Look at the picture above. Now imagine it’s your rear view mirror as you’re driving down the freeway. That giant set of batwings is right behind you and gaining; now it pulls into the fast lane. The driver and a passenger grin as they zip by you ass-backwards at seventy miles an hour. The front grille of the ’59 Chevy slowly recedes in the distance ahead. If you spent any time on the roads of San Francisco around 1973 or so, this might actually have happened to you.
The 1959 Chevrolet begs not to be taken seriously. It’s just way too over the top, which makes it an open invitation to pranks, abuse, stereotyping, ridicule, and even willful destruction. Think about it: if you were given the opportunity to crash test a fifty year old car against a new one, wouldn’t the ’59 Chevy be the obvious choice? Well, except maybe a ’59 Cadillac, but they’re too expensive, and folks might get seriously upset.
The ’59 Chevy is the apogee of late fifties American taste spun out of control; it represents the point at which the collective consciousness said: STOP! That’s quite enough! We’ve gone down this road as far as it can go. Time for a one-eighty, time to reel in the excess, time for the bubble to burst, time for a recession.
By 1961, a recession and a drastically slimmed down Chevy arrived. And within a few short years, the ’59 developed cult status, a rolling art object (forwards or backwards), as well as the favored object of creative destruction. I speak from experience as an early participant.
1959 Chevrolet by paulvaranasi
True confession: at the age of ten, I had a spell of shoplifting, and the sole targets of my kleptomania were model car kits. I staged elaborate crashes in the driveway. Lighter fluid was the accelerant of choice, augmented by firecrackers jammed into the engine compartment and trunk. One of my first victims was a 1959 Impala coupe. It was memorable, watching those crazy batwings droop and melt into a puddle.
I say if you’re going to blow something up, make it a colorful object; the Chinese tumbled to this thousands of years ago. So I can totally relate to those IIHS guys and their choice of the ’59 Bel Air. Admit it: it was a beautiful destruction. Like a samurai warrior in his finest garb ready to meet death, the Bel Air glided gracefully to its spectacular end. Would you rather have seen the bland blob of a ’59 Rambler American take on the Malibu? I think not.
At Towson High in 1970, our dope dealer drove a Biscayne sedan just like this one. What a perfect rolling billboard. Everyone could see him coming blocks away, and we’d head across the parking lot to buy our dime bags of ditch weed. His eyes were about as squinty as the eyebrows on the Chevy. And his product was about as effective as those fins were in adding aerodynamic stability at speed.
One day at lunch time we were lined up to make a transaction across the driver’s window sill, when someone said “Look, up there on the roof!” The Principal and Vice-Principal were standing on the flat roof of the auditorium, peering at us through binoculars. The dealer panicked, started up the tired of Blue Flame six, slammed the Powerglide into gear, floored it, and clipped the stout back bumper of a school bus with his right front fender, thanks to the slow manual steering. Or his dulled reflexes. Kapow! Another ’59 Chevy sacrificed to a higher calling.
The 1959s were the results of the Great GM Design Center Rebellion of 1956, in response to Chrysler’s bold 1957 cars and the tepid ideas initially on the drawing boards for 1959 (more detailed story here). There are two ways of looking at them: As vehicles, they left a lot to be desired. With their huge overhangs, narrow tracks (inherited from the ’58 underpinnings), “Jet-Ride” soft suspension, flaccid shocks, undersized 14″ tires with a recommended 24 pounds of pressure and slow steering, handling was atrocious.
Build quality was mediocre and performance suffered under the bloat, up some 500lbs from the trim ’55-’57 models. Where the small block 283 offered sparkling zip in the classic tri-fives, now a big block 348 was necessary for decent momentum, unless you ordered it with the self-destructing Turbo-Glide automatic. In that case, you’d be gliding to a stop on the shoulder all too soon.
But life would have been so much less colorful without them. They’re a rolling testament to the blowout of late fifties irrational exuberance. And a magnet for creative minds. Or crazy ones.
No, it’s not a wrong-way driver. This was then-Phillip (now Pippa) Garner’s first major collaboration with the Ant Farm, flipping the body of this ’59 Biscayne front to rear. It must have raised some eyebrows in traffic.
