It’s been a while since the last of these galleries featuring vehicles in mid-century American suburb homes. As in previous installments (links at bottom), it’s a collection of new homes, clean streets, and some cars of interest.
Related CC reading:
Vintage Snapshots: What’s On The Driveway?
Vintage Snapshots: What’s On The Driveway? – Part 2
Vintage Snapshots: What’s On The Driveway? – Winter Edition
More Vintage Snapshot Galleries Here
Those little fins added on the Ford in photo 2 are crazy, and ugly. What a time
J C Whitney at their finest. I suspect that’s right out of the “New and Hot” section.
The car is a 1950 Ford Crestliner, probably stock except for those awful little fins. Next door neighbor’s son had one of these gems.
The Crestline looks better as a Packard than the actual Packard did.
These pictures drive home for me (no pun intended) how much “house inflation” has taken place in the past 50-60 years. These small houses probably held a family of 4 or 5 with a single bath, most likely. Many first time buyers would turn up their noses at these small, nondescript houses in 2024 (but I love them).
1st photo – My recollection is how much an ordeal for mom or dad to park the monster in the smallish garage. Scant inches free on any side.
Importamation: You are so correct on that. Everyone thinks they need a humongous house now for just a mom, dad and two kids. It’s nuts.
Richard: My exact same thought. I questioned if that big old car could even fit into that little garage. Heck, it almost hangs over the driveway!
We were a 1 Rambler family with a 2 car garage – and it was still a chore for my Mom to squeeze the Rambler inside thanks to all the bicycles, trikes, wagons and assorted paraphernalia kids drag in. Garages always seem to accumulate junk in direct proportion to any empty space available. My father’s various sales jobs generally allowed a company car to come home with him. Never room in the garage though. I think my dad got sick of me pestering him to put our decade+ Rambler outside so the new car would be inside. The concept of a company car versus our own car was a concept lost on me as a kid.
I live in a 1954 MCM rambler with 990 square feet. Today that size house is marketed as a “condo alternative”. After I moved into the house, a prior owner came up to introduce himself to me. Indeed, he did have three kids – everyone sharing one bathroom without a bidet!
My Dad, 76, grew up in 2 bedroom, 1 bath house with two parents and one sibling. Built by my grandparents in 1953, it was sold just recently….and promptly torn down for a McMansion. There was nothing wrong with the house, but it wasn’t what people want nowadays. Had a big lot in a great neighborhood. Small galley kitchen, one bath, no half bath, yada yada yada. Now that I am a 54 y.o. “empty nester” it would have been great for me (but in a different city than where I live and work now).
My 1923 ‘Craftsman Bungalow’ (termite farm) is 1,158 square feet and I never use the second bedroom .
So true about having at least two toilets ! .
-Nate
I’ll say that I quite enjoy having 3 – one on each level (1970’s ‘shed style’ house with the master BR upstairs and the guest ones downstairs). I just have a nostalgia for things I wasn’t alive to see, being in my 30’s. Cars are the obvious example, but my home is no exception.
Wow what great shots.
I’m glad Matt identified the car in photo #2 as a Ford, since I was going to ask whether it was some kind of mutant Henry J. Crazy ugly indeed. On the other hand, I really like the Nash Rambler in photo #4, with its utilitarian bathtub styling.
Hah, my first thought was also Henry J until zoomed in. But the little finlets don’t bother me as much as the two-tone paint pattern.
That was the top-of-the-line 1950 Crestliner, which was Ford’s substitute for a hardtop coupe until the Victoria was rolled out during the 1951 model year. The two-tone paint treatment and vinyl roof were standard. The “finlets” were added by the owner.
The tail lights gave it away.
In pic 1, those awning windows were one of the best ’50s gimmicks. You could leave them open when it rained, and the screen was inside where you could switch it for a storm pane easily. Too bad they’ve been discarded in recent years. Most newer windows are sideways sliders, which are the worst of all types.
Unfortunately, it looks like that house’s more recent owners didn’t agree. I’m not 100% certain that this is the same house, but it sure looks it to me – and the background mountain matches as well.
Location is Cody, Wyoming:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Q6JWEDWEh6YCWM9A6
They have central A/C now, so they probably hardly ever open the windows.
