Vintage Snapshots: Parking Lots In The ’50s & ’60s
– Posted on June 12, 2024
-
-
-
American Brands: GM 
American Brands: Ford 
American Brands: Chrysler 
American Brands: AMC, Jeep and All Others 
Automotive Histories and Misc. 
Asian Brands 
UK Brands 
Australian Brands 
European Brands 
Cars Of A Lifetime & Auto-Biography 
Buses 
Trucks, Pickups and Vans 
Design 
Trains, Planes & Ships 
Motorcycles, Trikes, Bicycles 
Engines, Transmissions and other Tech 
Tractors, Lawn Mowers, Off-Road Equipment 
RVs, Motorhomes, Trailers, Campers
#2 could have been an AMC ad. The garish Impala and LImited are too big to fit into the lot, but Met is small enough to fit between them.
In the second shot with the radio towers, I think I see a two-tone Rambler station wagon (left column) and a two-tone International pickup (right column). Would take either of those vehicles today.
The last shot is from the Bear Lake parking lot in Rocky Mt. NP. A very familiar place and the start of many great hikes for the Niedermeyers.That’s Otis Peak on the right and Taylor Pk. on the left. The glacier in between was used for glissading (sliding down on one’s butt) after summitting Taylor Pk.
I wonder if there is any of that glacier left in the Park. Or if anyone is still glissading…
I can ’bout smell the gasoline evaporating out of the gas tanks & boiling out of the carburetors. And the oil breakdown products & volatiles subliming from the pavement & from the greasy undercarriages of these cars. The “road draft tube” had been eliminated for PCV starting 1963, so at least the oil part was starting to get better.
You can really see the excessive length of that Buick Special in the second shot, as compared to the Impala across from it. I’m also struck by the number of high-end cars in the oceanside hotel/motel photo. Must have been a pretty swanky place.
The silver-blue 1958 Buick is the mighty Limited, not the plebian Special. It was longer than the base Cadillac and priced within a couple hundred bucks of it.
Fun fact: a 1958 Limited sedan is worth significantly more today than a 1958 Sedan DeVille. It’s very scarce (a particularly unpopular one-year model in a particularly bad year for Buick sales after a red hot decade) and it’s highly prized by Buick fans because Buick took dead aim at Cadillac. Similar Sedan DeVilles of this era sold in much larger numbers with much higher survival rates.
And the companion Cadillac is at the far end of the next row over.
Right, my bad, I meant to say Limited.
Buick finally got its version of Harley Earl’s extended deck premium model program in the 1958 Limited: C-Body Super, Roadmaster and Limited: 127.5″ wheelbase; OAL: Super and Roadmaster: 219.1″; Limited: 227.1″
The following year, the Series 4800 Electra 225 arrived: 225.4″ OAL; Series 4700 Electra: 220.6 OAL. Acres of sheet metal sold!
Front seat passengers have been riding with their elbow out of the window since, at least, 1954.
In the lead photo, what make is the green & white car with the droopy tailpipe? Looks like its red sibling is on the far right.
56 Mercury?
’55 Mercury, actually.
Thanks to both of you for the answers and thanks to Rich for putting these posts together. Always fun to see and get more familiar with vintage cars
Top Photo: getting the impression this is a government installation (ie: army facility, or early research center). Also, the shadow under the Mercury, looks like the exhaust pipe is hanging a bit. Time for coat hanger repair.
I agree – I’m not positive about this but I’ll make a guess that it’s Tinker Air Force Base. The cars have Oklahoma license plates starting with “1”, which was for Oklahoma County (i.e., OKC). Definitely looks military.
5th photo:
guessing its California by the mountains in the background and black license plates and ’66(?) Chevelle.
Across the very top of the red building is a Merry Christmas light string. Is this a fire station??
I think this is a ’65 Chevelle.
