1955 Citroen DS 19
[We’ll start of with a nomination from one of our Contributing Editors–but don’t let that stop you from nominating your own choices.]
On a strictly intellectual basis, I would posit that the 1955 Citroen DS 19 was the car of the century. In terms of engineering, design and driving dynamics, it was. Nothing else in the world came close. That said, it was a piece of crap that set new standards of unreliability and was almost impossible to keep running on a daily basis, even in France.
1955 Dodge Royal Lancer
But when I opened a copy of the Saturday Evening Post in 1954 and saw advertising for the 1955 model year cars, I was blown away by the stunning two-tone paint jobs and vibrant colors. At least in my own estimation, such things had never been seen before, and they were far more interesting to my seven-year-old mind than something as abstruse as a DS 19.
1956 Olds 98 Holiday Coupe
General Motors went beyond the competition by giving unique side chrome treatments to different trim levels within each of its model lines. I remember going along to the Olds dealership when my father was negotiating for his 1956 Olds, and being blown away by the dealer sales tools I saw. Flip books with transparent sheets and spot colors made it possible to simulate every paint combination available in each trim level. Psychedelic. Not only could you cruise at 90 mph all day long (provided the heat didn’t get to you), but also look good doing it. Damn! Life was good…and all with just 324 cubes and a two-barrel carb.
1956 Ford Sunliner and Victoria
But my uncle Ed beat my dad to the punch; he bought a 1956 Ford Sunliner, in the same Calypso Coral (orange) and Victorian White combo illustrated in the Victoria above–sorta like a Dreamsicle from the ice cream truck. I don’t recall seeing many solid-color exteriors (shown on the yellow Sunliner) that year.
Its white-with-orange inserts interior treatment mirrored the exterior paint scheme, and under the hood was the 312 Thunderbird V8.
Is this a CCOAL? Perhaps not by the editor’s standards. Even so, to this day I can’t think of any other car that’s rung my bell like Uncle Ed’s ’56 Sunliner. I’m still on a high.
I’ll nominate the Chrysler 300-B. It was the first car with one horsepower per cubic inch, it was pretty dominant in stock car racing, and one averaged 139.4 mph in two way runs over the flying mile at Daytona Speed Week that year.
I’ll happily add my kudos for the 300B. Those cars still had the kind of solidity that was largely lost in 1957 and not regained until the early 1960’s, but were the start of a long tradition of performance leadership for Chrysler Corporation to go along with its tradition of engineering excellence. They were backed up with a considerable variety of well-built and nicely styled Chrysler cars, ranging from fairly spartan Windsors to quite luxurious New Yorkers.
A third for the 300B!
Hooray – this is the one year that we will not see a serious nomination of a Chevrolet! 🙂 Oh crap, someone is sure to nominate the Corvette.
The 56 Ford was a beautiful car, maybe the best looking of the decade.
I also have love for the 300-B, for the second year in a row, America’s Most Powerful Car.
I will go a different direction and nominate the 56 Studebaker Golden Hawk. First, this was the inaugural Hawk, the model that would stay in the Stude lineup to the end (at least in South Bend). Second, the lightweight 56 Golden Hawk was equipped with the 275 hp version of the big Packard 352 V8. This was an all-out muscle car, and could beat both a 300B and a Corvette to 60 or in the quarter mile, according to at least one contemporary road test. Unfortunately, the Packard engine would not be available after 1956, and all later Hawks made do with the Stude 289 (some with a supercharger).
Good choices all. But I’d nominate the ’49 Ford. Like the Taurus it saved Ford. Ford had to restructure and streamline it’s operations……this was the new face of the New Company. It was a breath of fresh air after all the re-deux 42 pre-war cars. It was radical, simple and beautiful ……yet practical. It was the bench mark of all post war cars.
Damn, just read Paul’s nominee for 1955 CCOTY. Consider this my very early nom for 1949~!
The 56 Fords (all of them) were great, but were only a very mild refresh of the 55s. Things happened slower in those days! Not much new from any of the manufacturers. FoMoCo did win COTY from MT that year.
How about the timeless and beautiful NEW Continental Mark II?
+1 on the Mark II – the Inspiration for the entire “Personal Luxury” segment in the 60’s and 70’s
A painting I did some time ago.
Beautiful work!
I hereby nominate the 1956 Volvo PV444 – just because it was the first car Volvo officially imported to the States.
But why oh why did they have to stick with a split two-piece windshield?
We only got the 4door 56 Ford the Customline oh and the Mainline ute and of course stupid me Ranchwagons opentop cars Nar. Citroen DS were easy to keep going the powertrain was similar to what they used from 1934 the suspension tough enough to win several east African Safaris as long as its maintained.
