(first posted 5/8/2016) I had been driving my first car, a 1953 yellow Chrysler convertible, starting in high school and then in college for more than four years and it continued to work as well as could be expected. It had its flaws, (but don’t we all?) and a truly good and faithful driver would honor that automotive relationship and not let a splash of chrome, a big V8, or a seductive dashboard lure one to cheat.
Anthropomorphizing cars (and boats) is something many people do, especially young college juniors. But when we stray from the loyally serving car to a younger sleeker model, I doubt many people feel a sense of guilt.
I did feel guilty. However, I enjoyed every most many of the minutes of that indiscretion.
It’s not like I could afford to take on another lover vehicle. I was working pretty much full time as a broadloom carpet warehouse schlepper and had a growing student loan from the Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn. Between classes (mostly scheduled in the A.M. hours), work, and studying, I was starting to develop a pattern of sleep deprivation that would stay with me throughout my working career. Money was tight; the student loan was scary to a young guy with no idea how he was going to pay it off, and our country’s involvement in Vietnam was starting to become more than a distant dustup being handled by American “advisors”.
So, it was with a sense of “life is fleeting” and “what the heck” that I said yes when a friend was selling his summer ride. It was a white over red 1957 Oldsmobile 88 sedan with a 371 cu inch 277 hp / 400 lb.-ft. of torque at 2800 rpm golden rocket V8 with a four barrel carburetor, Hydramatic transmission, and 14 inch wheels with full wheel covers. Oddly, it had no power steering and no power brakes, so it was a bear to park and rather hard to steer at low speeds.
It was everything my trusty 1953 Chrysler convertible was not. It was sleek, powerful, quite fast (for the time), had a glamorous chrome, red, and white dashboard, and a play-the-radio-all-you-want 12 volt electrical system. It even had rockets on the fenders – What’s not to love? It was also weather tight; no more snowdrifts on the front seat and wet rugs after a snow or rain storm.
I did not sell the Chrysler. I backed it into my parents spare garage stall ¾ of the way (lawn mowers and bikes were in the back), tacked a piece of carpet onto the bottom center of the garage door, and lowered it gently onto the hood. I then transferred the plates, registration, and insurance to the Olds. After all, the old yellow Chrysler convertible was my first COAL; I wasn’t totally heartless.
Starting around age 13, I was drawn to the fancy dashboards of late fifties GM cars, especially Oldsmobiles. The most elegant part of these dashboards was the long thin smooth chrome shift lever that angled down to the small PNDSLR display. Pure physical poetry.
While the dash looked like the complicated controls of a spaceship, it actually had only two gauges: a speedometer and directly underneath it, a gas gauge. A working gas gauge; what would they think of next?
The Olds dash had lights for GEN and OIL (left side), HOT and COLD (right side). Yes, a COLD light; it was green. I had a buddy named Jim whose family bought a new Oldsmobile every other year and he would never drive these cars until the COLD light went out. We got used to it.
The heater, fan, and vent controls flanked the PNDSLR shift quadrant display. They were really small controls compared to what we see today; using them when wearing gloves was problematic.
Speaking of heat, the Olds had a bad thermostat stuck on open, so on cold days the green COLD light never went out and the car did not developed enough heat for normal engine operation nor for passenger comfort. The fix was to develop a series of folded cardboard panels to put in front of the radiator. Medium folded panels worked for cold days, bigger less-folded panels for very COLD days. I fantasized about a roller window radiator shade device operable from the driver’s seat but never got around to inventing it. Not sure why I never properly fixed it; it’s not like the thermostat was hard to reach. I was probably afraid I would strip a bolt or break something during the repair job disabling the car completely and then I would be stuck and it would really cost a lot to have a mechanic fix it. So I stayed with the safe albeit crude winter cardboard solution.
Even if it’s broke, don’t fix it.
The 1957 Oldsmobile had a dashboard with a rolled top that turned sharply down just before the windshield. During the summer a lot of dust, debris, and other “stuff” ended up falling into this hard to see and reach space. It all came back into my face when cold weather started and I turned on the defroster full blast to clear the inside of the windshield. In those days A/C was a rare option and this COAL was not rare.
