Gearcity successful vehicles series#

Gearcity successful vehicles series#

However this trend ended abruptly with the 1959 Cadillac Series 62. The 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air and the Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner of 1959 showed by just name the extent to which designers looked to the skies. The jet set lifestyle had captured the hearts of the American public and car designers of the time exploited this fascination to turn out ordinarily plain-looking family cars to come out with wings, turbines and afterburner tail lights. One of those was the speed with which the automobile, despite complicated compound curves and forms, could be manufactured. With the advent of the jet age in the 1950’s came technological and design breakthroughs in the automobile. The “fabulous fifties” also saw some of the most beautiful and some of the most outlandish cars ever made.

Tailpins and chromes was the norm and that design was the brainchild of Harley Earl. The long pent up demand for cars caused by the Depression and World War II exploded into an irrational excess in the decade of the ’50’s. auto production exceeded that of Great Britain, France, Japan, Sweden and all other nations put together several times over, and Ford and GM – both of which produced their 50 millionth vehicle in the 1950s – posted healthy profits.

Many of the automobiles of the time were designed by stylists who took their influence from the transport industry in general and therefore used ideas from both planes and trains prevailing during that time. The early 1950s saw the rise of chrome on cars, as an increasingly opulent society flourished in the United States. The 1950s cars became lower, longer, and wider.