(first posted 11/13/2015) Jason’s post this week on his drive in a pristine 1958 Impala gave a fantastic firsthand perspective of how the car feels and performs, along with the reaction it garners on the roads today. Were impressions of the car similarly favorable in the late 1950s? Let’s roll back the clock to the time when the car was new, and Motor Trend ran a comprehensive overview on the latest from Chevrolet in their December 1957 issue. The coverage starts with a story on the styling development for the 1958 design, with an emphasis on the new Impala. The piece was authored by two GM designers, Bob Cumberford and Stan Mott. Cumberford would later become a writer for Automobile, responsible for the excellent By Design column in that magazine.
Next up, Motor Trend test drove the ’58 Bel Air hardtop sedan fitted with the new 348-cubic-inch V8. They also compared a steel sprung car with an air sprung car, and were pretty skeptical of the latter, an observation that was quickly borne out by the lack of marketplace acceptance for the air suspension. All in, Motor Trend was a fan of the all-new ’58 Chevrolet, and it’s great to see that many of those positive impressions still hold true based on Jason’s ’58 Impala experience in late 2015.
Having been “assembled” in a 1958 Chevrolet (a green Biscayne sedan.) I especially appreciate this post!
Was this really a review, or merely thinly-disguised corporate PR? Many “news” stories are like this, as one sees on Yahoo for example. “All the news that’s fit to print” is a long-standing bit of New York Times deceit.
This is a very good example of what passed for automotive journalism back in the 1950’s. If anything, its exceptional for the way in panned the air suspension. I have a feeling there were a few phone calls between Chevrolet Motor Division and the Motor Trend offices when this came out, because here you have what was the leading automotive magazine in American (back then, at least) telling you to save your money on the standard suspension and don’t bother with the extra cost air suspension. Which is exactly the opposite what Chevrolet wanted you to read.
When we talk about vintage automotive journalism, invariably Tom McCahill comes up, and we’ve gotten to the point that we regard him as the standard of 50-60’s car reviews. Actually, he’s so noteworthy because he was doing this completely different from any other automotive magazine or publication with regular car reviews.
And if you go back further, the reviews are more and more soft soap puff pieces for the manufacturer. Back in those days, if you were too overly critical of a car, you suddenly found yourself dis-invited to any new car unveiling.
And even McCahill was acting as a paid shill for Chrysler in a 1958 film that can be found online. However, I guess he bought their cars for his personal transport, so I suppose you could say that he was only selling what he bought himself. Still, . . .
Agreed. It’s the kind of article that can only be done with the considerable cooperation of the car company. It’s informative, but they’re willing to cal out the air suspension. That alone makes this much better “journalism” than what Car and Driver (and others) did repeatedly in later years, like their gushing reviews of the 1980 X-Bodies, based on specially-prepared prototypes.
The magazines always want to be first out with an article on an all new car. I remember reading articles on the Aurora before it went into production. I also remember reading an article based on a production model, and the editor was quite clear about the production model falling short of the preproduction model. The Riviera was kept under wraps until production, and generally was considered softer riding than the Aurora with handling more or less as expected. Both cars got suspension upgraded in 97 that took care of the Aurora’s deficiencies.
I kind of remember the X-cars. They never looked that good to me.
I think it’s true that a few manufacturers got shy about inviting car scribes who repeatedly criticized their products to future new-car press junkets. In cases that resemble this tact( or perhaps when for some other reason, a model the magazine wanted to test isn’t available when the magazine wants to test it, some magazines have found a private owner who will loan them a car to test. Road & Track did this when they needed to test the new 1966 Rolls Silver Shadow, and the distributor was unwilling to loan a car. In a different issue, Road & Track was interested in evaluating the then-new 1976 Cadillac Seville, and learned that the Los Angeles press office for GM hadn’t yet received a Seville for testing even though dealers already had the cars in stock. In this case, the magazine went to a local dealer to borrow a car to test.
As a kid I was a passionate reader of Motor Trend beginning around 1958. I remember being a little shocked a few years later, when “foreign cars” began to be popular and written about, to hear MT described as “The Charlie McCarthy of Detroit.” This was years before Nader and the consumer movement so many of us were more than all a little naive, I guess.
I think you mean Joseph McCarthy, if I get your joke. Charlie McCarthy was Edgar Bergen’s puppet.
Ha! Uh, no, he in fact meant Charlie McCarthy, as in MT was Detroit’s puppet, its mouthpiece.
Get it now? 🙂
Thank you for posting this. This is quite the comprehensive history and provides some great insight into how GM went about designing the ’58 Impala.
