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OLD CARS -The truth .Owners tales.How they really were.

309 messages,  Last post on Jul 08, 2008 at 7:21 PM

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Messages Page 27 of 31

#260 of 309 Re: My Take [grbeck] by Mr_Shiftright HOST

Mar 04, 2008 (9:55 am)

Replying to: grbeck (Mar 04, 2008 9:50 am)
yeah but 1949 saved Ford's butt nonetheless.
 
I think Ford really started a downhill slide beginning in 1955. Heavy, rough-running, leaking, rattling---a '55 Chevy seemed years ahead in my young little mind.

#261 of 309 Re: My Take [grbeck] by Mr_Shiftright HOST

Mar 04, 2008 (9:55 am)

Replying to: grbeck (Mar 04, 2008 9:50 am)
yeah but 1949 saved Ford's butt nonetheless.
 
I think Ford really started a downhill slide beginning in 1955. Heavy, rough-running, leaking, rattling---a '55 Chevy seemed years ahead in my young little mind as it viewed these cars some ten years later.
 
I remember thinking that Ford was in the past and Chevy was headed toward the future.
 
In the 60s, the only Ford I remember being remotely popular with young kids was the '57 model. Everybody wanted a Chevy or a Pontiac. Oldsmobile was still an older person's car, Buicks were for doctors or real estate moguls. Chevy spoke to youth and to adventure and well, that small block V8 was a great engine.

#262 of 309 Re: My Take [Mr_Shiftright] by grbeck

Mar 04, 2008 (10:12 am)

Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Mar 04, 2008 9:55 am)
Ironically, the 1957 Ford had serious quality control issues, although the cars looked sleek and youthful.
 
Prior to the advent of the small-block V8, Ford had the youth market with the flathead V-8, but then with one stroke, Chevy stole the hearts and minds of young hot-rodders everywhere. Ford did have the station wagon market with the Country Sedan and the Country Squire, which spread to the rest of the line and gave its vehicles a more "family" car image. They were what your parents drove.
 
Pontiacs always seemed a bit more upscale to me. When I was a kid, one of the first relatives to graduate from college and get a decent job drove a 1964 Grand Prix...which still seems appropriate, even though it was a few years old by the time I first saw it. It had a younthful air, but somehow was more sophisticated than a Chevrolet Impala SS.

#263 of 309 Re: My Take [Mr_Shiftright] by andre1969

Mar 04, 2008 (10:17 am)

Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Mar 04, 2008 9:55 am)
I think Ford really started a downhill slide beginning in 1955. Heavy, rough-running, leaking, rattling---a '55 Chevy seemed years ahead in my young little mind as it viewed these cars some ten years later.
 
I guess to me, the '55-56 Fords were sort of automotive wallflowers. Not ugly or horrible looking, but not all that exciting, either. I just get this mental image of Aunt Bee from the Andy Griffith show driving one to town to do her marketing. Probably because she drove one on that show! I saw a '56 Ford 2-door sedan, all black, at a gas station the other day. Nice looking car, but I just think a '56 Chevy is a lot more exciting looking, and more youthful somehow. And interestingly, the '56 Chevy seemed to borrow heavily from Ford styling. Its full-width lattice grille is definitely Ford-ish in style.
 
I always thought '57 Fords were kinda ugly, mainly because of those jutting, bug-eyed headlights. But otherwise, it seemed a much sleeker, more exciting car than the models that preceded it. Wasn't the '55 Ford actually just a very heavy facelift of the '52-54 style? That might be one reason it seemed a bit dull compared to a '55 Chevy. Anyway, the public evidently loved the '57 Ford, because that model year, Ford outsold Chevy by about 100,000 units. I guess the love affair didn't last though, once word got out about how poorly built the '57 Ford was. Still, it didn't sink their reputation like it did with Plymouth. While Plymouth was still struggling in 1959, with sales barely above the dismal 1958 level, Ford went on to trump Chevy yet again in 1959!
 
When one of my uncles was young, his dream car was the '57 T-bird. Ultimately he got one, but I dunno whatever happened to it, as that was before my time. I guess his tastes have changed too, because nowadays he has a '49 Ford.

#264 of 309 Re: My Take [grbeck] (Mr_Shiftright HOST) by hpmctorque

Mar 04, 2008 (10:43 am)

"The 1949 Ford had been rushed into production, because the company was facing bankruptcy and could not afford to wait for the new model. As a result, a lot of last-minute tweaks were not made, and quality, particularly body fit, suffered, although Ford did try to make improvements for each successive model year. The all-new 1952 models from Ford were a big improvement."
 
True, grbeck, although the company may not have used the term "continuous improvement," the outcome of their assembly practices yielded this result in the '50-'54 models.
 
Separately, on the design side, Ford finally replaced its lackluster flathead I-6 with a modern (for its day) OHV I-6 for '52, and swapped its famous flathead V8 with a new high(er) compression short stroke OHV V8 for '54. Both were important improvements over their pre-war designs. However, with Chevy's '55 introduction of its 265 c.i. small block V8, especially, and Plymouths launch of its first V8 that same year, Ford's lead was short lived.
 
"I think Ford really started a downhill slide beginning in 1955."
 
While build quality at Ford may have suffered a reversal beginning with the '55 model year (I don't know this for sure, but it seems reasonable), it deteriorated considerably with the '57 models, although not as much as Mopar's did.
 
Ford attempted to make quality improvements for '65, and again for '67, that seemed to show some results, but it wasn't long before build quality deteriorated again.

