Here we go: I know it was a long time ago, another universe for some of you. But you’re all historians here, so let ’em rip. Not just American cars either, of course. And the criteria for turkey-hood is…whatever you want it to be.
The Turkeys Of The 1950s: Your Nominations, Please
– Posted on November 21, 2011
’96 Taurus. Overpriced, over-styled.
of the 1950s……
Bah!
He said 1950’s. I have a feeling you’ll get your chance a bit later.
As to my 1950’s turkeys, immediately coming to mind (cars dad brought home at lunchtime from the dealership) was the Hillman Minx (don’t try doing over 50 for any period of time) and the Renault Dauphine.
Actually, you could just about nominate any low price foreign car brought over back then except for the Volkswagen Beetle. None of them could hold together for any long period of time due to their inability to cruise at 55mph all day without long term damage to the drivetrains. Roads in Europe (Germany excepted) just didn’t demand that kind of stamina from a car.
Bad choice the Hillmans were one of the better brit cars even though the side valve power trains hailed from the 30s
Bryce isn’t going to like that one.
I’ll nominate the Kaiser Darrin. Take your slightly oddball car company and instead of failing slowly run it right into the ground by making some REALLY oddball cars.
Actually by extension I’ll nominate anything that Dutch Darrin was involved with, his ’50’s designs have not aged well.
I’m somewhat surprised that you nominated the Kaiser Darrin. While the sliding doors are unusual, I’ve always liked the looks of the Darrin. I agree with your overall comment about Dutch Darrin’s work.
Having seen several quite recently, I think the 1951-1953 big Kaisers look pretty good. The thicker door/window frames were dated compared to contemporary hardtops, but it has good proportions and nice detailing. (The ’54-’55 cars are too gaudy for my tastes.)
The big flaws were the price and the lack of a modern V8. A Kaiser Manhattan cost as much as a Buick, but it had the old Continental flathead six with maybe 115 gross horsepower. All Kaiser could do was to add a supercharger for 1954, which wasn’t the best solution.
I’m not as keen on the Kaiser Darrin, which isn’t really my thing; I have to agree with Darrin that his original design looked better than the production car, although I don’t think the difference was as dramatic as Darrin apparently thought.
I second Kaiser. My dad and I restored a ’51, finished this summer. I prefer the 50’s cadillacs, but he found this one in a garage in winatchee, wa w/ 50000 miles on it. we did a complete factory restoration that included just about everything that could be done to it except taking the body off. it’s not a caddy, but it’s nice to preserve it for the sake of preservation.
true though, when we first got it running (under low compression) it was the slowest thing ever. now even after having the engine rebuilt it tops out about 55mph
Cool car. My mother’s family bought one of these in 1951, the year she graduated high school. It replaced the 35 Ford sedan that had served the family for 16 years (an eternity in those times). It was really a beautiful car for the time. My grandma had an accident with it around 1958 or so, and the Kaiser was a goner.
I’d have to nominate the Hudson Jet. Nothing killed its brand more than that. And then the “Hash” Hudsons of 1955.
If we wanna go by sheer looks of things, the 1958 Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs and Buicks. Christ.
If we wanna go on loss of faith, the whole 1957 Forward Look Chrysler Corp. Cars. Fatal Beauties from top to bottom.
In a way the Edsel wasn’t a turkey, considering it set a delivery record for an all new Marque of over 63,000 units. It did better than DeSoto in 1958!
(crickets)
I agree on the looks of the ’58 GM cars (Chevrolets designers did a lot better than their frame engineers) Not to mention the fact that 1958 was maybe the first time the body-sharing became really obvious, and at least Buick and Oldsmobile lost a lot of their identity.
Other than that, the 50’s were filled with failure. Many of us just remember all the great classics, but truth is those cars became classics because so many other cars were turkeys.
On both sides of the atlantic. Many highly innovative cars from this time were just to innovative for their time, and fell flat on their faces in historic terms. I guess only the 70’s were worse.
I agree on the looks of the ’58 GM cars (Chevrolets designers did a lot better than their frame engineers)
When I search for old cars as potential projects I totally skip the X-frame years. Too willowy for me and I’d like to have a frame rail for a minor amount of extra side impact protection.
Perimeter frame FTW!!
I’d say the “Hashes,” more than the Jet. The Jet was kind of homely, and it was a big flop (mainly because it was too expensive for what it was), but it would take a very broad-minded soul to look at a ’55 or ’56 Hudson next to the earlier Hornets and not wince.