I’m really surprised Chevy released some of those drawings for publication that look *a lot* like the ’59.,
That is entirely coincidental. Back in ’56 when the car was being designed, these were just some of the more blue-sky ideas, one of which would hopefully give one detail to the finished car. The intention was that the ’59 Chevrolet was going to be related to the ’58 like the ’56 Chevrolet was to the ’55. And no doubt, the 60’s would have been as closely related to the ’58 as the ’57 was to the ’55.
Now, according the to the article, the ’58 was finalized in May ’56. In either September or October ’56 the bombshell that was the ’57 Chrysler line appeared and the shit hit the fan, big time. Suddenly, instead of a minor updating, the ’59 Chevrolet had to be completely different! Which means a lot of these really outta there sketches from 1955 are suddenly being grabbed and people are trying to figure out how to make them work on the car that Buick Division was developing.
What’s interesting is while Chevy [GM] is promoting the ‘all new’ 58, they are hard at work on the upcoming new ’59 body shell.
Imagine if there was internet and digtial cams back then, there would be spy pics of “next years model” on the next page.
Another imagine is if GM said “We aren’t going to copy Mopar” and stuck with the taller body for 59?
No internet or digicams needed. Spy shots of upcoming models have been in car and enthusiast magazines since at least the 1950s.
Except that they were being released a month or so before the new model introductions, not two or three years in advance like they do nowadays. Magazines were way more afraid of the car manufacturers back then.
A few magazines in the ’60s and ’70s were brave enough to show long-lead spy shots. CAR magazine in the UK was one example – they would regularly post spy shots years in advance of the release date. Sometimes the cars would be shown as much as five years earlier.
As a reader of CAR for nearly 45 years, I think one reason why they were able to “scoop” with their “spy shots” YEARS in advance was that many manufacturers had such long development times and/or manufacturers were often forced to delay models for year(s), due to lack of funds.
Not precisely relevant here, but from the Aug. ’58 NADA magazine, a note about Ford reportedly fast-tracking a then-future design for its upcoming ’59s:
By the time the 58 was introduced, the 59 was pretty well set in stone anyway, so perhaps they were trying to get folks ready for the next transition. And that radical 59 had to come from somewhere, and as Syke says, some of those themes were already being developed anyhow.
I agree that GM wanted to put those ’59 development pictures out there to preview them. I’m sure that they got some feedback from the public. Though the design was probably pretty much ready for production by then. I think that this occurred with the ’70 Riviera with a retro Delage influence.It was released prior to the retro design ’71 Cadillac El Dorado. I think that it would reduce the “shock” to automotive journalists who could then “pave the way” for the design’s release.
I found this quite interesting, as I hadn’t appreciated how much of the ’59 Chevy’s styling and specifically the rear end were already part of the development of the ’58.
I also was not aware of the plans for the Executive Coupe, which looks just like (and pre-dates) the same roof line that Ford would use on the ’57 Skyliner. Side-facing rear seats; hmm. No wonder they dropped that. But a slightly longer version with regular rear seat would have made for an interesting alternative. A coupe companion to the Nomad.
As per my comment above, I think that was GM in panic mode. Look at the trunk lids. Although different, the 55-58 progression of trunk lids was a nice gentle evolution. A 90 degree rounded bend going all the way to the rear bumper. Then the 59 trunk lid has one hell of a liftover to put items in the trunk.
Those drawings make me wonder just how much of the “early” sketches for the ’58 were re-referenced to develop the ’59.
When you have to do “radical” to get our styling lead back, all of a sudden those early sketches aren’t so far out there anymore.
Yeesh! That front-slanting windshield–I think I’ll just wait another couple years for a combine with a cab, thanks.
I see your Deere and raise you a Gleaner with a curved windshield. Granted, it’s newer, but still, Gleaner’s didn’t change much mechanically.
The curved windshield was a great idea. It really sheds the dust.
Gleaners are still unchanged mechanically. Sat in a new one at a farm show this summer and it was a beautiful early-’90s machine.
Early versions of the cab had it slanted the other way, with a small front-slanting window at the bottom. It didn’t shed dust any better, and it was harder to see because there was a window frame right where you wanted to see the header. I couldn’t find an actual photograph of one, but 5 minutes in MS Paint hopefully shows what I mean:
Do they still have their “Silver Seeder” reputation? Gleaners have always been the pheasant hunter’s favorite brand of combine!
We’ve owned two combines in the last twenty-five years- a Deere 6600 and a Gleaner F2. We used the 6600 through last year (Bought it in 1989), and bought the F2 this year, as the 6600 was just plain worn out.
