Chrome & Jet Age
By the 1950s, Detroit had quit being shy. Cars got lower, wider and longer, chrome spread across everything that would hold still, and horsepower started becoming part of the sales pitch.
This was the age of tailfins, wraparound glass, bright trim, fiberglass bodies and styling departments that occasionally acted like somebody had handed them a blank check. Some of it was elegant. Some of it was outrageous. Most of it was impossible to mistake for anything else.
Chevrolet gave America a fiberglass sports car with looks from tomorrow and a warmed-over Blue Flame six under the hood.
Leather, fins and country-club manners looked respectable enough until Chrysler put 375 horsepower worth of 392 Hemi under the hood.
Cadillac took the tailfin race about as far as Detroit could take it and created one of the most recognizable rear views in American car history.
Bottom Line
The 1950s weren’t subtle, and that was half the point. Detroit was selling optimism by the foot, horsepower by the cubic inch and chrome by what sometimes looked like the acre.
Pick one and pull up a fender.