And let’s not forget the dogleg windshield A pillar that was popular in the early 1950s up to about 1960. These designs were the result of extreme wraparound windshields and resulted in a dogleg A pillar that protruded into the front seat entry space. While daily drivers of these cars slipped under the dogleg with nary a thought, unfamiliar drivers and front seat riders were often introduced to them in bruising ways. On the plus side the wraparound windshield gave the driver a good wide angle view forward, looked neat as hell, and made for interesting vent window shapes. What are vent windows you ask?
The windshield wipers were vacuum controlled. At idle the engine had lots of vacuum and the wipers worked fine. At full throttle, engine manifold vacuum disappeared and the wipers first slowed and then stopped. Completely.
Important safety reminder for cars with vacuum wipers: Do not floor the throttle in heavy precipitation conditions. Actually, that’s probably good advice even if you have electrically powered windshield wipers.
Another feature of vacuum controls was the sounds heard inside the car when switching from full heat to full defrost. There would be a series of lower doors closing (thump, thump) and then the creaking opening of the defroster vents (eeecccchhh).
The Olds had a three piece rear window and the fuel filler pipe was under the left rear (driver’s side) tail light. Just flip up the panel under the rear light with the big 88 on it and there it was. My calculations told me I got about 8 miles to the gallon, but I used those four barrels more than I should have. Judicial accelerator use might have brought my mileage all the way up to double digits, perhaps 11, maybe even 12. In any case, I flipped up that tail light based fuel filler panel a lot.
The 88’s performance was striking to a guy whose prior ride took over 20 seconds to get to 60. My college friend Richie had a 1963 Olds F85 2 door coupe with a 215 cu in aluminum V8 and three on the tree. One evening coming home from a rare late hour lab (most of my classes were in the A.M.) Richie and I lined up at a light on a deserted section of Long Island’s Peninsula Boulevard. The light weight (2600 pounds) F85 jumped off the line and got a good ¾ length lead on me as the 88’s engine strained against the inertia of 4200 + pounds of glass, steel, iron, and dumb teenager. But as we all know, there’s no replacement for displacement and the 88 steadily reeled the F85 back in. By the time we reached the posted speed limit of 60 mph the event was over and we were about equal.
Public Policy Note: Accelerating like this in the 1960s was quite a bit slower, and far less dangerous, than it would be today. Accordingly, you the reader should never do this. We were dumb trained assholes professionals on an empty closed road.
By now I had a job working in a carpet warehouse unloading full rolls of carpet from trucks, measuring, and cutting those rolls, and then delivering the cut goods to the customer. It paid much better than the burger gig and changed me from a tall, skinny, weakling teenager to a tall skinny slightly less-weak teenager.
The warehouse manager Marty was never without a cigarette in his mouth and when he talked, the cigarette bounced up and down. My co-schleppers in the warehouse were John and Freddie. John was a big bear of a man who was married with kids and came to the job with a clear sober let’s get this done attitude. Freddie was much younger than John; he stood about 5’ 6” and was built like a prize fighter. He liked to shadow box in the warehouse with me as the shadow. Freddie also had to report to his parole officer once a month and had a much less serious view of life and love and work than John or I.
We’d be in the warehouse when an 18 wheeler pulled up in front. Marty, John, Freddie and I went out to the now open back of the trailer and saw it full of 12 and 18 foot wide rolls of broadloom carpet. Full carpet rolls can weight 300 to 600 pounds depending on quality, width, and length. Marty would compare the load with his paperwork, step down and say with cigarette bobbing “OK; unload”.
Freddie would ask “which ones?”. John and I already knew the answer. “All of them”.
Freddie pushed the end from inside the trailer, John caught the roll about three feet from the leading edge and pulled, and I positioned myself under the roll about three feet from the end to catch it when it dropped off the truck. HEAVY. We would stagger into the warehouse where Marty pointed to a spot and we both threw the roll onto an existing pile of carpets. John’s end went up onto the pile; mine landed on the floor next to my feet.
John and Freddie called me “big buck”. I think they meant it ironically.
With my days full of sitting in college classes and lectures and my evenings sitting at a desk studying, the physical efforts of the carpet warehouse work were a blessing that I realized should be continued in one way or another as I got older to prevent middle-age lethargy and deterioration. I think it has worked. So far.