The Gleaner is a superior machine in every way. Much easier to service (And it breaks down a lot less), parts are universal, fuel usage is down (We have the Allis-Chalmers turbocharged 4 cylinder), and harvest quality is up.
Our straw is less chewed up, our grain samples are much, much cleaner (almost perfect), and we think that our grain losses have been cut in half.
This was our first machine of any kind to be made by Allis-Chalmers, but I’m convinced that Gleaner made a great combine. You can see that they didn’t have the R&D money that Deere did- for example, to hold the door open, they welded a loop that stays between the handle and the door. It works, but it isn’t fancy. But, man, that machine works well.
You couldn’t pay me to own another Deere combine.
+1 on matador’s comment. Gleaner’s had a better reputation for grain retention in my view.
I think the “bar” in the middle of the front would actually catch dirt. The sloping window of our F2 works great- the dirt runs down it, and where it curves in, it just “falls off”.
Yeah the drawings go a long way in explaining the 59 batwing styling it was merely a continuation of the theme, Ive never seen or ridden in a air suspended 58, pretty sure that wasnt part of the options list for local assembly or the 348 motor most of the local cars were 283 manual and nearby is an original survivor I must shoot one day.
Dad had the air suspension in his ’58. Even as a young child, I can remember he had a lot of trouble with it.
You know something’s wrong when dad brings a used car home overnight, and during days when I was in school. Odd used cars around our house were normally only during the summer when he came home for lunch, so his car crazy kid could climb all over it while he ate.
There was a one off Rolls Royce in Britain with the forward leaning windscreen. It was a late pre-war build. I think General Montgomery used it as his staff car. Weird as hell looking thing.
Below is a rendering of ’58 Chevrolet rear styling development from my collection of Original GM Styling Studio Artwork. This was done by Carl Renner on Nov. 7,1955. Notice the faux air vents louvers on either side of the back window where as in the final Impala Coupe design there was just one centered over the back window. Also the rear window here is in 3 sections much like the ’57 Olds Holiday Coupe. The tailight treatment here outboard of the curved fins on each side is like the final design. What is different is that the rear quarter panels here are much more complex in shape than the final slab-sided design.
Nice to see this old write up of the ’58. The perfect follow up to Jason’s ride in the same 348 auto equipped version. I’m not so sure this is all just blowing smoke up GM’s rear, the article does state the air ride pre-production car they drove handled poorly. Those chassis illustrations are pretty well done. Lot’s of interesting details were covered in the magazine’s article.
The down years for the ’58 were the 70’s, when the Tri-5’s were starting to be collectible and gaining value. So much so that there was even a “Three’s Company” episode about the differences between 57 and 58.
Mr. Roper is selling his “57 Chevy” cheap, but collectors come with more cash. Turns out it’s an ‘early 58’ and called “junk”.
In the 70’s the 58 was not shown much love. The tri 5’s were cats meow.
Even the ’58 Corvette was slow to gain a collector following compared to other C1-era Corvettes due largely to their overdone chrome. For years a ’58 was always worth a little less than a comparable ’57 or ’59.
I remember that episode, and even though I know that some people aren’t as into their cars as we are, I always found it beyond belief that someone could own, register, maintain, smog check and insure a car for 20 years, and not know the year. It probably bothered me even more knowing that Mr. Roper would doubtless have had the paperwork in hand as he prepared to sell it.
I also wondered what piece of Malaise-era garbage they replaced it with. Probably a stripped, three-speed manual Fairmont like the one featured a few days ago, or a similarly equipped Nova.
Fascinating look at the one year wonder.
Chevy owed MT a thank you note for any sales air suspension sales that may have been killed. It seems like most of those early systems ended up recalled or replaced by upset owners. It almost makes you wonder if Chevy didn’t panic and actually green light the comment!
Always amazing to see how ideas on the drawing room floor show up on a variety of cars, sometimes several years down the road.
That early fender wing sketch on page 47 sure seems to have inspired a lot of early ’60s Dodge cars, and not to their betterment. The darndest thing is that if you look at it another way, the ’59-’60 Buick pops out.
It makes you wonder if a few sketches were ever put out there just to mess with the competition. Chrysler was sometimes famous for taking what they perceived as market intelligence on GM and managing to torpedo their sales with it.
We are going to get to see the Edsel article, aren’t we? Please?
Yup that one pic definitely said 59 Buick to me. It did say in the portion of the article that was written by the GM guys that sometimes something that didn’t make the cut for one division ended up being further developed by another division.
I second the desire to see the Edsel article, pretty please.
tis fun to read the opinion of the time…by the days when I started reading about cars in the mid 70s, the general theme was how could Chevy have made such a mistake with the 58 after the 55-57 models? Seems they didn’t feel that way at the time….
