Ford Motor Company enjoyed a good year for 1957. The Ford Division introduced thoroughly revamped cars throughout its line-up, and even offered supercharging for the first time ever as an option on Thunderbirds. Mercury models were also redesigned and moved up-market in preparation for the pending arrival of the Edsel division. Only the Lincoln and Continental remained mostly unchanged. Motor Trend was ready with all the details in the 1957 Auto Show Issue.
Ford also jumped on the longer, lower, wider bandwagon for 1957. The cars stretched 3.2″ to 9.2″ in length, dropped 2.1″ to 3.5″ in height and grew in width by 2.3″. Taking the larger bodies into account, engine output also grew, with everything from the inline-6 to the top V8 adding horsepower. While styling was all-new inside and out, Ford’s “Lifeguard Design” themes from 1956 continued to get some emphasis, with a deeper-dished steering wheel and limited protrusion of knobs being touted as safety features.
A nifty innovation that Ford trotted out for 1957 was the retractable hardtop body style. While the stow-away metal roof enjoyed only limited popularity during its three year run in the late 1950s, the idea resurfaced again about 20-years ago and still enjoys some popularity on open-topped cars around the world.
The best news for the Ford Division was that it beat arch rival Chevrolet in sales for the model year, earning the top spot as the best selling car brand in the U.S.
To my eyes at least, the third time–or in this case the third year–was the charm for the first generation 2-seat Thunderbird. The added length, bolder grill and subtle tail fins look just right to me. Performance was also significantly enhanced, with better handling and more powerful engines, including the 300 horsepower Supercharged Thunderbird Special 312 V8. Customers were pleased, as T-bird sales surged 37%, climbing to 21,380–well above the “other” American 2-seater from GM.
Lincoln marked 1957 by launching a new 4-door hardtop “landau” body style. This tardy addition to the line–both Cadillac and Imperial had offered 4-door hardtops in 1956–became Lincoln’s best selling 4-door. Styling enhancements included the de rigueur canted tail fins and new headlight clusters ready-made for the adoption of quad lamps in front.
The Continental entered its second (and final) year as the ultimate flagship model for the Ford Motor Company. The cleanly styled, carefully crafted luxury coupes did not fare so well for 1957, with sales dropping 83% from 1956. The market for ultra-luxury cars in the late 1950s was minuscule, and Continental’s $9,966 base price ($85,348 adjusted) was considered shockingly expensive. The proposed convertible, which might have sparked some additional sales, never officially materialized–apparently only two were ever built, essentially both were prototypes.
Mercury based its 1957 styling direction on themes established with the Turnpike Cruiser concept car of 1956. While much chunkier than Virgil Exner’s Chrysler Corporation designs, the Mercury was still very futuristic in the 1950s “dream car” idiom. In fact, beyond lending its looks to the ’57 Mercury line, the Turnpike Cruiser also became the newest top-line series, featuring Seat-O-Matic, a version of the “memory seat” (shades of the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham) and a retractable rear window on 2- and 4-door hardtops. In spite of the new style and fancy models, sales dropped 12%, but Mercury did not fare as badly as the medium-priced makes over at GM. These results were particularly remarkable given that Mercury was moving aggressively up-market into a higher price bracket, dropping low-line models and seeing average price increases of 23%.
Undoubtedly FoMoCo was pleased with their performance for 1957. The company took sales and market share away from behemoth General Motors while withstanding the onslaught from the flashy new Mopars.
Ford kept costs down by utilizing the same headlight buckets and taillight bezels as well as taillights, themselves, for all three years of the 2 seater Thunderbird. The sheet metal upper rear quarters are also the same stamping as used on the big Fords of each year.
The cool and almost forgotten thing about the 57 Ford was that there were 2 of them. The 2 lower series were sized to compete more directly in Ford’s traditional market, and were more comparable in size and style with Chevy. But the Fairlane and Fairlane 500 were on a different body and a longer wheelbase. Both these and the 57 Plymouth sort of re-set the scale of what size the “low priced three” would be going forward, and the smaller Ford disappeared after 1958.
I love how the editors considered the 57 Lincoln to be even more beautiful than the 56, a view that is rare today.
