I don't feel we are a truly advanced society if our cars don't all have tailfins

[Randomguy]

We are slipping, truly, when cars from 60 years ago were so much cooler

.

[Razors Edge ★]

Just now, Randomguy said:

We are slipping, truly, when cars from 60 years ago were so much cooler.

A '59 Vette?  No fins.

[KrAzY]

I blame the hippies for the destruction of vehicles as we knew them

[Razors Edge ★]

2 minutes ago, KrAzY said:

I blame the hippies for the destruction of vehicles as we knew them

I love the hippie who came up with this one:

[Razors Edge ★]

I found some tail fins! But I think this was a hipster's fault, not a hippie's!

[maddmaxx ★]

I still had the best.

[Wilbur ★]

33 minutes ago, Randomguy said:

We are slipping, truly, when cars from 60 years ago were so much cooler

.

Your nation was fascinated by the potential of space travel and it carried over to the automobile. 

[jsharr ★]

36 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

A '59 Vette?  No fins.

 

[Wilbur ★]

44 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

A '59 Vette?  No fins.

I don't know whose 59 vet you saw but every one I saw had fins.  Chevrolet even called them fins. More accurately, "fender fins". 

[Razors Edge ★]

6 minutes ago, jsharr said:

 

Those are Bat Fins!

[Razors Edge ★]

5 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

I don't know whose 59 vet you saw but every one I saw had fins.  Chevrolet even called them fins. More accurately, "fended fins".  

Dope smoking hippies!  Never heard of "fended fins", but I tossed in a plane for you!

[Longjohn ★]

I had one of these. I sold it for eight times what I paid for it but if I had a barn I would have kept it. It was a cool car. First year for the slant six and it had a push button transmission.

[team scooter]

Growing up the son of a diehard Chevy guy, I thought my dad would disown me after I mentioned that our neighbor's white and gold 1957 Plymouth Fury was the absolute most beautiful car I had ever seen. It was a work of art. One day I passed by a little too close to look inside and left a black mark all along the entire side from the hand grip on my bike. I think I felt worse then our neighbor who just took a wet towel and washed the mark off.

[Further]

 

Well that didn't work very well.  

[maddmaxx ★]

2 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

Dope smoking hippies!  Never heard of "fended fins", but I tossed in a plane for you!

Not a stock 59 but rather a custom special with rear fender flares to accommodate wider rear tires.  What are those chrome things running from between the headlights on each side back along the top of the front fenders?

[jsharr ★]

49 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

Not a stock 59 but rather a custom special with rear fender flares to accommodate wider rear tires.  What are those chrome things running from between the headlights on each side back along the top of the front fenders?

The chrome trim on the 59 vette front  fenders is stock

 

[Ralphie ★]

7 hours ago, Longjohn said:

I had one of these. I sold it for eight times what I paid for it but if I had a barn I would have kept it. It was a cool car. First year for the slant six and it had a push button transmission.

Was it possessed?

[Ralphie ★]

 

SO you are saying Cuba is the world's most advanced civilisation?

[Parr8hed]

8 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

Dope smoking hippies!  Never heard of "fended fins", but I tossed in a plane for you!

That picture gave me the heart palpitations.

[Parr8hed]

@Randomguy what is the car on the upper right hand corner?  Is that a '57 nomad?  Looks dope AF.

[maddmaxx ★]

31 minutes ago, Parr8hed said:

@Randomguy what is the car on the upper right hand corner?  Is that a '57 nomad?  Looks dope AF.

IMO it's a 57 Olds.

[Parr8hed]

32 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

IMO it's a 57 Olds.

Yea, taillights certainly don't look like a Chevy.  

[Longjohn ★]

My dad had a 56 Nomad. We went to Florida in it. He only kept it three years and traded it in on a 1960 Dodge wagon, what a piece of junk. Many regrets on that trade.

[maddmaxx ★]

My mom had a 58 Pontiac Bonneville.  It was a tank.

[JerrySTL ★]

I've owned one car with fins - a 1960 Chevy Biscayne 4-door similar to this one. It had two options: 2-speed automatic and an AM radio. Even the floors were vinyl. If anyone barfed in it, you could just hose out the interior. 