Not the whole car, but I loved finding this photo of my parents with mom’s ’58 Bel Air from when they were dating. They met at Chevrolet dealer in Cleveland – mom worked there in fleet sales and dad was visiting dealerships carting the Chevrolet Featurama exhibits around.
I love pics like these.
The ’61 Impala is quite fetching.
I may be wrong here, but isn’t the vehicle in photo 2 an Aero Willys?
always “known”it, but the juxtaposition of that that 59-60 (?) buick with its contemporaries strikes home how TIGHT that car looks.
Huey,
It’s a 1950-ish Ford with the fins added. Someone above in the comments thinks it’s done to look like a Packard which was still a prestige brand.
Looking at the two tone paint job I think he’s right.
The Crestliner was a more expensive model trying to compete with the Bel Air while Ford prepared their own hardtop. Looks great but for those fins….
The Chevrolet “bubble top” matches the house color almost perfectly.
It’s definitely a 50 or 51 Ford Crestliner. It was something Ford threw together to compete with the Chevy Bel Air hardtops until theirs could be ready. It came in two door sedan and convertible. Surpri9singly no coupe was offered. I did a photo search and could find no other car with the fins, so I presume it is aftermarket. In the photos I noticed some had a gravel guard behind the front wheel well, and some also had a simple chrome strip along the top of the quarter panel. I don’t know if they were aftermarket.
Picture one takes me back to my youth and hearing this song:
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same…
Sadly, most of the moder six to seven figure new houses are also made of Ticky-Tack.
I was landscaping by a new 500,000 dollar house being constructed and the owner came and took us inside to see the how cheaply it was made.
NOT a happy camper.
@Bob : ‘and they all go to the University…..’ .
-Nate
These photos would be quite at home in an episode of Happy Days, the Wonder Years, Leave it to Beaver, Dennis the Menace, Bewitched, I dream of Jeannie, the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and in the earlier seasons of Quinn Martin series The Fugitive and the FBI. 🙂
But some of these late 1960s cars would be also quite at home in “That’s 70s Show” and the Netflix animated series “F is for Family”. https://imcdb.org/movie_4326894-F-is-for-Family.html
And speaking of the 1970s and to a latter extent, the early 1980s, if you remember the beginning of the movie Pixels starring Adam Sandler, there some good screenshots on IMCDB showing how the suburbs looked back in 1982 before we see the main characters grown up in 2015.
https://imcdb.org/vehicle_853450-AMC-Gremlin-1974.html
Grandmother Stembridge’s ’62 Biscayne (hopefully I have the right). Photo probably taken in the very late 1960s/early 1970s, as we would have driven down in our ’68 Country Squire LTD.
It was succeeded by a ’77 Nova four-door six-cylinder that I briefly owned in the 1990s before selling it on outside the family.
Wish I had pictures of the new family home, 1957-58. We had just moved from East Coast to West Coast, bought a new build hillside home with a drop-canyon in the back. Parents had matching color turquoise and white 1955 Oldsmobile’s, hers a Starfire convertible, his a ’98’ two-door hardtop. The house was white with turquoise trim. We only lived there for a year. Dad sleep with the neighbor lady on the left and neighbor lady on the right. So divorce followed. So three new houses next to each other, on a hillside, all went for sale at the same time. Rumor had it, the houses were going to slide down into the canyon. So the developer put into the newspaper houses were firm, marriages not so much. So there it was out in the open, for all to read, infidelity’s. And not homes sliding down into the canyon.
Just for a moment in time I had a perfect childhood, two beautiful turquoise and white cars and a white with turquoise trim hillside home.
Well, you don’t come across a Baucom very often. I wonder if you’re related to Terry Baucom the Bluegrass musician?
I lived in a small, 2-bedroom house in Fort Worth in 1957-1961; one much like these in the photos. If I had a photograph, it would show a 1952 Dodge Cranbrook in the driveway.
I have much love for these 1950s/60s photos; wish I could go back to that time for a visit: 5¢ candy bars, 10¢ Cokes, 15¢ Hostess cupcake 2-packs.
That 1959 Buick in photo no. 1 looks far to wide to be accommodated in the one-car garage. Also, very poor parking by the Thunderbird driver, the rear 1/3 of the car is in the street.
The Thunderbird is also blocking the sidewalk. He doesn’t park like that when he’s sober.
