GM’s 1959 cars are an endless source of, ah, visual amusement (I’m trying to be generous). It’s best not to take them too seriously, as presumably the design studio water coolers were being dosed with hallucinogens. How else to explain them? Sputnik? Googie architecture? Irrational exuberance? Desperation at having been shown up by the ’57 Chryslers? Well yes, that’s certainly what triggered the mad rush into the automotive stylistic unknown.
Their origin story has been told many times, including here in my 1959 Cadillac CC. Today we’ll look at what I consider to be the poorest expression of that wild rush to go where no automobile has gone before. The ’59 Olds looks like it escaped the reject pile, although its front end does have some barely redeeming qualities. But under the skin, the Olds still had some of the qualities that had made it as good or better than its corporate siblings. Let’s start from the inside out, and save the wild stuff for last.
Starting with its frame. Somewhat curiously, Olds never used the X-Frame, which was used on a variety of GM cars starting in 1957. In 1957-1958, Olds and Buick had used what amounted to a hybrid of the X-Frame and a semi-perimeter frame. For 1959, Buick and Olds diverged frame designs, and Olds used this, still a combination of X and perimeter elements, which was referred to as “Advanced Wide-Stance Chassis”. The side frame rails take the place of the reinforced body sills on the X-Frame cars.
Even more curiously, Olds used Hotchkiss-drive leaf spring rear suspension from ’57-’60. That was rather going against the GM coil-spring grain, although the ’57 Cadillac (not the Eldorado) also used leaf springs.
Under the hood, the Olds was as good as it got at GM. The new 394 CID Rocket V8, the latest evolution of the original Olds V8 from 1949 that rocketed the industry, now had 315 gross hp, and was right up there with the best the other divisions fielded, except of course Pontiac’s Tri-Power 389. And it was backed by the best transmission GM had on tap, the “Jetaway” Controlled Coupling Hydramatic, an expensive to build but significantly improved evolution of the original. It still had a fluid coupling, four gears and split-torque for unparalleled efficiency but with smoother shifts.
So that’s the good stuff. Now for the not-so good stuff. All the ’59 GM cars were based on the Buick body shell, which explains why it was the most organic looking of the bunch. Everyone else had to start with that and try to create a variation that best reflected their division’s brand, or just look different, in the wild melee that was happening in the GM design center at the time.
Cadillac’s over-the top fins and strong front end were certainly differentiated and unique enough, and resulted in an icon.
Essentially the same can be said for the Chevy.
The Pontiac, especially from the rear, starts to suffer from a bit of desperation to differentiate. But its split grille front end and Wide-Track stance are its saving grace.
But the Olds rear end can’t escape the tacked-on look.
In fact, that little descending line that sweeps down across the rear fender has the unfortunate effect of looking as if the upper portion and its bulging tail lights are literally grafted on, as on some of the more unfortunate Studebakers. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing cohesive or organic about this. It’s a jumble of elements pulled out of a grab bag and applied in a scatter-shot way. Go back and look at that Buick rear end, if it’s necessary. That was actually a design; this is a mess of leftovers.
But we can amuse ourselves with it, especially from the right angles.
I look at this picture and it starts to look like something that the Russians would have shown at their Great Hall of Industry in 1962 as a preview of what the comrades would be driving in 1969, if the stars all lined up just right.
Admittedly, the sedan ’59 body was the weakest one, but then it was also the most common, at least in the lower 88 lines.
Yes, the Holiday four door hardtop with its flying wing helps. But it’s never going to be a…’59 Buick. Oh well. It can probably outrun the Buick. And get better mileage. You know, the under the skin stuff.
Let’s take a quick stop inside, although this is hardly original upholstery. But that deeply dished steering wheel certainly is, and was a real Olds trademark for a couple of years. Now if only they’d gone with a single spoke wheel; hey, Olds was “the experimental division”.
Here’s a more cheerful look at the interior.
And how did the “Linear Look” 1959 Oldsmobile do, on the market? Not too shabby; it outsold Buick, which was in a downward trajectory. And it was only barely beaten by Pontiac, which was of course on an upward trajectory. This was life in the middle of GM’s family; the oldest and youngest were firmly entrenched in their respective positions, but the middle three endlessly fought it out.
But in 1960, when that rude upstart Rambler popped into the top five, and Dodge had its very brief moment in the sun, Olds slipped out of its typical #4 or #5 spot all the way to #7. But that fall from grace was temporary.
And I’ve purposely left the front end for last. Why? It intrigues me, to some extent.
It’s credited to Irv Rybicki, who would go on to replace Bill Mitchell in GM’s Deadliest Era. But here he shows some uncharacteristic flamboyance, thanks to the spiked water. I’m not so much a fan of the details, but I do rather like the way the hood dips in the center section.
That theme was of course taken up by the 1960 Corvair, in a drastically sparser variation.
This one is even wearing chrome eyelashes, which only add to its complex textures and shapes.
Is there some sort of bug screen over the middle section, to obscure the bold Oldsmobile letters?
Yes there is. So let’s sign off with a nicer example.
Which is even available as a yoga mat. Seriously. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one that has a bit of a soft spot for that front end.