#265 of 309 Re: My Take [andre1969] by lemko

Mar 04, 2008 (11:12 am)

Replying to: andre1969 (Mar 04, 2008 10:17 am)
One of my uncles, (now deceased) bought a new 1957 Ford Skyliner. He has so much trouble with the car's top and other quality issues that he quickly traded it for a new 1959 Chevrolet Impala hardtop.
 
The 1957 Ford had a lot of problems with body integrity that the strange features of the 1958 Ford corrected: hood scoop to strengthen the hood, fluted roof to stiffen the roof panel, and the double colon taillamps to stiffen the rear panel. A 1957 Ford's doors would often pop open on rough roads.
 
Funny thing is, whenever I see a photograph of a mid 1960s junkyard, you see a lot of '57 Fords but few Chevies.

#266 of 309 Re: My Take [lemko] by andre1969

Mar 04, 2008 (11:43 am)

Replying to: lemko (Mar 04, 2008 11:12 am)
Funny thing is, whenever I see a photograph of a mid 1960s junkyard, you see a lot of '57 Fords but few Chevies.
 
On a similar note, at car shows, it seems like '57 Chevies are all over the place, while '57 Fords are pretty rare. Even at the Ford Nationals in Carlisle, there aren't that many that show up. Especially when you factor in how many sold when new. '57 and '58 Plymouths are actually starting to get more common at shows. I think part of that may be the popularity of the movie "Christine". While that movie was scorned by old car lovers because they destroyed 12 or 13 Plymouths to make it, it put the '58 Plymouth, Fury in particular, on the map, and as a result has probably saved far more from junkyards than those that were smashed up for the movie. There's also a club dedicated to the Forward Look Mopars in general, and it gets a bigger and bigger turnout at Carlisle every year, so that might be one reason I see a disproportionately high number of '57 vintage Plymouths.
 
Still, nowhere near the amount of '57 Chevies.
 
Oh, here's an odd statistic. Of 32 years of DeSotos, the one with the highest survival rate is actually the 1961! The one with the fewest built! I think the National DeSoto club alone accounted for about 60 of them back in 1990. So 60 out of roughly 3000 built comes out to 2%. The most common year, however, was 1956, with about 200 in the club. There were about 110,000 built in 1956, so that only accounts for about 0.2% of them.

#267 of 309 Re: My Take [andre1969] by lemko

Mar 04, 2008 (12:26 pm)

Replying to: andre1969 (Mar 04, 2008 11:43 am)
One that got away...
 
Speaking of 1958 Furies, I used to pass a two-tone green 1958 Plymouth Savoy two-door hardtop next to a gas station on my way to college back in the mid 1980s. My Dad thought I should make an offer to the owner of the station to buy "Christine" but I was a broke college student and having such a car would eat-up all the time I should be studying and would eat up all my funds. I also noted a lack of a "V" on the grille, so this car was probably a lowly inline six-cylinder model anyway.

#268 of 309 Speaking of the National DeSoto Club... by lemko

Mar 04, 2008 (12:28 pm)

...as a young person, did you encounter a lot of snobbery when you first encountered them? I kind of experienced it with the Cadillac-LaSalle Club and they kind of had a disdain for cars of my Brougham's vintage. This attitude has faded as I got older and they became more accepting of younger guys and newer cars.

#269 of 309 Re: Speaking of the National DeSoto Club... [lemko] by andre1969

Mar 04, 2008 (12:52 pm)

Replying to: lemko (Mar 04, 2008 12:28 pm)
...as a young person, did you encounter a lot of snobbery when you first encountered them?
 
Not in the National DeSoto club, no. But then, the only real interaction I had with them was a newsletter they put out. Can't remember if it was every month or every other month. It was a really nice, glossy, high quality newsletter. I need to re-join that club.
 
Now the Maryland DeSoto club, that was a different story. I was only 18 when I joined both of the clubs. Most of the members, I'd say, were probably about 3 days older than God, although there were maybe 2 or 3 members that were in their late 30's/early 40's. But to an 18 year old, even that is an old man! For the most part, these people were just obsessed with keeping their DeSotos as original and pristine as possible, and harping on the War of 1812 and Moses and the burning bush and other fond memories of their childhood, and I just didn't have a lot in common with them.
 
I'd be curious to see what the demographic of the Maryland club is like nowadays, though. I'd imagine that I'm still a lot younger than the typical DeSoto owner, but judging from what I've seen of the Forward Look era Mopars at Carlisle, it does seem like younger people are starting to appreciate these cars, so their appeal is spanning a broader age bracket.
 
Now one area where I have faced some snobbery, is from the fact that I have both Mopars and GM cars. One acquaintance of mine, that lived near me and would run into me at car shows from time to time, actually got mad at me when I bought my Catalina! I was a traitor to Mopar, I guess. Whatever. Karma works in mysterious ways, because back in 1998, I saw him getting out of a '69 Impala wagon. Almost hit him with my '86 Monte, because he just blindly walked out right in front of me. I blew the horn at him and he turned and looked at me nasty, but then I recognized him. I ran into him about 5 or 6 years later at a car show in Rockville, MD, and now he says his whole family drives nothing but Toyota Corollas. He said the Mopars kept breaking down and leaving him stranded!
 
Sometimes I really have to bite my tongue at a Mopar show, when someone starts ragging on GM, or at a GM show when someone starts ragging on Mopar. I guess if I ever end up with a Ford product in my fleet, I'm really going to have to watch what I say!

Messages Page 27 of 31

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