Another interesting bit is the front cover headline “8000 miles in two Edsels tells all!”
Sputnik is just around the corner.
Sputnik had gone up a two or three weeks before this issue hit the newsstands. 4 October 57.
I have always seen the obvious connection of the 58, 59, 60 and 61 Chevrolet styling. But I have not been aware that GM crash restyled the 59’s after Chrysler’s new look appeared in 57(?). There is also a transition of the 57, 58, 59…. Cadillac fins too. Buick’s 59 fins do not follow from the 58 model, which was quite different from 57. Oldsmobile’s 58 to 59 is not obvious either. Pontiac’s fins are minimal, but not obvious from 58.
The ’59 Buick was the planned model, or at least something along those lines were originally planned. I think the Buick had been on essentially the same body from 1954 thru 1958, so was due for a major restyle. Chevrolet and Pontiac were working on a different production cycle.
When the word came out that everything had to be changed, out of necessity all the divisions had to start with what Buick had already done, starting with the doors.
Chevrolets and Pontiacs were A-bodies. I think GM planned to move them to B-bodies since they were bringing out small cars.
No in the past there has been a reprint of an article detailing the development of the 59s. It was a crash course because of the Chryslers and corperate made the decision to consolodate to one body for 59 instead of the A,B,C that they had used in the past. They decided that due to the time constraint and costs of development and tooling for 3 bodies. Fact is the plan was for refreshing the 58 A for 59 to utilized existing tooling and further amortize it. So everyone was told they had to work off of the Buick and share a lot of it so that they could get it to market in time and contain costs.
What I see is that in 1956 Ford, Chevrolet, and Plymouth were on a 115 inch wheel base. For 1957 Ford had a 116 and a 118, while Plymouth was all 118. Chevrolet was still 115. When GM (Chevrolet) would have known is not clear, but certainly by the summer/fall of 1956. Probably the 1958’s are designed, but the 59’s could be changed, which seems to be the case (I don’t really know). But moving the Chevrolet to a longer wheelbase by 1959 is needed to keep up.
Nice reading there .
I really like the executive coupe .
’58 Chevies were impossible to sell used for decades .
Now they’re rather popular almost as hot as the tri – fives .
-Nate
I have heard about the originally planned ’59 and ’60 updates of the ’58 design but have never seen any drawings. Is there anywhere I can find these? That would make a great article for CC.
I’ve seen a few in years past but cannot remember where. Special Interest Autos is a good possibility.
As to what they were, from my memory: The best parallel is to go from a ’56 to a ’57’ to a ’58 Buick. Dowdier, more overchromed, and uglier. The ’58 was very lucky it was a one year design.
I have only seen one 58 Chevy on the road that had the Level Air script on it, and that was in 1974! I’m sure by then it was converted to coils.
My friend’s parents had a clapped out 58 Impala convertible in the late 60s. Despite the deplorable condition I still loved riding in it. I like the 58 better than any of the Tri-5s, but apparently the buying public didn’t in 58.
Quite the contrary. The ’57 was the failure year for Chevrolet, as Ford outsold it (either model year or calendar, can’t remember which) for the first time since 1936. Chevrolet for ’57 was downright dowdy compared to Ford and Plymouth.
For ’58 Chevrolet absolutely killed Ford in sales, getting total revenge. For the 1959 model year, Ford executives were pessimistic following up a homely car with an overly conservative one – and to their shock they won the sales race again, as the quitely attractive Ford appealed to more people than the off the wall Chevrolet.
With the exception of Buick, I’ve always found the ’59 GM cars ugly as hell. At least the Buick had a completely unified design from front to rear. For that matter, I’ve always felt that Chevrolet and Cadillac were the only attractive cars GM had in ’58.
I agree that the 59 Buick is the best of the bunch by far but I’d certainly take a 59 Caddy and wouldn’t mind a Chevy. The Olds is the worst though the Pontiac isn’t that far behind.
I thought this article might relieve a lifelong perplexity for me, but it didn’t (through no fault of the author). I was born in ’60, started noticing cars around 63 and began looking at them seriously around 1965 or ’66. By then the ’58 Chevy looked not only horribly antiquated, but horrible. I could not believe such an ugly, ill-proportioned mashup of design ideas was made into a real car. And I couldn’t explain its ugliness to myself on the basis of the car’s age, as the ’57 made much more visual sense to me, as did many of the Chrysler products of the era. The ’58 is simply an ugly, ugly car.
The sketches are interesting. The design with the reverse slanted windshield is as humanoid a car design as I have seen. The single headlights within the elliptical frames look like eyes, the windshield like a pompadour.