And enjoy these vintage photos showing the parking lots of Toronto during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
https://www.blogto.com/city/2011/10/that_time_when_toronto_was_a_city_of_parking_lots/
Yes, it’s a fire station in Los Angeles County. Here’s a then-and-now view from the same parking lot:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/rkwzanRnFxjNYDDm7
Love to see these muted earth tones, make a comeback, in current colour trends. Colours blend well, in nature. Appearing more natural, and modest.
And zipping past in the lower left of the second photo is a Nash Metropolitan.
Wasn’t it wonderful to look down a street and be able to distinguish automobiles simply by appearance. Now what we see in 2024 is a colarge of cars undistinguished from each other.
As I’ve said before here, I grew up in Southern California in Newport Beach. Generally in every day traffic you couldn’t tell who was behind the wheel. Yet there were standouts from time to time. One was a local family who owned a furniture manufacturing company in Los Angeles but lived near us. They drove a ‘59 Rolls Royce. The other was a quirky older man who drove a Crosley (rather the other side of the fence from the Rolls).
Now it’s a silver, black, grey or white SUV. Yeah, those will be classics one day.
The 6th photo is the Beach Club Hotel on the Galt Ocean Mile in Fort Lauderale, Fl. Based upon the cars in the lot, the photo cannot be any earlier than 1963/64: there’s a ’63 Impala convert and a ’63/64 Valiant in the first row, and a ’63 or ’64 Buick in the 3rd row back.
The Beach Club Hotel opened Christmas, 1956, at first as a private club. The Lulubelle Room there was made famous by Woody Woodbury, a local personality and head of the BITOA (“Booze Is The Only Answer”) Club, who did his weekly shows there. The hotel’s “tropical modern” design/architecture became a theme in beach construction for a time. The hotel closed in the early ’80’s, replaced by the twin tower L’Hermitage condominiums.
I suspect the 4th photo is also a Fort Lauderdale Beach, or Lauderdale-By-The-Sea beach-side motel, no earlier than 1959, based upon the yellow Plymouth four-door sedan parked 6 cars down on the left.
Thanks for the GREAT photos!
Thank you for posting these pictures. I love seeing them in their natural environment. I was born in Detroit in March of 1955, by the time I was 5 years old, I was already a mini Gearhead. I knew all the makes, models and years of all of the US Big Three on site. Those cars had personally, maybe there were some we didn’t like, they all had a certain look that defines them. But the colors bright and the chrome was everywhere. By the late 60s, things were more bland but they still had personally. Things took a dive due to the 1973 oil embargo. No one wanted Big gas guzzling American cars. That crisis effected more than the auto industry and it changed the US in a big way. It took years to recover and the recovery brought a whole new normal to everything we did. And to add to all that there never a fuel shortage, it was all based on emotions and I HATE that. I loved the vehicles made by the Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corporation, GM not so much. The cars changed after the embargo. They needed to be more efficient, but I’ll never see why that the beautiful styling had to go. No body cared about good gas mileage at the time, we didn’t have to. Now I collect diecast models from the 50s through the 70s, and I read these articles, so I say keep them coming, they make me feel good. I sometimes think I might start writing some. After reading these and the comments that US Gearheads post, I can see most of them come from guys my age, and we all love the cars and we all have the same thoughts about them. And I like knowing your all out there. It makes me feel like I belong somewhere, where there’s guys all over the country that think like I do and I appreciate that. I look forward to seeing the next photo gallery of our great American cars. And BTW, the thing I like the most about these pictures is I didn’t see one fourign car in any one of them. And I like that!
The thing that I enjoyed the most at looking at these pictures, is NOT ONE foreign car!!! 😁
No mini vans either!!!
Sofflat, in the 6th photo, I see a 1960 Chrysler hardtop coupe on the far left and a couple of early model Corvairs on the right and one them looks like a 1962.
Yes, Douglas. In front of the Chrysler is a ’62 Pontiac, and a ’60 Olds is entering the photo frame from the right. That’s why I’m figuring the earliest the photo could have been taken would be ’63-’64. Those Corvairs are sweet, especially the two-door bronze Monza!