I can’t look at that ’59 Buick and not think of Judge Reinhold as Brad Hamilton in “Fast Times At Ridgemont High”. (The Cruising Vessel.)
Wasn’t that deep dish steering wheel considered rather dangerous in a front end collision? I have read Ralph Nader’s “Unsafe At Any Speed” and I believe he devoted an entire chapter to drivers being impaled on the steering column in an accident. He also took issue with Reverse being at the bottom of the transmission quadrant right next to Low instead of after Park. This was remedied with the 1965 models.
I was thinking just the opposite – would it be safer given the noncollapsible steering column was much further away?
I see both of your points. I guess the Olds design’s safety would depend on where those steering wheel spokes would break.
Dished steering wheels were certainly intended as a safety feature, as you said putting some distance between driver and solid steering column. Ideally the spokes of the wheel itself would run at something like a 45 degree angle straight from hub to rim rather than jutting almost straight back from the hub and then turning almost 90 degrees to join the rim at its’ level as this does, but I guess people using the spokes as a handhold had to be accommodated.
I doubt safety was a major consideration. in fact, it looks to me like it could be more lethal than a typical wheel, if the spokes broke at that near 90 degree bend. You’d then be impaled by two near-vertical broken-off spears. I’d prefer to take my chances with the wheel instead.
Any significant collision in one of these and the steering column is killing the rear passenger, after it cut the driver in half. What’s left of the driver is buried under the engine now occupying the passenger compartment.
While the dished wheel was an early safety feature (part of Ford’s 1956 Lifeguard package). However, I agree with others, this particular wheel does not seem to have safety as a consideration in it’s design.
Hi Glen,
“… Reverse being at the bottom of the transmission quadrant …”
Reverse at the bottom of the quadrant was more common in the 50s and 60s than not. From personal experience this was the case with Packard, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Cadillac, and Studebaker.
The only makes I drove back then that used the now common format were Chevrolet and Ford. File this conundrum under “Go Figure”.
Chrysler products were in a class by themselves (they always were back then) with levers coming out of the dash in 1955 before perfecting the art (IMO) with push buttons to the left of the steering wheel.
For a great read on this subject take a look at JPC’s write up at: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-the-mysterious-disappearance-of-the-chrysler-pushbutton-automatic-a-government-conspiracy/
I spent a fair amount of time around one of these as a kid. A neighbor lady drove one. She was my cub scout den mother for one year and also watched my sister and me after school around that time too. The car would have been really old then, but it was in good shape, showing very little rust for a white car.
I remember the speedometer that (in some way I have forgotten) turned different colors as you got faster. I think I led a bunch of cub scouts in encouraging her to get it up to where we could see red, but she wouldn’t do it. It had never occurred to me at the time that it had a bigger engine than my mother’s 64 Cutlass.
Olds came back to those wide-set lights in the 67-68 Cutlasses (and 67 88). I think they pulled off the later versions better. I liked the look as a kid (maybe because I just got used to it), but looking at this one afresh it is kind of a mess.
I rode in a neighbor’s ’60 Olds once or twice from evening elementary school programs, and was fascinated by the color-changing speedometer line!
The speedo in the 59-61s (and maybe the 62s) were of the “thermometer” type where the indicator moved from left to right across the scale. Up to about 35 to 40 mph, the indicator was green, at which point an orange indicator moved up from below to cover the green. Then around 70 mph, a red indicator would move up to obscure the orange.
To give you an idea as to how much lower travel speeds were back in early 60s PA, I only saw the red once when my uncle was passing a slower car on a 2-lane road. Maximum speed limits were 50 mph on 2-lane roads, 60 on 4-lane divided roads, and a whopping 65 mph on the PA Turnpike, a road I never traveled on until 1967.
I owned a ’62 98 with the change color ribbon speedo. The Olds had a worn out suspension that discouraged high speeds, but that didn’t stop me from testing a friends claim that the Olds speedo turned black at 100. (It doesn’t).
Yes, it’s a mess but I kind of like it because its such a mess. I don’t know if I’d want to own it, but I can appreciate it.
I always thought it was bonkers that GM bothered with different frames, different suspensions, and different transmissions but then had all five divisions use the same front doors and windows. Why spend the money to make the parts nobody sees (or most likely, cares about) look different, and make the parts everyone does see look the same? Did most buyers really care how the frame is shaped?
One question I do have about pre-1965 GM full-size cars: did each brand use a different floor pan? That is, did cars with perimeter frames have differently-shaped footwells than cars with X-frames?
Same query, and isn’t the floorpan part of the shell?
The cars with the X-frame might have a floorpan that was flat under the seat ends while the cars with perimeter frames might have had a few inches less room at the seat ends….I am guessing. That is why the question was asked. Also, when replacing a rusted out floorpan, were they interchangeable?
As to the floor pans, they are part of the inner body structure. And your question is one that I’ve been pondering. My guess is that there were more than one floor pan versions, because of the two different frame designs. These kind of variations were acceptable, as they were built in large volumes, and the engineering wasn’t that difficult.
