Text by Patrick Bell.
Our feature for today is very relatable, as we all have been (or still are) children and we always had some kind of car in our lives. There are many fine images, so enjoy some kids and cars from the past.
Three brothers were goofing around while posing in front of a V8 powered ’55 Plymouth Savoy 4 door sedan. It was a nice summer day, and apparently a special event day as the boys were all cleaned up and nicely dressed.
Easter Sunday, 1957 is the title on this image of likely siblings standing by a ’50 Pontiac Chieftain De Luxe Convertible Coupe. The girls weren’t too impressed with Grandpa’s attempts to get them to smile. It was a nice, but cool day, and across the street was another Pontiac, a ’53 or ’54 model.
Perhaps another Easter Sunday pose in a southern climate with a V8 powered ’53 Ford Crestline Victoria. It was a nice neighborhood of ranch style homes that were built without cutting down the surrounding trees.
Here we had a ’50 Crosley Station Wagon that belonged to B. F. Brown, a dealer in Fostoria, Ohio (notice the dealer license plate). Crosley built small cars from 1939-1952 and the wagon was the most popular model. Mr. Brown became a dealer in 1948, and these cuties were his twins.
And another group of siblings in their Sunday best, standing next to a ’55 Mercury Montclair 4 door sedan.
These three were at play in the patio area with a ’57 Lincoln Premiere Coupe in the background. The pedal car’s fins and taillights make me think of a ’58 Plymouth. Neither one of them look like they had seen much dirt, so were likely close to new.
This young feller doesn’t want to make eye contact with the camera or the photographer. He was hanging on to a new looking ’55 Pontiac with a grille guard and a right hand spotlight.
Two tired looking girls with dresses that were color coordinated to the ’56 Chevrolet Bel Air Sport Sedan behind them. The windows were down and the sun low, so it was a warm summer evening. In the left background was a ’55 Chevrolet Two-Ten 4 door wagon.
Another ’56 Chevrolet, this one a six cylinder model and in the background of a young man demonstrating his hula hoop skills. The dog doesn’t seem impressed and a friend was coaching him from the sidelines.
A close to new V8 powered ’57 Chevrolet Two-Ten 2 door sedan from Wayne County, Michigan, the home of Detroit. The homes in the background appear to have the same floor plan with different style roofs. It looked like a warm day, but it wasn’t hot, or that young’un would not have been able to sit on the car.
A couple of color coordinated kids posing on the new family car, a ’59 Ford Ranch Wagon Fordor with a non standard Illinois license plate. They were in an established neighborhood where a ’56 Ford Fairlane with a V8 was parked across the street.
Now we have an unusual ’62 Ford Falcon Deluxe Fordor wagon, as it was right hand drive. There is a sign on the building eave fascia that I can’t make any sense of, and the girls look like they were dressed up for Pioneer Days.
Here was a happy looking youngster relaxing on the back of a ’62 Oldsmobile Starfire Coupe. It was an older neighborhood with some exterior wiring on the white stucco building where the laundry was hanging to dry.
This girl looks like she was caught off guard, or maybe she was shy. There was a portable record player on the ’68 Chevrolet Caprice Estate Wagon with one of the two available 327 V8’s. It appears like they were in a beach parking area.
Another set of twins, this time with a ’67 Plymouth Satellite 2 door hardtop from Ohio. These boys look like they might have been up to something.
That does it for today’s vintage photo tour. Thanks for joining us and have a great day!
How can you tell the 1955 Plymouth in first photo is a V8 and not a six?
The hood emblem, which you can barely see under the right hand boy’s armpit. The V8’s were “V” shaped, while the sixes had a horizontal bar style. Thanks for your comment.
Just a small correction to mention: the black kids in front of the `55 Mercury–that car happens to be a Monterey and not the top shelf Montclair series. No color-coordinated ‘saddle’ along the window ledge.
Thanks, Will, but I am going to stick with my ID. Actually, my first thought was the same as yours. But a little research showed the four door Montclair for ’55 did not get the ‘saddle’ you refer to, and it did get the ‘B’ pillar and rocker panel moldings that the Monterey did not have.
What a treasure trove of photos! Thanks for the smiles that you brought to my face,
Great set of picures here!
The “non standard” Illinois license plate on the 1959 Ford Ranch Wagon is a 1959 Amateur Radio plate. The call sign beginning with W is a clue, and also the small letter barely visible on the plate’s left side is the beginning of the word AMATEUR written vertically. A full image of this type of plate is below:
I found the location of this shot – seems to be in the West Rogers Park section of Chicago.
