I don’t think we’ve ever taken a look at a ’59 Chevy wagon before here, so when I ran across this fine one shot curbside by Staxman at the Cohort, I bit. Now we’re all very familiar with Chevy’s bat wing styling, which may not have been terribly practical for a wagon, but Chevy made it work, well enough. And since I used to ride to catechism in an almost identical ’59 wagon, I have vivid memories of what the inside was like: roomy.
What we have here is a Parkwood wagon. And that name tells us something that probably just about no other wagon name ever did: that this is a 6 passenger wagon, and not a 9 passenger version. because if it had been, it would be a Kingswood. And if it had been a lower trim (Biscayne-level) wagon, it would have been the Brookwood. Only the Impala-trim version wasn’t a ‘wood’ suffix wagon,as the illustrious Nomad name was saved for it.
The Parkwood and Kingswood wagons were in Bel Air-level trim. The original owner of this one was a thrifty soul, as it apparently has the venerable 235 six and what appears to be the three-on-the-tree. needless to say, a palette of 283 and 348 cubic inch V8s were also available. Even a fully-sychronized four speed floor-shifted manual, if one was so inclined, but only on the more powerful V8s. Plus of course Powerglide or Turboglide.
The one I rode in was also owned by Mary Lou Funk’s dad, also a thrifty guy, and it too had the six and manual. Well, it was a short ride to St. Thomas Moore on Monday afternoons, but I remember the back seat very well, especially those foot wells that dropped down between the the X-Frame center and the sills.
Since I started skipping catechism very early (3rd grade, the first time), my rides in the Chevy wagon were increasingly rare.
The only 9 passenger wagon available was the Kingswood; the rest were all 6 passenger wagons. But I can assure you there were plenty of times that there more more than 6 aboard the Catechism Express.
That’s a rather nicely preserved old wagon, for sure.
The only wagon I got to ride in as a kid was a neighbor’s full-size Chrysler wago – don’t recall the year or what division it was, but the neighbor’s mom took us to the show in it during summer months.
It sure was a kick riding backwards in the little third seat!
My first car was a 1960 Bel air 4 door sedan. The Bat wings weren’t as radical. Do believe the ’59 looked better as a wagon, then a sedan.
Bringing back the memories: Change the orange to brown, and that’s mom’s first station wagon and the first time there were two cars in the garage. And yep, I’ve got the memories of riding in the back. 283/Powerglide of course. And yeah, that interior, even down to the magnetic Infant of Prague on the speaker grille (our family were very devout Byzantine Catholics).
I really remember the car because it was the only time that dad didn’t got with the top of the line for that year model on a car (yes, mom’s wagon said Hallman’s Chevrolet on the owner’s card, just like dad’s Impala two-door hardtop). And, it had the standard crank down rear window, not the optional electric powered one. Always wondered why dad did it that way, never did ask him.
For 1960, the replacement wagon was the Impala(? – well at least whatever they called the Impala level wagon that year) with the power rear window.
One of these belonged to one of the car-pool-Moms when I started kindergarten. It could have been a 60, it’s been a long time ago. The copper Chevy wagon was among the oldest vehicles in the group during that 1964-65 school year, with a lavender 58 Ford sedan taking the prize for the oldest.
I remember us coming up behind a car that was stuck in an intersection. Mrs. Mejer bumped it with her front bumper to give it a push. She convinced all of us kids to push – either against the dash (for those riding shotgun) or on the seat ahead of the back seat passengers. Damned if it didn’t work because that car got moving. 🙂
The next year the school in my own neighborhood was complete and open and we were expected to walk there, so no more car pools.
