The oldest family car I remember was our 1959 Chevy wagon, at the end of the era of tail fins. My dad bought this new, so probably in late 1958 when I was 1.

Check out those tail lights.

My very first memory occurred in one of these (1940 LaSalle), with Dad driving cross-country from San Francisco to Offut Air Force Base Omaha, Nebraska upon the family's return from three years in Okinawa. The car barely made it across the desert and needed a rebuild on arrival.

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Not dad's car but his bike.
Would love to find it. It was sold in the Norwalk-LaMirada area in So-Cal in the early 70's.
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Dad had a 1949 Ford coupe when I was born and in 1955 bought a new 55 Chevy 210 2 door with a V8 and Powerglide. I don’t remember the Ford but my earliest memory is Mom telling us that Dad bellied landed his Lockheed Lodestar at Chicago Midway in October of 1954 one month short of my 2nd birthday. They all walked away and the airplane was repaired. The CEO of the company was onboard and he commented to my dad, “Bill, that was the smoothest landing you have ever made!”

He also had a 1951 Olds Coupe that he would commute to the airport in. He replaced the Olds with a new 1961 VW sunroof which all three of us learned to drive in.

Charlie

My Dad's Car. The one that started all this sickness with myself, my brother, my boys and my wife.....

Here is my Dad and Mom with my cousin and the car I grew up in. This picture was right after they purchased the car at the Long Beach Chevy dealership in 1955. Seamist green, blue-flame six engine, vinyl flooring, all drum brakes.

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BTW - I still have it.

DaveB

that 55 is cool @DaveB

takes topic full circle on the cars.

50s aus holdens were basically chevs put on a diet and fed a GM straight 6.
(aussies got the fancy wrap around windscreen update in 1960 ).


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the cabin turrets on holdens were tall so you could wear your hat while driving.
not kidding. everybody wore a hat permanently glued to their head in australia until the mid 1960s.

@wonkipop Funny, growing up in the US in the 60's my image of Australians was they wore shorts and a slouch hat 24/7 . BTW - Did the holden also have a 2 speed powerglide?

My Mom was 4" 10" or 150cm. The steering wheel in the 55 is huge. So when she drove it she barely touched the pedals and almost cleared the top of steering wheel. It looked like a ghost car from behind.


DaveB

My parents 55 was the same color but with a white top and as I said before, V8 & Powerglide. Carpets, no radio and dog dish hubcaps. They bought it new in Elgin, Illinois but it was pretty rusty when they traded it in for a new 1963 Olds Dynamic 88. Now that was a great car!

Charlie

like the monty python "bruce" sketch.

shorts and slouch hat is true of the working man australian from WW2 on.
until the recent era where every body on work sites wears fluoro reflective gear and full skin coverings for out door work. low ozone content in southern hemisphere atmosphere. high skin cancer rates.

but australia was a very formal place in middle class ciricles.
very british.
full suit and tie with a hat on.
even when it was 100F and a north wind blowing with bushfire smoke swirling through town.

it only really relaxed from the late 60s on.
now no one wears tie, not even politicians.
but hats are back in big time.

yep holdens had two speed powerglide but i have to think when auto trans came in.i
i don't think it was offered on aussie cars until some time in the 60s.
ford and chrysler had the autos earlier.
holden then had the trimatic auto box. think that came along in late 60s.
my dad was strictly a stick shift man.
but it wasn't on the floor.
"three on the tree" as it was known. lever on the steering column.
front seats were always bench.
often with a kid between mum and dad.
thats where i used to sit a lot until i got too big.
these days you would be accused of child cruelty if you even dared to let a kid get in the front seat of a car until they are 10 years old. no fun for the modern aussie kid.

1988 I think?

The Bug is my 1966 Oval window'd Bug. The red Vega was my Dad's he bought new in 1973. All us kids learned to drive that Vega. I took my drivers test in it. He also had a 1959 Vert Bug and bunches of other cars I don't have pics of.

I don't have a pic handy, but Dad's first car was a 356 believe it or not. Back when Porsches were kooky imports.

@Root_Werks

a white "pastie" i can see in the background too?

My first automotive memory is seeing high tension power line structures parade past the windows of a '49 Hudson in a sunset thunderstorm... pretty scary. I was probably 3 or 4.
The other is sitting in my dad's lap, steering a '56 Ford Sunliner, two-tone green with a white top. My strongest olfactory memory is of Parliament cigarettes lit on that car's lighter.