The expensive parts of body engineering are the cowl, the main inner body structure and roof, and of course the doors. Two different floor pans would not have been that big a deal.
The floor pans were indeed different between the various makes. When Olds and Pontiac adopted the Roto-Matic the transmission tunnel was made significantly smaller than tunnel on Buicks and Chevys.
That’s mostly what I was getting at rather than the cost of having multiple floorpans. It seemed that an X frame of any sort would lead to a bigger tunnel that the center passengers front and rear would have to straddle with their legs. The intrusion from perimeter frames is less intrusive, but I always liked the wide all-the-way-to-the-door footwells (especially in the rear seat) you get with a unibody car and figured an X frame would offer that same advantage. Sit in the back of a post-downsized B body or Panther and you’ll see what I mean about narrow footwells, especially when sitting three abreast.
It’s been a long time, but my mother and aunt both bought new 1961 GM 2-doors, my mother a Chevy Bel Air sedan and my aunt an Olds Dynamic 88 hardtop (bubble top). The Chevy had the X-frame, and the Olds the perimeter frame (I don’t know if Olds still retained the center X-member).
My recollection is the hump in the rear (where my brother and I always had to sit) was much larger in the Chevy than in the Olds. But I don’t remember any difference in the height or width of the sills in getting into the back seat. As I recall in the front, there were no sills to step over — the floor was level from the center hump to the door openings.
Tradition. Historically, auto manufacturers made the chassis and engine (although many smaller makes bought engines too). Way back in the day, that’s what was by far the most critical element, and what differentiated one make from another. Bodies were seen almost as an appendage to the chassis, and typically were made by a different company. Expensive brands almost never made bodies, and the buyer picked the body style and maker. Even the Model T used bodies made by Dodge Brothers for quite a few years.
Fisher was one of the largest body builders, and supplied GM along along with others, like Fleetwood. GM eventually bough Fisher (partly in 1919 and full in 1926) but it continued to operate with a very high degree of autonomy until 1984. It was tasked with engineering and building the bodies for all the GM divisions, who did the engineering for their chassis. Traditions die hard.
The engineering and building of bodies was actually very complex, and the concept of sharing bodies among various divisions started at GM in 1929 when Pontiac, which was struggling at the time, got a Chevy body with a longer front end. The portion of the body in front of the cowl was not Fisher’s responsibility.
During the somewhat desperate rush to completely re-design the ’59 cars after the ’57 Chrysler cars came out, it was deemed that the one styled by the Buick studio was the best, and thus would be the basis for the bodies Fisher then had to engineer and build for all the divisions. The other divisions had to use the complete inner body structure (the most complicated part to engineer and build) and had to use the Buick front doors right down to its outer skin (yes, all the ’59 G cars have the same identical front door), but were able to make some changes to the outer sheet metal for visual differentiation. But obviously the basic roof and door structures were all identical.
Back then many buyers were still loyal to this system of brand differentiation being largely in the chassis, engine, transmission, etc. Buick had very different Dynaflow transmissions, for instance. Keep in mind that many buyers in the 50s and early 60s were folks who grew up in the ’20s and ’30s, and were deeply steeped in this tradition.
Of course it was archaic, and needed to end. Roger Smith did that, by essentially eliminating Fisher as a division, and consolidating all other development/engineering aspects into two semi-autonomous groups: C-P (Chevrolet-Pontiac) and B-O-C (Buick-Olds-Cadillac) It needed to happen, but the chaos and unintended consequences of this were absolutely mammoth, and that hurt GM even more during this very difficult decade. But it was inevitable.
On top of what Paul stated, GM was much more decentralized than the other big American car manufactures, in particular Ford. GM had a lot of autonomy within each of its divisions and until the body sharing started with Chevrolet and Pontiac, each were independently operating in the same corporation. Once GM realized that the body structures could be shared among divisions, it spread through out all divisions, with the creation of the A, B and C bodies. While the body structures were shared, each division still independently engineered their own cars, and simply used the body shell as their starting point. This meant they continued to use their own chassis and engines. It also meant that each division built upon existing technology from its own division, such as Buick using coil springs with a torque tube drive well past the others.
As time went on more and more sharing between the divisions took place, but it was a very lengthy process. Early signs were with the mid-sized 1964 A-bodies which shared much of the chassis and body engineering, much more so than the full-size cars of that time. It wasn’t until 1977, the full-size cars used essentially the same, chassis, suspension and brakes and of course GM was moving to “corporate engines” rather than divisional engines.
We also saw the reduction of basic body structures, with the first attempt in 1950 with the B and C body sharing one basic structure. GM reverted to three body structures, but by 1959, the A-body was eliminated and as per the 1950 model all fullsize cars shared one basic body shell that could be stretched and changed to suit all cars from Chevrolet to Cadillac. Of course as Paul states above, Roger Smith really mixed things up once he started running the show.
I understand how and why things got this way; I just think GM realized later than they should have that it wasn’t necessary anymore. The 1965 full-sizers went to shared frames; was there any revolt from GM old-timers after learning their favored brand didn’t have it’s own frame design anymore? And this is when Fisher Body was still a separate division and would be for nearly another two decades.