All of your stories are sweet. You bring life to motoring. There is something special about traveling in a car especially when we did not have electronic games to distract us. My Mom bought her postwar car in 1950. It was a 1950 Dodge Wayfarer, two-door, six-passenger with upgrades including a deluxe steering wheel with chromed horn ring, deluxe heater, Fluid Drive and other stuff. Our favorite trips for my brother and me were the long distance ones. We would visit relatives in the Boston area, family friends in neighboring states to New York, and go to the Adirondack Mountains of New York for the summer. In 1951, Mom hooked up a trailer and we went camping without sitting in the car with the gear. It took nine hours from The Bronx to Hearthstone Campground two miles north of Lake George Village because we had to take highways only, which meant Route 9 all the way. We loved it. Just the other day we had a cool night. When I got into my GMC Acadia in the morning to run an errand I smelled that familiar smell from my childhood. In the summer, there is a certain soft odor of dampness from condensation that is within the car after a cool night and as a hot day is ahead. I smiled. The Dodge Wayfarer had that same odor. So, a trip from Luzerne, New York to The Shelburne Museum just south of Burlington, Vermont started with that fresh sweet smell. We had no electronic games so we looked out he window. When our children were small, I forbade electronic games en route when we were on vacation. They had to see the passing countryside and urban areas. Why else were we on a road trip if not to experience something new? Of note, my Dad never drove the car. He never drove – PERIOD. He did appreciate being chauffeured to church on Sunday morning. Let us hear from more of you of your sweet memories from when you were a child!
You’re much too kind, especially since this one was belted out way too quickly at bedtime. But if you’re interested in more, I have a whole series of Auto-Biographies that cover my childhood and later too:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/paul-niedermeyers-auto-biography-series/
The two toning looks good on this car .
-Nate
Being a child of the ’70’s, I find it amazing that there were actually 4 separate model names for wagons built on the same platform back then.
The 50’s and 60’s were the REAL golden age of the station wagon, as even though there were still a lot of wagons produced and sold through the 70’s they were not quite as in vogue during the “Me Generation” years when I was growing up, at least in the East Coast locales I was familiar with. Born in ’67, I can only remember one wagon that was in my family’s circle as a kid, and it was a ’77? Country Squire driven by an aunt who was always viewed as a bit of a throwback. To be fair she was probably a decade older than my parents, and her 3 daughters, all older than I was, were involved in equestrian sports, so that wagon served a purpose. My own mother was a bit on the extreme side, driving 2-door compacts with stick shifts, but most of the parents of my friends owned coupes (lots of collonades) or sedans, as even by the mid 70’s wagons were considered old school to my parents’ circle.
Oddly enough my family did briefly own a first generation 1984 Dodge Caravan when they were very new on the scene. I have always viewed that anomaly as more of an 80’s conspicuous consumption show of cutting edge consumerism than as a practical choice. It was only in the driveway for 2 years max, and was traded in on the purchase of a Jaguar XJ-6, of all things.
I think this is close to, if not, my favorite CC car of all time. Early 60s wagons just scream “road trip”, dripping ice cream on the vinyl in the back seat, rolling up I95 towards Maine, stopping for strawberry shortcake at Yokuns Thar she blows restaurant in Portsmouth. (Yes I know it’s a 59 but in many ways it’s the first car of the 60s). ( Our actual road trips were in a Saab 95 wagon, 3 cyl. 2 stroke… only slightly smaller.)
And I know that the 59s are over the top and considered ugly, but I always loved them because over the top or not, they’re not baroque like contemporary Caddies etc. (Or for that matter, current Prii, which seem to be resurrecting the tail fin.)
the 59 bowtie is one of my all time faves
Since I sold the dealer showroom books off about ten years ago (I had them from ’58 thru ’64), I’ve never been able to keep straight what years the Chevrolet wagons had their own model names (parallel with the sedans), and what years they used the same model names like the rest of the line.
For all this talk of “wood” in the names, however, I don’t remember Chevrolet actually putting fake wood on the sides of the wagons until our ’66 Caprice Estate Wagon. Which was the first Chevrolet my father actually bought.
The fullsize Chevrolet wagons had their own model names from 1958 to 1961, and again from 1969 to 1972.
Prior to 1958, the wagons had distinct names, but they were part of the larger Chevrolet model lines, not distinct models. In other words, a 1955-57 Nomad is really a “Bel Air Nomad”, while a 1958-61 Nomad is just a “Nomad”.
Rear-end styling on Big3 wagons was sometimes iffy (beauty/beholder, of course), but the batwing thing here does seems to work just fine.