Especially so on the Golden gate bridge. s a rather subversive-minded twenty-year old, when I heard about this all I could say was fucking brilliant! Which it was.
1959 Chevrolet by paulvaranasi
I was introduced to the backwards ’59 Chevy by my friend Paul B., who is still making art with that ultimate art car.
With wings like that, who wouldn’t be inspired? Flights of imagination are what this car is all about. Driving? Not so much so.
Postscript: Jim Snell left this comment at my GM X-Frame article about the ’59 Chevrolet used in the IIHS crash test:
This may seem hard to believe.. BUT, this ’59 in the video belonged to a friend of mine. In fact, I helped him sell it on my web site. (I have a ’59 Impala and I own a popular 1959 Chevy web site. I was tempted to buy this Belair, but passed.) When we sold it, the guy from the East coast showed-up with $8,000.00 in cash and a trailer, and took it away. We had no idea it was destined for destruction. This video has infuriated collector car people all over the world. The car was originally from Georgia, it was a six cylinder model. That red dust that comes out on impact is actually Georgia clay that had accumulated inside the frame rails. The car was not a ball of rust bondo-wagon!
I love these,much nicer than the 58.Who needs a Cadillac when you could have a Chevy and plenty spare change?Those rear lights always remind me of the glasses a kid hating librarian who had a voice that would be perfect for boot camp wore.She scared the life out of me as a kid.
I love it too. The raised rear stance, give it lots of attitude. Tonnes of character here.
Growing up, I had a 12 mile, 25 minute bus ride to school. Along the was was the house of my father’s six grade school teacher, Mrs. DeWitt.
Mrs. DeWitt had a ’73 Impala and a late ’60’s F-100 in her garage. In her three-sided outbuilding she had a ’59 Chevrolet parked so the rear was facing the road.
The ’59 had belonged to her sister who died when the car was relatively new. Mrs. DeWitt couldn’t stand to part with the car, so it sat for years. It was still sitting there when I graduated high school in 1990.
Of all the cars I saw growing up, this one was quite memorable due to exactly what you have stated here – the treatment of the rear end.
This particular ’59 grew into somewhat of a local legend. In the Fall of 1990, I started college across the river in Missouri. Keep in mind, this car was a good twenty to twenty-five miles away. One day when paying for a parking ticket, I struck up a conversation with the older lady who worked in the DPS office. She saw my home address and told me the ’59 Chevrolet over my way was going to be auctioned off. Mrs. DeWitt had died and all her cars were to be sold.
The car was long rumored to be very low mileage, but it was never confirmed. However, it had been sitting for a good twenty-five years by 1990.
Sure enough, there was an auction and the car disappeared. I no longer frequented that area. Since then, on the rare occasion I have been by there, the outbuilding is still (barely) standing, but there is a gaping hole in it. The absence of the ’59 certainly reminds me that I’ve grown up and life brings a lot of changes during that process.
I would love to know what happened to it.
As they say about certain voluptuous women:
“She got curves in places where other women doesn’t even have places….”
As I’ve often relayed here I consider the excitement around my dad pulling up in the driveway with my mom’s new ’59 Chevy in Tudor blue as my first car memory. My dad sold it to my uncle who had it for years. That ’59 was a big part of my family fabric for many years. My dad’s only complaint was that on windy days he said the ass-end would get a little light, which he attributed to actual aerodynamic lift caused by the shape of the wings. True or not, he believes it
My father had a blue on like that, though it was a convertible. I remember having watched him remove the heads and scrape the carbon off the angular 348 pistons and tune the ignition and carburetor. He was preparing to “race” against the neighbor’s Edsel…seriously. They both survived, apparent upon their return later that evening. I think they both won, as i remember their wives yelling about lipstick on their shirts and the odor of perfume.
Hay, i bought that car you have in this photo, it has a new life in sydney australia.
Hay, i bought that car you have in this photo, it has a new life in sydney australia.
If the 59 Dodge had the angriest most pissed off looking front end of any car,this Chevy has the angriest rear end treatment
To me, the ’59 Buick is still the most pissed-off car (except maybe a few Cadillac Escalades) ever built
That’s pretty angry looking.A red 59 Electra coupe driven by a US Airman(or more likely an Officer) first got my brother and myself interested in American cars in the early 60s
I always thought the 1959 Buicks would have made a better “Christine” than the Plymouth….