That GM was less bothered by shared engineering on the mid-sized cars, and almost no differentiation in small cars (starting in the ’70s) was a sign that they again kept a tradition going for too long. I recall when I was an older kid looking over the brochures in the showroom in 1976, seeing ones for “Chevelle”, “Nova”, “Camaro”, and one that just said “Chevrolet” that I assumed was a full-line brochure. It wasn’t, it was just the Caprice and Impala – you know, the real Chevrolets. The big ones. To GM, the full-size (i.e., large) cars were the real ones and thus still worth each having their own engines and body panels. But as has been noted here, American buyers began moving away from large cars en masse by the mid-’60s. Why did it take until 1980 before you could easily tell a small Buick from a small Chevy? (and even that didn’t last). But small cars weren’t a tradition yet. And of course, the Sloanian ladder stuck around long after the ladder was only about two feet tall and the first four rungs were almost in the same place.
You hit the nail on the head with the reference to the “Chevrolet” nameplate applying to only the full-size cars in the 60s and 70s. This is the same logic behind the term “standard” sized cars (meaning full-sizers), and everything smaller was therefore impled to be substandard.
It fooled a lot of people, including my mother, who by 1967 still insisted on a full-size car (a 2-door Bel Air) rather than going for what would have been better suited to our family at the time, a 4-door Chevelle.
It was the same with other American brands. Ford in the mid-Sixties would run full-line ads listing the “Ford family of fine cars” (or some such) including “Falcon – Fairlane – Ford – Thunderbird”, ‘Ford’ in that context meaning the full-size, standard size, but really the big ones. Pontiac used ‘Pontiac’ in that way in a few places at least until 1981, Buick until 1984.
It was not archaic.It was the soul of the divisions and what made GM special.Roger Smith started the destruction of the identity of the cars with that damn badge engineering which by the late 80s was destroying the cars in earnest.It did not “have “to happen.That kind if thinking is nihilistic and totally appalling.
Didn’t Lee Petty have a ’59 Olds that was so fast that it was difficult to keep its lap count accurate at the new
Daytona Superspeedway?
This is good analysis, Paul and thanks. I agree about the “styling”.
I lived in a neighborhood with lots of Oldsmobiles and was as familiar with them as with any make. I liked them.
My only note is that Oldsmobile recovered quickly from this failure with what I still consider to be the nicest 1961 full size GM car – especially the two door hardtops.
No no, the back of the Olds is much better than the front. Inscrutable cool red eyes above a shark mouth, atop a jet-outlet bumper……alright, a strange forward n’ backward combination to have affixed to one’s bum, but a cohesive jumble it works out to be.
That front, however, is not complex. It is lazy. Did old Irv Brougham start on one side, then find, “My, what a wide and exhausting face this is” and have to move the inner lamp cross-eyed inwards and then add a warty pimple blinker in between to fill in time? And did he think the Corvair dip would work when spread across such a gormless face such that it would constitute a thrusty frown, instead of just forming his next attempt to break up great swathes of width that it turned out patently to be?
Pah! A face only a mother of rather ill-born conjoined twins could love, this.
A question, what is meant when you say “all the ’59’s were based on the Buick body shell”, by which I mean, what constitutes that, given that doors, fenders, trunks, hoods, and possibly dimensions and (it seems from this) floorpans appear to be unique to each division?
See my comment further up for more detail. They all used the same inner body structure, which is what counts. And the same door and roof structures. The outer skin, which attaches to the inner body structure, was of course different in many places, but the front doors (from the Buick) all used the same exact door, outer skin included. That set the template for the basic body side curvature, etc.
The inner body, especially the cowl, roof and doors are the difficult and complex ones to engineer and build. Slapping on different front and rear fenders, hoods and trunks is easy-peasy.
In 1965, when I was 8 years old, I remember ‘Uncle Al’, a seedy, balding, middle-age boy friend of one of my relatives drove one of these. It really looked ancient, and creepy, next to the ‘modern’ cars.
Otherwise, for me, the only 59 – 60 GM cars that look relatively decent are the Buicks, and maybe, the ’59 Chevy. Unfortunately, I find the ‘dogleg’ windshields make all of them look horribly dated.
This Olds reminds me of some huge, grotesque, gaudy chromium beast, waiting for it’s opportunity to devour small children!
Funny, because my 6th grade teacher drove a ’59 Olds, four door HT. Menacing. He was a hero to us, because he drove dirt-track stick cars on weekends.
I know the windshield with its reverse-canted and gracefully curved A-pillars is supremely impractical, but for me it represents the pinnacle of the space-age look (and Harley Earl’s dreams). No one did it better than GM in 1959-60 (although Mercury came close), and we shall never see anything like it again. As a kid at the time, I thought GM had gone retrograde with the return of an (almost) normally shaped windshield in 1961.