Those rear-side glass pieces, with the curves around to the back, must have added to GM’s cost—I see they’re not cheap today as used pieces ($385/pr + mega-$hipping): http://www.ebay.com/itm/1959-60-Chevrolet-Parkwood-Olds-88-Pontiac-station-wagon-R-L-quarter-glass-/272446638058?hash=item3f6f15c7ea:g:-AAAAOSwx2dYJod9&vxp=mtr
Those must have added cost, but they saved some significant costs with the use of the 4dr sedan rear doors and glass on the wagons. Most other wagons had different doors or at least window frames and glass. Pretty sure that Chevy wagons before and after the 1959/60 had unique rear doors/glass, so curious that they decided to go with the sedan doors for just this generation of full sizer.
After WW II, my father “sampled” cars of each of the Big 3. He wasn’t yet loyal to any 1 dealer or make of car when he traded a 55 Ford Country Sedan for a 58 Chevy Brookwood. Our Brookwood was 2 toned like this car (2 toning on wagons, at least Chevys must have been very popular, as finding a Brookwood or Impala that’s a single color is a rarity). I was only about 5-6 years old, so I don’t know which engine/transmission our car had but would guess a 6 cylinder with Powerglide. My Mom grew to really hate that car as the brakes were weak and she often had electrical problems….neither of which my father experienced.
In my small town, I remember 2 different 59 Chevy wagons, 1 was a medium blue Brookwood while the other was an interesting 2 tone white over metallic medium green. For some reason, Chevy wagons don’t seem to have had the sales success that Ford wagons did in my hometown even though the local Ford dealers were not all that aggressive at dealing.
The family owned 3 wagons while us kids were growing up, first one was a ’59 red Plymouth, dad would sometimes tow a travel trailer and a ski boat together, it was legal in California at the time. I was only around 5, but I do recall riding in the boat on the lake, also remember the time the boat became unhitched from little Shasta travel trailer, (dad forgot to push the locking lever down, no chains I guess) it passed us sparks flying as we slowed down the boat stopped in the left lane, a quick scramble and my older brother and dad got it hooked up again. Also remember a road rage episode where dad and another car pulled over, the driver pulled a gun, the other driver quickly lost possession of it and got the crap beat out of him as well. WW2 combat training and bravery came into play here. I remember dad said he wasn’t sure if he was brave or stupid, us kid’s knew he wasn’t stupid.
Second wagon was a stripper ’61 Brookwood, beige, 283, AM radio, powerglide and not much else, probably PS as well. All I recall about this car is the gas station attendant telling mom it was 2 quarts low on oil and here telling him to only add one because it “throws the last quart”. Mom never liked this wagon. Even less after brother hooked up a “bomb” to the spark plug wire, dad called her to bring something to his office, we kids all knew what was up. Never saw mom run so fast out of the garage after that, she was pissed at dad for a long time!
Last wagon was a blue ’65 Impala, remember this car well as it was our first with AC. It had a roof luggage carrier, and I was riding in the back looking out the rear window when I heard a loud “thunk” and watched our suitcases bounce down the highway and cars swerving every around bouncing suitcases. No cars were hit and everything was retrieved, scuffed up but the only real damage was a broken mirror in a cosmetics case.
Always kind of like the batwing ’59 Chevy, especially in the El Camino version. We used to walk about 3 blocks to St. Anthony’s for catechism classes, didn’t dare ditch.
In the TV show Astronaut Wives about the Mercury 7 astronauts and their spouses; the astronaut all got Corvettes and the wives got Chevy wagons of this era (more likely 60s than 59s). Some where the producers rounded up some of these classics for filming.
I might as we re-post this ad; everything changed the next year, with the Corvair’s appearance:
I miss real colors.
Awesome ad.
Here are the paintchips to go with it…
The picture below is of my uncle, cousin and myself in front of our new ’59 Brookwood. Dad was afraid of us falling out, so he chose the two door model. He did treat himself to his first automatic, paired with a V-8, probably a 283/PG combo.
A friend of mine’s father had a new blue wagon, six, stick shift. I rode in it many times. As I recall, in those days it was common for new car buyers to put on clear plastic seat covers. These clear covers had a little ?floral? print. In those pre-airconditioning days sitting on those seats during the summer was like sitting on a stove!
Geez, that rear end shot is hypnotic…such an unusual design.