I love that factory badass look from the late 50s.
It was sad to see that ’59 Bel Air get trashed…but there’s no question about which car I’d rather be riding in if there was an accident. Forget the Cadilllacs. My favorite ’59 GM product would have to be the Impala coupe, followed by that scowling Buick. Back in the ’70’s, I remember seeing a magazine article (complete with pictures) of a ’59 Chevy that had been converted to look like it was driving backwards. I was 12 or 13 at the time – I thought it was hilarious.
I’ve said before that they’d have had fewer naysayers if they had performed their 1959 test protocol on the Malibu and compared it to file footage.
As a kid in Europe, these were cars for the seriously well-off
Some were black and taxi cabs.
Driving on LPG
” He drives an American ” was a serious of wealth.
Not just the gas.
One of my best friends father had a 61 Oldsmobile 98, which made my fathers poor 403 Peugeot and even his later Benz 190 Diesel fade into the limelight.
It had a zillion çourtesey lights in the interior, a radio with a Wunderbar and it was an automatic.
I’v e never been the same eversince !
1959 may have been when GM said “enough”, but Chrysler held on to the outrageous designs for a bit longer, like this 1960 Plymouth Fury. One of the most over the top designs in my book.
Well, there was that ’61 Imperial that was still having a little trouble letting go of the outrageous…
The early 1960’s Chrysler cars are another example of betting the wrong way, similar to the GM look-alikes and over reliance on “The Sheer Look” in the 80’s.
I imagine that Chrysler thought the 60’s would be a continuation of the 50’s, leading to a Jetsons like future off bubble canopies and 7ft fins, they were caught totally off-guard when the new clean Bill Mitchell inspired GM cars and the Elwood Engel Continental came out in 1961.
Suddenly it’s 1957!They looked very dated compared to GM and Ford
I’ve always considered the ’59 Chevy one of the more restrained designs of the late ’50s.
It’s a happy design, is there anyone who doesn’t like it? I doubt it.
Ford must have been thinking along the same lines as the ’60 Fords looked like FoMoCo’s attempt to build a ’59 Chevy. You can’t really top the original.
You mean those little dog-ears? They shouldn’t have bothered, because they were about to make history over at Lincoln
I could happily have a 60 Starliner or it’s Edsel relation.Ford never bought into fins as much as GM or Mopar
A Toyota restyle with such a resemblance would be quite a sales success in the San Gabriel Valley (CA, USA), as most of the demographic drivers have only various stuffed animals displayed through the backlight to evoke a sympathetic response to their poor driving habits. Turn the “ears” up for a “Hello Kitty” appearance.
Oh my god! This was the first CC I ever read! Originally. I searched up “59 Chevy” on google and came across this, at TTAC. That lead me to the then-6-month-old CC. Now, I write for CC and still read TTAC occasionally. This article lead me into the world of car blogging.
Thanks,
Mr. Edward Mann
When we look at auto design concerning unusual styling, there is a functional reason for the style’s uniqueness. Saab 900s look like little else because of Saab’s many theories of car design. There is a functional reason why a VW Beetle looks like it does. The Citroen DS stands out because it attempts to do so much other cars didn’t do. The JEEP looks like it does because they had to be tough, inexpensive and able to go where there were no roads. These famous unique looking cars weren’t deliberately styled to look unique – the design and technologies they attempted to bring to the market make them so. The VW Thing and the Pontiac Aztek are two more examples.
But these? There is no reason for them. There is no reason to put bat-wings on the rear fender of a car. There is no reason for much of the styling used on many US cars between 1957 and 1962. There is no functional purpose to the toilet seat trunk deck on a Valiant or an Imperial. There was no technical enhancements to making tail lights into free standing rockets, flashlights, jet burners, tear drops, boomerangs, or other assorted objects which have nothing to do with automotive rear lighting. There is no purpose to add spoilers, ventiports or chrome scoops to fenders or hoods.
