Road Trips Of The 1950s, 1960s & 1970s: Vintage Photos Of People Traveling By Car

Text by Patrick Bell.

Many people will be hitting the road this weekend, heading home after the Christmas holiday.  To mark the occasion, here’s another gallery of vintage photos of Americans taking road trips by car.

Our lead image today was posted online as a “found slide” with notes on the side stating that this was a “cottage on Rex Beach, Sebring, February 1954.”  Located near Sebring in Highlands County, Florida, Rex Beach Lake was another name for Lake Jackson, which was renamed for a while after the famed novelist Rex Beach retired to the area.  (Beach is best known for his Western novel The Spoilers, which has been adapted as a movie five times.)

The black car on the left was a 1951 Plymouth Cranbrook or Cambridge 4-door sedan.  The car on the right, which looked like it was preparing to leave, was a 1954 Oldsmobile 88 or Super 88 2-door sedan with a New York license plate.  The Oldsmobile folks were snowbirds, and the owners of the Plymouth might have been as well.

The two photos above show an older couple from New Jersey with a 1950 Buick Special 4-door Tourback sedan.  They were out with their two dogs, who looked like they were in charge.

The Special was the entry-level Buick line, but Buick claimed it was “all Buick through and through,” and it was very popular.  (You can tell this was a Special because the rear doors had no vent windows — the pricier Super and Roadmaster models had swing-open vents.)  “Tourback” meant the notchback sedan, as opposed to the fastback “Jetback.”  The Special had a 248 cubic inch straight eight engine.

This lady had her bag packed and was ready to go.  Her ride was a 1951 Pontiac Chieftain Eight De Luxe 4-door sedan that looked like it had been “parked by ear” a few too many times.  I see minor damage all along the right side, and lots of curb rash on the whitewalls.

1951 was Pontiac’s 25th anniversary year.  It offered both 239 cubic inch six-cylinder and 268 cubic inch eight-cylinder engines, both of the inline flathead variety.  The eight was much more popular, outselling the six-cylinder models by a margin of nearly six to one.

I don’t know exactly where this photo was taken, except that it was obviously at a U.S./Canada border crossing.  The red car at the left was a 1953 DeSoto Powermaster Six 4-door sedan, while the two-tone car about to be inspected was a 1952 Plymouth Cranbrook Belvedere 2-door hardtop, with a full load in the trunk.

There’s no information on the location or date of this photo, but it was taken at a small motel on a cold morning.  The heavily laden two-tone station wagon behind this lady was a 1955 Chevrolet Two-Ten Townsman wagon, which looked fairly new.  I see the emblem below the tail light that indicated that it was equipped with the new 265 cubic inch “Turbo-Fire” V8.  Parked on the other side of it was a green 1951-1954 Chrysler Town and Country or DeSoto wagon.

This looks like it might have been another motel, and it looked like these folks were getting ready to leave.  The car at the left was a 1957 Buick Super 2-door Riviera hardtop with an Ohio license plate.  For 1957, the Super shared the longer wheelbase and 300 horsepower 364 cubic inch V8 of the senior Roadmaster, but had less standard equipment and cost about $400 less.  The station wagon at the right was a 1958 Pontiac Chieftain, which had a 370 cubic inch “Tempest 395” engine with 270, 285, 300, or 310 horsepower.

This photo was taken on Washington Avenue in Parsons, Kansas, where this couple was perhaps saying goodbye to someone.  Their car was a V8-powered 1958 Plymouth Custom Suburban 4-door station wagon, which was equipped for the road with a loaded roof rack, dual fender-mounted mirrors, and a made-to-fit bug shield over the grille.  Across the street, from right to left, were a 1959 Ford Fairlane, 1957 Plymouth Plaza or Savoy 4-door sedan, and on the far left a 1948-1951 Hudson 4-door.  (We also featured this photo in a previous galley of vintage snapshots.)

We saw a different shot of this 1958 Chevrolet Delray 2-door sedan in our recent galley of vintage motel photos, with the same young girl and her Raggedy Ann doll.  From this angle, we can see that she also had a Ragged Andy, and that the car had a 1959 Texas license plate.  The boy was probably the girl’s brother.  He was wearing a shirt from a south Houston school.  I still don’t know the locale of this photo, except that it looked like a typical roadside motel.  The car on the left was a 1959 Pontiac Star Chief, also from Texas.

“Do you want one of these?”  This gentleman was getting some refreshments from a cooler in the trunk of a Aztec Red 1954 Cadillac Eldorado with a 1955 Michigan license plate, issued in Macomb County.  It looks like they had pulled off the main road for a rest stop.

The Eldorado was Cadillac’s most exclusive and expensive non-limousine model for 1954, although it no longer had the custom body work of the inaugural 1953 Eldorado. Its price was now $5738, $1334 more than a Series 62 convertible.  This one has been modified with three chrome strips on either side of the license plate area, which were a new feature for 1955 Cadillacs.  It has whitewall tires, which were standard on the Eldorado, but not air conditioning, which was not yet available on the Eldorado because the large A/C condenser needed to be mounted in the trunk, in the same space as the well for the convertible top.  (Tom Halter talked more about the early Cadillac air conditioning system in this post.)

This well-dressed couple had just arrived from the airport after a trip.  They were both carrying overcoats, but the bag on the ground said “Jamaica.”  You can see the baggage check tags on the suitcases.  They were standing by a 1960 Buick LeSabre wagon.  The car in the background at the left was a 1961 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 or Super 88.

This is a 1973 photo taken in the parking lot of a Howard Johnson’s Restaurant on the Massachusetts Turnpike, where a 1963 Chevrolet Impala Sport Sedan with the “Turbo-Fire” 283 cubic inch V8, a Massachusetts license plate, and 10 years’ worth of rust appeared to be having some cooling system trouble.  There was a puddle under the car and a trail draining to the left.  A man in a coat and tie was fiddling under the hood while his wife paced nervously or impatiently.

The car to the right was a 1967 Pontiac Catalina from New York.  On the turnpike in the background, we can see a 1969 or 1970 Ford Country Squire and perhaps an early ’70s Toyota Corolla.

This brightly dressed lady was standing in the parking lot of a quaint little commercial strip with a Northern California vibe.  There is a Villager Coffee Shop (which is still in business today) in Blue Jay, California, an unincorporated area in the San Bernardino Mountains, so that might have been the locale.  The lady in orange and pink was standing by a 1963 Ford Country Squire station wagon.  The blue wagon next to it was a 1963 Mercury Comet, and there was a 1971-1974 Volkswagen Type 3 Squareback behind it.  Further down, beyond the motorcycle, were a Toyota FJ40, perhaps a 1964 Chevrolet Impala, and a 1964-1966 Chevrolet C-series Fleetside long-bed pickup truck with a camper shell.

From the fashions alone, we can tell that this photo was taken in the 1970s.  These folks were loading up to leave this Holiday Inn.  Judging by the palm trees and the number of blue license plates in the parking lot, it was likely in California, perhaps near the Los Angeles International Airport.  (There is still an LAX Holiday Inn next to the 405 Freeway.)  The wagon in the foreground was a 1970-1972 Chevrolet Chevelle Concours with a luggage rack.  In the background, from right to left, I see a 1974 Dodge Dart Sport, a 1976 Pontiac Ventura SJ with a Landau vinyl roof, and an early Volvo 144 or 164.  There was another station wagon behind that, but I can’t make it out.

Thanks for joining us and have a great day!

 

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