This was my dad’s first new car. A LeSabre that he couldn’t make the payments on. His mother had to cosign for it. He was 23 with a wife, two kids, living in his mom’s house and buys this car. He had it custom pained so that the roof, hood and decklid were white. Then he put rectangular back up lights under the rear bumper. After struggling financially after losing his punch clock job at US Steel, it was repossessed by the bank.
Our family has lots of photos of that car and he never got over losing it.
We ended up in a used Pontiac Tempest, crammed together every Sunday trying to make it to church on time. Seven of us. No a/c. Chicago. Sheesh.
For the rest of his life, my father never took another risk and worked at the same place for the rest of his life, dying before retirement in 2001. Happily, everything he had was paid off because he never wanted to lose again.
I get it.
That is honestly a really touching story. Having suffered periods of unemployment in my life also, I get it, too. Such a shame as he obviously truly loved the car. Appreciate you sharing this.
Some stylin’ rides in this group! My favorites are the 59 Buick, 61 Impala bubbletop, and 63 Pontiac (a Bonneville I think).
Re Stephen Dumais link to the Adam Sandler movie. That house is a block away from me. It is in Etobicoke tin the West end of Toronto. They were built in 57 &58
$25000 new today 1.6million if a wreck 1.8 to 2 million if in good to excellent condition. A T Bird was 5 grand. The positive is car are reasonable compared to homes today.
Fantastic shots!
I see they saved enough on the pre fab house in Wyoming to buy a nice Buick =8-) .
These are lovely photos .
-Nate
It looks like a basic modular house, next step up from a double wide. I lived in something similar that was from the 1990’s. Actually a decent house of far above mobile home quality (but thin walls).
And not an McMansion in sight.
Really like the 60 Buick Lesabre post and 57 Chevy which looks to he a 210 model. The frugal owner not going all out on luxury or performance with his cars. What with probably having a mortgage and a couple of kids and parents who remembered all too well how tough things were during the depression.
That first photo – I’m wondering whether the Buick owner is just visiting? From what I’ve seen of American homes, it doesn’t look ‘nice enough’ for what I imagine a Buick customer would be likely to live in. Would someone with a fairly ordinary house like that in 1959 really buy a Buick?
Peter, I am qualified to answer your question as I grew up in that era in a decidedly lower-to-middle class area of modest, ordinary homes. One neighbor’s house was quite small and modest and they had two sons. In 1960 they bought a new Corvair and a new Buick Invicta four-door sedan. So yes, it is entirely possible that the owner of the Buick lives in this house. Higher model (Roadmaster then Electra) Buicks were more likely to be driven by doctors and other professionals (one of our family doctors in the early 60’s had a beautiful Wildcat coupe loaded with options).
Would someone with a fairly ordinary house like that in 1959 really buy a Buick?
Absolutely. I realize from a non-US perspective that’s a bit hard to imagine, but Buicks were very commonly bought by…common folk. The lower end models just weren’t that much more expensive than a Chevy or Ford. Which is how they came to be the #3 brand in sales in the mid ’50s for several years.
Buick was a storied brand going back to the earliest days of the car industry, and it always sold well and had a strong and loyal customer base. A basic Buick was just a regular car, like a Hudson, Nash, Studebaker, and plenty of folks preferred this class of cars over the “low-priced” brands.
Buick was more like an independent car brand within GM; it had the widest price span and model range. They were not at all just for the more affluent buyers.
My parents built a 1,000 square foot house in 1965 for $13,000. I thought that the 5 of us were living like Rockefeller on the $10,000 per year my father earned!
Anyone know what the “round, yellow/black top”, car is in pic#4??
t/y
It’s a Nash Rambler Airflyte, similar to this one – it’s a great yellow & green color combination.
I grew up in Southern California near Newport Beach. This is before it was ‘the place to live’. No malls, no freeways, no urban sprawl. Large empty lots in neighborhoods. No Disneyland yet. The folks across the street always owned Pontiacs. Next to them, the elderly couple had a ‘47 De Soto Traveller. Neighbors down the street had a ‘58 Edsel Bermuda (station wagon). Next to them they had a Buick Invicta. Their neighbors had a 54 Mercury Monterey in coral red and white. My folks owned their first new car : a ‘56 Ford Fairlane two door hardtop.
These photos brought back memories, thanks for posting them.
Mom’s Beetle with me in the co-pilot position probably 1967. I always liked the grass strip in the center of the driveway.