 

[maddmaxx ★]

2 minutes ago, JerrySTL said:

I've owned one car with fins - a 1960 Chevy Biscayne 4-door similar to this one:

 

One of my housemates had one of those.  I got him to go drag racing with it once.  He broke the right axle shaft.  I won my bracket and overall and won the other housemates bracket to earn enough money for us to spend the night replacing the shaft.  He never raced it again.  

[team scooter]

2 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

One of my housemates had one of those.  I got him to go drag racing with it once.  He broke the right axle shaft.  I won my bracket and overall and won the other housemates bracket to earn enough money for us to spend the night replacing the shaft.  He never raced it again.  

My dad never mentions it, but my uncle (my dads younger brother) loves to talk about how both he and my dad were always sparing with each other and even had matching  '57 Chevys they used to race against each other at the local dragstrip. I guess they were constantly replacing clutches and drivetrain parts. That was the time my uncle switched over to Mopars. My dad drove Chevys until we took his keys away in his late '70s.  

[JerrySTL ★]

3 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

One of my housemates had one of those.  I got him to go drag racing with it once.  He broke the right axle shaft.  I won my bracket and overall and won the other housemates bracket to earn enough money for us to spend the night replacing the shaft.  He never raced it again.  

Got to be careful racing those cars as they can take off and fly. They were the subject of an urban legend that at certain high speeds (think one of those models with a 409) could take off. Some tests did show that the rear end could lift off the ground and break traction plus make the car difficult to steer.

My car was one of the few with an automatic transmission which could be push started. The Powerglide transmission has pumps on both the input and output shaft.

[Longjohn ★]

18 minutes ago, JerrySTL said:

The Powerglide transmission has pumps on both the input and output shaft.

My 55 Chevy had a cast iron two speed. I made the mistake of pulling that transmission out by hand as I was on a creeper. That sucker almost crushed me. I managed to squirm out from under it. I changed the seals in it and then used a transmission jack to put it back in. Mine could be push started but you had to push it with another car, it needed to hit 20 mph before the engine would start turning over.

[maddmaxx ★]

34 minutes ago, JerrySTL said:

Got to be careful racing those cars as they can take off and fly. They were the subject of an urban legend that at certain high speeds (think one of those models with a 409) could take off. Some tests did show that the rear end could lift off the ground and break traction plus make the car difficult to steer.

My car was one of the few with an automatic transmission which could be push started. The Powerglide transmission has pumps on both the input and output shaft.

Most cars have a significant amount of aero lift above 100 mph.  That's one of the reasons for my love affair with my Daytona.  Downforce measured near a half of a ton in Chrysler's wind tunnels.  In most street cars, when you hit a certain speed you can feel the front end get light and sometimes you can see it starting to mover around in a small circle, up,down, left, right.  In the Daytona at 100 you could feel the car settling down on the road as the aero kicked in.  The tall vertical wing supports also began to act like fins on an arrow, keeping the center of drag well aft of the center mass.

[Green Grass]

3 hours ago, Parr8hed said:

Yea, taillights certainly don't look like a Chevy.  

It's definitely not a Chevy...I agree with Max that it's an Oldsmobile.  Although, I think it's a '58.

[Green Grass]

2 minutes ago, Goat Geddah said:

It's definitely not a Chevy...I agree with Max that it's an Oldsmobile.  Although, I think it's a '58.

Nope, Max was right.  It's a '57.

[jsharr ★]

5 hours ago, Parr8hed said:

@Randomguy what is the car on the upper right hand corner?  Is that a '57 nomad?  Looks dope AF.

It is a 1957 Oldsmobile Super 88 Fiesta Wagon

 

[Razors Edge ★]

Hard to argue with fins (or a slicer or smoke!).

 

 

[maddmaxx ★]

1 hour ago, Goat Geddah said:

Nope, Max was right.  It's a '57.

Yes, the 58 was a truly ulgly car.

[Parr8hed]

1 hour ago, jsharr said:

It is a 1957 Oldsmobile Super 88 Fiesta Wagon

 

Thanks.  That's a good looking car.  

[jsharr ★]

25 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

Yes, the 58 was a truly ulgly car.

The 1958 is not as fetching as the 1957, but you found an ugly picutre

 

 

 

[maddmaxx ★]

Makes a good hearse.

[jsharr ★]

Just now, maddmaxx said:

Makes a good hears.

Also good for busting ghosts.

[maddmaxx ★]

Just now, jsharr said:

Also good for busting ghosts.