I have yet to read anyone give a positive review of the Hashes’ “V-line” styling. They were, and remain, about as ugly as ugly comes.
Although the ’52 Stude comes close…
My father owned a 58 Chev wagon (Biscayne, I think). It was somewhat offensive to my 6 year old tastes… The ’63 was a lot more handsome.
50s turkeys? So many choices… Plymouths with great styling but bad build quality, Chrylser corps slowness to adopt a fully automatic trans (though the fluid-drive is legendary for it’s durability and honestly probably not much slower in the real world than a “dyna-slow” in a Buick.) Pontiac hainging onto the straight-8 so long after the other GM divisions had V8s. Ford trying to out GM – GM with Edsel and Continental as a seperate marque. The unloved 1958 cars that debuted in the teeth of a recession.
It’s hard for me to single out one model for a 50s turkey cause I actually like most of the 1955 and up models for their sheer “in your face” jukebox over the top styling. If it don’t move, CHROME IT!
Trabant! (Introduced in 1957.)
The Stude-Packards of the late 50’s-You’re not fooling anyone with that.
Continental Division-Even though it made some very pretty cars like the Mark II and some not so pretty cars like the Mark III, the whole concept screamed of bad idea.
You beat me to it – the 57-58 Packards were just awful. The car wasn’t really competitive as a Studebaker. The only one that really sold in any numbers was the super-strippo Scotsman. Larded up and passed of as a Packard, well, I just don’t know what else to say.
I think you can go back even further and say the Standard Studebaker line starting with 1956. I don’t know exactly what they were supposed to sell against, Maybe Pontiacs? But they’re remarkably narrow little “full sized” cars.
The Packardbakers were just gilding the lily of an already poor line of cars.
how about the unfortunate 1957 &1958 Packardbakers?? Selling Studebakers cosmetically altered to look like and be sold as Packards was an awful end to a great car company…
I agree! Another vote for the Packard-bakers here.
’59 Chevy!
From that angle in those colors it looks awesome 🙂
I’d read – in at least two different print sources – that Ford sent out cartoons of that batwing rear to the press in unmarked envelopes.
Still…I don’t think the ’59 has anything on a Packardbaker. Or a Hash.
“I’d read – in at least two different print sources – that Ford sent out cartoons of that batwing rear to the press in unmarked envelopes.”
Yet the next model year Ford copied the idea. I think they both look pretty cool, actually… The Chevy has a special place in my heart, as a ’59 BelAir 4 door sedan (Mom’s) and a ’60 Impala convertible (an uncle’s) were two of the more memorable cars of my childhood. The X-frame does kill it for me though, and also I do recall the cars were built pretty poorly and tended to nickel-and-dime one to death as a consequence. Everything from shift linkage to window regulators breaks, which is an enormous PITA. Now if I had the budget to essentially rebuild one to better-than-new “practical classic” condition, a ’59 Chevy would be a really awesome choice.
Years ago in California I knew of two done up like that and used as real drivers — an El Camino in LA and an Impala Sport Coupe in San Jose. Both were black with the light gray (“Sheffield Grey” IIRC) roof. What a killer look…
Launched in 1953 the spectacularly awful, fundamentally unstable and laughably named Reliant Regal:
Nash/Hudson all the way. Out-dated from the get-go, at least once the ’55 model year came out.
The Kaiser Manhattan? I’d like to see a “CC” on that, as I saw several of these when growing up into the mid-60’s and there was one for sale a few miles from my house around 10 years ago. When a kid, I called them “Gootchie cars” for no especial reason, perhaps due to the upper-lip-shaped windshield and the rest of the car was just styled, well, kind of weird. Still, they intrigued me and do to this day. It was chromed very well.
+1
I think I got a CC shot of a Manhatten in Cuba a few years ago. Let me know if you need it.
Ford Popular /Prefect line up hopelessly out dated actually the Ford Pilot too flathead powertrains mechanical brakes they were terrible cars 20 years out of date.
I think most of the obvious ones have been nailed:
’58 Edsel – check
’58 GM BOP cars – check
’57 Forward Look Mopars (great-looking but what piles of junk) – check
’57-’58 Packardbakers – check
’58-’60 Lincolns – check
I’d disagree on the ’59 Chevy — wild but not a turkey. I’d strongly disagree on the Kaiser Manhattan. Styling ahead of its time, and I don’t mind the Darrin Dip (or widow’s peak) on the windshield top edge.
