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Dagmars, Fanta-Fins & Highway Hi-Fi
By Bob Merlis

Fall 1956. Ike and Dick are about to sock it to Adlai and Estes. You
open your morning paper, and there it is!--a ten-point headline
screaming: "SUDDENLY IT'S 1960!"

No. you haven't tripped into lysergic awareness or the Twilight Zone
(neither will be invented for three more years). It's '56 all right,
"Love Me Tender" is in the Top Ten, Jack Kennedy's been standing in
line to see Bus Stop, and the guys at Chrysler Corp have unilateraily
decided we'll all be better off if they flush what's left of the
Fifties down the toilet. The future's been expected in autodom since
VJ Day, and now it's here, courtesy of the flipped stylist cats and ad
copywriters now gigging with Chrysler. Tomorrow's cars today, starting
with the righteous 1960, er 1957, Imperial.

Ever seen one in full wallow? Check out the wildest towering fins this
side of a B-47. Dig those crazy acres of panoramic windshield--like
widescreen. And the quad headlamps and "gunsight" taillights,
Torqueflite pushbutton-activated three-speed automatic transmission
(standard, Jack). Hey, isn't this the first production car with
compound curve side glass? You can bet the Teamsters' pension fund it
is. The '57 Crown Imp convertible: 4820 pounds of joy. Elvis and
Lizabeth Scott cruised in one in Loving You. Let's have a party!

The new wave hit in '56, but it had been heading Detroit's way since
war's end. Back then, Henry J. Kaiser, fat from his Liberty Ship
business, took on Motor City's Big Three with the help of designer
"Dutch" Darrin. Darrin, famed for his swoopy Depression-era movie
star/gangster Packards, was told to come up with something avant for
Henry J. He did; his flattened out '47 Kaisers and Fraisers looked
like no prewar buggy anyone'd ever seen.

At Studebaker, they tossed history to the wind and turned loose Ray
Loewy. Raymond Loewy, the most cosmic industrial designer since the
Bronze Age, who'd already blown minds with his boss blue Ritz cracker
box, with Lucky Strike's red-and-white bull's-eye packs and Coke's
streamlined fountain syrup dispensers. Loewy's late Forties Studeys
don't even resemble cars. They look like trains. To be exact, they
look like the Pennsylvania Railroad's GG-1 locomotive, which Ray just
happened to have dreamed up a couple of years earlier. You've seen it:
a bulletshaped engine intended to haul in either direction to avoid
switching.

"is-it-going-or-is-it-coming" design made Studebaker Commanders and
Champions bad joke fodder for years. But no one could deny the cars'
look was futuristic. How better to suggest the far-flung shape of
shorts to come than with 180-degree wraparound rear windows and, on
those '50-51 Commander Starlite coupes, what for all the world
resembled a propeller nacelle from a P-38? Loewy had only succeeded in
transforming a car inspired by a locomotive into a fighter plane with
a few bands of metal and chrome appliques. Voila! And just in time for
Korea.

Other independent car makers experimented, too--Nash's revolutionary
"bathtub" models and those bulbous Packards that came on like bumper
cars with the mumps. In the end, the " safe" styles of Chrysler, Ford,
and GM carried the day, and the indies were squashed. But those wild
train-, boat- and plane-derived models made their mark, and the majors
got the message: You could put a rocket ship on the road, even if you
had no intention of going to Mars. Move it, Ming, the light just
changed!

Simply, the coolest land cruisers ever to sit on four Firestones
rolled off American assembly lines from '56 to '67. What follows is a
guide to the swingin'est wheels, the ones whose presence once insured
their country's unquestioned superiority in things cultural. Think
about it, citizens.

General Motors

CADILLAC. First with the fin, and their finest may rest on the '49
Coupe De Ville, Caddy's original "hardtop convertible." "Dagmars,"
dual chrome- plated grill protuberances with "Dagmars," dual
protuberances with a marked resemblance to a statuesque Scandinavian
starlet of the day, began to sprout in the early Fifties, and grew
into actual rubber-tipped mammaries by '58,

The absolute apex of chrome-choked jukebox style was reached the
following year with garish mutant models that looked like they'd been
zapped in the slippery womb by the same lethal radiation that got
Godzilla. And who could forget Paul Newman, bottoming out the mushy
suspension of his '58 Cad in Hud? No wonder Patricia Neal went ga-ga
for that ratfink.

The next (and last) Caddy worth breathing heavy over is the '67
Eldorado. This massive machine was lean and razor-cut. Not
surprisingly, it became the proto-pimpmobile for the Superfly
generation.

