The examples seem to be 'street' vehicles as compared to the 'show' vehicles that populated the small mags that used them for circulation numbers. I think today is the same, we oh and awh over the pretty cars in the shows (GNRS) but we appreciated the cars that a 'normal' person would own and build. Be it a bit over the bar which drives us to make our own a little bit better.
Playboy magazine set the tone for increasing circulation by featuring "perfect" girls in its' pages instead of the proverbial "girl next door". Hugh Hefner put it into words in an early interview when he stated that "nobody would pay money to see pictures of average women, they're looking to see the best." Same applies to car mags and cars.
I really appreciate the subtleness of both of those. For the average guy I think it s'more realistic way to go. The "perfect" cars we see in magazines are usually payed for by big wallets which I've never found just lying around.
It's fun to date the flashiest girl once or twice, but you want to marry the one that looks great in just a bit of makeup and dress up. Everything works out better that way. So for a keeper or a DD, here are two good choices.
Hello, Back in the late 50s and early 60s, three things usually kept us teenagers from making more modifications to our daily drivers. One is money. The other is where the money comes from after school, daily. Finally the third one: Time kept us from having enough of it to work. At our house, we constantly heard… “Your job is to do well in school, that is the most important…” blah, blah, blah… So, we can add a 4th reason for creating problems with our daily drivers. Recent photo of one of the best examples of a mild custom from our time line, late 50s – early 60s era Nice mild custom…Daddy’s Girl… The things we wanted to do to our hot rods, trucks and customs were going to take money, time and lots of down time for our transportation. That was not going to happen. Most teenagers had after school jobs. The ones that did not, had no time to tear into their hot rods for fear of not having a ride to school. Yes, friends can do those early “carpools,” but, the teenage bravado with your own car was the important thing that was necessary for daily survival in high school. Who knows if Marylou was going to ask for a ride home, or a pick up the next morning… Jnaki The situation made it possible to do minor custom/hot rod modifications to keep the car on the road. In an afternoon/early evening, a custom grille could be installed with great results. a small pinstriping job could be done on the dash or trunk in an afternoon or Saturday morning. We even put in a dual quad carb set up in a 57 Chevy in one afternoon to just past dinner time. For us, it was the small custom accessories and modifications that we could do to our hot rods and drag racers that made the drive-in parking lot show that much better. Mild customizing was popular method, over the radical custom jobs we saw at the local car shows. Also, no one actually built a complete ground up hot rod for their daily driver. This was the late 50s and early 60s, so the factory cars were the important cars on the road and pocketbooks.
The Jalopy Journal
