During my growing up years in the late 50’s and 60’s cars had a lot of different body shapes and sizes. They ranged from the extravagant style of the ’59 Oldsmobile 98, which looked something like a rocket, to the simple, utilitarian style of the 60’s and 70’s Volkswagen Beetles.

Lights came in all kinds of shapes, sizes and arrangements. There were single round headlights like on the early 60’s Falcons and Mustangs and double headlights as on the ’58 Chevy and ’65 Thunderbird. Pontiac liked to place headlights vertically in a row of two as in the early 60’s Bonneville and the late 60’s classic GTO. Chrysler experimented with double headlights arrange diagonally. Headlights and body shapes were so distinctive I could name the make and model as cars drove by us.

Tail lights were elliptical shaped in the 1959 Chevy and two large, gently pointed red globes in the ’57 classic Thunderbird. On the larger Cadillacs of the early sixties smaller round red lights on the ends of enormous rear tail fins looked like the rear lights of a large jet airliner. The rear lights on the tail fin of the enormous Oldsmobile 98 when lit up red looked like the tail exhaust of a rocket. Then there were cars like the 60 Chevy station wagon that had three smaller tail lights on each side of the rear. The 65’ Thunderbird had rear turn signals that lit up sequentially.

Cars came in a variety of colors then there were different two-tone arrangements like blue and white. Then you had the chrome bumpers and on the really big cars they had posts that jutted out and were placed symmetrically on both sides of the front. The bumpers contoured nicely next to the car body accentuating its shape. Large white sidewall tires really added to the beauty especially on the larger luxury cars like the Lincoln Continental.

To me the older cars were like works of art. I remember afternoons as a boy sitting on our front steps admiring the workmanship and beauty of my parent’s two cars. Now that I’m older I cherish the memories that come back when I think of some of those cars. These were some of my favorite cars.

1959 Oldsmobile 98

With a 394 cubic inch Rocket V8 engine this Oldsmobile was 4 cubic inches larger than Cadillac that year. It’s Hydra Matic transmission set a standard in the industry and created a quote silky smooth ride. I remember it felt like you were riding on air even going over railroad tracks. As a side note the transmission fluid was part whale oil.

A factory brochure says the following: “This sleek new beauty makes a complete break with the past, setting the pace for a new styling cycle. It’s lean, clean lines are the essence of Oldsmobile’s “linear look” for ’59. It goes on to say this about the rear fins: “The gracefully sculptured twin booms, accented by thin blades, sweep along the entire body to give the car a look of fleetness even while standing still.”

I just know that as a nine-year-old kid the car looked massive. It seemed like on trips we were taking our whole living room with us. Those soft white vinyl seats seemed as large as couches and the fold down arm rest in the back seat served nicely as a table when playing cards with my sister. It had air conditioning which only someone who grew up without can really appreciate and the front hood seemed to stretch all the way into the next county which made it really great to sit on when at the Drive In watching a movie.

It was the first car we had with electric windows with a panel of switches on the driver’s door controlling all the windows. Having long arms, I could reach over and control my sister’s window. It was fun catching her arm or hair in the window or opening it suddenly and seeing her hair flying in all directions. It was the look on her face that I enjoyed the most.  

Everything about the car embodied the American Dream. It was about feeling financially secure and prosperous. The car shouted out we have arrived and doing quite well. The massive size, sleek design and luxury spoke proudly of American Exceptionalism; number one in car production and a free market land of dreamers and doers that were going to win the space race against the U.S.S.R. It was an incredible car.

’58 Chevy Brookwood Station Wagon

With a six-cylinder, 136 horsepower 235.5 cubic inch engine it could reach a top speed of 91 m.p.h. and got about fifteen miles to the gallon.  It was more of a practical family car / work wagon. The guy who works for the city maintenance department who has a son studying engineering at the University of Florida owns this wagon. It says I’m upwardly mobile but I have to do without a luxury car with air conditioning and I have to crank my windows instead of pushing a button.

