`59 Chevy Print Ad - Impala Sport Sedan

"What would you want with more car than this?" I don't know...a garage long enough to fit it would be nice. This print ad depicts the Impala "Sport Sedan," which is better known as "The Flat Top" (and for good reason).

As supplies of `59 2-door hardtops have dried up, people have started to look at the more desirable versions of the 4-door cars, which include this one. Frankly I've seen some pretty righteous customs built from these flat tops; if you lower them even two inches and paint them in a two-tone scheme, they look as long as an aircraft carrier. Guaranteed there's about as much room in one as well. The pillarless design is classic. If you've never driven a hardtop car, it's tough to describe the feeling with all the windows down at 60mph. Think of convertible without the sun beating down on your neck. I've owned several hardtops in my life, and would love to own another. But having even a `59 sedan like I do is almost as much fun without breaking the bank.

Looks like this particular car is painted two-tone Code #962 - Frost Blue body with the darker Harbor Blue on the top and rear decklid. It appears to have the "V" emblem with crossed flags on the hood, which denotes a 348 V8 engine. There is no radio antenna(e) or side view mirror, nor does the car have the optional "spinner" hubcaps. Junior Ahab in the back seat is pining for a boat ride, but Mom's got Capt. Ahab all to herself for awhile. Mom's wearing jeans...was that even legal in 1959? The hat is the same color as Junior Ahab, showing that she cares enough to wear the same color.

The ad makes reference to "New bigger brakes with better cooling for safer stopping." They're not kidding...brakes on the `58 Chevy were junk with not near enough stopping power. `59s changed all that, thankfully.

Click on the picture to see a larger version of this ad!

Classic TV Ad - 1970 Pontiac GTO

"This is the way it's gonna be, baby..."

Ummm, what?

The Humbler runs a gauntlet of bleach blondes, cheeseburgers, and street racin' wannabes down at the drive-in. Optional Exhaust cut-outs give the car straight pipes with the pull of a lever. This commercial tells us all that in 1970 it only takes cutouts to attract the attention of some other guy's woman.

Check out the camera work in this commercial! The fish eye lense is everyone's friend at this Drive-In. There's no doubt in my mind why GTOs are popular; even this one from 1970, built in an era past the Goat's heyday, still stands out as an impressive machine. And why not? It speaks volumes about what was right about American cars in the 60s and 70s, without being the behemoth that later 70s cars became. In 1970, all you needed were two doors, 455 cubic inches, and if you believe this commercial - exhaust cutouts.

I guess that's the way it was....baby.

Super Salmon `76

It is said that cars this big have their own zip code...

If you can't identify this car, it's a 1976 Chrysler Town and Country station wagon. To us it was known as the "Super Salmon" because of its salmon red paint and determination to keep running no matter how ragged it got around the edges. I know...it's not a Chevy; what's a non-Chevy doing on Chevy59.net? Well I owned the car and I own the blog. That gives me dibs. Besides that it's a classic car, a core subject here at Chevy59.

Despite the rough look of the car, it had a rebuilt 440, newer transmission, and a rebuilt differential. Someone had spent a lot of money to keep this car roadworthy, and it was ours for a mere $800 in 1998. Yes, it got 8mpg around town, but 14mpg in the country. But the AC was cold and all the power windows worked. It even had a two-way tailgate. In the late 1990s I had pictures of this car posted on the Internet at another site, and got lots of emails from Town & Country lovers and owners who were more than happy to share their photos. One lady wrote that she grew up around the Kennedy Space Center in the Seventies, and saw lots of these Town & Country wagons driving around; seemed to be the "car of choice" among wives of NASA employees.

We bought the car because it had character, and my wife was looking for a wagon. We found this one of a car lot in Everett WA. To make it look even bigger and longer than it was already, I lowered it two inches all the way around. This was an easy job. The front torsion bar suspension has a ride height adjustment that can be changed. The front of the car was lowered in a matter of five minutes (if that). The rear took a bit more work; lowering blocks were installed between the differential and the springs. The whole job took roughly an hour of actual work. The ride quality didn't change at all. In fact the car drove like it was smaller; the turning circle was quite tight and the steering was responsive. My whole family used it at one time or another; my Dad hauled garbage, my sisters used it for moving and trash day, and my wife did in fact use it as a grocery getter.

Eventually the electrical system gave out and the AC quit working. The floor pans in the way back and the back seats were rotted out as well. The person who bought it drove the car home and pulled the motor for his 1972 Imperial.

It's probably getting 8mpg to this day.

`59 Chevy Styling

Recently I was going through a stash of magazines that had been sitting in my parents' attic since the mid-1980s. One of the magazines was an issue of LIFE that outlined "The Ten Most Beautiful Cars" and "The Ten Ugliest." Guess where the `59 Chevy showed up?

In the 1980s they thought `59s were ugly!

The lines of a `59 Chevy share nothing with any other car. Even the `60 Chevy is considerably different to the `59. The body is formed in overhanging fins and curves that give one the feeling of speed, even if the car is parked (an intentional design treatment). In the early 1960s people customized these cars with different body treatments; one doesn't have to go to all that trouble, since the car already looks like a custom.