Concrete must have been a comparatively expensive material back then. Most small, “starter” homes in my area originally had asphalt driveways and even my dad’s last one, a more luxurious 1938 model, had the two narrow strips with grass in the middle. Concrete slab construction of a house was extremely rare.
In.1971..I towed a 1966 ss396 chevelle. To nash.tenn. behind a 68 Oldsmobile station wagon to.my home with a dead engine….restored the car in 1973..iand 1979..it’s been in garage ever since.that day..old chevy ss cars are family. Rj
Growing up in 50’s and 60’s fun to see these cars and the comments about the houses. The Buick in 1st pick reminds me if my grandmother. She always drove New Buicks. In 1963 she moved to a new house. The garage was too small for her car so she got a 1963 Rambler Ambassador so it would fit. As for the houses now days every kid needs their own bedroom. I grew up in a 3 bedroom 1 bathroom house 5 boys one girl plus mom and dad. 5 boys in one bedroom with triple deck bunk beds. We all grew up just fine.
Living in our current house, my oldest daughter when in grade school, asked when she could have a bedroom with it’s own bath. I told her as soon as she could pay her own mortgage!
The house is a 3 bedroom 2 bath 1650 sf. rancher. Over the years more kids, the house was tighter, then they grew up and left. Been here since ’87. Now we are retired empty nesters, not even a cat. Life is good.
My Paternal Grandparents had a matching pair of two-tone Ivory on Turquoise Oldsmobiles , Grandma drove a 4 door sedan while Grandpa drove a coupe . My Maternal Grandfather always drove a Buick as he had a 59 Evicta then later the Electra 225 models . His wife , my Maternal Grandmother never drove that I ever recalled but my Uncle drove that Evicta almost all through his college days , and my Mom’s Sister , my Aunt had a 1962 Rambler Ambassador which she called Snow White because of the color . As a young child I recall my Dad drove a 1960 Oldsmobile 98 sedan , while my Mom drove a two-tone Ivory on white 57 Ford Crestliner Convertible which was of course my favorite car to ride in . I miss the days of the two-tone paint schemes and the uniquely different body styles from each car maker and models . We also at the time lived in a 1940 built 3 bedroom farmhouse with one bathroom but on a huge 1.8 acre lot . The house caught fire in 1972 and was rebuilt to make a 5 bedroom brick ranch style home they still live in today , too many cars , boats , travel trailers then later motorhomes have come and gone since the magical days of the early 1960s
I love these trips back to the Golden Age of American cars, I can name everyone of them. That doesn’t mean I like them all but I do have my favorites. Of all of these,, I think the 1961 Chevrolet Impalas are great looking cars. They have the beginnings of the early 60s Chevrolets, but in their simplest form. I also like the 58 Desoto. I’m not much for two-tone paint, but the Desoto wore it well. The colors however are too far out there. After reading the comments from the other posters, we all love these retro pictures of life in the 50s and early 60s. Most of us were just kids back then and our lives were fantastic. We are the “Bugs Bunny Era” kids, and I think many of us still are. Keep these retro pictures coming, but I understand as things progressed, our beautiful American cars did not. Today our cars look like used bars of soap, but, hey, they get a little better gas mileage. That’s not a trade off any of us would choose to make. So sad.
I can tell that the ’60 Buick (next to the ’57 Chevy) has NEVER been towed from the rear with a sling-type tow truck: it’s bumpers are perfectly straight, horizontally. Those 3-piece rear bumpers had supports that were quite flimsy (dispite the bulk of the rest of the car) & would bow upwards in the middle after being towed by wreckers of that era. I had a ’60 2-door LeSabre that had 2b towed, after it got stuck in floodwater in Willowbrook, NJ (not far from the then-famous “Fountains of Wayne”; TVs Uncle Floyd’s favorite reference, back in the day!)
All good but I Like the 61 Chevy & 63 Pontiac.
My wonderful aunt and uncle raised five children in a house of slightly less than 1000 square feet built right after WWII.
All my cousins from that family turned out fine…better than me actually.
The first picture showing a 1959 Buick in the driveway. Question? Can it fit in the garage?. When my father and, I came home from the Buick dealership with our new 59 Buick Electra, we also had to hope we could get it in the garage. The 30s and 40s and early 50s could fit. Cadillac fins went up. Buicks went out. It fit but, just barely.