These cars are the automotive equivalent of junk mail envelopes covered in messages which cannot be true. Or a giant bag of chips which upon opening, you discover only half filled with chips. Or a three story façade attached to a log cabin in an old ghost town. Cars like this are tacky and weird.
It goes on. We’ve got pick up trucks sitting in driveways styled to look like tractor-trailer trucks, or the GMC Terrain – like little locomotives with cow-catchers. The Nissan Leaf looks like Jar-Jar Binks from Star Wars. Their Juke looks like a joke.
There is functional design which results in unique styling, and then there are cases where stylists try too hard and their determined efforts to create a new look only succeeds in making everyone gag. On one hand we have a tweed jacket, and on the other we have this Lady Gaga meat dress. One look will last a hundred years while the other lasts only until the flies find it. Yes, both are unique and make an artistic statement, but only one is really honest in doing what it was supposed to do.
Not just American. What was the purpose of the little “finlets” on the 1960 Mercedes-Benz 220? Was it to slice through that thick German air or was it to get in on some of the wildly popular American style automobile design?
Fins were on everything,even the staid Austin Cambridge and it’s badge engineered relations.See yesterday’s CC
Just like my Minx the finlets are just styling nobody was selling safety the idea was not important to car designers, solid steel dash no seat belts was all par for the course if you crashed one you died usually from being flung around the interior.
Don’t forget these cars were designed not too long after WWII and at a time when a full scale nuclear war seemed likely to start at any moment.
I think a lot of people, on some level, regarded cars safety as a pretty small concern compared to what they had been through, or could be about to go through!
Typically German understated Valkyrie Wing design.
@VanillaDude I totally agree with you from a functional perspective. All of the chrome add-ons, fins and jet-age inspired looks do nothing to make these better cars. When I was child, I used to find most 50s cars way over the top, with overwrought styling and colors. But now I look at it differently. Designers and engineers seemed to have a lot of creative licence back then. And I think many of these heavily styled cars are their way of cutting loose and having fun, pushing the envelope. Structurally, this may be an inferior car. But creatively, it is super cool. The likes of which, we’ll never see again. I think it’s automotive art without a boundary, that was heavily inspired by aviation aerodynamics and the new jet age.
I do look at much of automotive styling as art. And a reflection of the designer’s creativity. As an artist myself, I love any opportunity when a client gives me creative leeway. That’s when you create some of the boldest and most memorable design.
Cars can easily remain basic transportation, function over form, but nobody wants that. A car is one of the most perfect ways for a designer and engineer to express themselves. I am envious of the creative freedoms that designers and engineers seem to have been allowed back then. This was that tiny window between WW2 and before all of the safety, emissions and gas mileage rules of the 60s and 70s kicked in. Look how dreadful many cars became, when all these rules came about at once.
The early 1950s De Havilland Comet Jet was very impractical having it’s engines located within the root of the wings. Hard to access there, and very dangerous if an engine explodes. However impractical, having the engines located with the wings looked very beautiful, was streamlined, and added to it’s jet age mystique. Even if the jet had serious engineering issues otherwise.
The 1950s was an example when automotive design creativity and engineering were experiencing a great rush. And the designers and engineers were likely having a blast designing such outrageous concepts. Probably similar to the creative enjoyment Andy Warhol had in the 50s and 60s. I look at most ’50 era cars as artwork, where the designers had overt fun, meant for your senses as much as to carry you from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’. Especially when they had very limited government regulation and restrictions at this point.
I will add that GM and other makers could have, and should have, made safer cars their priority. But that is a corporate decision that needed to made, one way or another. At the highest levels. The designers job was to make these as stylistically competitive as they could. And it was the dawning of the jet age. That’s why these cars, reflected the flash of 1950s era jets. And the flamboyant optimism of 50s culture. Of course, the biggest weakness of these cars was their lack of safety. But the corporate offices needed to pursue that, with government intervention, to push safety.
Of course, cars are a reflection of society.When these cars were designed, American was at the pinnacle of its power and the mood was optimistic. Nothing was too way-out, since way-out was “the future.” Of course, it was all just a sham. Underneath all the bling, flash and chrome was some really compromised of some less than adequate engineering. There’s just not a lot of structure underneath the acres of chrome. Bad brakes, tires and steering were all part of the program. Nobody really knew any better, since all they had drive at this point came from Detroit and were all basically the same.
