1959 Chevrolet Parkwood and friends

The 1959 Chevy is a car that collectors either love or hate, with its distinctive "eyebrows" over the headlights and teardrop taillights. Personally, I think it's the ugliest car Chevy ever made. Few wagons of this era survived, especially as daily drivers like this one.

This car's owner also has a 1951 Chevy which may or may not be drivable. Next door to these cars is a very smart-looking 1961 Chevy C10 pickup that also appears to be an unrestored survivor. And just a couple of doors down is a GMC, possibly also a 1961. Too bad it's wrecked; the frame is probably too messed up for restoration.

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1959 Jaguar XK150S

In 1959, the car magazine The Motor described a car as, "the fastest closed car the magazine had ever subjected to a full road test". Was it the fuel-injected Corvette? Perhaps a hemi-head Chrysler with dual-quad carburetors? Maybe the supercharged Studebaker? Nope. It was a Jaguar XK150S with a 3.7 liter, six-cylinder engine.

The car pictured was the final, and most powerful iteration of the XK120/140/150 cars introduced in 1948.

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1959 Chevrolet Corvette at sunset

Spotted this perfect Vette around the corner from my building last night. Came back 5 minutes later and it was gone. Was it ever really there? This body was made for 3 years. A '59 is easy to tell apart from a '58, as the '58 had two chrome strips on the trunk. If there's a way to distinguish a '59 from a '60, I don't know what it is.

 

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1959 Crown Supercoach School Bus

School bus? Cool bus! Designed for school districts that could afford the very best, the Supercoach pictured was built virtually unchanged from 1949 all the way to 1991. From curbsideclassic.com: "What made Crowns so special?  In a word – toughness – these buses were legendary for their strength, robust construction, and longevity.  While most of Crown’s competitors used 45,000 psi steel, Crown’s floorpan and framework were constructed of 90,000 psi ultra high tensile steel sheathed with heat-treated aluminum bodywork.  The Super Coach’s double-walled steel body structure was both bolted and welded to outriggers on the main chassis which was built using nested channel frame rails and cross-members."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1959 Chevrolet Apache Pickup Truck

Observations:
* Look at that wrap-around glass on both the front and back of the cab. Pretty cool, but do NOT roll this vehicle over.
* Naming a vehicle after a group of indigenous people is ridiculous, Yet here was are in the year 2020, Jeep Cherokee.

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1959 Nash Metropolitan convertible

A favorite of both collectors and Weird Al Yankovic, the Metropolitan was the only really small car you could buy from an American brand in the 1950s. Every single car (except for the Corvette) made by General Motors in 1959 qualified as "full-size". Sure, American Motors sold "compact cars", but they were actually pretty big vehicles.

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1959 Volvo PV445

Seattle loves old Volvos. In 1944, Volvo introduced the PV444, a remarkably modern car with unibody construction and coil spring suspension. So it was a bit of a surprise when nine years later they launched the PV445 as a design from the automotive stone age, with ladder frame chassis and leaf spring suspension. This design was so primitive it stayed in production only sixteen years. Hey, it's a station wagon, not a sports car.

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1959 Volkswagen Type 1 Beetle - when there's no gas gauge

Early model Beetles had a lot of quirky features, none more strange than the "reserve fuel tap" to compensate for the fact that they did not have a gas gauge on the dashboard.

The regular fuel tank was 10.6 gallons, and the reserve tank was 1.3 gallons. From the owner's manual: "For vehicles with a fuel tap, the operating lever should be set at "Open". If the engine begins to "shutter" due to lack of fuel, just turn the lever right to "Reserve."

The owner of an old Beetle described what this meant in practical terms: "Of course, there was no way to check the gas level while you were driving, which meant that you could be straining down the freeway at 65 MPH one minute and windmilling down to zero the next when you ran the tank dry. So the VW designers gave the driver a little valve next to the foot pedals that you could work with your toe, which turned on a reserve fuel supply good for about 30 miles, which they figured was enough to get you to a gas station. So when the engine quit, the drill was to leave the engine in gear, cut into the slow lane, flip the valve with your foot and pump frantically on the gas pedal to restore the flow of gas. If everything worked, the engine started up again after about 5 seconds of terror; if unsuccessful, you cut onto the shoulder and coasted to a stop."

 

 

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Magnolia Car Show: 1959 Chevrolet Corvette Fuel-Injection

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1959 Ford Ranchero

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