I’ve been re-reading car magazines of the 50’s, comparing the Buick performance to the Olds, The Invicta tested (4 door Vista roof, 401 V8, Twin Turbine trans) ran 0-60 in 8.2 seconds and got an average of 17-19 mpg at 60 mph. The Olds (Super 88 2 door Scenicoupe, 394 V8, 3 speed Hydramatic) ran 0-60 in 11 to 13 seconds and got 10 to 13 mpg. Also the Buick cornered nearly flat, while the Olds attempted a pillow soft ride lost most of it;s cornering ability. The large finned aluminium front brake drums gave Buicks the best brakes in the country, the smaller brakes on the Olds disappeared on the 3rd stop from 60 mph (or 1 stop from 80 mph) and they considered it dangerous to drive. I personally loved all the ’59 GM design’s (Cadillac preferred ’58) Buick the best, want another, have had 5 ’59 Buick’s, 2 Impala’s, 3 Olds, 4 Pontiac’s, 2 Cadillac’s (had 12 1958 Caddy’s) still drive 2 1963 Electra convertibles (one has 458,000 miles), and 1964 and 65 Riviera’s which are all faster and better mpg than ’59’s Also have 5 1964-65-66 Imperial’s, 1 1956 DeSoto Fireflite, 2 1957 Plymouth Belvedere’s, but those are another story. Can;t find all pic’s this is the ’60 Electra.
that doesn’t seem right, the Buicks were almost always the slowest because of their transmissions, which were true slush boxes
that Invicta was running Chrysler 300 times and they were in no way as fast as the Chrysler
Tom McCahill got considerably slower times for that same Buick and he was the premier tester of the day
Note: this poster consistently claims performance stats for his favorite cars that are obvious exaggerations and do not jive with historical records. He did this here repeatedly a few years back, and now he’s returned and is doing it again. I’ve pointed it out numerous times to him, citing magazine tests that I have or found. It’s not at all helpful for the record, and I’m probably just going to delete his comments in the future if it keeps up.
Check out Brooklands Buick (1948-1962) and Oldsmobile (1948-1963) books. these repeat original articles from those years, I was surprised myself the Olds weren’t faster all through the years, and since I had a 1958 98 Starfire convertible several years (with J2) was amazed the fastest Olds recorded through all those years was a 1958 Olds 98 at 8.5 sec 0-60. On my 58, after blowing the 371, I put a 394 out of a friend’s ’59 98 Scenicoupe in the ’58, which weighed hundreds of pounds less than the larger ’59’s, in the ’58, 0-60 times dropped from 8.5 to slightly under 8 seconds, but I was sticking to stock reported performance in the articles. Anyone who thinks Buick’s are slow in comparison to other US cars has not been around them or driven them PROPERLY. One can tell from a test if 0-60 was run in low or drive gear, Buick from 1954 on will easily exceed 60 mph (through the years the 401-425 could run 70-80 mph in LOW) the magazine test were usually run in low, in drive 1 to 2 seconds can be added, but if you’re running 0-60’s low is faster. In one ’57 Buick Century test they stated ‘The ’57 Century, properly tuned runs 0-60 in 8to 8.1 sec and is one of three fastest cars built in this country.’ McCahill was a favorite of mine in 1963 testing a Wildcat coupe he pointed out the engine was low miles and nowhere near broken in, it still ran 7.3 seconds 0-60, and Buick progressively improved the Twin Turbine transmission, by late 50’s into the 60’s the big Buick’s were running 17-19 mpg, considerably better than Old’s mpg BTW, I did have one terrifically fast ’62 Olds 98 coupe, everything must have come together at the factory the day it was built, it was faster than any other Olds I had. You say I have performance exaggerations for favorite cars, if I didn’t do it, I don’t say it, for years my auto restoration business allowed me to own or experience nearly everything on wheels, and I love them all, the ones that I kept, my ‘favorites’ are the ones I found to be the best. In reference to the magazine test’s, check them out, better still, drive the subjects if you can, or talk to the old fart’s like me who were there and drove then, in my case, still do. I have enjoyed looking at CC, takes my mind off friends dying and the lady love of my life passing in 2017, that happens when you get old. My posting’s I did thinking experiences might be enjoyed by other’s. There was a saying in the 60;s ‘No brag, just fact.’ my son, and friends left, all tell anyone new to meeting me,’Don’t try to do anything, especially in a car, like Lar does, he makes it look easy, you may die trying. No brag, just fact.’ BTW, I know Mopar performance well, still have 8 of them, but my ’63 Electra and 64 Riviera are faster, handle like torsion bar Mopars, are more dependable they look stock, butI never said they were. What I’ve posted has been true, really check it out, I won’t post any more, have to drop the top and enjoy life. God bless, and best wishes to everyone.
As a rule, and based on empirical evidence circa 1961:
High end 4 barrel Chryslers, Desotos, and Dodges were the fastest off the line. Think Torque-flite.
High end 4 barrel Olds and Pontiacs were pretty good off the line and better when punching at speed (30-50 mph). Think cubic inches and the choice of 4 gears (in most cases).
No knowledgeable person with a stock Buick would run any of the above. They knew it; we knew it. But they were nice cars all the same, especially the more rounded 1960s.
We all avoided the maniacs with 4 speed 409 Biscaynes; they were crazy (both the cars and the drivers). And faster than all the rest.
You knew a driver was a player if he had moon eyes behind the front wheels.
Not subtle but very effective.