Things started moving a little more quickly in my senior year. I had a girl friend who would become my first wife and was heading towards graduation while still unsure of my future direction. I had started as an advertising major but Adelphi College (later University) eliminated that track at the end of my freshman year so I was compelled to become a marketing major to keep my course prerequisites valid. One afternoon I was walking from the Olds to a class when I saw an exotic looking silver coupe that I could not identify. It idled past me in a unsteady lumpy manner and the driver parked it in the “Staff Only” section of the lot. I dawdled a bit and after the owner had gone I looked more closely.
F E R R A R I
I was in awe. I had heard about these but never seen one in the metal. It was dirty, needed a simoniz, and had two fresh puddles of oil under it after only being parked for a few minutes. I asked about the professor who drove a Ferrari and was informed it belonged to the new computer programming instructor. I signed up for his course called FORTRAN. Why? Because he drove a Ferrari. Was any other reason needed? That decision changed my life forever. I was born to program computers.
If life was moving kind of quickly before, now it really got up on a fast plane. I was planning to get married to a pretty petite blue-eyed blond named Annie who could not steer either of my two cars. First car to go was my first COAL, the Chrysler convertible. I sold it to a carpet mechanic (installer) named Meyer, a big gruff cigar smoking fellow who was one of the best carpet installers in Nassau County, Long Island.
I once saw Meyer driving around with the top down and rolls of cut carpet and padding draped across the passenger side of the windshield down over the trunk. I do not recall seeing any ropes or tie downs. He had a cigar in his mouth, one hand on the wheel, and one hand on his cargo.
He probably didn’t want to wait for John and Freddie and me to make the delivery.
I started taking job interviews on campus. I was interviewing for all available jobs but I was looking for computer programming jobs. An early March interview with Allied Department Stores got me a part time management training gig in retail on a trial basis to see if we had a future together. More on that later.
But, in late March of 1966 Shell Oil Company came on campus looking for computer programming trainees. This is what I was looking for. Shell offered me a job (pending successful graduation and continued good grades) to start in NYC at the Shell Oil Company New York Data Center in Rockefeller Center. Starting date would be 6/6/66 with a starting salary $6,600 a year.
A sign?
Note: 30 years later I would be issued a civilian contractor pass for NYC DOC’s Rikers Island with the number 6666.
Annie’s mother heard about the impossible-to-steer Oldsmobile and demanded offered that we take her 1959 Ford Galaxie 500 two door. She said she would sign it over to us Annie as soon as her new Fairlane came in. Annie’s Mom was a Ford lady.
The night before our marriage I drove my bride-to-be into Manhattan in the Oldsmobile so she could spend the night at her aunt ‘s apartment near the church. I was told it was bad luck for me to see the bride on our wedding day until we got to the church.
As I was heading towards the Queens Midtown tunnel to return to Long Island the Oldsmobile’s brake pedal sank to the floor. Remember, no cell phone, no AAA membership, little money, and getting married the next day. What to do but just drive home, a little slow for sure with lots of angry people honking and making obscene gestures. I used the transmission S and L cogs and the foot operated parking brake and its release lever to slow the car down at the toll basket, threw in the quarter (it’s now $8.00), and got home leaving the car at the mechanic’s shop with a note “DO NOT DRIVE – BRAKES GONE – PLEASE FIX.
I got to the church on time and things went much more smoothly than the day before. After we took possession of the Galaxie I sold the Oldsmobile to my barber, found out the Galaxie ran poorly, and tuned it up with new plugs, points, condenser, rotor, distributor cap, and ignition wires. It had a 352 cu in V8 and a 2 speed Ford-o-Matic transmission and while the car had a loosey-goosey take-your-time feel to it (hard to explain), it drove smoothly with a nice V8 rumble.
I installed a pair of front lap seat belts in it. I was a married man now; I had to think like a married man.
My mother-in-law never did sign it over to us and that was too bad because one night returning from a carpet customer who thought their new carpet was defective (it was) I T-boned a meat truck at an intersection totaling the well tuned Galaxie. My mother-in-law’s insurance company was really upset She didn’t think too much of me either. Who could blame her?
