Text by Patrick Bell.
It’s time to hit the beach again and see how people added some sea salt to the tin worm’s diet. Many of the images are from Daytona Beach, Florida, while the rest I was not able to quickly determine the location. So grab your shades and sun lotion and let’s go!
A gentleman was enjoying his trip to Daytona Beach per a photo search. He was cruising in a ’55 Ford Customline Tudor Sedan with a V8, Fordomatic, and a New Jersey license plate.
Apparently this couple forgot to bring any beach furniture and the lady had to lounge on their ’54 Pontiac Chieftain Custom Catalina. It doesn’t look very comfortable, but it did make a good photo.
There is a lot to absorb in this image. The newest I see were a white ’62 Ford Country Sedan and a white ’62 Rambler Classic, both in the driving lane, and at the far end of the same lane is possibly a white over red ’63 Chevrolet Impala. At the water’s edge is a blueish ’62 or ’63 Chevrolet Chevy II Nova, and in the right upper edge is a light green ’61-’63 Rambler American, one of four Ramblers. The oldest I can ID are the white over coral ’54 Cadillac Coupe with factory air, one of four Cadillacs, and the white over red ’53 or ’54 Chevrolet Bel Air Sport Coupe in the water. Some other interesting units in the foreground; a white over black ’55 or ’56 Thunderbird, and a dark blue mid-fifties Hillman Husky Estate and red Volvo 122S were the two foreign cars.
Search results indicate this was another image shot at Daytona Beach, this time with a ’50 Studebaker Champion Regal De Luxe Starlight Coupe with an elaborate grille guard. The lady passenger got caught with her eyes closed.
This lady does not look dressed for the beach. She was posing next to a ’54 Buick 2 door Riviera that appears to have three VentiPorts, which means it could be a Special, Century, or Super. It is equipped with dual outside mirrors that were unusual at that time, unless you towed a trailer.
A casual but stylish lady posing with a ’56 Pontiac Star Chief 2 door Catalina. In the background left perhaps a ’57 or ’58 DeSoto, and to the right a ’58 Chevrolet Biscayne 4 door sedan.
It looks like it was a nice day for a cruise on the beach in a ’55 Oldsmobile 88 Holiday Sedan. This was the first year for the four door hardtop and they sold well, but not as well as the regular four door sedans.
A ’61 Chevrolet Impala Sport Sedan with E-Z-Eye Glass and a relaxed looking gentleman enjoying a can of Schlitz and a day at the beach.
It is hard to tell what the object of the photo was, as we have five seagulls, three beach houses, and a ’64 Ford Country Sedan with a droopy headliner in the middle.
We are back at Daytona Beach with the Sun and Surf Motel in the background. The young lady was catching some rays next to a ’62 or ’63 (going by the rocker molding) Chevrolet Corvair Monza Club Coupe with a ’61 model wheel cover.
Daytona Beach once again is our location with a ’66 Plymouth Barracuda in Light Mauve Metallic that looks close to new. This was the last year of the first generation of the Barracuda.
The beach was fairly quiet on the day this ’71 Pontiac Safari wagon from Ohio was out for a cruise. This was the first year of a major restyle where the disappearing tailgate was introduced in the wagons. That idea disappeared when the downsized restyle arrived for the ’77 model year.
It was GM day at Daytona Beach in this image taken in 1976 per a search. Seven out of the ten cars showing were GM products with two Fords (black over maroon ’68 LTD 2 door hardtop and a brown ’73 or ’74 LTD 2 door hardtop with an aftermarket opera window), and the lone Mopar was the white ’67 Dodge Dart 270 4 door sedan in the lower center. Next to the Dart was a gold ’63 Chevrolet Chevy II Nova wagon which was the oldest, and the newest were the white over gold ’76 Pontiac Grand Prix with T-tops on the left edge, and the Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight this side of it was a ’75 or ’76.
Another Ohioan, this one a ’73 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu Colonnade Hardtop Coupe. This was the first year of the Colonnade style.
Thanks for hitting the beach with us and have a great day!
I was at Daytona Beach in the early 90s and was amazed that they still permitted driving on the beach. Which I did, only because I could!
In the 3rd shot, I think it’s a red 59 Mercury wagon facing the surf.
I believe it is a ’60 model. The ’59’s headlamps were high in the fender, while the ’60’s were in the grille.
Cool collection a pics. The lady, for some reason, seems to be laying so, so close to the “Corvair”.
Reason may be that the sand appears to drop off sharply to her left.
Corvair Lady is my favorite shot here. She does appear to be in deep communion with the Corvair’s taillights and bumper, but is likely looking at or talking to someone whose knee or elbow is just barely in the photo at the far left. Love the matching towel and swimsuit.