I remember vacations in August when I was thinking of the Motel swimming pool two hours into the trip. All you could do was crank down the windows and open the passenger side air vent. Basically, all you were doing was allowing hot air to blast into the car………kind of like a sauna on wheels. Praying for rain all you could do was sweat until you stopped at a nice cool restaurant for lunch. If it did rain, little silver awnings over the windows helped keep water from getting into the car.

This is the car I really enjoyed with its unique shapes and lines and how they all came together. Thin blades swept back from the center of the single front headlights gradually flattening out before reaching the side of the windshield. The body paint was kind of an olive-green shade that seemed to subtlety change with the light. Then on the front sides just behind the headlights was a row of small silver rectangular ornaments resembling exhaust ports of souped up engines.

Along both back sides flowed this turned down kind of fin that roughly resembled love handles and culminated at the back by bulging slightly outward as it went down and inward. The single round red tail lights looked similar to a human eye with the bulge at the back kind of looking like eye brows. Some people called them tear drop lights which is a good description. I thought they were really unusual and interesting looking.

My main memories were riding with my dad with the windows down in the summer as we went to the hardware store to pick up supplies for some new home project he was starting. Another memory was stuffing my face with double chocolate fudge cookies as we rode up to a Florida Gator football game.

‘60 Chevy Brookwood Station Wagon

This was a bigger built Wagon than the ’58 having a more powerful V8 engine but I didn’t find the body design nearly as interesting as the ’58. However, it did have an air conditioner installed by a previous owner. Rounded and rectangular it hung like a window unit under the dash pointed at the middle of the front seat. It put out cool, dry air and that’s all that mattered.

One of the great things about those old station wagons was the pop-up seat in the rear cargo area that allowed kids to be in their own world as the road stretched out behind them. We could cut up doing farting sounds with our armpits, make faces at people in cars behind us and get an occasional trucker to blow his horn. It was kid heaven. Meanwhile the parents could have adult conversations about mortgages and getting rid of crab grass while listening to whatever they wanted to on the radio which usually was a choice between two or three stations and static.

Two things come to mind when I see a ‘60 Chevy Brookwood Station Wagon. The first thing is my dad smoking a cigar as we drove around town. I can close my eyes and smell the smoke and somehow, I find that reassuring. The other is the hole we had in the back-seat floor. I can’t remember if it was the ’58 or the ’60 but I know we were able to see the pavement below.

Someone in a moment of stupidity thought of poking curtain rods through the hole to drag on the flying pavement. I don’t know what we got out of that except to see the sparks fly. Also, I hate to say the hole served as a convenient way to get rid of trash. If my parents only knew what we were doing in the back seat.

’65 Ford Thunderbird

My dad kept a mid-60’s Thunderbird for someone for about a week when I was about ten. I remember it had the bulkier, more muscular body of that period. It had double front headlights and the distinctive rear with a row of three red round lights on each side that lit up sequentially on the ’65 model when making a turn. Under the hood it had a 390 cubic inch four-barrel carburetor V8 engine and in the rear dual exhaust.  This car could really fly. In fact, my dad maxed it out a few times.

This Thunderbird was called pastel yellow with a black interior and had white side wall tires. After riding around some with my dad we stopped at a place like an A&W Drive-In and while we sat waiting for our food I remember looking around at the car.

The black bucket seats were luxurious. Shiny and smelling of leather they were very comfortable as you seemed to sink in them as they wrapped around. The dashboard looked like shiny cedar wood and on the driver’s side it wrapped around you like the cockpit of a fighter jet.

Then when he started it up it had the most amazing sound. It was a low rumbling sound as the car gently shook while at the same time it somehow reminded you of the deep purring of a big cat like a tiger. Pressing on the accelerator it seemed to rumble inside you. I’ve never heard another car sound that way.

‘60’s and ‘70’s Volkswagen Beetles

The 65’ V. W. Beetle had a 4 cylinder 40 horse power engine with a top speed of 78 miles per hour with a stiff wind at your back going down a hill. In other words, they were just plain slow including the 70’s Beetles. However, they were very

economical getting around thirty miles to the gallon which was great for a college student surviving on macaroni and cheese and an occasional care package from home.