When I was six, my dad bought a '50 Willys Jeepster to restore for my older sisters and brother to drive to high school.

I was equipped with a pair of goggles, a bandana to cover my nose and mouth, a scraper, then shoved under the car. "Get to work!". My introduction to auto restoration.

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Charlie

My Dad's 55 is a white top too. This is the 55 today. Come this October it will have been in my family for 68 years. When my Dad was alive I just kept the car going. It runs but I wouldn't drive behind it. Now that my Dad is gone, it's next in line to be brought back after the 914 gets finished. And that is the actual license plate for the 55 in California. My Mom had a great sense of humor.

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DaveB

Buddies Fastback at the time. Thunk it was FI and Auto trans?

The late Great Dr. Wright had this, a few will recognize what it is.

9014?

Diablo 914. I wanted the kit back in the day.


Big article in VW/Porsche magazine. I still have a copy of it.

that might be the best looking aftermarket kit ive ever seen on a 914!

Nope, it was the Eagle GT.

I can remember my Dad had a 1964 Pontiac Tempest 4 door. It was a 3 on the tree, wich just wasnt cool back in my days. I remember it had no seatbelts in the back seat, us kids uaed to lay in the back window and wait for dad to hit the brakes so we would fly out and land on the seat ( sometimes the floor). I remember going to the drive-in theater in it. It had no AC....Dad used to tell us it did have 4/75 AC and that was good enough for us. I spent many hours under that car holding the flashlight for dad during oil changes and such (and learning to curse in German).

I used to think that car was "un-cool", he finally sold it in about 1970 to the kid accross the street......Turns out it was a pretty cool car after all, as was my Dad, I just didn't know it. This isnt an actual pic of his car (at least I don't think it is) but it looked exactly like this.

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57’ Buick Special. 2 tone green. Similar to a 57’ Chevy. We drove from Seattle to Buffalo in it when I was 5. Then they bought a 67’ Chrysler Newport Custom. It had a 383 and a 2 barrel carb. Dismal MPG. There was nothing custom about it. FPOS car. I pleaded with my dad to buy a Buick Skylark (a 326?} with bucket seats. A baby GTO in the day. Nope.

That’s what my Dads 55 looked like except yours is in better shape now than Dad’s was in 1963 when he traded it in. Illinois and New Jersey winters take a toll.

@DaveB

chev and holden engine bays almost identical!
even down to the wiper motor.

GM had to think up a new place for the battery in holdens.
right hand drive gear got in the way.
good thing the engine bay was mostly air and you could shift sh$t around.
no worries getting your fat fingers in there to change the plugs.


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aussies called them grey motors.
for obvious reasons.
red motors came along in the 1960s. high compression.
fancy!

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My father, Betty and I restored his 55 Bel Air convertible. We found the factory assembly manuals on ebay, and bought them. They referenced the Holden and all of the right hand drive components.

The manuals went when he sold the car.

aussies weren't dumb back then mr. p.
(can't speak for their collective intelligence these days but).
they knew where the best gear came from and who had the right stuff.
at least back then.

except the mother country worshippers who flogged their little morris cars along highways and caused traffic jambs of holdens and fords backed up behind them.

GM always had a good product in holdens right through to the late 70s.
they dropped the ball at that point.
decided to use the GM europe platform. what a mistake.

Thats when Ford got the upper hand on them.

Shortly after that though it didn't matter because Toyota was preparing to karate chop the lot of them and did.


EDIT - in reference to the manuals and right hand drive components.
both ford and holden did sell small volumes of the larger american cars as "lux" vehicles.
can't recall if 55 chevs were, but certainly impalas were, right through from late 50s to late 60s.

My dad always worked in body shops so, we've been a car family from the beginning. My oldest memory, from 1973 / 74 was sitting in the passengers seat of his 71 Corvette, backing out of the garage.
I remember the black interior and looking up, watching the garage door go by. I was 3 or 4 years old at the time.
Here's pic of a 71 Vette, NOT his actual car though. Man! I wish I had this today.

@wonkipop If the engine had 72bhp in '56 that's about what the 1.8 had in the 914 20 years later. That's full circle. As I look at the engine bay it's a little more compact and has the radiator on the V8 side for chevy in 55. But, it's the same layout, even the same air filter. That's really cool - thanks for putting them side-by-side.

DaveB