And the tailpipe before the rear, port tire also interesting.
I would question whether the tailpipe is stock.
It is not. I have done this myself. It is easy to fabricate a replacement exhaust at home by skipping the bends necessary to take the tailpipe over the rear axle to the rear.
This car was on an 8-block stretch of a Seattle street that I often drive. I’ve sometimes seen this Chevy on the same street:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/12119356@N00/27571600840/in/dateposted/
I can’t remember if it was on the same block, or even close.
My Aunt and Uncle had a 60 Chevrolet wagon when I was little. They would take my cousins and I too the drive inn and back in with the tailgate down. They would sit in lawn chairs watching the movie while we boys did everything but. We would be in our PJ’s and I can remember mornings waking up in the back of the wagon in the driveway when my uncle was to tired to carry us in.
The other memory l have was that everything in the back of the wagon was fair game UNLESS you put it on one of the fins, then it was yours. That poor old wagon had everything from toys to food to God knows what stuck out there at one time or another.
Thanks for the memories, Paul!?
My best friend’s mom in grade school had a brown one of these. I too remember rattling around in that gigantic interior, or at least it seemed so my 9 year old sense of space at the time. She was single (divorced) and was an executive secretary for Northwestern Bell. She must’ve have gotten a nice raise ’cause a year or so later she traded it for a cherry red/white two tone ’63 Impala SS hardtop. THAT was a badass ride and I loved going over the my friend’s house just so I could get a ride in his mom’s SS. Great memories!
“Since I started skipping catechism very early (3rd grade, the first time)”
I’m curious how you pulled that off. When I went it was inescapable.
Always on Sunday and after class it was a quick ride in a modern wagon (83 Cutlass Cruiser) to Soccer practice.
It was on Mondays after school. I normally rode my bike to school in nice weather, and walked in winter. I only hopped in the ’59 Chevy wagon after school if it was bad weather.
One sunny fall (or spring day) I was riding my bike towards the church when I suddenly got the idea to not go. What would/could happen? I was pretty nervous, and hung out in a big empty lot, because I didn’t want to be seen. The church was just two blocks from our house.
There was no consequence, as they obviously didn’t take attendance. Thus started my long slide into juvenile delinquency, which increased steadily with time. By the time I was in high school, I was attending classes pretty sporadically, except the ones I liked (Art). It explains why I dropped out and lefy home when I turned 18, as I wasn’t going to actually graduate. But my parents had no clue.
Sometime I’ll tell you about all of my shenanigans in altering report cards. I became very good at that.
Altering report cards was difficult by the time I was in high school since it was computerized by then and mailed to my mom’s house on a random day while I was still at school, and the grade letters were printed on an early-’80s dot matrix printer making them hard to alter. I did know of some classmates who learned how to hack into the computer that stored the grades and officially change their grades upward; unfortunately they weren’t amongst my friends.
We were Protestant. When I was 6 or 8 I asked my father what happened it a Catholic ate meat on Friday. My father said it meant s/he wasn’t being a very good Catholic. I didn’t strike me as much of a sanction. Without some muscle behind it, it wouldn’t have stopped me.
Going to catechism in a Chevy wagon without a Lake Wobegon reference?
It’s because of CC that I connected “Catholics drive Chevys and Lutherans drive Fords” and the vague notion that it wouldn’t sound quite as right if Keillor had done it the other way, to the public perceptions of the companies at their peak – Henry Ford is Martin Luther, General Motors is the Vatican.
nlpnt- I don’t listen to PHC but that was certainly true growing up in Chicago- Catholics and Protestants were about the same percentages as GMs and Fords. Meaning, there weren’t a heck of a lot of Fords around.
Paul, I’ll second Thomas on this one- always good to read your recollections.