The original land yacht mk 3

[jsharr ★]

1 minute ago, maddmaxx said:

The original land yacht mk 3

Was actually a 1959 Caddillac ambulance.    You want fins and class and shit, how about a 1957 Caddillac flower car.  Sort of alike a classy El Camino

[maddmaxx ★]

1 minute ago, jsharr said:

Was actually a 1959 Caddillac ambulance.    You want fins and class and shit, how about a 1957 Caddillac flower car.  Sort of alike a classy El Camino

Wholy carp, wadda party machine.

[jsharr ★]

1 minute ago, maddmaxx said:

Wholy carp, wadda party machine.

Business in the front, party in the back.  The Manhattan Waterfall!  

[12string]

18 hours ago, team scooter said:

Growing up the son of a diehard Chevy guy, I thought my dad would disown me after I mentioned that our neighbor's white and gold 1957 Plymouth Fury was the absolute most beautiful car I had ever seen. It was a work of art. One day I passed by a little too close to look inside and left a black mark all along the entire side from the hand grip on my bike. I think I felt worse then our neighbor who just took a wet towel and washed the mark off.

It was 1979, early spring.  My good friend called and said his truck had died but his sister said they had just taken her grandfather in-law's drivers license.  They wanted his cars out of the barn so he wouldn't keep trying.  There was one left, one he never drove often.  Free, just had to get it started.  Opened the barn to see a 1958 Golden Commando, 350 double 4 with a pushbutton tranny and all the options.  Under 5K miles.  That car was SOOOooo much fun!

[MickinMD ★]

My first car was a '59 Chevy Impala with 283 cu.in V8 engine, which I bought in high school in the Fall of '67.  My parents had no car and I was planning to commute to college the next year and knew I'd need a car.  So I dropped out of high school sports and got a fast-food job after school, saved money and bought the car for $300. I had to buy a 2-barrel carburetor rebuilding kit and replace the manifold gaskets and points & plugs, but those 283 V8's were built to take abuse and it ran fine.  I talked my mother into getting her license, even though she didn't want to drive, because it was some thing like $350 for a year's insurance if I was driving on her policy but it would cost $1400/year for a teenager as the principal on the policy.

It had HORIZONTAL tailfins and that was a problem.  If I reached 90 mph the tail would lift the car up and it would slow down to 75 mph!  I had to put cinder blocks in the trunk to keep the car stable.

The drinking age in Maryland was 21 and in D.C. 18, so people would take orders for other underage drinkers who would gather at McD's, sub shops, and other "standard" meeting places to pay for their own booze on the weekend and make a "Rum Run" and drive someone 18 down to D.C. to buy alcohol.

There was a sign on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway that said, "Washington, D.C. 32 miles" then one that said "Welcome to Washington, D.C."  We competed to see who could cover the distance between the signs the fastest.  At one point, I held the record of 17 minutes - one minute more than 120 miles/hr would do - with that '59 Impala.  Those in the car with me vouched for the time but I swore them all to secrecy: no one was to be told that a Corvette pulled up behind us and flipped his high beams on and off so we would let him pass!

My car's paint was nearly a decade old when I got the car so it was never as shiny as this one, but I did buy orange motor paint and had the 283 cu.in V8 engine looking like new (much like 283 in the 2nd photo below) after I replaced the manifold gaskets and no more oil was leaking all over it:

 

 

[maddmaxx ★]

Ah yes, back in the day when you could open the hood and actually see the engine.

[Green Grass]

38 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

My first car was a '59 Chevy Impala

The car in the picture is a '60 Bel-Air.  Of that I am sure.

[maddmaxx ★]

7 minutes ago, Goat Geddah said:

The car in the picture is a '60 Bel-Air.  Of that I am sure.

Yep.  One of the quick identifiers is that the 59 had the constant curve to the trailing edge of the tail fins while the 60 had the bent straight line.  The other tell is the tail light.  The 59 has the weird tear drop and the 60 has the individual lenses.

[Longjohn ★]

15 hours ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

Was it possessed?

It wasn’t repossessed? I painted mine the same color as the one in the picture I posted. It was originally green with green interior but I had to replace the interior so I changed the color of the outside as well.

[Ralphie ★]

3 hours ago, maddmaxx said:

Ah yes, back in the day when you could open the hood and actually see the engine.

Now they have nice plastic castings that looks like engines!