How about the ’53 Plymouth — was there a more homely car put out by the Big 3 in the 50s?
The list though shows that 1958 was one of the nadirs of automotive styling.
The ’59 Chevy? Definitely not a turkey – but if you crash a modern Malibu into it, then it’s a dead duck!
In ’55 Studebaker management desperately slathered chrome all over the greatest looking American car of the fifties, their ’53. They kept trying to compete directly with the Big Three. Compare this car with the ’55 Bel Air. It was the true beginning of the end.
I wonder if I would dare say the first generations of first the Corvette and then the Thunderbird? The only reason any of those lasted beyond 1955 was the fact that the other was around. OK, giving the Corvette a decent engine in ’55, and the Thunderbird rear seats in ’58 helped save them, but I can’t recall any of them being neither successful or really good cars in their first generation.
The Allstate. Its a superturkey! The badge engineered version of the Henry J. that was sold by Sears. Its sales were super low.
Consumer Reports, recently known as Camry fetishists, published an interesting article in the early 50s on reliability of used postwar cars. It makes for interesting reading.
http://www.imperialclub.com/Articles/48-53UsedCars/index.htm
According to this, the independents did not fare well. Willys, Kaiser, Studebaker and Hudson seemed to have quite high repair frequency, including nasties such as main bearings and crankshafts going south.
Mopars, by contrast, fared very well from ’49 on, as did many GM cars. Fords were decidedly middling- Lincolns were particularly abominable.
What is striking is how short life expectancies were then. ’46-48’s needing huge amounts of repairs/rebuilding, when they were only 6-8 years old. I am curious as to why repair frequency was much lower by 1949/50- perhaps it was just the cars were newer, or maybe it was due to overproduction in the postwar years to meet the needs of people who nursed their cars through the war. Conversely, it could be that by ’49, everybody had their new cars out, which probably were more reliable, having had technology developed during the war. Certainly Mopars between ’49-56 were some of the best cars ever made, which is all the more striking compared to their quite poor pre-49 quality. Who would have thought that Chrysler could go from making mediocre cars, to good cars, only to steal defeat from the jaws of victory in ’57. Its a good thing that they learned from their lesson and after the ’57 model year devoted energy to quality and forward planning, ensuring that the company never again would go from boom to bust.
In the fifties and sixties, a new car rarely went more than five years until trade-in, and 100K miles was considered a good lifetime. Materials and manufacturing technologies have improved a lot since then, as have our expectations of quality. Once the Japanese vendors figured this out they drove the rest of the market to match.
Its a good thing that they learned from their lesson and after the ’57 model year devoted energy to quality and forward planning, ensuring that the company never again would go from boom to bust.
That’s funny.
I think part of the reason 46-48 cars were so bad was that they were trowing them together as fast as they could to meet the demand for new cars.
We have had incredible advancements in oil and oil filter technology since the 50’s. An amazing number of 50’s cars did not have a full flow oil filter of the type we are familiar with today. The answer was supposed to be very frequent oil changes, like every 60 days. How many owners do you suppose kept up with that?
Just check out the maintenance required on the 1953 Ford. Chassis lube every 1K miles, oil change every 2K miles, and on and on.
Looking at the charts, Fords don’t do badly at all…Ford is fully competitive with both Chevrolet and Plymouth. I wonder if it’s because more people were driving at higher speeds and longer distances as the economy boomed in the early 1950s, and the flathead V-8 was better suited to higher speeds than the old Chevrolet and Plymouth sixes.
FORGET the Austin America and go back 20 years.
Born in 1948 and still surviving into the 50’s before it was canned, the AUSTIN ATLANTIC was Austins’ idea of what Americans wanted in a car. Developed specifically to sell in the US market, it was a big convertible, with power hood and windows (there was even a hardtop later) it was too odd and too expensive for American tastes, and totally alien to British tastes.But…
When they canned it they had a lot of engines and other hardware to use up, and Donald Healy produced a new sports car that caught the eye of Austins’ top man. A deal was done, and the Austin Healey 100 was born.
The Atlantic’s an interesting harbinger of things to come – BMC/Leyland’s obsession with selling in the US, and abject failure to understand the market there.