Then-and-now comparison is below. The modern image is from Apple Maps Look Around because the Google StreetView for that block isn’t very good. The house in the background with what looks like three glass blocks on the side of the window bay is pretty distinctive, so I’m fairly confident that’s the block.
I don’t have the Apple Look Around link right now, but here’s the StreetView link for this block:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/rczZFNQR8Jm6siK27
I love seeing updated shots! It’s so neat to see “before and after.” Thank you!
Let’s digress from cars a bit. Ham radio is still quite popular. I have a friend who does it and is forever trading contact cards with people all over the world. He has used self restraint but it is possible to spend absurd amounts of money on the equipment.
btw I learned today the HAM was originally pejorative as in “ham fisted” or incompetent. Over time the people in the hobby embraced the term, sort of implying that ham was just slang for amateur.
Thanks, Eric!
The 55 Pontiac kiddo is foreshadowing today’s goofy car show trend of affixing a small stuffed kid to the front of your car. What a trendsetter!
Another piece of license plate information – the picture of the ’56 Chevrolet with the hula hoop kid is from Quebec. My guess is that it’s a 1956 plate, which was white w/ dark green letters – but the 1961 plates looked very similar (had black letters), so it could be that too.
Before the digital cameras film had to be developed and there was no guarantee that the picture would turn out, Probably some of the photos were taken twice to ensure that one would turn out. As a kid during this age half of the pictures I took didn’t get returned. So it was very disappointing when getting pictures back from being developed that some of the photos weren’t there. That probably explains why some of the kids have a bored look on their faces.
50 year old joke. ( If not older).
What song was Snow White singing when she dropped her film off for developing?
Someday My Prints (Prince) Will Come.
Last photo a young Jake and Elwood?
My thinking exactly. “We’re on a mission from Gawd.”
Wish I still had some of the old family pictures with our cars going back to the 1950s. But around 1959, a move to San Francisco, our household stuff sent to a warehouse burned down the day before our stuff was to be delivered. Family pics roasted.
Then about 1971, while I was a college student living off campus, my place burned down. So my pictures from the 1960s burned. I only have a few pictures of my cars from the 60s.
Maybe the Falcon was a non marked Postal vehicle with RHD?
I’m quite sure there was no such thing. But it is a bit of a mystery. it’s not an Australian Falcon, as they had a distinctly different body at the rear, with less overhang.
Ford US didn’t build RHD cars; if they were imported to a RHD country, they would be converted to RHD locally. I have to assume that’s the case with this one, but which country that would be is a good question.
I have one guess: the Australian Falcon didn’t get a (locally produced) station wagon body until 1961. Perhaps some 1960 US-built wagons were converted to RHD in that first year? It does rather look like it could be in Australia, given the red dirt.
Note the grass-thatch roof on the building to the left; that’s another clear indication this is likely in Australia or perhaps even more likely in New Zealand.
Well imported RHD US style Falcons showed up in New Zealand occasionally they kept the weaker 4 bolt rims long after OZ went to 5 lug wheels and had the tail dragger rear ends, probably out of Canada.
My guess is South Africa. The ‘red dirt and the building design’ I think suggests South Africa. Certainly outback Australia never had buildings like the one in the photo.
I would put money on it, that this Falcon wagon is in South Africa.
That is a good guess, quite likely better than mine.
South Africa, yes. If not, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Tanzania or, Kenya, perhaps. Certainly not Oz: it sounds nuts, but the color of the red dirt is wrong (as are the background trees, the grass roof, and perhaps the architecture too). If someone can make out the name of the street, or house, that’s up on the verandah/porch top edge, it might give a clue.
Apparently, S Africa got Falcons from ’60-’63, and they were a flop, due to the same (initial) weaknesses as in Australia.
Quite fascinating to see a long-bottomed RHD Falcon wagon.
I suspect those twin boys have been up to something for their entire lives! Mischief ensues!
My great uncle who was the Navigator of a WW2 aircraft carrier has identical twins in his division, and he could not tell them apart. They had the twin con game down to an art. Whenever one of them was getting grief for not doing something they said ” I dunno, you must have been talking to my brother”
The shy girl in front of the ’68 Chevy wagon has a Beatles record on that record player…I recognize the ‘Apple’ logo!
RHD Falcon? Not convinced about that – the sun on the steering wheel might have been due to an early morning photo shoot.
Boys in Fedoras next to the Mercury sunday go to meeting clothes.
That’s my favorite as well. Lots of great kid pictures here, but those guys with the hats are absolutely fantastic.
+1
Like the pics of the kids who look like they’re off to a business convention of some sort.