My dad bought my sister a red V. W. Beetle which was about a ’65 model. She was going to the University of Florida eating a lot of Ramen noodles and needed cheap reliable transportation to get around school and also for when she came home for Christmas and occasionally on weekends.

I really looked forward to her visits when she talked about college life and sometimes got to drive her car. Her boyfriend had installed an eight-track tape player with an impressive wrap around speaker sound system. Listening to Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl for the first time in that car was an amazing experience as I felt the soft bass and heard every note and word of that song.

Driving around with friends listening to the music I felt like I was different. Somehow, I felt a part of the larger world outside of my small town with the music in some mystical way connecting to the energy and ideas happening in Gainesville and the rest of the world. Being in that car I was more enlightened and special setting me apart from other teenagers. We had these important discussions about life and politics while the rest were running around following everyone else being mindless teenagers.

The body style which kind of resembles a turtle shell is itself a metaphor for this time. We had gone through all the changes of the sixties and Vietnam leaving at least some of us disoriented. Getting into a V.W. was symbolically like returning to the womb or going into your own shell where you could escape for a while. Everything we had been taught to believe was being questioned and it was nice to have time to figure out things and find meaning.

The simplicity of its design spoke of protecting mother earth, simple living in harmony with nature and to some of communes and a counter culture. It was the baby boomer’s rebellion against what some thought was the dehumanization of society by excessive materialism. To some it was the beginning of the drift into socialism and the V.W. Beetle was a statement against the Ugly American capitalism exhibited in the ’59 Oldsmobile 98. It was the ultimate Hippie car.

I also think about those relatively care free days when I was in my late teens. Being young the world had so many more possibilities; I was at the beginning of my life and good things were just around the corner like meeting that special girl and living happily ever after. I also remember the terrible anxiety I felt the night before I went away to college.

That red V.W. also brings back other images. I think of Carole King singing I feel the earth move under my feet and girls in mini skits walking down high school hallways or riding around Gainesville one night talking about life with my sister. I think of my first semester at college lying in my dorm room listening to James Taylor sing You’ve got a Friend and trying to deal with loneliness and all the changes. You feel life so much more at that age.

Ten years later in my late twenties I had a V.W. when I lived in Orlando. It was lime green, had a black sun roof that slid back and had a large dent in the driver’s door. I was working as a lifeguard/swim instructor at a local Y.M.C.A. and living in a boarding house. I had to really watch my money and the V.W. was very economical.

I could fill up the tank for eight dollars and it would last me for at least a month. Whenever I started getting passed by ten speed bikes, I knew it was time for a tune up which I could do myself for around fifteen dollars. Also, I was able to replace the generator myself with the help of a Chilton book on V.W.’s which I was very proud of and the very day I finished the job I almost ran over the hedge around the I.H.O.P. on Colonial Avenue. I popped the clutch in first gear and with the added power of the generator I did a wheelie.

The sun roof was great. Going down one of the brick streets hearing the low humming of the tires you could feel the soothing light filtering through the massive oak limbs above the road. It was also fun when the passenger stood up in the opening and felt the wind in their face. On dates the moon shone down while you were talking or you could go to the private airport and watch planes flying over………. It was very romantic.

Other things I associate with that car are talking late into the night with friends then waking in the early afternoon with the sun on your face. Also, great walks down brick streets in the waning afternoon light feeling really peaceful as I looked at the old homes and the light sparkling on the lakes. Then there was the health food store that had really great bread made completely from scratch with whole grain. It was a meal in itself and with Deaf Smith peanut butter it was sumptuous. Many other memories come back.

I remember talking to a good friend of mine about emotional memories. They are the feelings you get from the rose-tinted afterglow of an autumn sunset, or a certain smell or song that comes on the radio. I think cars are like that. They are more than just steel screwed together they are a part of the times of our lives.

What do you think?