Text by Patrick Bell.
I am a car watcher first, but I am a people watcher as well. It has always been fun to connect cars to their people and people to their cars. Today we will narrow it down a little more, with a good selection of images to look at people’s fashion tastes in their clothes and cars.
Here was a pair of sharp looking dudes leaning on a ’73 Pontiac Grand Prix. It may have been photo day as there was another camera on the hood. The sky looked overcast and the trees were bare, but the green grass indicates an early spring day.
Another photo day, this time possibly with three generations of the same family hanging out in the garage. Perhaps the little girl wanted to ride her fancy tricycle and the other two did not want to get out in the wind. The car was a ’64 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport Coupe with custom tail light lens and dual exhaust tips. It was wearing a ’68 issue Texas license plate with a “Frontier Chevrolet” frame.
A stylish woman posing with a ’68 Ford Mustang Fastback 2+2 that may have been some sort of special edition. There was another word after the “Mustang” script on the fender that I do not recognize. It looked like a warm winter day with a first generation Chevrolet Corvair parked on the hill.
A lunch break after a morning of fishing is enough to make you smile. These three were about to eat and a soft drink was a treat for a kid back then. And there was someone inside the ’66 Dodge Monaco 500 2 door hardtop as well.
This may have been a college student posing with his ’66 Pontiac GTO Hardtop Coupe from New York. His sweater indicates a cool day perhaps in the early spring.
A search indicates this couple had just moved into their first apartment with their ’69 Mustang Mach I SportsRoof with the 428 Cobra Jet V8. I am not sure about the car on the left, and a white Volkswagen Type 1 was across the parking lot.
Here was a lady that matched her car, a ’63 Pontiac Tempest convertible that had a ’70 issue Illinois license plate. It looked pretty good for a seven year old, perhaps it spent the winters indoors. They were in a neighborhood of fine homes.
And another lady color coordinated with the car, a ’70 Dodge Challenger R/T hardtop. The one wheel showing had a wire wheel cover and a snow tire mounted. A late winter or early spring photo.
A happy and patriotic couple sitting on a red, white and blue ’60 or ’61 Mercury Comet 4 door sedan. Along with the paint job there was also a custom steering wheel. If the photo date of May was correct the setting was somewhere in the north where the growth of spring was in the early stages.
Per a search this lady and her husband were from the Phillipines and this was their first ever snow experience. They were located in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and she was posing in front of their ’70 Pontiac Firebird with a ’71 Chevrolet Nova Coupe on the other side of it.
In this image, the blue ’71 Plymouth Duster 340 is the one thing that was not color coordinated, everything else had green and/or gold shades. It did have the optional hood scoops and Rallye Wheels, and was towing a small pop up camper. In the background was a ’65-’70 Toyota Corona, along with some lush, rolling hills.
I remember this look very well; bell bottom jeans, wide belt, and a plain or tee shirt. She was leaning on a ’71-’72 Chevrolet Vega GT Coupe with possibly a Missouri license plate. In the background was a gold ’74-’76 AMC Gremlin X, brown ’72 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe, and the rear section of a gold ’68 Ford XL or LTD.
This couple looks like they were very comfortable together. They were posing with what I am going to call a ’75 AMC Gremlin X going by the Dark Cocoa Metallic color. It was in nice condition, perhaps close to new.
A barefoot young woman showing off a bouquet of flowers she apparently received. She was standing by a ’71 or ’72 Ford Pinto sedan that was likely close to new per the photo date. Maybe the car was also a gift.
This bell bottomed dude looks rather tall. He was leaning on a ’69 Oldsmobile 4-4-2 convertible with a ’70 Volkswagen Type 1 parked in front. The Bug appears like it had a few years under the sun when this image was shot, so the date was likely in the mid-seventies.
Thanks for joining us and to all good day!
The bicentennial paint job on the Comet is nicely done. He’s entitled to look proud!
Good thought, polistra. Since the photo date was May ’71 he was thinking way ahead!
I have three older sisters (born ’47, ’50, & ’55). All the above ladies bring back memories:
– The Chevy Impala photo reminds me of my oldest sister with the young lady sitting on the car. That style of hair was the norm in the early and mid 60’s. She wore that hair style in her senior year book photo.
– The Pontiac Tempest & Dodge Charger photo is the spitting image of my middle sister. More focused, yet, trendy. She started her career in retail right out of high school.