I’m about a half generation younger than you, but all of what you said sounds about right, given the fact that I was pretty heavily into cars at that time, although too young to drive. And driven the way you describe, none of those cars would get better than single-digit gas mileage! BTW, love those moon eyes (standard issue decals in model car kits at the time).
The test data from this era is pretty inconsistent for a lot of cars. However, since it was brought up, here is some test data I have:
1959 Olds Super 88: 315 hp 394 V8, 3.23 ratio- Hotrod Magazine
0-60: 8.4 seconds
1/4 mile: 16.7 secs @ 83 mph
1959 Olds Super 88: 315 hp 394 V8, 3.23 ratio – Motor Life Magazine
0-60: 10.3 seconds
1/4 mile: n/a
1960 Oldsmobile Super 88, 315hp 394 V8, 3.07 ratio – Motor Life Magazine
0-60: 11.2 seconds
1/4 mile: n/a
1960 Oldsmobile Super 88, 315 hp 394 V8, 3.07 ratio – Hot Rod Magazine
0-60: 9 seconds
1/4 mile: 17.0 secs @ 83 mph
1959 Buick Invicta, 325 hp 401 V8, 3.23 ratio – Motor Life
0-60: 9.3 seconds
1/4 mile: n/a
1959 Buick LeSabre, 250 hp 364 V8, 3.23 ratio – Hot Rod
0-60: 9.5 seconds
1/4 mile: 17.75 secs @ 84.9 mph
1960 Buick Invicta, 325 hp 401 V8, 3.23 ratio – Motor Life
0-60: 9 seconds
1/4 mile: n/a
1960 Buick Invicta, 325 hp 401 V8, 3.23 ratio – Motor Trend
0-60: 11.5 seconds
1/4 mile: 18.4 secs @ 79.9 mph
and one of the ’59 Pontiac’s
The ad copy refers to “king pin angle”, presumably caster. Question: did these cars still use king pins as strictly defined now, or did they have spindles with ball joints, and the ad merely uses the older term which people might be more familiar with?
They used ball joints. King pins went away in the mid ’50s. I believe the last year was ’54 for Chevy and Pontiac, and probably a year earlier or so for the bigger GM cars.
’56 the last year for “bigger” car kingpins.
I remember during the ’60s, our next-door neighbor drove a white ’59 Pontiac Safari station-wagon. Wow – four tail-fins! Even at less than 10 years old, that car was pretty rusty!
I have often felt that when it came to styling, GM gave all the divisions, EXCEPT Chevrolet, free rein. Chevrolet? MUST always look cheaper than the others.
In this case, it looks like all the divisions had their styling for the 59 models “locked in” and at the last minute somebody noticed that Oldsmobile was no where to be found. So yeah, the 59 Olds looks like a rush job cobbled out of bits and pieces left over from the other cars.
What an unattractive car! Unless I were absolutely devoted to the brand I wouldn’t have bought one. Were all of the Big Three and the Independents (what a great name for a late 50s rock and roll tribute band!) infected by the Ugly Virus – UgVid-59 – just like today? I would have walked into a GM showroom and turned around. Perhaps I would have gone down the street to VW and lusted over their Karmann Ghia and wondered if my kids would have liked that back seat.
Other than the Caddy and the Ghia, what was the best looking car of 1959?
That’s a QOTD if I ever saw one.
Depends how you slice it. My pick, if you divvy them up by nationality :
Edsel
BMW 507
Citroën DS 19
Lancia Flaminia
Alvis TD 21
GAZ Chaika 13 (nominated for Eastern Bloc as a whole)
Struggling to find a Japanese one – really not their best era. Prince Skyline by default.
Well, over at Ford they put together a pleasing design that actually came within a few thousand units of beating Chevy in the sales race.
How did this thing outsell the Buick? Unbelievable. With all the angles going off in all directions this body on this Olds is a mess. I never noticed the backward canted angle on the Olds body. Maybe the rear of the thing is too busy to notice those details, or the observer is afraid of getting shot by those cannons atop the taillights. The Buick is much cleaner. I still like the Chevy the best.
I recognize lots of the photos from previous CCs. The 59 GMs have had good coverage at CC, deservedly or not. One way or another they are a study in design.
Looking at the Pontiac again, it has the flat roof, on a four door, whereas the Olds four door has the sloped roof. I thought ’59 GMs all had the same rule – sloped roof on the two doors and flat top on the four door, but I see it varied. I don’t know which looked better. I think I preferred the sloped roof overall.
Great comparison piece.
All the GM cars had the same basic body styles available: 2 and 4 door sedans (like this one, with sloped roof), two door hardtop (Bubble-top) and four door hardtop (with flying wing flat roof). And of course convertibles and wagons.
Buick was still suffering from a poor quality reputation earned by the 1955 models.
The 1955 models broke sales records, but the Buick factory wasn’t prepared to build that many cars properly in one year.
They also had earned a reputation as especially bad gas guzzlers because of the combination of powerful V-8 engines and inefficient Dynaflow transmission.
Lee, you’re comparing an Olds 4 dr. sedan with a Pontiac 4 dr. hardtop. All the GM divisions in ‘59 had the same roofs for each model.