The population, even today, seems split on the styling issue, although as the years go on I seem to get more thumbs up for mine than blank stares; some folks who grew up watching these things cruise the streets are not nearly as enamored with them as people who have grown up around nondescript import sedans. I sort of fall in the middle; `59 Chevys were still regulars on the road when I was growing up, but back in the day they looked kind of freaky. My first recollection was a `59 El Camino sitting in my neighborhood sitting in the weeds. The styling has grown on me as I have gotten older, and as contemporary automotive styling has become less interesting.

Another article I came across from the 1980s says "1959 - Did Chevy Go Too Far?" Back then I think the population still swayed towards seeing the `59 as an overboard example of the 1950s. It is because `57 Chevys ruled the car shows, and to many it was the only worthy example of Chevrolet from that decade. As the years have gone by the supply of `57s dried up; they've also been customized in so many different ways that it's hard to think of any unique job one could do with the car now. Invariably this is leading classic car buyers to look for alternatives. The `58 and `59 are the next in line. Their suspension design is 'fairly' modern, they can hold a ton of people, and there are as many of them left in the world as their older brethren. Time has come when people realize the `57 Chevy Bel Air is no longer affordable in any form, and that other models and years could very well bring as much enjoyment as "The Hot One."

Last month I opened a custom car magazine to see no fewer than FOUR `59 Chevys. Prior to that I saw TWO in another magazine. It appears that public impression of the `59 Chevy has started swaying towards the positive. So what does that mean overall?

Now they don't think `59s are ugly anymore!

Kurt D. Clark
Originally written January, 2003 / Edited and updated for this blog

`59 Bel Air Custom

This thing is wicked! Thirty years ago most customizers would have walked away from this project. But today is a new day...Check out the transformation through photos of this four-door Bel Air into a hot lowered custom. Looks like they started with a clean complete car and did something original with it. Engine? Who cares what it is? The car is awesome no matter how many pistons it has going up and down.

Nice work!

`59 Cop Car in Leawood, Kansas

"Car 641...come in Car 641. We've got rabble rousers down at the soda fountain, over..."

Isn't eBay amazing? All one has to do is put in a search string of "1959" to come up with a wild array of products from back in the day. The picture to the right is one such item; I got it a few years ago doing a simple year search. There were no markings anywhere on the 8x10, and the photographer is unknown. The photo depicts mechanics at a local garage in Leawood, Kansas standing next to the local prowler Biscayne, which has presumably been in for repairs. Crossed flags and a "V" on the hood indicates the 348 cubic inch V8 for power. If you look closely to the right there is a `59 El Camino hiding just inside the garage door. It's hard to determine if this is a police maintenance garage or if it's the Chevy dealer. Seems unusual that these guys would be lined up to get photographed with a car that came in all the time, so it's more likely that it's the dealer's garage we're looking at.

The license plate under the nasty dent on the front bumper says "Kansas Centennial 1961" so we can determine that the picture is from the early 1960s. Knowing these bumpers, I'd have to say the "incident" that caused it was no small matter. These things are extremely sturdy and tough to bend. I once uprooted a cement post with the front bumper on my `60 Buick (similar to this car) when I was 15 and learning to drive. It did little or no damage to the Buick.

Now take a look at the line down the middle of the bumper; for those in the know this is called the "two-piece" bumper, which denotes a car built somewhere other than California. "One-piece" front bumpers were put on all cars built in Los Angeles; I've never heard the true reason behind it, other than the rumor that it was for purely aesthetic reasons - the one-piece front and rear bumpers look far cleaner than the two-piece front and three-piece rear bumpers that were on all other cars. Given Leawood's proximity to Kansas City, the Chevy plant there probably built this car.

Some of the men are smoking, and although they look like my parents some are likely younger in this photo than I am now. Notice there isn't a single t-shirt wearin' mechanic among them. This was the button-up and slacks generation, accented by a pack of Lucky Strikes and Thursday night bowling. The big pod thing on the fender was called "The Growler," which we all know now as The Siren. It sounds like a cross between a big bird and an air raid warning from the Cold War. Nothing like the Flip-N-Blip psycho sirens we here now; The Growler was purposeful and simple.


This is still one of my favorite pictures involving `59 Chevys. A copy of this picture was also donated to the Johnson County KS Museum for their collection.

`59 Driver's Ed Picture

"Your Chevrolet dealer helps make driving safer."

Came across this great looking ad a while back, when I was buying old magazines at Goodwill (click on the pic to see it larger). It depicts the sparsely appointed Biscayne sedan; from the outside we can't determine if it is the Biscayne Utility (no back seat) or the standard Biscayne. Either way, the driver was not given much in the way of comfort or convenience. This was all car and no frills. Color is Highland Green DDL-42495. Notice the lack of sideview mirrors; it's likely that the car also lacks seatbelts, as at least in Washington State they weren't required until 1964.

How nice it would have been to have a `59 Chevy Driver's Ed car, instead of in my case a wimpy Volkswagen Dasher. And when they wanted to pull out the big power, they rolled the Dodge Aspen out of the garage for our freeway test. Having this car would have been much more fun, and possibly safer given the amount of metal each one took to build.