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They may have just been used cars back in 1962, but the lineup in front of Lancaster Lincoln Mercury has certainly aged well. Given the opportunity, the chances of us leaving Lancaster Lincoln Mercury without at least the red '58 Desoto and the '57 Plymouth wagon shown here would have been slim to none. More »
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53 years ago today, Chevrolet introduced the1959 El Camino to the automotive world and it hasn't been the same since. In direct response to the popularity of the Ford Ranchero, Chevrolet had decided it needed to stake a claim in the world of the automotive based utility vehicle. More »
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The path into the world of automotive obsession is usually a long and strange one. Often it is an infatuation with one particular car that pushes us towards a lifelong love of most things automotive. It could be a car you spent time around growing up, the first or fourth car of your own or perhaps even a car you saw only in magazines or on TV. Whatever it might be, chances are you remember it. What car made you love cars? More »
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Opening the doors on a forgotten barn or garage to reveal a dusty vehicle that needs little more than some elbow grease and a weekend spent in the garage to reverse the effects of sitting is the stuff of gearhead dreams. After reading about the trio of Italian barn finds this week, we started wondering what vehicle we dream of finding covered in dust more than any other. What is the barn find of your dreams? More »
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Although Chevrolet didn't introduce the El Camino until 1959, what if they had decided to unleash their unique utility vehicle on the world one year earlier? Behold the El Nomado, a well executed custom vehicle currently listed on Ebay that answers that exact question. Even with a lot of modern custom touches, this one of a kind vehicle does a pretty good job illustrating what a 1958 El Camino might have looked like. More »
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Besides the fact this picture is beautiful, it's like a car spotting adventure without going anywhere. We're still a little stumped by the black roof outline in front of the white Suburban. Anyone know what it is? More »
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When it came time to introduce their redesigned for 1959 model, Desoto called upon movie star Rock Hudson to give a convincing "off screen" endorsement. Between the styling, swivel seats and "back lot" off road testing in this vintage commercial, we think the 1959 Desoto might have been okay selling itself. More »
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While the modern day luxury excellence of Mercedes Benz and the memory of the long defunct and very quirky Studebaker don't have a lot in common these days, it wasn't always the case. If you wanted to test drive a Mercedes in America between 1958 and 1963 there was one place to do it: your local Studebaker/Packard dealership. More »
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When it came time to introduce the Subaru 360 to the American public in 1968, this set of commercials calling the car cheap and ugly was released. Neither the advertising campaign nor the Subaru 360 was particularly well received. More »
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This may not be a real Ferrari, but no matter — it's still one of the most gorgeous things we've ever seen. Pontoon-fendered 250 Testarossa body, you had us at hello. More »
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There's this incredible collection of street-parked vintage Detroi cars residing in San Francisco's Western Addition… yes, one of the most parking-challenged neighborhoods in the City That Parking Forgot. It appears that the owner of these cars is making some room. More »
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Did the 1958 film The Lineup influence the makers of that better-known San Francisco car-chase movie a decade later? More »
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Remember the Win-A-Wartburg contest put on by the 24 Hours Of LeMons perpetrators, in which the winning "Why I Want A Wartburg" essayist gets a '58 Wartburg 311 and free LeMons registration? Here's the winner! More »
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How would you like to get your very own Warsaw Pact-built, proletariat-grade machine, equipped with a 3-cylinder/2-stroke engine with just seven moving parts… for free? More »
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Not long ago, I dug up some old photos of the 1958 Volkswagen Beetle that launched me on the primer-and-junkyards automotive path I've taken to get to this point. Now look what's happened! More »
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It's like threading the needle at a quarter of a mile… but it's really livin'! Hot Rod Magazine put together this great drag racing documentary for the 1958 Nationals, and it's well worth watching. More »