As for me, I was always a happy Catholic schoolboy, if only because the public schools at the time were so bad- I had friends who got guns drawn on them in the hallways in high school. If that’s not a motivator to not get kicked out…
I had a bunch of wagons but faves tend toward Mopar 55-68, GM 57-70 Ford 55-68, and AMC 56-68. A girlfriend in 1966 was given her Dad’s ’56 Chrysler New Yorker T&C wag in Mandarin red with white roof, we traveled in it. My best bud had ’52 and ’59 Dodge wagons, I bought the ’59 from him (white, 361, 4 bbl, duals, most acc), My Aunt got a ’59 Custom Sierra, fully decked with dual A/C , loved the swivel, 6 way pwr seats and the full 300 E 413 drive train put in it. The interior in lt blue/dark blue and chrome was spectacular. One uncle had a ’57 New Yorker T&C , white, full decked, He kept it when he bought a black 60 N Y T&C hardtop wag. I had 57, 59, and 60 Plymouth Sport Suburbans, 55,56,57,59 and 60 Dodge, 56, 57, 58, 59 DeSoto Chrysler 55, 56,57,58, and 60 some Ford, AMC, and GM with my ’58 Buick Caballero and 59 Invicta Estate wg ( had 59 Nomad wag, Impala convert , and El Camino. all had 348 with TurboGlide. Just gave away my last wagon, the ’58 Cabalerro to a close friend. Seemed like the rear emblem swung down with the license plate so it could be read with the tg down
Bastard. You’re driving home the one bad point about being a car dealer’s kid. No matter how much you love cars, all sorts of cars, there’s only ever going to be one brand in the driveway. And, most likely, one single model of that brand.
To boot, none of those cars were ever particularly interesting. Always small block, Powerglide’s, top of the line two door hardtops. Because dad didn’t order a car according to what he’d like to drive, he order the car to make sure it was an easy sell the following year when he turned it back in.
My late uncle was a car salesman for some years in a New Jersey suburb of NYC. My cousin, 63, still lives in that area and is definitely a gearhead. I ran your comment past him, and he had this to say:
“That’s an interesting question. There were usually two cars in the drive, my mother’s daily driver and my father’s company car, and, there were two brands present during my tenure so would have been a Chevy or a Buick since he worked for both. My mother’s car was usually pretty jazzy. One that stands out was a ’64 Buick LeSabre convertible, white with light blue top and a monster motor in it — a 400 n’ something. It was a ‘program’ car, a demonstrator that my father bought. Another was the car I learned to drive in — the yellow 1965 Impala convertible with the 283. Both had some go power (the LeSabre had tons) but then again after 1958 it was necessary that we have a car that could pull the boat trailer so even if they came off the front or back lots at the dealership that had to factor in. Generally speaking the cars weren’t bland but yes, they were saleable. I guess that’s the alternate — make the car either the basic box that will work for anybody, or make it something the motorheads are going to be looking for. In the end, the Impala stuck around until its Unibody gave up the ghost in the middle seventies. Wish I had that car today.
“My father’s cars on the other hand could be anything. Often he’d walk off the floor end of day and slap a plate on something to drive home, which was great for me since all kinds of great stuff showed up in the driveway — Corvettes, Triumphs, a Studebaker (which my Grandmother Colbran bought), even recall a little dump truck in the mix. He usually did get a demonstrator assigned to him, but while not totally blah it was eminently saleable at the end of the model year per the comment. Was always an Impala instead of a Bel Air (same body style but Bel Air had less trim and usually only four taillights instead of the Impala’s six, etc.) and it went away in October when they introduced the new model year. Clearly driving the demonstrators home was a good for business — salesmen got to know the product, had dependable transportation, and neighbors, friends, family, etc were exposed to the product in a positive way. Certainly influenced me, buying mostly all Chevys, two Buicks, other than when I briefly went over to the dark side (Audi). College cars didn’t count (Herald, TR-4 and MGB) tho I saw the error and finished out with a Camaro, Caprice and the Corvette in that order. Bringing it all back around, yes, there is still only one brand in the driveway — three Chevrolets.”
My cousin’s wife calls his C6 ‘Vette “the other woman.”
on the 59 chevy
I just picked up a brand-new (very used) Volvo 850 turbo. Omg I’m hooked on wagons now!
My parental GP had this car and for a for a long time lame mentied that the electric windows still worked while the ignition was off. While a stupid idea, it is what is was. Later we learned that stupids had suffocated themselves on electric windows….