Just for JPC I will nominate the 56 chevy. Personally think a 210 or 150 wagon would have been best. Last year for the 265, it set new standards for anonymity. Because of that (and because jpc said it wouldn’t, couldn’t happen) I am nominating the 1956 Chevrolet.
Oy!
One of my Great Aunts bought a new 1956 Ford Crown Victoria. White over turquoise. It was the first car with air conditioning I ever rode in. The clear A/C tubes came out of the package shelf behind the rear seat.
I’d like to nominate the BMW 57. which marked a return to sporty Bimmers not seen since WWII.
I nominate ALL Chryslers, Fords and GM’s that year, but ONLY in pillarless and/or convertible trim.
I know nothing about non-domestics, VWs not even in my ballpark.
I nominate the ’56 T-Bird. How many cars have songs written about them? Besides, this was Ford’s first real attempt at going after an import.
I would like to nominate the 56 DeSoto Adventurer. Beautiful, especially in a 2-tone paint job, powerful with the 341 Hemi, and a better value than the base model 300 – the DeSoto Adventurer was the most powerful car in its class according to Allpar. Consumers appreciated this value too: Despite a downturn in 1956, DeSoto sold almost as many cars as it had in 1955. A DeSoto also paced the Indy 500 this year.
Sorry to sound conventional, but it’s gotta be the Chevy. I was born that year, and by the time I was 3 or 4 years old I could recognize a ’56 Chevy, and like hundreds of thousands of American men born that year, we still can instantly identify a ’56 Chevy. The Ford may be prettier, the Citroen more innovative, the Chrysler faster, etc but the Chevy’s a classic. Though the Volvo may have been more a harbinger of great things to come. And in that spirit, my nominee for 1957 CCOTY would be the Toyota Land Cruiser. (Note this is all from a US market perspective).
The 56 is my least favorite of the tri-5 Chevies. The looks were merely a change for the sake of change versus the 55, and not an improvement. Otherwise, the car was basically unchanged. Unless you have a compelling argument that the 56 brought something new to the market, my opinion is that the 55 deserved a win, but not the 56.
I’ll agree on the 56 being change for the sake of change. I always found them bland. Though 55 is the only year I like from the Tri Five run.
That two-tone green/black Olds is outstanding. I’d love to see what one looks like in person…
Wikipedia tells me that the Citroen DS was only first introduced at the October 5, 1955 Paris Motor Show, which means that in most parts of the world the first ones were 1956 models. That has to be the winner for 1956, no question… but if we’re calling that a 1955 model than put me in the Chrysler 300B camp.
The ’56 300 was a rehash of the previous year’s model on the exterior, but the ’55 only came with the power-sucking 2-speed PowerFlite. 1956 was the first year it was available with a (surely seldom ordered) manual transmission and was also the debut of the revolutionary TorqueFlite automatic, which became the model for all automatic transmissions over the next 40 years.
Technically, I would vote for the Chrysler 300-the first 50’s Chrysler to catch my attention and a milestone of automotive performance-a truly Big Fast Car. But sentimentally I think we need to get one of those lovely mid-50’s convertibles in here, and I hereby cast my vote for Aunt Bea’s Ford Fairlane, bought second-hand from Goober over Andy’s clearly expressed concerns. The scene at the end of this episode where all-is-forgiven and they pile in for a ride (The big Ford lurching away, top down, all heads rocking forward and back, all those driving lessons not yet having brought Aunt Bea’s skills up to a par with those of Paul’s Dad) is one of the classic endings of American situation comedy.
Nominating the 1956 Ramblers.
They pointed towards what would be intermediates in the 1960s, and although they weren’t significantly smaller than the Low Priced 3 cars of the time, they would be in one short model year. And they were well engineered and well built, and would help lift Rambler up in sales by the end of the decade (facelifted, of course).
Great pick… IMO one of the most truly bizarre looking American cars to ever be unleashed on the public and ahead of it’s time in several ways. Citroen Ami levels of weirdness…
I actually think these Ramblers are hideous, but one of my biggest daydream project car wishes is building a ’57 Rambler Rebel Electrojector clone using Bosch D-jet hardware off a later M-B V8. How cool would that be? I think I could hack the technical end of it (just barely) but it’s probably beyond the abilities of my bank account, for now at least!
Interesting choice…and today’s Accord/Camry/Fusion/Malibu share more with this Rambler than they do with the hallowed 1956 Chevrolet.
Hey no kidding, check this out, specs from the ’56 Rambler brochure and Wikipedia:
Dimensions: 1956 Rambler / 2012 Camry
Wheelbase: 108″ / 109.3″
Length: 191.1″ / 189.2″
Height: 58″ / 57.9″
Width: 71.3″ / 71.7″
Weight: 2891 lb. / 3190 lb.
I would nominate the 1956 Fords because of Ford’s push for safety features that year.