The Vega & Gremlin photos so remind me of the third sister. Long hair, bell bottom blue jeans, wide belt, flowery shirt or blouse.
The 60’s & early 70’s was a fun time!!
Hooray to Polistra for thinking of the Bicentennial with the red-white-blue paint job on the Comet—sounds like a very good bet.
Today’s sample doesn’t span many years, but it’s easy to recall them—for the clothing and hair fashions, for when these cars were everywhere, and so on.
I don’t think I’ll take time to pin down any locales today, but the Illinois “nice neighborhood” likely looks much the same today—Winnetka? Evanston? Waukegan?
Or Grand View Drive in Peoria…
Good god, the ’70’s (when I was a kid) were as bad as I remember. Everyone, me included, looked bloody ‘orrible. If your own hair wasn’t about to engulf you, your jeans were going to make you a unic (whilst the foot-wide flappy bits of same tripped you up at foot level), and the vomitous colors and patterns of your shirt made you a threat to decency everywhere.
These are wonderful photos, and thankyou for the post Rich/Patrick. This is a car site, but I do like the idea of old pictures where cars are behind the human subject: doesn’t it just make the cars themselves spring so vividly to life?
I’d like to look that “orrible”, now!
If you wanted to take photos and see your pictures shortly thereafter in the 1960s, you needed one of those huge Polaroid cameras as seen in the ’64 Impala shot. You pressed the button to take the picture, then a photo buzzes out the side (motorized on the fancier models, you turn a crank on cheaper ones). Wait 60 seconds, then peel off the coating paper and – like magic! – there’s your photo. But you’re not done yet. The thin photo paper would roll up unless you pasted it to a thick cardboard backing paper that was included with the film. You might also need to smear a chemical across the photo to help preserve it and/or stop further development, using a felt-covered plastic wand also included with the film. By the mid-’70s neither the backing paper nor chemical-infused rub-on was needed, and newer cameras starting with the (awesome) SX-70 used film that also didn’t have that wait-one-minute peel-off coating. There were about 10 photos per film pack.
If you wanted indoor or nighttime shots, you needed a flash gun, the big round blue thing seen attached to the camera here. You had to insert a new flashbulb, take the picture, let the flashbulb cool down (it’s very hot after firing!), trash the old bulb, then insert a new one. Later 1970s Polaroid cameras used “flashbars” that had ten bulbs in them before you had to change them, and they were much smaller and didn’t get so hot. By 1980 flashbulbs were replaced by electronic flash that could be reused thousands of times and was often built into the camera. Photography was expensive back then, usually requiring film, processing/developing, and flashbulbs/flashcubes. And cameras were usually big. I’m amazed there are as many old photographs as there are.
I came of age in the ’70s and I like the girl with the green Vega GT; also the girl with the birthday present Pinto. The Vega girl could be a fan of The Runaways or maybe a future member of Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. The Pinto girl with the Marilyn Monroe flower vase is just plain cute.
The Vega/Pinto/Gremlin troika is something…
I can’t wait to see the Fashons and Cars of the ’80s. 😉
The Challenger girl reminds of a good friend of mine who also had a ’70 Challenger in B5 blue/blue interior/white top and R/T stripes and wire wheel covers during her college years. She still has her ’78 Firebird Formula which she bought new after she sold the Challenger and it is still like new. She’s in her mid ’70s now and is my idol for aging in style.
Nice pictures all .
I can’t say I miss my bell bottom trousers .
-Nate
Note the unintentional “product placement” in picture #4, Pepsi cans perfectly centered, LOL! I find it most ridiculous in today’s commercials when EVERY product label is prominently turned to face the camera!! 🙂
But the boy was holding his upside down!
The car beside the ’69 Mustang (picture #6) appears to be a ’71-’73 Mach 1. 🙂
You are likely correct. I was thinking along the same lines but the door glass looked too long, long enough to be a full size car. But that photo is blurred, so it is likely distorted as well.
Thanks for your comment.
So nice to see people not slathered in ink, bits of metal sticking out of everything.
One could almost forget that was normal.
The “64 Chevrolet”, pic has either a kid dresses too warm, or the adults not dressed for the temperature.
Excellent collection of memories.
I have a picture or two of me from the 1970s with my cars. Had a 28-inch waistline then, never liked ‘wide-ovals’ then or now.
Every single one of these people look infinitely cooler than I will ever be.
I always thought of myself as fat, as I’ve been off and on all my life. I probably thought that I was fat when this picture was taken in ’74 or ’75.