From the woeful TR7 (product of attempting to anticipate Federal regulations on open sports cars) through Jaguar’s decades-long stagnation, stuck in the mould of what America expected, the inaccurately percieved needs of the all-important export market played a big part in the down fall of the British motor industry.
I second the vote for the 1957-1958 Packardbakers.
Also, perhaps a special “Before Its Time” award to the Buick Flight Pitch Dynaflow/Triple Turbine and GM’s air suspension designs.
Additional nomination: The Henry J. Just a cheap, cheap car that offered the side benefit of sucking resources away from the more competitive standard Kaisers.
Also, the 1958 Mopars with electronic fuel injection (Electrojector). Great idea, didn’t work with the technology of the time, and all cars were recalled and retrofitted with carbs. There is a great article on Allpar of one of these cars that has been made to work with modern technology. http://www.allpar.com/cars/desoto/electrojector.html
The 1954-55 Mercury Sun Valley and the 1955 Crown Victoria Skyliner – a tinted glass roof in the days before air conditioning became commonplace. Bad idea. Really bad,
They were just a little undercooked and needed some more time in the (R&D) oven. 🙂
LOL designed in Dearborn (in the winter I’d bet)…..for Death Valley?
They had a shade block though. Still I think it was very cool! Not quite as cool as the 57-59 Skyliner retractable.
What’s more low-tech than a turkey? Failed technology attempts that were just ahead of their time do not a turkey make.
Now the Henry J, that was a low-tech turkey.
Haven’t seen the Isetta in the list, so far. There was one delivering chicken(!) in the Detroit suburbs around that time. The front exit would have made me nervous…
But the Isetta saved BMW from going down the pan ! It provided transport for Germans who couldn’t afford a Beetle. Not suitable for the US , but not a turkey.
1958 Toyopet Crown.
Dangerously underpowered, unreliable, poorly suited for American roads…
This was no Camry.
But . . . . . . from what I’ve read, incredibly well-built and virtually unbreakable. A 50’s British car built right.
Any views on the Avanti and the De Lorean ? Turkeys that lived to become swans !
50’s turkeys……….not 60s, or 80s!
I would say the 1953 Studebakers. The sedans looked okay by themselves, but next to the Loewy coupes they looked way too stubby. I recall reading that the coupes were a small percentage of Studebaker sales (maybe 20%?) even before the 1953s came out, so devoting so much time and money to a near-specialty model and cheaping out on the bread and butter models was a really bad idea. That, plus the fact that the coupes had major quality issues that first year, permanently damaged Studebaker’s reputation.
Oh no! That was a gorgeous car, way ahead of its time and very influential. Even the sedan. Park one next to a ’53 Chevy for heaven’s sake. The coupe even has its own stamp! It’s a swan, not a turkey.
Weak sales in ’53 was due to the Ford/Chevy price war.
As I said above, what they did to it in ’55 made it a major turkey.
Oh, I agree it is a beautiful car, and I love Studebakers. I’m just saying the stodginess of the two- and four-door sedans and quality problems of the coupes really hurt Studebaker. And I mean ‘stodgy’ when compared to the Studebaker coupes, there was a big difference. Imagine a 1953 Studebaker sedan as a four-door version of the coupe-that really would have been sharp! The ’53 coupes also had a chassis that was a little too flexible. It was designed to flex, as to supplement the suspension, but flexed a little too much, especially on the hardtops. Most of the assembly and quality problems (mostly due to rushing it into production) of the ’53 coupes were fixed by ’54, but by then the damage was done. All of this was detailed in Studebaker 1946-1966: The Classic Postwar Years, by Richard Langworth. I finally read it last year. It also said that although the Loewy coupes were revolutionary and very influential for years to come, they just didn’t sell. This was all news to me as I wasn’t around when Studebaker was still in the game. But to address your original point, no, the Studebakers weren’t a turkey by any means aesthetically, just as regarding Studebaker’s bottom line.
The Starliner hardtop and Starlight coupe sold well in 1953. Their proportion of total Studebaker production was well above the industry norm for those body styles.
The problem was that the sales of the sedans were very weak. If Studebaker sedans had sold at the same rate in 1953 as they had in 1952, company sales would have been about 25-30 percent higher. The sedans were simply viewed by many potential customers as too small and light. They looked smaller than the 1947-52 Studebaker sedans, and were cursed with inferior build quality, to boot.
Unfortunately, sales of all Studebakers collapsed in 1954, victims of bad word-of-mouth regarding the quality of the 1953 models, and the Ford-Chevrolet price war.
