indifferent to polarizing looks gene” along to me, an owner of a 2004 Scion Xb and a 1973 Peugeot 504. Although I spent my early years in the backseat of the Edsel, I don’t remember much about it other than that it was two tone white with turquoise, had a green fabric interior, that I inadvertently put it into neutral and “drove it” down the driveway when I was 4 (don’t remember this), and that my dad had it nicely repainted in 1967 only to have it totaled a few days later.
With his growing family firmly in mind, the choice for a car to replace the Edsel was clear – a 1965 Mustang convertible, white with a black top and interior, 289 V8 with a stick. As I noted, my dad was a free thinker, and wow, a Mustang, a convertible! I have no idea what my mom thought, but I’m sure this decision was not cleared at the top. But as for 8 year old me, sure I’ll squeeze into the back seat and sit on the transmission hump, no problem! This was the standard fate for all youngest siblings back in the days before mini-vans and individual captain’s chairs, and so I happily tolerated the less room and the usually cigarette smoke-filled cabin while I tried to get the Twins game in on my new transistor radio. In fairness my dad in 1969 also bought a blue Buick Deluxe station wagon (with the 2-way tailgate and 2-speed automatic tranny) which I guess would be the unloved, family appropriate, polar opposite of the Mustang (see http://www.curbsideclassic.
Anyway the Mustang was eventually handed down to my brother who drove it in high school (sweet!) until he drove it off the road in a snowstorm on the way to be traded in on a grey 1976 Chevy Chevette (let’s try not to point fingers here, everyone knows that mistakes were made). And I inherited the big rusty Buick wagon which was great for beery late night rides into the countryside (except on gravel roads where it would fill up with road dust) until it died of a leaky gas tank and general neglect around 1978.
My dad is now 89 and willingly gave up driving 4 years ago. I don’t think he misses driving but he does always ask me what kind of rental car I have when I visit him in his assisted living facility. And he’s always amused when I pick out some sort of oddball car like a convertible PT Cruiser, Chrysler 200, or Jeep Compass with a loud plaid interior (which I usually do). Did my dad and genetics steer me away from plain cars, or was it those formative years looking eye-to-eye at the giant nose of that Edsel? Who’s to say?
Sco
Being # 6 of seven kids, I know about riding in the middle of the front seat with my stubby legs touching the transmission hump while Dad rowed the three-on-the-tree manual transmission . Once my sister was born (#7), I was moved to the rear compartment of the Impala wagon. As long as the tailgate window was open, I was happy!!
Fortunately, my middle brother grew very tall and big early in life. This allowed me to avoid his hand-me-downs.
Thanks for the memories.
Isn’t the “adjacent unidentified car” a ‘57 Chevy?
Sure looks like it, from the appearance of the fin and taillamp.
I agree.
I’m SURE you guys are just kidding… but OF COURSE it’s a ‘57 Chevy tail fin!
The most iconic ‘50(s) tail fin there is! (Well, to my 10 year old eyes from 1970, anyway.)
Although my Dad’s first car was a ‘56 Chevy, THIS is the one he wanted, so I learned very early on how to identify one.
The car in question is a 1959 Edsel Corsair not even close to a Chevy. Check out pictures of 1959 Corsairs on the enet if you doubt me. The edseluvr.
Dan, they’re talking about the OTHER car; the unidentified tail fin, which most obviously belongs to a ’57 Chevy.
> The most iconic ‘50(s) tail fin there is!
Close call between this and the ’59 Cadillac
We were being laconic and ironic. ;=)
Exactly. 😁
Six-passenger (okay, driver-plus-five)…the old full-size American norm. We were six, and had our preferred seats in the family’s cars. Dad and Mom had the driver’s and front passenger seats. From the oldest: I had the right rear, my brother the left rear, first sister the middle rear and youngest sister the middle front, where she would perch on her knees facing backwards with her chin on the seatback. Once my Dad could afford the luxury, he bought a used 1963 Cadillac and its leather seatback developed a slight soft spot where youngest sister placed her chin. It never appeared visually but could be felt with one’s hand. That leather was soft, lustrous, compliant but resilient. It was nice stuff.
Even his midlife-crisis 1967 Camaro was ordered with a front bench seat, so as to (allegedly) hold six.
What ever happened to real leather in car upholstery, anyway? There seems to be precious little real leather in mass-market cars, now. Most of a “leather” interior these days seems to have been produced by a chemical cow, which lazily grazed away its warm afternoons on petroleum products. At least Mercedes owned up and called their rock-hard, slippery stuff “MB-Tex.” The legendary Naugas on which Naugahyde grew, anf their Pontiac cousins the Morros (Morrokide) are apparently now lumped into the generic chemical cow breed.