The major buff mags knew well to never criticize and never fail to complement the efforts of their patron…
I don’t think the 37% increase in ’57 T-bird sales was due exclusively to its improvements over the ’56 model, as this article implies. The ’57 model got an extended 15 month sales year over the ’56, because the ’58 T-bird was not introduced until January 1958. The longer sales year simply gave people more time to buy cars recorded as ’57 models.
So true – I remember as a little kid being confused by print ads that included the 57 T-Bird with the new 58 Fords, an unusual juxtaposition of 57 and 58 styling.
MT’s sketch of the Skyliner looks a lot better than the real thing. Their sketch closely resembles the proportions and shape of the Peugeot version in the ’30s. It would have worked if the trunk opened all the way down to the bumper.
The clean-sided elegance of the Continental (foreseeing the classic 1961 Continental) makes such a jarring contrast to the overdecorated, baroque Mercury!
Imagine trying to find parts for that retractable hardtop. The electric motors would have been unobtanium 30 years ago. You’d have to get them rebuilt _if_ you could find someone to do it!
So you were supposed to put your hand through the 4-spoke steering wheel to adjust the heater in 57 Mercurys? Huh. Must have made that when the “Lifeguard design” guy was off duty.
Continental’s probably the only one I would go for — those Lincolns are pretty awful. Still, worse was yet to come.
You had to do that on older Mercurys, too. At a small car show last weekend, there was a 1954 Mercury Sun Valley, their two-door hardtop with the forward portion of the roof in glass. The heater controls were on the dash on top of a “shelf” and you would have had to reach through the steering wheel, or WAY around the wheel, to use them.
The Mercury was, to me, the outstanding, and definitely most rare car at the show, but “Best Of Show” went to a lightly-custom 1969 Chevrolet Camaro, a car that at shows of American cars has become as common as dirt (well, at shows the cars are clean, but you get the idea). Of course 80% of the cars were Chevrolets…which suggests the “automotive demographics” of the club membership.
Wow. So they had a really badly thought out – but attractive! – design for the ’54 and they uglified it but kept the same terrible idea in later years. Impressive.
Though by no means the purview of Detroit only, of course. See that small fin on the top of the steering column of this Simca Aronde? That there is the turn signal. Just when you need to keep your hands on the wheel and/or change gear, you have to handle this prize-winning piece of automotive idiocy. At lease you can usually wait a couple minutes to adjust the ventilation in your Merc – but the turn signal?
*Facepalm*
I remember the trafficator switch on my aunt’s Austin A30 was in the centre of the dashboard – not so hard to reach in such a narrow car. But on top of the steering column!
Posting the new car reviews every September would be great!
It’s hilarious that they actually felt the need to point out the “canted fins” on the T-bird, the “high, tilted fins” on the Lincoln, and the “unique fins” on the Mercury. Fins were in!
And noting how everything old is new again, I think we may have reached “peak taillight” – look at the new taillights on the Prius and tell me they don’t remind you of some of the late-1950s designs.
I still have somewhere in my collection old 1950s and 1960s Mad magazines, in which they lampooned many of the auto stylings of the day.
Geez, this is some bad reporting. Ford, America’s best selling car in 1957, apparently fielding two wheelbases – sort of an early flirtation with a full and mid-size car, and they completely bypass any real discussion of the long wheelbase car! What is this mystery wheelbase? Does it give any real benefit in passenger or trunk room? What are the pluses, or minuses, of getting the bigger car? This was a big story, and they completely missed it.
If not for the bug eyes, that are hard to see in these pictures, the ’57 Ford was quite the attractive car.
That optional Mercury four headlight fit always looked a bit scary to me. Certainly not properly styled in.
My father had a 1957 Fairlane 500 hardtop (Town Victoria, I believe). Even though he traded it on a 1962 Fairlane 500 (what a bringdown, IMO), the smaller Fairlane was the better car for our family. However, the 1957 had the Thunderbird 312 V8, with plenty of power. He talked about that car until the day he passed in 1978. No other car for him was better, including all of the Mercurys he owned.
Fletcher Armstrong Sr. once told me of having a Ford of this vintage equipped with a Thunderbird engine. Said one night, on the M-102 Farmington bypass, he was nearly killed when after driving at a high rate of speed, he suffered drum brake fade and was barely able to properly control and stop the vehicle.
That was well before my time. By the time I knew him, he was exclusively driving Buick Electra 225s (his wife the early Regals.)