Text by Patrick Bell.
Summer is here for all practical purposes so we are going to do some traveling to see the sights. Only this time we are going to avoid the crowds, at least most of the time. Climb aboard as we have some good images of out of the way places in the good old USA.
The first image for today was a beautiful view on a beautiful early fall day on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Ypsilon Mountain is on the left. A gentleman was waiting in a close to new looking ’63 Ford Galaxie 500 convertible that was registered in Denver.
A small group, perhaps of family members, traveling in a ’55 Oldsmobile 88 4 door sedan from California, stopping to take in the sights at a roadside pull off.
Now we are visiting Hoover Dam on the border between Nevada and Arizona. This gentleman was cruising with all the windows down in a V8 powered ’55 Ford Fairlane Victoria from California that looked close to new.
A photo search indicates this was Glacier National Park in Montana, where a V8 powered ’56 Chevrolet Bel Air Sport Coupe from Oregon was stopped on a gravel road for a photo op.
This ’55 Pontiac with an accessory Grille Guard was parked on a side road to take a photo of the rock formations in the background. It had a Wisconsin license plate plus an adult and possibly a child waiting in the car.
It is off to Arizona where the Superstition Mountains are east of Phoenix. A couple were posing along with a ’57 Chrysler New Yorker Sedan. The “famous” New Yorker was a “recognized leader in the fine car field”, at least according to one of the original brochures.
This was one of 2447 Lincoln Premiere convertibles built in ’56. It was from California and they were stopped watching the train go by (California Zephyr?). The steering wheel looked rather large, and it appears it was missing a section. They were large, but I think the missing section was an optical illusion.
A drive in the country is a nice way to spend the day, and the driver of this ’58 Oldsmobile Super 88 or Ninety-Eight Holiday Coupe made a stop and left the kids in the car. It had a ’61 issue Illinois license plate and the low sun indicates either early morning or late evening.
Here we had people checking out the Shower trees in Hawaii. On the left a ’60 Chevrolet Bel Air 4 door sedan with a load of passengers, presuming the two outside belong to it. To the right a ’57 Chrysler that may have been a stretched sedan or wagon. It had a full load of passengers and perhaps a Hawaii license plate used from ’61-’68.
We are now at the Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California. It appears that two couples were traveling in a ’64 Mercury Montclair 2 door Marauder Hardtop that may have been from Vigo County, Indiana. It was a warm day as the windows were down, and the Mercury was missing a wheel cover.
This image was taken by Charles Cushman in 1968. The location was Corte Madera, California, and the lady was his wife, Jean. There were two Fords in the foreground on that day; a ’68 Fairlane Torino 4 door sedan with a 390 V8, and a ’58 Custom 300 Fordor Sedan. Next came a white ’63 Chevrolet Bel Air wagon, and a Commer FC van on the end. In the background a Jaguar and two Buicks; a ’50 Super convertible and a ’67 Skylark or GS 400 Thin-Pillar Coupe.
The Badlands National Park in South Dakota was the backdrop for a ’68 Chrysler Town & Country wagon with a pop up camper trailer, stopped along the highway. It looks like two adults and two young children, plus luggage, were waiting in the car.
Perhaps there were two couples traveling in this ’66 Ford Galaxie 500 2 door hardtop from California. The man leaning over the car may have been looking at a map, trying to figure out how to get where they were going, in this photo dated to 1970.
Our final stop was more than likely the Garden of the Gods in Colorado. The car was a ’70 Ford Torino 4 door sedan with snow tires and a Colorado license plate issued in El Paso county, if I read the first two letters correctly as KG. The county seat is Colorado Springs, so they weren’t too far from home.
Thanks for riding along with us and to all good day!
See 🎵 the 🎶USA 🎵 in Your Chevrolet! 🎵 Dinah Might have liked those Bel Airs! Shore thing!
The odds against a Commer van AND a Jaguar in the same parking lot outside of Britain are astronomical!
I’ve never seen an actual Commer van in the metal. I think I might have had a toy Matchbox one as a child back in the 1960s.
That Commer van in the background of the 1968 photo. Quite a rarity even for Marin County.
All swell photographs. We never took road trips to see parks, etc., just getting from one place to another, Boston to SC or NC to drop me off at military school or catch a Trailways bus to the school in Middle Tennessee. We always rode in style though- one year a Corvette, then a 1961 T-Bird convertible with a/c; a 1963 Cadillac Series 62 convertible with after-market a/c and finally, a 1965 Buick Electra 225 convertible with, you guessed it right, an after-market air. My Dad loved convertibles, but he insisted on having a/c as well.
Nice pictures, thanx for identifying the Commer van ! .
-Nate
I have been remiss, Mr. Bell, in not expressing my awe at your knowledge of cars, but also of license plate history and geography. The depth of your knowledge never fails to amaze me.
Thanks, Evan. While I do have an above average amount of knowledge gained in my many years of study, I could not do it without the World Wide Web. It is a boon for detail nerds like me.
I’d be willing to bet that the Chrysler poking its nose into the photo from Hawaii is one of those stretched Chryslers/Plymouths used by MacKenzie tours in Hawaii in the early 1960s. They’ve been written about before here on CC:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/uncategorized/vintage-snapshots-the-chrysler-limousines-of-hawaii/
I am quite fascinated by those and fully intend to go to Hawaii someday and look for one (or what’s left of one) until I find one. It’s a shame that we don’t seem to have many CC readers in Hawaii as surely someone knows more about these things.
That trip in the “66 Ford, hrdtop”, hopefully, got better! The road there looks about “non existent”.
One of my favorites in this set is the Chrysler Town and Country in the Badlands.
But what surprises me is that amount of squat in the wagon’s rear suspension. That pop-up camper can’t really be all that heavy…
I recall C-Body wagon leaf springs seemed to bottom out, with trailers. Or heavy cargo loads. And no air shocks. Springs may be tuned for ride softness. Might be something heavy, just forward of the tailgate.
I like that picture too – probably because Badlands National Park was one of my favorite places to visit. The picture prompted me to try to ID the trailer – looks like it was a Puma El Dorado, a pop-up made in Indiana during the mid 1960s.
They were about 2000 pounds loaded. It should probably have had a torque bar to assist on the tongue. Our family’s Bethany trailer + 67 Galaxie 500 was loaded for 3 weeks for a family of 7. Dad weighed our rig before hitting the road. We did 2-3,000 mile trips during July/August for a decade. From there my parents kept getting fancier.
Not sure if Torinos appeared at some point in the TV series, but I get a Mod Squad vibe, from this image. Aided by the ‘action’ pose by the person.