Adults saw them very differently the 57 was just a made over 56 and didnt sell well even over here where any new car was sought after, 58s sold quite well.
Interesting comment on the “adult” perspective. I’m a few years older than mFred and my (negative) impression of the ’58 vs ’57 was also set at an early age. It’s taken 50+ years to see things even slightly differently.
Dman, so you now like (or dislike less) the ’58? What have you come to see in it that you could not see before? In more recent years, I’ve revised my opinion on many cars that I did not “get” in child, for example the Volvo P1800. But this one…I just can’t get there.
As he was going to be getting a new ’58 Chevy in a few weeks, my dad took my brother and I down to the local dealer to look at them a day or two after they came out. I was in the third grade and already a car guy. I remember looking at the dealer’s lot across the street where some unsold ’57’s were sitting and thinking that I liked them better than the new ones.
I have always liked the ’58 but prefer the BelAire two door hardtop style to the Impala which has always looked over styled to me. The lower models look much trimmer and don’t seem to be trying to be a cheaper Cadillac.
Fascinating and comprehensive article, great stuff! Content like this is what made C&D a top auto mag from the 50s into the early 80s. Sadly, today I thumbed thru the current issue at the drug store and it was all ads and a few scattered road tests of the latest “high-powered” whatever that’s way out of reach of the average car buyer. In other words, garbage.
It’s why I gave up reading the automotive rags a long time ago.
As for the 58 Chevrolet, I thought it was ugly in the 60s when I started becoming obsessed with cars as a kid. I still think it’s ugly and the reason it’s becoming “popular” now is because the 55-57s are so wildly overpriced in the market.
Great contribution. I have many copies of Motor Trend from the 50s and have never seen this issue available before. When I got those they were only 25c apiece at used book stores and such. 70s prices.
In 1958, my parents bought a light/pastel green Brookwood while 1 uncle bought a 58 sky blue Nomad, and another a chocolate brown 58 Country Sedan. Compared to the 55 Country Sedan that the Brookwood replaced, though only 3 years newer it was the ingenue movie star to the Ford’s seasoned character actress. The 58 Country Sedan? Maybe it was the brown color, but it came across as your middle-aged uncle of a car.
By the way, the Stan Mott byline made me wonder … when will we see a CC on the Cyclops?
A little something I found on Facebook…
https://www.facebook.com/hugovanandel/videos/1086002218090071/
I never realised the air suspension was all 4 corners–I always thought it was a self leveling thing on the rear–I wonder how those designers felt when they realized their car was going to be a one year wonder.
The air suspension was developed for the Eldorado Brougham, where it did not work well either.
It was listed as an option for 1959, as well, but its reputation was so tarnished by the middle of the 1958 model year that – if Chevrolet actually produced any at all – few were ordered.
Everyone tried the air suspension in ’58. Even AMC did it. Everyone gave it up the next year.
One of my dad’s friends bought a Bel Air with the air suspension and gave us a ride in it. I remember that it seemed big and cushy compared to our ’54, but I didn’t have any way of judging whether the air was cushier than the regular coils.
Were the air bags interconnected left/right? At least on the rear, the schematic seems to show them that way. If they were, they would have acted to INCREASE body roll in cornering. In a right turn, the car would lean to the left, and the air pressure increase thus caused in the left air bag would then tend to jack up the interconnected RIGHT air bag and increase body lean. I hope that was NOT the case and that the schematic is simplified.
The ’58 Chevy Impala did not escape all the chrome gingerbread ladled on it by GM. The lower level Biscayne and DelReys were much more tastefully trimmed. At least the Impala got the snazzy basket handle roof C pillar. That was also used on the ’57 and ’58 Cadillacs, then on the later Camaro and Firebird. I have to admit that GM kind of lost me from ’58 thru ’61. The ’58 Chevy was big and fat, the ’59 GM cars just too weird to take seriously, Chevy through Cadillac. My Dad bought a new ’59 Impala two door hardtop, he didn’t like it much. He said that the seats were on the floor and the back window burned up the kids in the backseat, the rear seat backrest actually burnt. After that, he fitted a set of venetian blinds in back. The ’57 Chevy was already considered a classic as I grew up in the 1960s. Even if it was not widely admired when introduced, the ’57’s stock just had to go up after the public saw the monstrosities that followed it!
The ’58 Chevy sold fairly well in the “Ike Recession”. But, when Boomers grew into teens, and shopped for used cars, the ’57 was top on the list.
OTOH, the Tri-5’s got overexposed, overpriced, IMHO, and thus 58’s made a comeback, along with other vintage 50s/60s cars in the collector market. 😉