As our family grew out and away, the six-passenger car grew near-extinct. Dad broke the “tradition” with a four-seater, a 1969 Cadillac Eldorado Diesel, of which I have waxed poetic (Ha!!!!!) here before. His later Mercedes could not hold six, either. Taking out the rear sear of his Nissan Quest, he rendered it into a four-seater. My brother and I carried on the six-passenger tradition, as most of our cars over the years…a sequence of Dodge Darts, Plymouth Valiants and Dusters, Dodge Aspen and Monaco, Mercury Sables, Ford Tauri and a Dodge Intrepid…all had front benches. When Mom and Dad needed six seats, as when relatives flew in to visit, they would borrow one of my cars. Brother finally went to minivans, but even now, two of my fleet, tne Intrepid and what wil likely be the last Taurus wagon, have six seat belts.
I had to laugh at your story of putting the car in neutral and rolling down the driveway at age four. I did that too at age four in 1957. Twice. Bashed the heck out of Dads 53 Buick Special when it rolled down the driveway and smashed through the garage doors. After the second time Dad didn’t replace the garage doors.
Dad passed away four years ago at age 96. The last time I spent extended time with him we took him to dinner for his birthday. He regaled everyone with the story of his youngest son driving the car into the garage. Twice.
I did the same thing with mom’s 1980 Subaru when I was about 10. I liked to pretend driving, and I inadvertently left the Subaru in neutral once. About an hour later, it slid down the driveway and into the bushes.
No damage, but I got into a heap of trouble, and that was the end of my career as a pretend driver.
One of my younger sisters did that with my 1961 Ford, took it out of park and it eventually rolled down the driveway, where it crossed the street, rolled into Mr. Gish’s driveway and struck his nearly new ’68 Caprice. Fortunately no one was hurt and my father’s homeowner’s insurance covered the repairs to the Caprice (the damage amounted to a few cracked tail light lenses). The Ford came through without any (new) scratches.
When I was 14 I became the car starter. The car was my 68 Cougar that belonged to mt father for the first 16 months before I bought it. He parked it on the street for some strange reason since we had a two car garage and the driveway would hold another three cars. It was also parked uphill with the tires turned into the curb.
No I didn’t let go of the emergency brake and anything else dumb like that. My father simply had trouble getting the car started in the morning and then taking off. The car would belch black smoke and chug uphill. That Autolite 4300 choke was a problem. So I took up the job of starting the car every morning and letting it warm up long enough. Problem solved.
Although what I did to my mother’s 1974 Pinto wagon and where it caught on fire with me in it definitely put me into the dog house.
I dont think we were unusual. My recollection was that it was pretty common for little kids to be allowed to play in the car unattended. Without any sort of locking tranny either! In retrospect this seems almost impossible but to my recollection that’s the way it was. Dont know when more safety features were added but they clearly were a good idea.
Well, someone I know very well (me) ran a car into a neighbor’s house with the car running and the transmission in drive. Did I mention that I was 18 at the time? 😉
Me too. As my mother chatted with a neighbor, 5 or 6 year old me pretended to drive the 64 Cutlass that was parked in their driveway. I moved the shifter out of park. Instead of the car sitting still like it did on our flat driveway, it began rolling backwards into the street. Nothing was hit and Mom was so scared and happy all was OK that the trouble wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected.
Hey CC Kid,
You write: “… or was it those formative years looking eye-to-eye at the giant nose of that Edsel? Who’s to say…”
Sigmund Freud might have a lot to say about that!
And about hand-me downs, it was good that your older sibling was a brother. Mine was a sister. OK, there were no hand-me down clothes, but I did inherit her old [girl’s] bike and my baby book, a left over from my sister’s birth, had a pink cover.
Sigmund Freud might have a lot to say about that as well.
Sometimes, a bizarrely evocative design feature is just a bizarrely evocative design feature.
Hi Tatra87, I agree. But it is too tempting a target at which not to take an occasional shot.
And sometimes, a bizarrely effective design feature is a big vagina.
(Though I must add, it never looked like that to me – sometimes a grille just lets in air – so in truth, I never got the sniggery jokes I’m now perpetuating).
It *always* looked like that to me from the first time I ever saw it – that or a toilet seat. I feel bad about comparing anyone or anything to an Edsel grille – women deserve better, and so do toilets….
Also: my folks handed down to me a 65 Buick Sportwagon with the vista dome roof and horrid two speed transmission. In college I envied friends with Mustangs and Javelins and T-birds. But I was popular when we’d load eight guys into the wagon for late night burger runs to Herfy’s near the University of Washington campus.