+1 Bingo. Except for Mercedes and Volvo, I don’t know who was selling safety back then. Not just the cars were unsafe, many roads were engineered in the 1920s and 1930s, made treacherous due to poor design and overcrowding.
The people who styled these cars, weren’t as co-dependent with engineers as they are today. It was the styling department’s job to create showroom appeal. The push for safety and quality came in the next decade.
Actually Ford did promote safety in 1956 with their Life Guard Design. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vgYxhdRLnw Buyers did not respond to it well at all and that was the end of Ford touting safety features in their marketing. Other mfgs knew of the failure of selling safety and certainly didn’t advertise it and likely cut any budget they had for safety features.
So you can’t blame the corporate offices for mfgs not pursuing safer cars in the 50’s and 60’s, the blame lies on the customer.
Of course those original Life Guard features eventually became the norm. The basic concept of the door latch is still used today on all cars. Dashes and steering wheels now have the ultimate in padding, air bags, and of course seat belts are still with us.
Ford made those features optional and there werent many takers.
–> “So you can’t blame the corporate offices for mfgs not pursuing safer cars in the 50′s and 60′s, the blame lies on the customer.”
Well, Mercedes and Volvo made excellent reputations for themselves on safety and quality, No? And made great inroads in the USA. I think Ford could’ve marketed it better. Maybe Ford should have contacted Volkswagen’s marketing firm?
Sounds like it makes the manufacturer blameless selling less safe cars, as the public didn’t demand safer cars. It took formal government law and policies to force further safety regulation. Against heavy lobbying, in some cases. Not good PR when this stuff comes out later.
I just watched several of the Ford “Lifeguard” safety ads from the late 50s. I would describe them as technically excellent. But VERY dry. They lacked effective marketing impact and they didn’t really sell safety to me convincingly. They are not memorable, as ads go.
However, I first saw this Volvo ad below, when I was a child.
I didn’t even have to read the copy, and the visual and message is etched in my mind until the day I die. Whether it was true or not… Volvos *looked* like they were super solid cars. I appreciate it’s a newer ad. But creative marketing existed before the 1950s. Volkswagen ads were super simple, but massively effective.
You have to work a bit harder sometimes, to sell a concept. The rewards, as Volkswagen learned in the 50s, were immense. I get the impression Ford didn’t market safety effectively. The way Mercedes and Volvo did.
Way too easy to blame customers. When I see the low key advertising they used.
Ford with its “Life Guard Design”, as well as Chrysler Airflow design, was in a way ahead of their time.
Mercedes and Volvo didn’t start promoting safety until well after the 50’s and you really can’t consider either brand successful in the US in the 50’s compared to the Big 3.
Ford possibly could have marketed it better but there certainly were limitations on exactly what they could have done in the 50’s. The quoted statistics as they were available at the time. However there were no crash test ratings that they could cite and it would have been in very bad taste to show someone impaled on a steering wheel or covered in road rash or run over as a result of being thrown from the vehicle. Plus at the time many people still believed that they would be safer if thrown clear of the vehicle.
Facts are that very few people were willing to pay extra for the padded dash and seat belts and at the time some people believed that there must be something intrinsically wrong with the Fords, compared to the competition, if Ford felt compelled to offer those safety features.
From what I have been able to find, the “safety doesn’t sell” thing came from HFII after the 56 Fords did not sell as well as the 55 models. Truth was that 56 was a down year across the industry, and the safety focus was not really to blame.
Thanks very much for your thorough and accurate answers Eric. I don’t blame the public. And I give Ford credit for their attempt to sell safety. Personally, I blame the lack of regulation and safety standards being in place. Air traffic control standards were similarly very lacking in the 50s. And some high profile mid-air collisions led the government to act. (I.E. The 1956 Grand Canyon collision) With public pressure being a factor. Adopting the Federal Aviation Act in 1958 and creating the FAA. I think they were equally slow to regulate auto safety. Perhaps due to powerful industry lobbying against. But I don’t blame the public for not being better informed, as they were not seeing evidence. Like the aviation industry, the regulators didn’t act until it was obvious, there was a safety issue.