I do not care for the widely separated headlights. To me it makes the front end look “googly-eyed”.
If I have to pick a ’59 GM F/S to look at, I choose the El Camino, followed closely by the Chevrolet Sedan Delivery.
Man, that is pretty ugly, this from a guy who owned a ’60 Chevy. I didn’t see much good in the front until those last pictures. So I looked up some more and it really does look much better when it’s in good condition. The rear is pretty interesting at first glance but the more you look at it the worse it gets. Jay Leno even has one.
This was when quad headlights were still new, nobody was quite sure how to arrange them, and GM was the wildest with the variations:
* In ’59 the Chevy and Pontiac had the conventional side-by-side layout,
* Buick had them slanted (my favorite),
* Caddy had them side-by-side but slightly separated, and
* Olds had them widely separated with the parking light in between.
* We had to wait for ’63 to get stacked headlights in the Pontiac (Nash had them in ’57 of course), and
* Hidden headlights in the Corvette.
I think that covers all the ways anybody ever arranged their quads!
Dodge could not make up its mind:
The above Dodge was a 1962, this is a 1963:
Imperial’s pedestals certainly deserves mention
Early ’59s equipped with the optional autotronic eye had a unique headlight feature Olds called the safety salute. When the eye detected oncoming lights, it switched the outboard lights to low beam 1st, then after a delay, switched off the inboard lights entirely. This made dimming the lights a 2 step process rather than the single step process common to every other make of car.
Spent hours trying to troubleshoot a new owners complaint on a used Olds he had bought from our dealer. No one at our Ford garage was familiar with this Olds feature. We eventually had to ask the Olds garage for help. That’s when we found out it was supposed to work that way. GMs tried some weird ideas!
The ’59 Cadillac is over the top (especially the Fleetwood, with the fake side scoops), but this Olds is truly unfortunate. The strange stops and starts of bursts of chrome, the rear wheel openings that call to mind the ’56 Olds (never my favorite; I liked the ’57s much better), the strange taillight pods are all odd. Then there’s a universal feature of ’59 GM cars: besides all of them having Buick doors, the pillared sedans all have a peculiar vertical rectitude to the B pillars and the rear door frames just before the C pillars. It’s as though GM grafted the 54-56 sedan roofs to the ’59 bodies. Really, GM? That was the best you could do for the pillared 4-door sedans? And am I the only one who has noticed that GM kept that vertical rectitude in the 1961-1964 station wagons, too?
I always have to remind myself that cars from the late 1950’s don’t really photograph well (at least to me) relative to their appearance “in person”. I’m sure this Olds is no exception. I actually rather like the overall appearance; truth be told I’d prefer this to the Chevrolet. Speaking of Chevrolet, I’m hoping we get some shots later on of that ‘69 Custom Coupe hiding in the background 🙂
Growing up, cars like this were foreign and a bit weird to me, and sometimes ugly. I was much more used to the cleaner and more conservative vehicle designs of about 1964 and up, the jukebox and space age cars were mostly relegated to the poorer side of town, if even there – even the poor had to move up the automotive food chain fairly quickly in rust country.
Sometimes I find myself bored with the square lines of cars like the 1964 big Olds or 1965 Chrysler, and find myself wandering back in time a bit further. With the right colors and options, the 1959 Oldsmobile isn’t such a bad car.
I discovered a very interesting website many years ago, the site belongs to one Kris Trexler, who put up a lot of interesting stuff on early color television. He has an interest in cars, and has collected several very low mile and amazing survivor cars, among them a very attractive 1959 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight.
The site is quite old and can be a bit finicky to navigate, and the photos are all saved in far too small format for modern internet use (did I just write that!). But, his cars, including the Ninety-Eight, are just gorgeous.
Poke around at the entry for a particular car and you’ll be rewarded with many detailed photos….
http://www.kingoftheroad.net
Mr. Trexler’s Olds…..
I’ve previously noticed similarity in the ’59 Buick and ’62 Valiant rear end lines, angles, shapes, and curves—but the ’59 Buick pic here really hammers on it for me.
Not sure if the front isn’t even worse than the rear, to my eyes. Those widely-spaced quads are just plain weird, even for 1959.
You could just add an additional pair of lamps in there, like they did for a contemporary French film.
Un homme et une femme?
“La Belle Américaine” circa 1960. The car is the star in this movie. They customised an Olds convertible slightly just to make it anonymous (the car is never referred to by brand in the film).
While I’m no fan of the styling compared to other ’59 models, what impresses me most about this car is that it’s more-or-less intact after 61 years. Still running. Still driving.
No one will (more than likely) ever restore it. And eventually it’ll die a mechanical death of some sort. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the engine’s never been pulled.
I see what you’re talking about, but I don’t think it’s in front of the letters; when I zoom in it looks to me as though it’s behind the grille. What could it be? Donno. Bug screen…? I think not; it looks too opaque for that. A/C condenser or fluid cooler of some kind? No. Chunk of cardboard to get the engine up to operating temperature because the thermostat’s faulty or missing? To me that looks closer to the mark.
lolwut?! For real? Then my question isn’t about what was in the water at GM in the late ’50s (hallucinogens seem a sturdy guess) but what was in the water at GM in the late ’70s through early ’90s (Xanax? Quaaludes? Diazepam? Thorazine? All of the above?).