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Here's a story I've been meaning to tell since I started writing for Jalopnik: how it came to be that I love junkyard-built, low-budget, primered-out heaps so much. You can blame this '58 Volkswagen! More »
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The ghost of Fulgencio Batista won't allow Americans to visit Cuba, but those commie-lovin' Canadians are free to doff their tuques and enjoy the presence of the world's largest concentration of pre-1960 Detroit iron. More »
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An Alfa Giuletta duking it out with a Volvo 544 on a 2,450-mile race across the Alps in 1958? Well, sometimes there are more important things than slaving for The Man on a Monday afternoon! More »
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This is Down On The Street Bonus Edition, where we check out interesting street-parked cars located in places other than the Island That Rust Forgot. Having just read Gordon Bowker's excellent Malcolm Lowry biography, Pursued By Furies, I can't see the word "Consul" without the quasi-autobiographical character of that name in Lowry's masterpiece coming to mind. That's why I imagine this '58 Ford Consul locked in a 50-year downward spiral of ethanol abuse, swilling whatever the Thai equivalent of mescal might be. We also get some bonus cars: an Alfa Giulia Spider and some sort of ancient Mazda wagon. Make the jump to see and read more, and thanks to Arco for sending in these shots! More »
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Given 60 years of hindsight, the argument that the '58 Cadillac looked "hardly distinguishable from the rest of the General Motors line" doesn't hold up real well. Still, Lincoln was rolling out the big guns in the ever-escalating chrome-and-gingerbread arms race of late-1950s Detroit with their cars' design. Thanks to SOS10 for the tip! More »
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Robert Mitchum outrunnin' revenoors in a triple-carbed '50 Ford sedan full of white liquor- now that's what we call a car movie! Thunder Road still holds up well after 50 years; thanks to this YouTuber, we can watch the preview. Make the jump to get the theme song. More »
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We had another close one yesterday, but the '69 Crown managed to edge out the '59 Datsun in the race to the Lake Of Fire in the Choose Your Eternity poll. We've seen some pretty affordable cars lately (well, affordable to start with, before you start buying parts), but what about Hell Projects that raise the pressure in the boiler by starting out with gut-punch price tags? You must finish a project that you spent 30 or 50 grand just acquiring, right? And if you need to spend $5,000 on a windshield or crankshaft... well, what choice do you have? Can't give up now! We've picked a couple of cars that, if restored, would bring tears to the eyes of vintage racers and eagle-eyed concours worshipers alike, and would fetch vast sums from the same crowd. If restored. More »
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What with all the racin' madness lately, I haven't had a chance to descend into the lake of burning 90-weight that is Project Car Hell for a few days. In our last matchup, we almost had an upset for the ages, with a Japanese car nearly beating a French car in the Dangel Peugeot Wagon versus V8 Fairlady poll. And that Peugeot was a tough one, too! You fans of Japanese Car Hell can feel proud... or ashamed, depending on how you look at it. Today we're getting away from the PCH Superpowers and mixing it up a bit, with a perennial German Choose Your Eternity favorite going up against a proud Detroit native. More »
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With the '69 Citröen ID19 carrying the French to victory over their British rivals in the PCH Superpower Rematch, I can see we'll need to have some more elimination rounds to see whether France or Britain shall be crushed beneath the weight of proudly display the oil-spraying, parts-shedding PCH Superpower Trophy. Today's challenge, however, is a return to a fine PCH tradition with no nationalistic overtones: Two-For-One Hell Projects! More »
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Apparently believing the Studebaker Champ pickup he shot wasn't quite rare enough, VintageRacer went back out on the Seattle streets and found this 1958 Edsel station wagon, equipped with the finest in Eisenhower Era woodgrain and surprisingly little rust. Make the jump for another gallery and VintageRacer's description. More »
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Well, you've done it again - voted into the Jalopnik Fantasy Garage another glass-and-steel piece of history which some, but not all, agree would make for a great addition: the Lotus Eleven. Last week saw no progress towards filling the garage due to Geneva Motor Show shenanigans, but that just gave us some extra time to think about what to offer up this week. Sometimes it's hard to be objective when selecting nominees, this week's pick is a personal favorite from a bygone era of high rollers, big egos, and uncompromising style - the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham. More »