The newly installed seat belts probably saved my life. Or at least prevented serious injury. To this day I approach uncontrolled intersections as if a meat truck is speeding there with my name on it.
And no one has to tell me to buckle up. Ever.
I was planning to start the adult portion of my life as a married computer programmer in June of 1966, but that was still a few months in the future and until then I needed to keep up my grades, graduate, keep paying bills, and, as I was now without a car, buy one immediately. That would be COAL 3.
Going back to the sunny day of our marriage, my friend and best man Richie drove Annie and me home from Manhattan in his F85 taking the scenic water view route of Brooklyn’s Belt Parkway. As my new bride and I sat in the cramped back seat staring at the ships in the bay and each thinking that life was moving kind of fast, maybe too fast, the F85’s radio played the Beach Boys’ Help me Rhonda.
Another sign?
Hard to believe a ’57 V8 Olds, with all that chrome, and Hydramatic, would have vacuum wipers ! My ’46 Ford Anglia had vacuum wipers, but that was a flat head, beam axle, entry-level crock. In 60’s England only old flat head Fords used vacuum wipers.
Zephyrs Zodiacs and Consuls untill 62 and the release of the MK3 had vacuum wipers it was a Ford thing.
Obviously I never drove a Zodiac or a Consul in the rain….
I had a 62 MK2 Zephyr wipers were useless in rain especially uphill. Vauxhalls of the 50s drove the wipers by cable from the camshaft the faster you went the faster the wipers, safety be dammed.
My frends 67 amc rebel 550 had vacuum wipers but it was the base model bottom of the line car with everything optional .
IIRC the 59 ford also had vacuum wipers my dad had a yellow and white galaxy 500 victoria sedan which was the 4 door hardtop. Anyone know why some were also fairlane/ galaxy 500?
The Galaxie came out in mid-59. It had the T-Bird style roof as opposed to the wrap-around rear window. These carried both Fairlane 500 scripts on the rear quarters and a Galaxy callout in the center of the trunk lid. In 1960, the two were more clearly separated into their own series.
Electric wipers did not become standard on AMC cars until 1972. Prior to that, they all came with vacuum wipers. So if you didn’t check off the right box on the options sheet when ordering your new ’71 Javelin AMX with 401 V8 and 4-speed tranny you still got the suction-operated wipers.
My dad’s ’61 Ford Fairlane (6-cyl., 3-on-the-tree, rubber mats, nylon burlap seats, radio, heater, and no other options) had vacuum wipers, and even at age 7 I thought that was a ridiculous arrangement – lots of wiping when you’re not going anywhere, little to none while underway.
Chrysler products all had electric wipers much earlier. I’m surprised about vacuum wipers on an Oldsmobile by then too. AMC kept vacuum wipers into the sixties, one of their odd anachronisms in otherwise often very modern cars that had integrated AC before the others, like the front suspension and torque tube driveline.
The first close-up picture illustrates GM’s approach to ergonomics. (Earlgonomics?) Dazzle and blind the driver, insure that nothing is properly visible.
Chrysler and Ford had some flashy bits in the ’50s, but they paid much more attention to readable instruments and reachable controls.
Mopar went to electric wipers as standard equipment in 1960, IIRC.
AMC had those ancient, unsafe vacuum wipers into the early 1970’s.
AMC had some kind of vacuum booster contraption that ran off the fuel pump, that was supposed to supply constant vacuum. I don’t really know much about them though.
It was a double diaphragm fuel pump, one for fuel the other to supply the vacuum wipers on AMC cars. Think two fuel pumps stacked one on top of the other. Worked good when new but eventually the vacuum diaphragm would rupture and if the fuel pump still worked people wouldn’t replace them and lot of people would buy them used in this condition and complain all day about the lousy vacuum wipers not knowing that the problem could be fixed. I went one step further and put a vacuum reservoir on mine and never had a problem something all auto manufactures should have done since day one Shame because vacuum wipers are infinitely adjustable and I would take a good working vacuum wiper system over anything made today.
Mack used vacuum wipers at least into the 80’s that I know of. They always were a bit behind the times.
Vacuum wipers on a diesel? They would have had to use an electric vacuum pump. Or?