The early “50’s Pontiac, convert” is awesome.
That’s one clean ’62 Olds Starfire. There was a lot of nice looking cars ( even station wagons) back then. As a kid in the 1970’s these were seen everywhere but was cheap used cars back then. I wished my dad would’ve kept a few of them.
The boy in front of the Pontiac: “belt and suspenders, indeed!”
Me (being held by Granny) and my cousin in 1964. Chevy is Dad’s, Pontiac is my Uncle’s.
I have a couple of photos to contribute featuring yours truly and the 1964 Chevrolet Impala I grew up with and eventually learned to drive in. Judging from the license plate and the color of the tree, this was taken in the fall of 1967 when I was about a year-and-a-half old.
This one is from the spring or summer of 1968. Although I’m mostly blocking it, the Impala sports a Hemisfair ’68 license plate to commemorate the world’s fair in San Antonio.
Last one, taken in the late fall of 1970. My Dad is about to head to Vietnam for a year (he was career Air Force and spent most of his time on the B-52, but in Vietnam, he was stationed at Da Nang and mostly worked on the C-47). We would soon drive the Impala from Texas to New Hampshire, where we could be close to family while my Dad was overseas. The car came through a New England winter without rust damage (my Mom would take it through a car was regularly to get the salt off) and take us back to Texas in the spring of 1972.
Great pictures!
You’d have to be a bit hard of heart not to smile at these rather gorgeous pictures.
And also not to laugh a little – my lordy me, how high boys pants and shorts used to go! Practically have to undo your fly to scratch your chest, you would.
Does anyone have a clue about the ’55 Pontiac. The spot light is on the right hand side. Also, a steering wheel on the right hand side is visible if you expand the photo.
It’s just that the image is flipped. There’s other images of this particular car online – here’s another one showing it the correct way:
Good catch! I missed that one.
Aaah yes, memories! My then little girl alongside my ’56 Chevy in 1979, about a year after we moved to northern Indiana. Now she is 50 years old and my ’56 I stupidly sold long ago after owning her for 20 years. Time does fly by……. 🙁 Many good memories of my lil daughter and the ’56, too! 🙂 DFO
I am going to guess the car in the background was my mother’s but hard to say since this was Easter Sunday and my father is home.
Love, love, love these old pictures. It’s difficult to tell even that the Plymouth is a 1955 with the front end pretty well hidden, but it is. Savoy is on the front fender. Rear quarter panel for the 1956. I’m going with V-8. It looks like part of a V barely visible on the hood underneath one of the boy’s right arm.
My Dad’s first new car was a ’56 Plymouth Plaza, his was a 2 door 6 cylinder flathead with the 3 speed on the column…a stripper, don’t know if it had a heater (he bought it in PA, so maybe it did) but didn’t have a radio.
He hadn’t met my mother yet, who despite learning to drive on a ’51 Chrysler Windsor with semi-automatic, never got used to driving a manual. When we moved from the east coast to southern California, my mom, sister, and I flew by propeller plane but my Dad was carrying some chemical he needed for his new job in the Plymouth and drove (mostly route 66 but other roads as well).
He worked at Hoffman a couple years, but got another job back east; by ’61 he traded in the Plymouth on a new ’61 Rambler Classic wagon, which we all accompanied him in for the drive east. The Classic also had a 6, but it had an automatic so my Mom could drive it. I think it got sandblasted on the trip back, he traded it in on a ’63 Rambler Classic wagon he bought in Pittsburgh.
Plaza.. That’s possibly the dorkiest model name for the low price leader in cars for that era.. ever.. lol..
Believe the car behind the three Easter Sunday children is a 1963 Ford Fairlane.
A topic I can participate in. A pic of me in front of dad’s Chevrolet
Me in 1975 next to our blue Ford LTD woody station wagon
Great photos ! the very best is that last one, I vividly remember an identical looking boy as the one on the left, he had this look more often than not and was always up to something nefarious .
-Nate
Such a fun time and great memories for me
I sure enjoyed these photos..For some reason, sitting on car fenders, or the hood, was a popular thing for kids to do. I remember on warm summer nights sitting with my friend on her grandmothers large grey Plymouth car fenders…Cars were built like tanks then.. Sitting on cars isnt the thing now like it was in the cifties, sixties.
A kid in the drive way with a hula hoop. His bike and wagon in the background. Maybe I’m showing my age saying this but kids today have no idea what they are missing. Good times back then!
I love this series, Rich. Well done!
I have this one from the early 80s showing our 2 sons helping to wash the family car, a 1980 Volvo 242DL.