Their eyes sparkle like the chrome on its gleaming flanks.
Children of the Depression, `60s people, discriminating yuppies and today`s teens set aside their differences and share a stare when one rolls by. The object of their affection?
The celebrated `57 Chevy.
Too poor to buy the car when they were young, or simply too young to buy the car when it was new, collectors now are shelling out big bucks for the 34- year-old classic that, incidentally, was outsold by Ford as a new car.
A Bel Air convertible retailed in 1957 for a shade over $2,500, with air conditioning, a radio or a heater optional. That same car in cream-puff condition in 1990 is worth $65,000 to $70,000.
A Bel Air coupe might go for $35,000 to $40,000, a four-door sedan for a little less, according to Experi-metal Inc., a sheet-metal fabricating firm in Sterling Heights, Mich., that specializes in custom and antique cars.
But what makes people lust after a car that suffered from transmission and fuel-injection problems and whose design was, in fact, dropped by Chevrolet the very next year?
Adoration for the `57 is primarily a love affair with design.
”The (look of the) 1957 Chevy has quality written all over it,” says Carl L. Olsen, chairman of transportation design at the prestigious Center for Creative Studies in Detroit.
Olsen, who has served on the design staffs of Chevrolet, Pontiac and Peugeot, observes that the `57 had a more lush look than the 1955 and 1956 entries, although the three cars shared a chassis.
”Chevy spent a fortune on that eight-piece grille and used chromium in a most attractive way, like the die-cast dual `machine guns` sticking out from the hood,” the designer attests. ”Then there were the (bullet-shaped)
protectors in the grille, affectionately called Dagmars after a buxom, blond TV entertainer on the ”Tonight” show.
”The 1957 Plymouth was supersensational with its high-flying fins in its debut year,” Olsen recalls. ”Plymouth also led the way that year with four headlights, although GM pioneered the lamps in concept cars.
In fact, Chrysler Corp.`s very modern-looking automobiles stunned General Motors and Chevrolet. The world`s biggest corporation panicked and brought out all-new models in the 1958 model year and again in 1959.
”But if you line up the Ford, Plymouth and Chevy of 1957 today, it`s no contest. The Chevy looks the best, with the other cars now appearing dated in a way that the Chevrolet doesn`t,” Olsen says.
The designer thinks the Plymouth looks old-fashioned. As for Ford, he calls the 1957-59 models ”Buck Rogerish” and says the company relied on gimmicks drawn from jet airplanes. ”Surfaces on the Ford of that epoch were terrible. They called it scupltured design, but it was imagery copied from aircraft,” he says. ”Don`t most of those cars seem horrifically dated today?”
Olsen gets no argument from Alex Mair, retired group vice president of General Motors, who was an engineer at Chevrolet for the `57 engine and later was the top executive at Pontiac and also at GMC Truck.
”The `57 may have been on the same chassis as the `56, but the change was incredible,” Mair recalls. ”It was all new from the beltline down, including taillights, fenders and bumpers. Even the instrument panel and the hood were totally different.”
Although the car was clearly a Chevrolet, it carried a touch of Cadillac in its gold grille and gold V, a Caddy trademark for generations. That touch of high-price luxury makes the `57 even more desirable to its legion of admirers.
Mair contends that performance played a strong role in making the car a classic. The V-8 engine went from a 265-cubic-inch displacement to a more potent 283 in 1957. ”We also offered fuel injection for the first time, and it may not have been too good in those early days, but it gave the car a performance image,” Mair says.
Prior to 1957, Chevy was a rather ho-hum family car. Although Ford once boasted you could buy any car as long as it was black, the `55 and `56 Chevies seemed to be available in any color as long as it was a two-tone white over green, white over blue or white over black.
Those interested in performance tinkered with their Fords and Plymouths. In 1957 Chevy was entering the third year of its styling cycle while Ford was bringing out an all-new Fairlane 500. How to dress up the Chevy and how to get it noticed by performance enthusiasts were the aims for 1957.