I guess on the East Coast, and back when cars rusted pretty quickly anyway, driving on the beach or even close to the waterline like the red ‘53-54 Chevy in the 3rd picture wasn’t too risky. And speaking of that 3rd picture, seeing two of my childhood family cars in one photo here at CC is a first, the Volvo 122S and the Hillman. Though our Hillman was a sedan and our 122S was a wagon. The colors are almost reversed too, as our Volvo was dark gray and the Hillman a dark red.
What I like about CC stories are the pictures of cars that are new and shiny, back in their day, so we can see them at their best!
I’m pretty for sure that the 1955 Oldsmobile Holiday 4 door hardtop is a 98 as the 88 and Super 88’s had fender skirts. Also the reason the 4 door hardtops didn’t out sell the pillared sedans is they were a mid year offering not in the main catalog.
It’s definitely an 88, as the attached brochure page shows. The 98 was noticeably longer, and the trunk was longer. Olds did without the fender skirts on the 88 and Super 88 four-door hardtops.
These all look so strange to me – I don’t think I’ve ever been to a beach that allowed cars on it, other than official 4x4s or ATVs that occasionally drove by. Even if allowed, I don’t think I’d chance it myself if possible; all that sand and salt can’t be good for cars.
The oval opera window on the LTD fooled me for a moment into thinking it was a Lincoln Mark IV. That was probably the intent. If that car had a continental-kit trunk lid installed, I might not have realized it was an LTD at all. This car has made me realize how similar the LTD coupe and Mark IV looked from the side.
Agreed. When I had my own ‘73 LTD Coupe, I thought the same thing about the Mark IV, thinking at the time they may’ve been sister cars (what I now know from coming here so long ago is called a “platform”).
What made me think this was the “L” shaped treatment on the C-Pillar. My LTD was gold with a brown vinyl top. If parked next to a Mark done up in the same colors, the roofs appeared identical to my eyes at the time.
I now know, that the Mark and the T-Bird at that time were the same platform, not the LTD. But the familiar similarities are uncanny.
Lots of photoshop going on here, as we all know well you cannot drive a rear wheel drive car off pavement, period.
I hope you’re stating that in jest.
You are joking, right? This was a tradition for decades – until someone had the revelation that this was not the best thing for the environment…
Huh?
Salt water and salt air in humid climates rusts cars out fairly fast, and shellfish loving Kiwis drove cars on the beaches, its kinda hard to get far from the coast here so cars rust away without salting the roads. A lot of people launched boats using cars that never helped either, Beaches also became designated roads and were often smoother than the goat track actual road nearby, two beaches that were regularly used as roads had quicksand creeks to negotiate going on and off many cars never got off Orewa and 90 mile beach.
We could also mention some car chases movie scenes on the beach, like the one from the movie “McQ” with John Wayne.
A friend and I built his 1954 topless Buick into a Batmobile and drove it over to the Daytona 500 from Clearwater in 1966. We returned with it for the Firecracker 400 in July. Hundreds of cars drove the beach every day and you could always count on at least one idiot to park too close to the water at low tide and have it sunk in for high tide.
My first thought was salt water and rust. A friend drive his VW bus on a beach in Baja and rust started to appear quickly thereafter.
Some 25% of Oregon’s beaches are open to automobiles, although some of those area may close seasonally due to nesting shorebirds. In Port Orford, most of the beaches are open to driving and we’ve taken the Tracker down once or twice.
On a recent van trip to Washington, we took the van into a beach access. Right in front of us was a Subaru, which stopped and let a little dog out to run. They drove off rather slowly, and the dog ran in front of the car, which they obviously couldn’t see, and right in front of our eyes they drove over the dog with the car’s wheels! And they kept driving.
I had to drive fast to catch up to them and honk my horn to alert them. They looked in disbelief, and got out and sure enough, no dog. It was dead quite a ways back.
They drove back quickly. When we got there the woman had gotten out and was holding the dead dog, sobbing. She told us that they had been doing this for years, and the dog loved to run behind the car. She felt horrible. We didn’t feel so great either, watching it happen.
The LTD 2-Door Hard-Top in the penultimate photo is a ‘73. You can tell by the back bumper. A shot of the grille would have been more definitive, but the easy way to tell from behind is how far out the bumper extends. The ‘74 had more extension, as the back bumper on that car was a mandated 5 MPH bumper, while the ‘73 had a 2.5 MPH back bumper.
As to the opera window being “aftermarket”, I’m not so sure. Growing up, my next door neighbor had a ‘74 LTD Brougham that had an opera window, from the factory, while my family’s own ‘73 LTD 2-Door Hard-Top (not a Brougham) did not have one. The LTD in that pick is not a Brougham, and something does look odd about that elliptical window’s placement on the C-Pillar.
Anyway, this brings back memories. For spring break, in my graduation year of 1978, we went to Florida, and I drove my ‘73 LTD on that very beach!
The first time I saw this, it took me forever to figure out what the white car with the maroon top in picture #3 was. 1959 Bonneville.