I’m racking my brain to see if I can think of any other model name that signified whether the wagon (or SUV/crossover) did or didn’t have 3rd row seating. My first thought was the Citroen DS and CX which if they had three rows of forward-facing seats became a Familiale, but that was just a trim level of sorts, it was still a DS21 or CX with an additional designation. I do find it odd how in the ’50s and ’60s three-row wagons were considered almost to be a distinct body style from the two-row version of the same car; at very least, it would be a different model, and sales breakdowns from those years available today often distinguish 6-passenger from 9-passenger wagons. By the ’80s the third-row seat in a wagon was just another option.
Re: your Citroen question — the LWB Traction Avants had an optional row of forward-facing jump seats between the front and rear bench. If you ordered those, your Traction was a “Familiale”. If you didn’t, it was a “Limousine” or a “Conduite interieure”. Confusingly, the number of pax/seats in the Familiale seems to vary from one MY to the next — either 7, 8 or 9, all in an identical bodyshell.
We had the 1958 version of this car for six years. It was a Brookwood model which was in the middle for ’58, the Nomad being above it and the Yeoman down below in the pecking order. Hard to believe how much the appearance changed in one year! Our ’58 was stripped other than the 283 engine and Powerglide transmission; no radio, no P.S., no P.B., no A/C, no nuthun’!
Standing up in the back seat one day my left foot managed to go through the floor, it was completely rusted away by age 6 (of course leaving the windows open in a violent thunderstorm in 1962 and not baling out all of the standing water didn’t help).
The ’58 was soon replaced by a ’64 Belair wagon that was strangely, very similarly equipped in the mostly same unequipped manner.
The styling may have been very different, ’58-’64 were almost identical under the skin.
I had not realized that the Nomad was used as long as it was for the wagon name. The first Nomad was a 2 door Bel Air wagon in 1955, which continued through the 1957 model year. The 1958 top wagon was called the Nomad, which continues through the 1961 model year as top wagon. For 1962 the wagon names are the same as the corresponding sedan (Biscayne, Bel Air, Impala).
You remind me that by 1972 the Nomad was the bottom of the line strippo Chevelle wagon. Which confused me as a child. Every drugstore had model kits of the famed 55-57 Nomad and I knew that it had been something special. Then I knew a Catholic family with 5 kids who had one of the Chevelle Nomads, dog dish hubcaps and all. That did not compute. I think that they finally retired the Nomad name after 1972.
Nope, Chevy wasn’t yet done dragging the Nomad name through the mud; in 1976 it would be applied to a *Vega* wagon, with a reshaped B pillar & side glass as well as vertical chrome strips on the tailgate all recalling the “real” Nomads, the ’55-’57 models. Also, for a few years in the late ’70s and early ’80s, there was a Nomad version of the full-size Chevy van which was actually quite cool – full top-line passenger trim and windows for the first and second row, but the rear half was reserved for cargo and was windowless. Nice graphics on the outside too. Makes more sense than a crew-cab pickup to me.
Astoundingly rustless. In most parts of the country a ’59 acquired that much rust in 6 months, not 60 years.
My first car was a ’59 Biscayne, bought in ’67. The floor was gone and the headlights were barely held by lace.
Have you seen this commercial for the ’59 wagon? So many cute details!
Looking back on this from the perspective of 2017, I love the heart-warming “Rockwell-esque” normalcy of it. Of course, an ad like this would never be made today. People have changed, as well as the cars:
Even though I wasn’t around back then, I’m pretty sure people didn’t act like that in 1959 either. Or did people actually dress up in semi-formal clothes to go car shopping?
In 1959 I was about the age of the children in the commercial. The family’s trade-in looks pretty old. You’d have to be pretty dense to miss the point about the door on the trade-in not latching properly.
The older car in that ad was a 46-48 Dodge Club Coupe. Pretty different from the ’59 Chevy wagon in terms of interior space…
Here’s another gem. It’s probably from the same creative group at the same ad agency, since it shares many of the same elements:
I stopped for another look at the car today, and it has Powerglide.
Paul, when you started ditching catechism, I would have thought Mary Lou Funk’s dad would have dropped a dime on you.
Just spotted this exact same car (license plate matches, rust holes too) parked on Ballard Avenue in Seattle, June 14, 2019. Looks to be still regularly driven!
Here it is in Ballard.