Also, it looks as though the driver’s door glass is cracked. That’s something almost never seen any more, cracked side or rear glass, though we still often see cracked windshields. It’s because of the two kinds of safety glass: windshields are laminated, and most all other glass is tempered. But a great deal of side and rear glass was laminated prior to the early 1960s. Extra, Extra, Read All About It.
I agree that out of the 1959 GM panic attack over Chrysler’s ‘57 models that Oldsmobile looked like a mess of left over ideas. To Oldsmobile’s credit in IMO the taillights were a nice bit of design continuity – I always think of the ‘57 model when I see the ‘59 taillights.
It is rather odd Oldsmobile returned to the parking light between the headlights in ‘67-‘68 which I think was a successful look on the Cutlass. The ‘72-‘73 Cadillac also had the parking light between the headlights, which the buying public seemed to like.
The lack of true safety glass on side windows is kind of shocking. Wasn’t Safety glass invented around 1900?
The 1950s were a Snoopy Dance with America standing tall in a world devastated by WWII. With GM the dance culminated with the ’59s. The head honchos at GM had been born from the late 1890s to early 1900s. The typical guy heading, say Oldsmobile, had been with the General since the 1930s, if not the 1920s. One of these guys standing next to the cartoonish Olds or Pontiac is almost laughable today. Autos in the 50s changed so fast. A grownup driver today, pulled over by a cop driving a Crown Vic, could have been driven home from the hospital after being born, by his father driving the same car.
I just like that this ’59 Olds has a big forehead like me.
An ugly artifact from the years before I was born. My grandparents owned a 1959 Olds 88, a car they liked very much for its smooth, comfortable ride and effortless Rocket V8 power. Unfortunately, it was totaled in a horrific accident about 18 months later that my grandmother, who was driving, barely survived. They replaced the car with a 1960 Olds 98, which they did not like at all for reasons long forgotten, and in turn traded that car in for a 1961 Chrysler New Yorker with every available option a year or so later, which they then kept for several years. They were probably among the very few people who traded a GM make for a Chrysler in 1961, and that ‘61 Chrysler was no less bizarre than either of the two Oldsmobiles which preceded it.
If only my grandparents had remained faithful to Olds: the relative tastefulness of the 1961 88s and 98s contrasted mightily not only with their 1959-60 predecessors but also the late Exner period Chrysler they chose instead.
This paragraph from the book, A Century of Automotive Style, 100 Years of American Car Design by Michael Lamm and Dave Holls, page 180:
“Oldsmobile’s identity symbol had long been the rocket and, for 1959, Olds designers integrated the rocket directly into the new model’s beltline. This was another of those strange tales that characterizes the development of the ‘59’s. Oldsmobile design chief Art Ross had a 10-foo-tall ‘rocket’ standing near his studio door. “One day Mr. Earl walked into our studio” noted Ross’s assistant Irv Rybicki, “and he didn’t like what we had going. At the entrance to the studio, Art Ross had positioned this rocket—the standard Oldsmobile symbol at the time… So as Earl was leaving…he stopped and stared at this rocket. He looked over at me and said, ‘Get a couple of fellows to move that over here to the clay’ So I did, and he had them pick it up and hold it along-side the clay model. And he said to me, ‘That’s what I want you to do Irv: Create a rocket up there at the beltline.’ And that’s how the tubular beltline on the 1959 Olds door got started. It went through maybe 100 variations before we [got what we] finally produced, but that was the beginning of Oldsmobile’s 1959 theme.”
There you have it, straight from the men who were in on panicked insanity that produced the 1959 Olds design. Since Olds had continually featured high-mounted ‘hot jet exhaust’ taillights since the ‘50 98, the tubular shape was ideal to continue the theme. Unhappily, the long rocket form related not in the least to the remainder of the design themes, rendering an overall mish-mash look. Suppose the public was used this from Oldsmobile given the 1958’s were just as bad. Personally, Of the ‘59’s, the 98 Holliday Sport Sedan ‘flat-tops’ plastered with chrome trim and two-tone was best, or the 98 convertible. The worst was the base model Dynamic 88 two-door sedan displaying all its stylistic weirdness without chrome and multi-colors to distract.
Did anyone have a ’59 Super 88 “Holiday” that would do a wheelie? The first time (and last) I stomped the gas to the floor, the front end left the road, and I wound up in a ditch. As an after thought–durable–tough–Oh yeah!!! I hit a 400+ pound hog in a curve while traveling at 90+ mph. The car went air-borne, then sliid across the road, through a ditch, through a fence and slid about 30 or 40 yards into a pasture. Two friends I worked with (they loaded the hog ad took it home) and four friends from my hometown stopped. and the 7 of us picked the car up and carried it back to the road. The incident caused no damage to the car at all. I am sure glad I wasn’t in a Ford, Plymouth. etc. If I had been, I’m sure I wouldn’t be posting this.