Fins handled the styling aspect, while the 283-cubic-inch V-8 and fuel injection brought the `57 the performance recognition it wanted. With the 283, Chevy added a new word to its vocabulary-fast. The 0-to-60 m.p.h. claim was 10 seconds; the quarter-mile boast was 17.5 seconds.
In its two-barrel carbureted version, the `57 boasted 185 horspower; with a four-barrel carburetor it was 245, and with fuel injection it was 250. The
`57 suddenly attracted youth to Chevy and helped fuel fierce loyalties among Chevy, Ford and Plymouth owners.
Mair and GM are proud of the `57 today, and Chevrolet`s current general manager, Jim Perkins, owns a copy in excellent condition. However, GM was not delighted with its sales performance 34 years ago.
The 1957 calendar-year volume of mostly `57-vintage cars, with some 1958 models in the fourth quarter, totaled about 1.46 million units. That figure was pleasing enough to Chrysler and Ford, but GM was disappointed: Ford had outsold Chevy for the first time in 22 years. The margin was 37,000 units, according to Mair.
The race for sales leadership involved some shady activity in the final weeks of the calendar year. Both big competitors registered cars in dealer rather than customer names to balloon the volume. But Ford won despite GM`s greater production capacity.
Unlike many of today`s designers, Olsen has nothing against chrome, and he credits the `57 Chevy stylists with expert use of chrome trim. ”With the bright metal, they were able to disguise the Chevy from other GM makes with the same body panel,” Olsen says. ”That allowed them to two-tone paint the cars and make them distinctive, despite the sharing of doors and many other panels with cousins in GM.”
Although GM, Ford and Chrysler agreed in 1957 to soft-pedal speed and horsepower in the name of safety, stock-car racing continued to receive quiet support.
The `57 Chevy was a big car then and now. Its wheelbase of 115 inches exceeds the 1991 Cadillac Seville by 7 inches and the Caddy Coupe DeVille by more than 4 inches.
Bel Air was the top of the line and still carries a much higher value than the middle 250 series or the base 150 series.
If the `57 ever got more than 14 miles to the gallon, it became a bragging point. Performance was far more important than fuel economy in the
`50s. A gallon of regular gasoline went for less than a quarter.
More than 90 percent of the `57 Chevies were sold with an automatic transmission, mostly the two-speed Powerglide.
Mair says there was disagreement over the transmission. ”In the 1955 model year, the sales were slow at the start, just like 1957,” he recalls.
”Harlow Curtice, GM`s president and chief executive, suggested that the Powerglide was hindering the market because it was a `shifting` transmission; drivers could feel the switching gears. He pushed for Turboglide, which was a lot smoother and similar to Buick`s Dynaflow.
Turboglide was offered in addition to Powerglide from 1955 through 1959, he said.
A 6-cylinder Blue Flame engine came standard on the line, along with a manual transmission.
With a 6 or optional 283 V-8, the 1957 Chevrolet was greeted in its maiden year with all the enthusiasm accorded a tax increase.
”We were upset when the `57 car didn`t get a rousing public reception,” recalls Mair. ”I surmise that a lot of people thought Ford had a sharp piece of machinery, and Ford really went after Chevy. The internal pressure at Ford to beat us was very intense.”
Randy Mason, curator of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., suggests that the `57 Chevy aged better than its contemporaries ”because it was less ostentatious than most designs of the late `50s.” By comparison, Chevrolet`s cousins, Oldsmobile and Buick, vied for the dubious ”king of chrome” award.
Pinpointing just when the `57 Chevy became a classic is difficult. Some say the `60s, others favor the `70s.
As to what makes a car a classic, designer Olsen says it`s a matter of bucks and not the blessing of clubs whose members collect old cars. ”You judge a classic by the amount of dollars it will attract,” he says.