A Scion xB AND a Peugeot? Are you sure you and our illustrious leader aren’t long lost brothers?
The 59 Edsel must have belonged to the “Not the Neidermayer” family.😋
Same thoughts crossed my mind.
By 1963 the Edsel was an orphan by three years, or four if you count the totally half-hearted 1960 which was only made for a short time. It was probably cheaper as a used car than an equivalent Ford by then and this just may be the reason for its choice by your thrifty dad. He wasn’t looking for different. He was looking for a bargain. And maybe he knew that almost all the mechanical bits were just standard Ford stuff. Even the push button transmission controls were gone after the first year.
I guess you missed the part in the post where he wrote: a new 1959 Edsel must have been quite a stretch.
A lovely story. And your mention of riding on the hump in the back of a Mustang resonated with me as I did that several times growing up. Today you couldn’t get away with it; no ability to tether a child seat or use a seat belt.
My earliest memory is sitting on the hump between my uncle and father in my uncle’s new to him C1 corvette.
Speaking of sitting in the middle on a hump – I have a memory of sitting on an engine compartment, or something in the middle – of an early Chevy van, or shall we say small delivery van, in the early ’60s. My folks thought it was the battery I was perched on, as my Uncle Vic drove along one night in Dartmouth. It was a company truck of some kind, and I remember both having fun riding there, as well as feeling completely unsafe as he careened over bumps and around corners. Great times.
The ’59 Edsel was considerably toned down from the ’58, so I wouldn’t say it was that oddball. Actually, I think the ’59 model is quite tasteful compared to some of the competition in ’59 (although I do love the bat-wing Chevys too). Good story too.
Thanks for this which brings back memories from around the same time but on the other side of the world in Israel. We too had 6-7 kids in dad’s 57 Plodge (and later his 64 Ford Fairlane), nobody gave a hoot and somehow we all survived. Oh to go back.
At the age of 7, being the youngest of 6 kids, my chosen (assigned?) spot in our family’s ’55 Chevy wagon was on an old sofa cushion in the far back cargo area. That was until the day Dad lost control on a slick highway, spun around, and crashed into a telephone pole. My face was introduced to all three back windows, and I ended up falling out the rear passenger door, onto the ground, still clutching the cushion.
Great stories! My own father completely lacked the free-thinker gene when it came to cars, always opting for socially acceptable wheels. I became the family free-thinker in cars, often picking the least socially acceptable choice.
I’ll bet the Edsel salesman was making the price of that new car pretty attractive in 1959. I might well have made the same choice then myself, for the right price.
Depending on the time of year, that 59 Edsel could have been a real steal. Folks were pretty sure that the Edsel was on the way out, and dealers must have offered any inventory at great pricing to move them off the lots.
However, kudos to Dad for going with such a non-conforming choice. My Dad was known for such things as well. We had, at one time or another, oddball cars like the Fiat 1100, or the new Mercury Monarch with no options, 3-on-the-tree, in red, among others. It does seem to pass down, either genetically or just by contact, but really, I would rather like the oddballs than suffer the herd mentality. To each their own….
Your dad’s frugality may have had a good deal to do with his selection of a ’59 Edsel. As the initially stand-alone Edsel dealerships started failing, the franchises were foisted on both Lincoln-Mercury and even Ford dealers to maintain market coverage.
These were same men who had not only been initially denied a franchise in the ill-conceived attempt to establish the Edsel as a all-new separate brand but also which competed directly or nearly so with the makes they current sold: corporate-family-created competition. To say that in the recession of 1958, increase competition from within the “Ford Family of Fine Cars” was not at all appreciated by its established dealers, thus causing resentment to be rampant.
Toward the end of the 1958 model year, L-M and Ford district representatives had to go to their dealers to inform them that “lucky you, you get to have an Edsel franchise too for 1959”. The response to this ‘happy’ news was resentment mask by indifference. Now stuck with a car they didn’t want, the ’59 Edsel demonstrator was relegated to the second row or even back lot and promotional materials were available “somewhere in that pile” or hardly at all. Who could blame them? The plus was in favor of the customer willing to consider ‘something out of the ordinary’, significant discounting for those willing to buy unwanted inventory especially at the end of the 1959 model year.
One local Ford dealer stuck with an Edsel franchise started using his ’59 Ranger demonstrator as a loaner car for those whose Fords were in the shop for repairs. The Edsel was a six cylinder, stick-shift, skin-flint special. He peddled it used in 1961 to a taxicab owner-operator who ran it into the ground.
What’s the Edsel and those three kids doing in that pic of the magnificently gorgeous ’57 Chevy tailfin…with the optional backup lights, no less? 🙂
It’s Tri-Fives FOREVER in Chas-land!