Welcome to Little Car in the Big City, where I highlight fascinating cars I found walking around a town that is known for being bigger than everything else, but where every car is fighting to stand out: New York, New York.
It's not often that you see pickup trucks just hanging around Brooklyn, especially if they're not somewhere between 10 and 20 years old and full of construction equipment. So seeing anything outside that range, especially in this condition, is a rare treat.
Yes, I know the paint's bubbling, and yes, I know it's got dents, and yes, I know it's got rust, and yes, I know there's a Heinz 57/ketchup paint joke somewhere in here, but what kind of condition are most 57 year old people in? Especially when you consider ones with such an intricate tramp stamp so loving tatted on the back.
This particular Ford F-100 pickup is distinguished as a 1956 model by its wraparound windscreen, which should still be a standard stylistic device on all cars and if you disagree you are wrong. It's also paired with the "Y-block" V8, which pumped out 173 horsepower. 173 horses was actually quite a bit in those days, especially if you consider that Ford's Flathead V8, available just three years earlier in this Ford truck's generation cycle, put out only 100 horses.
It's got plenty of chrome everywhere, especially on the bumpers, the grill, and even surrounding the rear gate, as is befitting a car from its era. But to put you back in that illustrious time, here's a few things that were going on when this truck was brand new in 1956:
- Elvis Presley released his first gold-certified album, which he promptly named after himself because the 1950s were all about modesty and nothing else
- Grace Kelly married the Prince of Monaco
- 96 United States Congressmen signed the Southern Manifesto, which officially protested racial integration, proving that members of Congress have been and always will be spineless idiots who are just chock full o' bad decisions
- Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy routine together at the Copacabana nightclub in New York
- The Soviet Union invades Hungary
- Finland joins UNESCO, neat!