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Because not even a burned and wrecked 80s Ferrari can compete with a burned 70-year-old car mentioned by name in a Robert Johnson song, the '38 Hudson Terraplane ran away with the victory in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity Poll. Today we're going to skip the common theme tying the two PCH contestants together and return to that perennial battle between two of the globe's contenders for the Hell Machine Crown: Italy and Great Britain. Here we have two mighty PCH superpowers, each vying to put one of its products in your garage... and France is waiting to take on the winner tomorrow! More »
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Yesterday's all-Corvette Choose Your Eternity poll resulted in the '68 just barely edging out the '69, no doubt due to the Jimi Hendrix connection. Now it's time to try a different type of theme; we haven't yet seen a selection of cars based on a model year alone, so today we're going with two vastly different- yet vastly cool- choices from Anno Domini 1958, the year Nikita Krushchev became premier of the Soviet Union. More »
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Here we are at Project Car Hell #100, and it even comes on a Friday! Yesterday we saw the Katrina-soaked '63 Bentley edge out a hairsbreadth victory over the not-so-complete '52 Benz, and today we're going to shift gears in the theme department and pick two cars referenced by Jalopnik-Approved™ musician Tom Waits. This idea comes courtesy of my brother-in-law, the owner of the deathless Toyota truck we saw a while back, so I guess I'll need to give him a PCH Tipster T-shirt in spite of the fact that he isn't even a Jalopnik commenter. I wasn't able to find a 1958 monkeyshit brown Buick Super, the Duster "trying to change my tune" has no year specified, and everyone thinks "Ol' 55" is an Eagles song... but not to worry- plenty of good choices left, including these two: More »
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The small-block-powered Jaguar XJC whumped the small-block-powered '76 Corvette in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll, and we figure it must have been the slick custom body mods on the Jag that tipped the balance- after all, the Vette just had a taillight transplant and a weird fiberglass hood, while the Jag had scoops and vents on every available surface. Today we're returning to the concept of unmolested original cars, this time with a pair of high-zoot European machines. More »
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Last week, we learned that 63% of you prefer eternity with a basket-case American kit car to eternity with a rattletrap French beach car. What lessons to be learned from that remain unclear, but what is clear is that today's Classic Ad Watch post dictates that we include a DKW in today's Choose Your Eternity competition. More »
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Here are some photos sent in by Belvedere legend Adrian (he of Moparbulance fame) of what appears to be a 1958 Plymouth with shortened wheelbase. The emblems claim it's a Hemi, and the 8,000 RPM redline on the tach is certainly a good indicator of hoonage afoot. These photos come from Tulsa, during the festivities surrounding the Buried Belvedere last summer. Any reader who knows more about this car- particularly if anyone has been crazy enough to stand on the gas all the way down the quarter-mile- please fill us in. More »
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The $495 Mercedes 230S won yesterday's Project Car Hell poll, beating the VW Type 3 by a decisive margin. It has come to our attention that some of you are confused about exactly what it is we're voting on in the Project Car Hell series- is it the car you'd most want as a project, or the one you most fear? Well, the answer is: yes! Vote for the project you'd have to be a total idiot to take on, but that would also be the most fun when finished. If you could ever finish it, that is... More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=283016&view=rss&microfeed=true There's just something about the sexy lines of the '58 Fairlane that more or less forces designer-threads-clad Frenchwomen to caress its flanks with their white-gloved hands. We can only only assume that the same women would feel compelled to rub their entire bodies over the even sexier '58 Simca Chambord. – Murilee Martin More »
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Nearly a half-century before Plymouth became an asterisk on Chrysler Group's balance sheet, the company created a one-off concept signifying the early years of the space race. The Plymouth Tornado, built on the bones of a 1958 Fury, was a design perfectly suited to its time — despite having the face of a clown fish — but was likely outdated within its first six months of life. Recently the subject of a $150,000 restoration job ($22,000 for the push-button tranny alone), the Toronado's being auctioned by Red Baron's. Hopefully the collectors market will support such an indulgence, or the car's owner has another shirt, because he's probably going to lose the one he's got on. – Mike Spinelli More »
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