My little sister recently sent a box of family photos. These were amongst the gems discovered there. Dad took thousands of car photos over the years, but unfortunately the bulk of them are 35mm stereo slides. Tough to reproduce those... Prior to this photo I had never seen a photo of the rear of my dad's '34 Ford convert. Looks like it wasn't quite "stock" back there either. Here's another shot of the Willys dad had prior to upgrading to the flathead V8 in the '34. He thought the flathead 4 cylinder in this coupe was pretty anemic. These are interesting to me as they are all dated August '57 and were all taken in the same place. Most are sporting 1957 Iowa plates. Really shows you how things were being done back then, even on fairly NEW cars--a '55 Chevy and what I am guessing to be a '56 Olds. Very cool to see! I have NO clue what this is: Don't know what these are or what show this was taken at: This is SWEET! Guessing it's a '40 Merc? This one isn't customized that I can tell, but I still just dug how it looked. And since it's a '42 I'm guessing it's pretty rare. Don't know who these gentlemen are, but this appears to be a fairly odd Willys Overland Jeepster coupe concept. Don't think this one ever saw production.
Yes it's a 38/39 zephyr with modified wheel arches on front and modified fender skirts on the back, plus a custom grille opening! Very interesting and great pics, thanks for sharing
I'd guess the first one is an early Vette with an Olds nose grafted on, judging from the proportions from hoodline back...
I think you might be right… the other divisions DID have their version of the Vette, at least in concept form right?
I don't think you are right. I believe it is a GM concept car from around 1954 that has recently been restored and I think sold for big$. Golden rocket rings a bell.
I love that '56 Olds. Those were gorgeous cars to begin with and, as you said, very cool to see some of the work being done to nearly new cars.
I sure can't speak with any authority on the subject… I'm not very familiar with all the old concept cars. There were several other photos from this auto show, but most of them were very poorly lit and cropped so I only shared these two. There was some really wild looking and ornate stuff!
More please ! I believe the roadster rear shot with the different taillights is a sectioned/channeled car that still exists. Will have to hunt up my guess for later.
I'll post some more tomorrow, but for now here's a few more of that concept car in question. You can make out the Oldsmobile lettering on the front in the second photo here, and over all the car does seem to have early Corvette proportions. Unfortunately I don't have any other photos of that channeled convert from August of '57.
Not sure ANY of these qualify as "good" photography, especially since the pics definitely show their age. But they are still interesting. At least I think so...
Cool, thanks! FWIW, since we lived in Iowa it would make sense that this may have been a Chicago Auto Show. We went to some of those when I was old enough to remember, which I wouldn't have been here.
These are great photos, thanks for posting...I worked on a farm in Iowa in the summer of '58, there were not a lot of rods or customs, but the cars I did see were well done.....this collection is really cool!
The second custom you posted was the 1954 Plymouth Belmont concept car. Sold at B-J Scottsdale last year for about ten jillion bucks. (OK, just $1,320,000.)
Ha! Y'all tell me to keep posting and stuff, but if I ever get set up so I can start scanning dad's 35mm stereo slides you'll be begging me to stop… Anyway, here's the remainder of the appropriate stuff from this box of photos. To start off it looks like jet aircraft had a major influence over the design of concept cars at the time. Full canopies and jet exhaust! Wow the size of the spare tire surround on this one! And another full canopy. Being a Mopar guy you know I love this one! No idea what this one is either. Looks like there is a Packard shape to the grille?
The Jalopy Journal