The domestic auto industry paid only tepid lip service to the entire issue of safety, and virtually all of the foreign manufacturers weren’t any better. To suggest that car makers should install equipment on their cars to help people survive accidents was simply revolutionary for that time, and bordered on heresy in some quarters of the industry. Safety efforts during those years focused on the “nut behind the wheel.”
Ford, pushed by Robert McNamara, was years ahead of the curve with this effort, and if the company had stuck with it, and the rest of the industry had followed suit, a lot of grief could have been avoided in the 1960s and 1970s.
Seat belts front and rear, padded dash and visors and child-safe door locks were still available as options when Dad ordered them on our ’61 Sunliner. It was held up a month while the Chester plant figured out how to put rear belts in a convertible, or so we were told.
Here’s a clip from the fabulous ’61 brochure. I see optional belts in the ’65 brochure too, Ford must have kept them available until they were required for all US ’66s.
The Citroen DS was a piece of crap? Whoa! Compared to what? Its American, British, German and Italian peers? Cars were almost universally unreliable back in the 1950s and it really wasn’t until Japan came on the scene in the 1970’s and 1980’s that things changed for the better. If you think Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen cars were paragons of reliability then either you are too young to remember the bad old days, or you believe the horse-s%$# that Mercedes and its fellow German manufacturers spew out as propaganda even to this day (have a look at the JD Power Initial Quality Ratings and you’ll find the Germans occupying nearly all the bottom positions).
The major issue during the first few years of Citroen DS production centered on the type of hydraulic fluid supplied; the red LHS fluid it was unexpectedly corrosive (it absorbed moisture and dust) and was the primary factor with some cars being unreliable, especially in very wet and very dusty climates. However this was addressed fully with the introduction of a new green LHM fluid in 1967 which proves to this day to be the fluid of choice for nearly all hydraulic systems, Citroen’s included.
The early years of the DS’s almost twenty year production run also threw into sharp relief that Citroen had underestimated the projected learning curve any given mechanic would need to fully understand, maintain and repair such a complex and intertwined system (suspension, steering and brakes were all managed in one system).
In terms of build quality, materials used and overal design integrity, the DS simply had no rival. I know, I’ve owned two of these wonderful and sublime automobiles and, in the hands of a sympathetic mechanic, the car had no equal, no matter what factor you chose to use as a comparator.
Gee, by 1967 Citroen finally figured out what kind of hydraulic fluid wouldn’t destroy seals and other critical components? That’s only 12 years after the DS series was introduced. That makes GM’s deadly sins seem like minor peccadillos. Unfortunately our family owned a ’63 that was only two years old when we bought it used. This was in France where one would assume that the mechanics at the Citroen dealer, who had access to factory training and parts, could keep the piece of garbage running. Wrong assumption. The car was wonderful to drive but otherwise a huge piece of shit. My ’60 Plymouth, no paradigm of the coachbuilder’s art, required no more than the occasional plugs, points and condenser to keep it running reliably. I put 135,000 miles (271,000 km) on that car, a feat I would defy any DS to do.
The real reliability problems with the early cars involved mechanics who were improperly trained to repair the cars, specifically many mechanics failed to appreciate the need to periodically clean the LHS fluid to remove particles that could cause a slow deterioration of the system. As I mentioned, the LHS fluid was only a problem in extremely wet and extremely dusty climates, but Citroen realized that to have a truly trouble-free system they would need to hermetically seal the high pressure system and this would require a completely new liquid that allowed no water solubility whatsoever. This required that the entire hydraulic system be revamped and completely sealed (i.e. no venting) and this required a new fluid to be developed. This was the green LHM fluid (Citroen cars now use an orange fluid called LDS). So if your comment suggests that it took Citroen 12 years to address a reliability issue with its cars is flat wrong. LHS red fluid cars were very reliable if maintained by a well-trained mechanic.
Take a moment to appreciate what the DS represented; a radical and completely different approach to the conventional automobile. That required an owner and mechanic mindful of this and this wasn’t possible for every car sold. The development of LHM was the company’s largely successful attempt to idiot-proof the hydraulic system against owners who could not or would not observe proper maintenance. And 12 years to develop, test and make road-worthy a new system seems right to me.
LHS fluid incidentally is to this day the recommended brake fluid in all Mercedes, BMW, Rolls-Royce, PSA, Volkswagen Group, Jaguar, Renault-Nissan and Toyota cars because of its non-soluble qualities (squishy brake fade is primarily caused by moisture leeching into brake fluid).
My auto shop teacher had been a Citroen importer’s service rep in Canada. He drove a Chevy so that he could actually make it to his calls. This was in the 1960’s.
The Volvo 120-series or Amazon debuted in 1956 and surely speaks for itself. Also the Ford Zephyr Mk2 was a pretty good car, and it had some rally success.