I’m thinking they were more likely air powered if not electric, which all big trucks have in abundance.
Quite a few diesels run belt driven vacuum pumps too. My ’75 Volvo 245, K-Jetronic FI, B20 pushrod, had a vacuum pump to help the brakes; It was rather clever, it mounted to the block where the mechanical fuel would go on a carbed engine, driven by the cam.
Sure; cars and light trucks that needed vacuum for their brakes had a vacuum pump. But the big Macks had air brakes. Of course Mack also made gas and medium-sized trucks, which might well have had vacuum wipers. And maybe the big diesel/air brake ones did too. it’s just that they would have needed a vacuum pump only for the wipers, which seems a bit odd, but possible.
Update: I just did a bit of googling: big Mack trucks did use compressed air wiper motors, as one would expect.
Car diesels all use a vacuum pump for the brakes either driven off the camshaft like my Citroen or with Bosch instead of Lucas injection the pump is on the injector pump. Mack trucks used compressed air motors for the wipers on older models not vacuum.
Righto Paul ;
.
Pneumatic they were ~ lots of Big Rigs used them .
.
-Nate
Right you are. The old rig that I used to drive used to have the wipers crap out at full throttle on occasion so I just figured that they were vacuum. I learned something new today. Thanks.
The family cheapo 1956 Plymouth had electric wipers, I think. Could be wrong though. I’m pretty sure my decades later 1956 Belvedere had them too.
Rlplaut: I really enjoyed this COAL. It shows so well how our cars become touchstones for many memories that we make during the ownership. Nicely written! Thank you!
The ’58-’60 Lincolns…7 electric windows, electric seat, electric antenna, electric signal seeker radio, fully electric convertible top latches, boot and door locks…vacuum wipers! Couldn’t you use just one more motor? Although the dashes were relatively restrained compared to the GMs of the period.
My 1962 Lincoln convertible also had vacuum wipers.
Actually, your Lincoln had hydraulic wipers, fed from the power steering pump. No slowing down/stopped wipers when one accelerated. And multiple speeds too, IIRC.
Our 65 Thunderbird had that feature as well. And a slew of vacuum-assisted controls for the heater/vents/rear vent and even, IIRC, the automatic transmission gear selector. A lot of soft hissing going on in that interior…
All of our Nashes had those vacuum-controlled wipers but I too am surprised to read that a 57 Olds had them. I thought by then most higher-priced cars had gone to electric wipers.
If you set them just right, you could even get them to be intermittent…one sweep every 5-7 seconds, or whenever the hydraulic pressure built up enough to engage the gear.
Competing with high end Oldsmobiles 1957 Lincoln dashboard. Kind of the Midcentury Modern opposite of GM baroque chromemobiles.
And some controls to die for:
I have always loved the three rear windows. It looks so custom. I read that they were supposed to resemble the windows of an airplane. I even talked my brother into buying a 57 two door hardtop. My 57 Cadillac also had vacuum wipers. My Dad’s 63 Lincoln had hydraulic wipers powered from the power steering pump. Those worked real well. My 97 Jag has a single wiper arm, it seems to work well enough. Were they trying to save money or what? Some Mercedes around that vintage also had the single wiper.
In 1968 parents bought a dark blue ’57 Old’s 88 Super for Mom to drive. Dad using his ’66 Beetle to use for delivering chicken (Chicken Delight) as a first job when we first moved from Portland to So Cal. Ours was a 2 door that looked like it was almost new with fresh paint, and did have power steering and brakes. I loved the rockets on the fenders, the 3 window back glass and the big round rocket exhaust tailamps mounted into the fins. And of course, the cool wrap around windshield.
Mom loved that car. She always gave her cars names. The Old’s was her “Blue Baron”. I well remember the hydraulic wipers, our neighborhood had a lot of steep hills and they would slow or stop going up hill, and go really fast coasting down hill. I remember shortly after the got it they had to replace all 4 mufflers. I had never heard of a car having 4 mufflers.
The reverse gear position right past low made it easy to accidentally hit reverse when downshifting for steep hills. Dad did this when we were coming down the hill from Mt. Wilson. The car shook violently as the axle bounced when the wheels turned backwards. He just put it back into low and the car was none the worse for it.