BUICK. The future started in '59 for Buick, when they chucked years of
fat- cat wagons with names like Special, Century, and Roadmaster. Here
came the LeSabre, the Invicta, and Electra, with Eurasian headlights
and wide- angled fins aiming up and out. For the Sixties, the medium
cooled - chrome grew scarce, shapes got slippery. Buick's hippest move
was the Riviera (especially '63-'65): two-door hardtops with bucket
seats, sharp looking from every angle. Inspiration apparently struck
style chief Bill Mitchell one foggy night in London town--a
coach-built Rolls sliced through the mist, Bill flashed, and the Riv
was born.

Like too many good things, it was downhill from there on out. The only
cool late Riv is the boat-tailed '71 "Batmobile" model, which has its
points. (Mainly a very large one--at the base of the trunk, a
fan-shaped growth appears to swallow a good three-quarters of the
chassis.) These fastback beasts still look menacing. Gary Busey hauls
Jodie Foster's teenage a.s around in one in Carney.

OLDSMOBILE. GM's "image car," Olds was the first to feature
hydramatic, front-wheel drive, turbochargers. Fifty-six was a great
year, thanks to the yawning shark's mouth grill treatment. The car
looks like it's slobbering, but the overall effect is very strong. In
'66, the original Toronado (the first American front-drive car since
the Thirties' Cord) looked more like a fastbacked tank than an
Oldsmobile. It moved: 135+ mph was not out of the question.

PONTIAC. Until '59, the year they invented "wide track," Pontons we're
strictly Little Old Ladiesville. Just what was "wide track"? A
surrogate for testicular fortitude: the wheels were spaced a bit
farther apart for a more macho stance. Sixty-three's Grand Prix, with
chrome-free slab sides, concave rear window, and buckets is the
slickest Big Indian that ever was.

CHEVROLET. So many have frothed freely over the '55-57's that there's
no point in doing it again. Nomads were a weird hybrid (station wagon
crossed with sports car), Corvairs have a nice nerd appeal, but if
you're talking strictly cool, you're talking about one Chevy and one
Chevy only: the '63 Corvette Sting Ray "split window" coupe. Never has
a car emulated marine life so closely. The split rear window, a
throwback to the early Forties, was dropped within a year, but that
peculiar design quirk, coupled with the fastback neopowerboat tail
roofline make this 'vette the very hippest.

The Cousteau vibe even extends to foldaway headlights hiding out in
fenders punctured by gill slits. This plastic-bodied grouper was the
fastest in its school, thanks to fuel injection, A dream car you could
buy. The Beach Boys pose with one on the cover of Shut Down Volume 2;
Jan & Dean try the same on the flip of their Dead Man's Curve/New Girl
in School album.

Ford Motor Company

LINCOLN. The neoclassic heritage spawned by the original
tire-in-the-back Continentals of the Forties haunts the marque to this
day. The dinner jacket look of the first Connies was revived in '56
and '57 with the Continental Mark II, the first car from a modern
major to break the $10,000 tag! Even at that steep tariff, these were
built solely for prestige: A thousand clams were lost on each one
sold. By '61 the Marks were over and the New Frontier and Great
Society ('61-67) swung with the understated four-door sedans and
converts simply called Lincoln Continentals. The early four-doors with
the rear door hinged at the back (they open "out," like the classics)
are the ones to have. Just the car to drive when making a withdrawal
from your neighborhood school book depository.

Ford must've had some remorse about scrapping the old Mark II's so
they reincarnated it in '69 as the Continental Mark Ill. Popeye Doyle
and his cronies dismantled one one winter's eve in The French
Connection. (Didn't anybody think it a little odd that a frog had his
American car shipped to the U.S.? How many of us give our LeCars
round-trip tickets when we vacation in Nice?)

MERCURY. Lincoln's little brother has always demonstrated a flair for
the far-out. In '57 Mercury used its real-life dream car, the Turnpike
Cruiser, as a kind of stalking horse for the forthcoming Edsel,
offering hardtops and convertibles with a boatload of wild extras--a
gold anodized inlay along the indents on the rear fenders, reverse
slant power windows, quad headlamps in hooded over-hanging nodules,
and "Seat-O-Matic" control, which offered the driver a choice of
forty-nine "power" seat positions! And don't forget those dual dummy
antennae jutting out from pods atop each side of the windshield. These
pods were completely practical, of course--they were extremely helpful
in permitting large amounts of water to enter the passenger
compartment during the rainy season. The Turnpike Cruiser, like the
Edsel, was a bomb, but a beaut.