You do give compelling reasons why better marketing would have made a big difference. Ford could have really led in this area, if it was successful. Ford had access to the evidence, that cars were deadly as they were.
I was pointing to the success of Mercedes and Volvo when they eventually did chose to market their safety. It was very effective well before the government bumper standards and seat belt laws of the early 70s. As too, the Volkswagen ads of the early 60s.
I think too, Ford could have approached and gained support from the federal government in terms of encouraging the public to buy safer cars. Via public service ads that highlighted the safety of padded dashes, collapsing steering columns, seat belts, etc.
I know some people don’t like excessive government interference. But I blame the lack of safety regulation in the 50s. Similar to the lack of safety standards in aviation. Perhaps mid-air collisions had more impact on people, to act.
Daniel, the fact is that until recently most consumers just weren’t willing to spend more money for safety features. Look at seat belt usage statistics which of course were mandated safety equipment well before the dates on the study in the graphic below. So yes at least some of the blame lies on the consumer. Here is a chart showing observed front seat belt usage in red, usage in all wrecks in blue and useage in towed wrecks from this 2003 NHSTA study. http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/SafetyBelt/OPIPT_FinalRpt_07-17-03.html
Unless they are excluded from those stats, I think drunk drivers could be a significant contributing reason for a lack of seat belt use in those wrecks. According to surveys conducted by Transport Canada, seat belt usage in my province of Ontario is 96%.
http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/motorvehiclesafety/tp-tp2436-rs201101-1149.htm
We know people don’t want to pay extra for safety, if given a choice and they have no incentive. That’s why I am saying the regulators needed to act.
Widespread seat belt use in the 50s, would never happen. But more passive safety features could have been introduced sooner. The slow (or non-existent) regulation in the aviation industry tells me, that regulators were slow to react to transportation safety in general at the time.
+1
I’d rather look at wildly styled works of art like the ’59 Chevy. The Leaf you complain about is what you get when styling is abandoned for function. The reason the Leaf looks the way it does is aerodynamics; the ’59 Chevy looks the way it does because the stylists wanted it that way.
Why so serious??? Why NOT style cars like this? Why drive bland?
A friend in the late 60’s had 1959 Impala sports sedan. It was that mist green with a white top. Six cylinder, powerglide.
That car was affectionately known as “The Spirit Of ’59”, as I believe he had what would be called a “pimpmobile” now! Dark tinted windows, purple interior lighting, little dingle-berry thingies attached around the perimeter of the headliner and bucket seats, AM/FM Camaro radio, thanks to midnight auto aupply, topped off with racing slicks on the back – really! His car was so slow it couldn’t get out of its own way!
That thing smoked so bad due to virtually no piston rings left, he regularly fogged up the neighborhood, and after an evening replacing the front fender, I left my buddy in a cloud of oil smoke so thick I coul not see him or him see me as we returned the car to my friend who was working!
Later that summer of ’69, we put a set of rings in the car in our driveway and (most of) the smoking stopped. He didn’t have the money for a valve job.
We had loads of good times back then, and that fall both of us went in the service. He to the navy. My buddy went to college.
While born in ’64, I can recall seeing these distinctive cars on the road occasionally in the early ’70s.
I saw where one survivor likely came from. In the mid ’70s I would bike to a small grocery to pick up odds and ends for my mom. I would pass a tidy brick raised ranch on a corner lot that had a two car side load garage to the basement. In it were a ’55 or ’56 Chevy sedan – probably a two door, and a ’59 four door sedan. I never saw those cars out of the garage, and they always looked clean and shiny when the doors were up.
Our first station wagon was a ’59 Brookwood, the equivalent trim level of a Biscayne. All the neighbors came out to gawk when dad brought it home.
What is really amazing about the ’59 GM cars is that the outrageous styling was done on (for GM) shoestring budget. Not only were greenhouses common, but even the doors. Yet, each make looked completely different.
The Olds and Poncho that year do nothing for me, Chevy, Buick and Cadillac knocked it out of the park.
+1 I fully agree. I found the curvy body of the Chev could’ve been a Pontiac. And the more conservative Pontiac, a Chev. Switching the grilles and trim of course.
