At first glance the Volvo Duett looks like a simple wagon version of the Swedish automaker’s PV444 and 544, but under the skin it’s a very different story. The 444 was a radically advanced car…
Posts tagged Cars of the 1950s
Vauxhall Victor F-series: Tri-Five in Miniature
You don’t often see Vauxhalls in the USA, but for a little while, one member of GM’s British contingent was as transatlantic as Katherine Hepburn’s accent. What you see here is an F-type Vauxhall Victor,…
Not-so-Wide Track Flashback: 1959 Pontiac Parisienne
For today’s Flashback we’re visiting Fort Charlotte in the Bahamas today, courtesy of this 1959 Pontiac Parisienne Vista taxi. Cabbies sometimes luck out and get the best rides. Fort Charlotte was built from 1789 to…
Auto Union 1000S: First and Last and Always
The four linked rings are most associated with Audi today, but they originated with Auto Union. The “Union” was an agglomeration of four German companies – Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer, that came together under…
1956 Packard Caribbean: Last of the Line
1956 would end up being the last year of the “real” Packards – many regarded the Studebaker-based models of 1957-58 as a kind of strange hybrid (sometimes derisively referred to as “Packardbakers”). But even though…
Panhard PL 17: The Two-Cylinder Tiger
Today our feature car is a 1960 Panhard PL 17, a highly unconventional car with its origins in the 1940s and the imagination of talented French engineer Jean-Albert Grégoire. But to really understand where it…
Rambler Ambassador: The Nash Legacy
American Motors was born on May 1, 1954, with the merger of Nash-Kelvinator and the Hudson Motor Car Co. By 1960 it was a very different company than Nash or Hudson had been, defined by…
Flashback: Alfa 1900 Berlina in Ascona
Greetings from 1950s Switzerland! From Ascona, on the north end of Lake Maggiore, to be exact. A pair of Simca Arondes (a Berline and a Grand Large hardtop) face away from us and a Hillman…
Boldly Transatlantic: the “Audax” Hillman Minx
It was the MG TC that ignited American interest in imported cars, and of course, primarily sports cars. But in the export-or-die era, it wasn’t long before family fare arrived. The first two non-sporting imports…
Cream of the Crop: 1953 Cadillac Coupe de Ville
If you wanted to say you’d “arrived” in 1953, there were few better ways to get that point across than a Coupe de Ville. In the immediate postwar years Cadillac solidified its dominant position as…
Sachsenring P70: Designed in Duroplast
Chances are good you’ve at least heard of the Trabant, national car of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR); but the Trabant wasn’t invented overnight. This dour gentleman is standing next to a Sachsenring P70 –…
Renault Frégate: Une Parisienne très Américaine
It was November 30th, 1950 when Renault CEO Pierre Lefaucheux the company’s newest car – the Renault Frégate – to great fanfare. The car would be in production for a decade, sort of, but had…