Another time me and my sister were goofing around trying to keep each other out of the car, and I accidentally shut the door on her fingers. Of course I got into trouble for that.
Once we got into the car at the supermarket, and as Mom got ready to start the car she said, “this isn’t my car”! Same color, key unlocked door. Ours was a couple of spaces over. Dad didn’t keep it long, less then 2 years. Replaced it with a ’62 Monterey. I remember Mom being upset. She really loved that car. To me it seemed liked the Olds was the best and fastest car on the planet.
Great write up. The heavily chromed dashboard (our was padded with power windows), and oval speedometer looked like a ’50’s jukebox.
We also had a new ’59 Galaxie for a while, but I was so young I only have vague memories of that car. My first car wound up being Dad’s ’66 Beetle in 1972.
Great article! One thing that never really occurred to me until now, is just how old and antiquated the mid to late 50’s cars would have seemed to people, by the early to mid 60’s, with the improvements in braking, steering, (some) fuel economy, (some) safety, etc. When I was a kid in the mid 80’s, to me, 50’s cars seemed so revolutionary and way cooler than anything else on the road, but that was more from a styling point of view, rather than a driving/ handling point of view.
When I first started driving in the late sixties, cars from the late fifties and early sixties were what my peers and I could afford. I love the looks of many 1950’s cars, including the COAL Olds above, but compared to cars from only 10 years later, they might as well be Model A’s (or the equivalent). The 1965 Pontiac that was my third car (it was purchased in the summer of 1971) was light-years beyond the 1961 Ford that was my initial vehicle. I certainly would not want any car from the fifties, or early sixties, as a daily driver.
My 77 Chevelle is the oldest car I’d consider daily driving. It has modern-ish brakes and handling, modern-isn safety features and reasonably entertaining in-car-entertainment system.
I have used it as a DD for a while and the 12-17mpg it gets commuting is not zesty.
In a ’77 you are not going to get good mileage. A good friend of mine had a ’64 Malibu 2dr HT with a 327 356hp and M21 4 speed. Got 8-10 mpg cruising downtown Portland in stoplight drags. If he kept his foot out of it we could get 20-21 mpg driving on the highway between Portland and Lincoln City Oregon yet with mountains to climb. My dad once got 27mpg in a ’59 Chevrolet SW 6cyl 3sp OD from Portland to Bandon, Oregon with a boat on top of the car. If you drove sensible you could get good gas mileage. I once had a ’69 Toyota Corolla. If I drove the car flat out never got under 25mpg. If I would drive the car easier I would get 35-39 mpg..Driving habits have a lot to do with gas mileage.
Vaccum wipers always depended on the engine being sharply tuned and the valves properly adjusted .
.
The ‘ Dual Action ‘ fuel pumps made them work perfectly at all times/loads/speeds *if* it was properly plumbed , few were if added on later .
.
You could also install a vacuum reservoir of any old Lincoln or Caddy , looked like a # 10 tin can , ad this and a check vale and !presto! no more stalling wipers .
.
Great story , well written .
.
-Nate
A very entertaining and most well written story.
Delightful article! More, please.
A close friend had a ’57 Olds 2-dr hardtop that he sold about a year or so ago, to a buyer in Florida. It had been meticulously restored to factory correct specs and looked gorgeous. He took me for a ride in it once, and I was shocked – it did not ride, handle or “feel” as nice as I expected and when he stepped on the gas to get it up to a higher speed, there was an awful lot of noise from all sources.
Later he told me that cars of the ’60s were great leaps ahead of most ’50s models in terms of NVH and ride and handling and were a lot smoother to drive. Quite an eye opener! Also the doors on that thing must have weighed 300lbs each!
So true, changes were rapid in those days. In 1966 when I was shopping for my first car with my Dad, we drove 60 and 61 Thunderbirds found on local used car lots. Both were in reasonably decent condition. The 60 was very crude compared to the 61 – a big leap in refinement, reduction in NVH, interior and exterior design improvements – in just one year. And four more years later you finally got front disk brakes in the T-Bird, solving the long existing problem of woefully inadequate braking. A decade of significant improvements.