Always kinda liked the 59 even after seeing several in the wrecking yard I part timed in at school that had been in accidents that were horribly mangled one could have been in a similar crash to the video one side was nearly gone no idea what it hit but it was a mess and there were blood stains all through it, One I actually looked at buying in later years looked ok at first glance but opening a rear door revealed the entire door shut below the catch to be missing rust had been very active not many left now other than pristine examples recently imported the local assembly versions rusted ferociously if near salt water, Smashing good ones into Malibus by insurance companies doesnt bother me it increases the value of other survivors should there be any
Just so you know Paul a 1959 Chevy will not be 60 until 2019.
At first I thought this Biscayne was sporting South Dakota plates until I realized it was just rather weathered Oregon plates.
http://www.15q.net/sd.html
These Chevies are quite cool and I like the styling particularly the shape of the rear wheel well and the bulging taillights. Did all 59s have a side view mirrors on the fenders? I wonder how likely it is to find a street parked 1959 Chevy wagon?
I’m glad someone finally caught that mistake 🙂
Outside mirrors back then were strictly optional, even on the driver’s side.And these are not “factory” options, but aftermarket, mounted on the fender like that.
About that IIHS crash test… I wonder if a non-X-frame car would’ve done better. Obviously nothing from that era would be great (or even good… or even mediocre…) but maybe traditional rails would have offered a bit more protection.
Regardless of the rails, the non-collapsible steering column is terrifying.
Who is to say what the balance should be between functionality/practicality vs. esthetics? The marketplace will decide with their checkbooks if a design is too far to either end of the spectrum (despite the gummint’s best efforts). The ’59 is my favorite of 50s/60s domestic because it did throw caution to the wind with a wild looking design. I still find it amazing that GM put it into production.
And how is it that at the time the Biscayne model looked so cheap, and now that little side spear and the chrome around the windows is all it needs? I love that picture that shows what they had to do with the sheetmetal on the rear door in order to shape that big rear wing-nice work there. Of course, they were flexy, and unsafe, and the seats were down on the floor in order to have some semblance of headroom, and the back seat got no heat in the Winter, and much of the trunk was too shallow to fit even a picnic basket or a cooler-but what a car! Never a question, from the front, back or rear-you were looking at a ’59 Chevy.
Every time I see these the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars plays in my head….
The rumor was that Chevy did not have an engine in it when they crashed it. I’ve looked at the video a few times and it’s hard to tell.
To this day, that IIHS video really pisses me off. “Hey, let’s take a nice classic car and completely freakin’ DESTROY it! Hey, good idea Bob, high five!”
Idiots. “Cars are safer than they were forty years ago”, well DUH! Thank you, Captain Obvious! Like we really needed to see footage of a classic car’s death to understand it. Stupid, stupid scientists. They probably all drive Corollas.
Grumble, grumble…
Oh this car is gorgeous — “my” color and “my” bodystyle.
It looks a bit like an angry mistress, or an angry wife in my father’s experience.
Actually, the first person (and possibly the only person) to reverse the body of a ’59 Chevy was one Phillip Garner, later a transsexual known as Pippa Garner. He did it because he felt it was a very “directional” car and achieved just the effect described. There was an article and interview with him (by that time, her) about this and his/her other art cars in C/D once.
I remember that. Some of his other “cars” were hilarious.
More than I needed to know…now I will perceive the appearance as a drag queen…perhaps as intended?
I’m sure it was a 59 Chrovrolet that got trashed in the first Mad Max film–hated seeing that and hate seeing one crashed into some degenerate modern Chevy that looks like a boring Toyota… its a fantastic looking car from an age when everyone looked forward to a bigger and better sci fi future that never happened
Here’s a nicer example: A 1959 Biscayne in “Cameo Coral”, parked in the same place where, in the early 1980s, I saw a blue ’59 Impala sedan while riding my bicycle. These cars were an unusual sight even then.
Malapardis Road, Cedar Knolls, NJ
Rear view:
First car I owned. Two door post car. Three on the tree with the 6 cylinder. Paid $150 to a minister who didn’t drive a lot. Got me back and forth to college for two years! Sold it for $225. Thought it was a great car. Then I bought a ’63 split window for $1200!