What became the ’53 Starliner/Starlight was originally supposed to be a dream car. Management decided at the eleventh hour that it would be the new production coupe, and everyone in design and engineering had to scramble. The original designs for the 1953 Studebakers was already far along by this time. Suddenly, the sedans had to be modified to bear a family resemblence to the totally different coupes, and that is why the coupes are beautiful and the sedans appear a little half-baked. 1953 should have been a big year for Studebaker but it just didn’t work out.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Crosley. My dad remembers them, says they were unreliable deathtraps…
I’d have to say the ’58 Studebaker…that thing was awful! There used to be a mechanic in our town who kept one inside the main office(I believe it used to be a Studebaker dealership). With the fairings on the front fenders to accommodate the extra headlight and the tail fins that I believe were riveted onto the body it was a total waste. Runner up would be the 1959 Cadillac-with those enormous tail fins it was a poster child for overwrought styling.
How about the NASH METROPOLITAN!
It may not be the worst of the 1950s; but it wasn’t much good. The Austin chassis and engine it was based on were totally unsuitable even for pre-Interstate America. And a two-seater, yet…and some unclean genius in Kenosha thought it would make their struggling company money.
I second the Metropolitan it was a sales disaster everywhere it was marketed neither use nor ornament plenty of people here bought a A50 Austin but the same powertrain in a wierd looking Nash you couldnt give away.
I’ll second the Henry J/Allstate.
Edsel would have to be the #1, since it is still the most famous flop car make from Motown. Trying too hard to be noticed, and then homogenized, and gone before even the 1960’s started!
From personal experience. 53 mercury sedan. Spent more time in the shop than the driveway. Followed by my favorite (maybe) a 66 vw beetle. The mercury did more to brainwash me on the beetles reliability than the beetle did.
Commented on the meteor site that I didn’t really see a reason Mercury existed from 60 on. This is the car that started that thought process.
The 1957-58 Packardbakers are duds, but the company literally could not afford anything else (the best course would have been to put Packard out of its misery, and let the 1956 models be the last ones to bear that hallowed name).
The 1957 Mopars are a bigger mistake, because they were made by a company that had the resources and talent pool to do better, but completely fumbled the launch of a critical product. Rushing those cars to market was a huge error. Build quality and reliability took a huge nosedive, resulting in many unhappy customers.
In many ways, Chrysler never recovered from that fiasco. Market share only came close to the 1957 figure once – in 1968 – and the company erased its reputation for superior build quality and reliability.
“Nash today, trash tomorrow.” The Rambler convertible was particularly ugly with the roll-back top and fixed side window frames, The inverted bathtub look never really caught on. Advanced unibody and safety features, yes, but that alone does not sell cars.
The 1949 through 1956 Chrysler cars-all with better quality because they carry the same frames, not the 1957’s, does anyone agrees?
Cars of the ’50s I wouldn’t want to own (because they’re TURKEYS!)
’59 STUDEBAKER LARK: Was there ever a more homely, dumpy car? Recipe: Put a lumpy, uninspired front clip and trunk on it, cut 3′ off the length, but leave the same old 1953 body/doors/windows in the middle. Makes the 57-58 Studebakers/Packards look lithe and classy by comparison. Why did this sell so well?
’56 PONTIAC: That grille–Tom McCahill said it looked like it was “born on its nose.” The ’55 looked so much better.
1958-59 EDSEL: I can see what they were trying to do with the front end, but it ended up looking like a gaping mouth. The Packard Predictor did it so much better. When your car becomes the butt of jokes, the game’s over. I’m surprised they sold as many as they did. Also the “Teletouch” often broke and its wiring was prone to catching on fire, which led to the demise of many Edsels (not sure about their occupants)!
1956-57 HUDSON– What a wasted opportunity! Who thought that weird “V-Line Styling” looked good? They could have used styling cues from the Italia or X-161 to give it some real Hudson personality. The Nashes from the same period are also hideous; hard to say which was worse.
How about a late ’50s DODGE with the flathead 6 cyl.? So much weight for that tired and noisy engine to lug around.
Somebody said CROSLEY– more of a go-kart.
The buck-toothed ’50 BUICK…I’m not sure.
Note: The cars I listed are the BAD TURKEYS. Some of the cars others have mentioned I actually like (and own!)–they’re the LOVABLE TURKEYS! (Gobble gobble)!