Semi-cool: The original Cougar, Merc's "pony car," started as a
Mustang sidekick in '67. Taillights automatically signalled the
direction of your intended turn by flashing sequentially. Wow.

FORD. Fifty-seven Skyliner retractible hardtops. Are they converts or
hardtops? Only their five motors, ten solenoids, thirteen switches,
nine circuit breakers, and 610 feet of wire know for sure. Fifty-eight
and '59 T-birds: big, square-mouthed, appealing in a violent sort of
way. Mustang: like Dobie Gray says, the original is still the
greatest--'64's and '65's only. Join the In Crowd.

Chrysler Corp.

IMPERIAL. Once shorn of their (late Fifties) fanta-fins, Imps were
never again cool, but consider Elwood Engle's redo on the '64's. The
former Ford man gave them a Lincoln influence by impressing a tire
shape onto the trunk lip and lower bumper. The shape was on the square
(as in non-round) side. Really, Elwood.

CHRYSLER. Innovation struck in '56 with the introduction of "Highway
Hi-Fi": your favorite tunes played at 16 2/3 rpm right under the dash.
Mambo to go. Fifty-seven's 300-C is one of the greats. Its "Suddenly
it's 1960!" fins and yawning egg crate grill make it say "Get the hell
out of my way" even when it's parked at the market. Three hundred
ninety horses. Maron! the '60 300-F's were pretty scary, too, boys and
girls (400 horses @ 5200 rpm).

DODGE. Like the Pontiac, an old lady's car that was put on a hormone
program in the late Fifties. Just uttering the name of 1957's top of
the line can take your breath away--"Dodge Custom Royal Lancer D-500."
Cops loved 'em, at least on TV. Broderick Crawford fishtailed all over
hell in one every week on Highway Patrol. In '66 Dodge kicked off the
"brute car" brawl with the Charger (check McQueen's classic Frisco car
chase in Bullitt). In the Seventies there was a Dart hardtop called
the Swinger. It wasn't.

PLYMOUTH. Hard to imagine that a car whose emblem is the Mayflower
introduced a model named for a cartoon character in '69. Beep beep.
Sixty-four's Barracuda was a crazy fastback that filled in a missing
roofline slope with a giant piece of contoured glass. Fishbowl fun!
Rear-seat passengers broiled, courtesy of the solar "greenhouse
effect."

Studebaker- Packard

Perennial also-ran Studebaker (merged with Packard in '56)
consistently came up with the most gone attempts at covering those
market slots the Big Three ignored. Dig: '53 Loewy Starliner coupe,
without question the most beautiful car ever made in the U.S.A. True.
Not until the Seventies did any major domestic maker attempt anything
as rakish. Loewy's lowboy was facelifted into the hawk line by '56 and
flew until '64.

Studebaker picked 1963 as the time to give America the family sports
car--the Avanti, an eccentric Loewy creation cooked up at the master's
Palm Springs retreat. The fastest production car ever built stateside,
a kind of four-passenger Corvette with a sharp collection of circles
and reverse curves and planes for a body. Shortly after the Avanti's
arrival, Studebaker was forced into Canadian exile. You can buy a new
Avanti II today (no longer made by Studebaker--they use a GM drive
train).

Also gone, but never to be forgotten: the Packard Hawk, freakish
stepchild of the S-P union--fish-faced chromeless cavity for a grill,
with dual Dagmar tusks, towering fiberglass fins, and upholstery on
the outside of the door. Too hip, baby.

Foreign Bodies

Sure, U.S. iron is best, but fairness forces us to admit that some
boss sets of wheels traveled by sea before hitting land. Various
un-American examples of auto-cool have come and gone, but one sterling
example remains, one of the greatest looking pieces of machinery ever
designed, regardless of intended purpose.

Forget about that classic wind-in-the-face sports car stuff that makes
old square-radiator MG's and Jag XK-120's so cher-chez'd. The Jaguar
E-types ('61-74) are the only foreign made movers ever to run with the
'vettes and to be storied in song ("Deadman's Curve"). Despite the
overt phallic symbolism of its hood, the E would turn on someone who'd
been neutered. The Dave Clark Five stood inside an E on the cover of
their Try Too Hard album. This is the car to drive down Carnaby
Street. England swings ... maybe for the last time.
***
Bob Merlis is a regular contributor to Automobile magazine.

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