I never paid much attention to ’50’s Oldsmobile. The oval design theme extends not only all over the dash, but outside the car, front and rear.
The hidden gas filler door is in the same location on the ’57 Chevy. Maybe all GM cars that year? Another oddity of ’50’s design.
What probably hampered the 88 in the drag race with the F-85 most was the HydraMatic, lacking a torque converter.
I’m pretty sure that hydraulic wipers (a pretty insane concept adding many pounds of thick hydraulic lines) from 1958. A lot of the systems of the all-new 1961s were also seen on the 1958 model.
Another great article!
Great read.
After all the years in the Chrysler, how long until you stopped stomping your left foot to the floor every time you shifted into reverse? 🙂
Great story.
All that chrome and shiny paint is great on the inside until you start driving down the road on a sunny day. Ow, my eyes! 🙂
Another great tale–you have a gift for telling a story! The ’57 Olds sounds like a fun car, too, even given its limitations. Plus, sometimes when a good deal comes along, you just have to go for it…
Another great article. Very nice intermingling of the automotive, personal, and professional, with a little numerology for those of us so inclined.
The son of one of my dad’s employees had a beautiful yellow (even to my 9-year-old eyes) ’57 Olds convertible. I think I only ever saw it twice, once with the top up, once with it down,
That was in 1965-1966 or so, and I’ve never forgotten it.
My first car, a 10 year old 1954 Dodge Royal with a HEMI and automatic transmission, had both power steering and electric wipers. The car was given to me by my sister and her husband at the beginning of my junior year in college. It was actually a pretty nice highway cruiser. One cold November day the wipers quit working though. Being short of money, I decided to take the wiper motor out and take it to a garage for testing. I have never been mechanically adept but I figured “How hard could it be?” I knew it had to be up above the radio in about the middle of the dashboard. I don’t remember how I knew that, it was a long time ago. But anyway I got together a few tools and crawled under the dash, removed the radio and managed to get the wiper motor out even though it was snowing out there in the parking lot and probably 20 degrees on an Ohio afternoon. I had no instructions or any kind of manual. I took it to a nearby gas station that had a mechanic and he tested the motor. It was fine, he said, no problem with it at all. So back I went and put everything back together. To my utter delight, the wipers now worked and so did the radio! As you can see from the photo of the actual car below, it was in cherry condition at 10 years old with not a speck of rust anywhere. The chrome was also still perfect. Always have regretted letting it go.
Late to the party again, but glad I made it. Thanks for a great read.
Those Olds dashboards look like Wurlitzer jukeboxes, but I mean it in a good way!
Electric wipers were used on 57 Chevies, likely an option. I fitted an electric wiper motor from a 57 onto my 55 Chevy. It was a direct bolt up, no modification needed. Even the control cable fit and worked exactly like it did with the vacuum motor. The only thing I had to figure out was a 12v switched power source. The power feed to the ignition resistor was a quick easy solution.
As a young kid we briefly had a 59 Ranchero, and from that point I was pretty much stuck on the late 50s Fords, particularly the 59. Back then they were everywhere. I never even have had the chance to drive one, but I still love them!
You’re lucky, the radio didn’t play “Work With Me Annie.”
Looking at the instrument panel of that Olds, I can see where they got inspiration for the Time Tunnel TV show!
parents had a 1957 Pontiac Safari that had the same problem – mom needed cardboard too to get any heat in the winter
had to more than just the thermostat and it was a 1957 bought new
I’ve never understood complaints about the dogleg hitting knees. Maybe in the ’59-60s and the Corvette, but the ’57s were still pretty tall. Our ’56 had a higher dash–no wonder my very short great uncle and aunt only went 14,000 miles in 14 years–they must have been driving blind. When we kids drove it to HS in the 70s, it had an excellent heater but a non-working gas gauge, so you had to keep track of mileage and always fill it up.
I just plyaed the lyrics to ‘Help me Rhonda”. I didn’t need to get too far. Hmmm.
The Olds styling, 3 piece rear window and knee knocker dogleg were copied by Vauxhall for their PA series big cars the 3 piece rear screen only lasted the first model but the wrap around front window stayed till the end of thaqt body style, I had two of them and you do get used to avoiding the dogleg.