We are taking a look back exactly one-half century to 1963. We haven’t singled out any one make – being made in 1963 is all that counts!
For those who were around then, and for those who weren’t, let’s take a moment to reflect upon that most remarkable year.
Fidel Castro visited the Soviet Union.
The Birds, a film by Alfred Hitchcock, was released.
The Beatles released their first album, Please Please Me.
The film Lawrence of Arabia won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Auto manufacturer Lamborghini is founded in Italy.
So keep checking back all day and tomorrow and maybe even the next day. We’ve discovered we have a lot of cars to write about.
I will be right here. Funny, but when growing up the line of demarcation between an old car and a modern car seemed to me to be the line between 1963 and 1964. Is it the difference between being four years old and being five? Maybe it was the fact that we got a new car in 1964 (an Olds Cutlass) which was a brand new style that year. But my father also had a 63 Chevy wagon company car, so maybe not.
For whatever reason, cars from 1964 and up seem more modern to me than those from 1963 on back. So, I’m looking forward to a week of “old” cars for a change. 🙂
I go for 1965 or 1966. For 1965 each of the Big Three substantially redesigned their full-sized cars — and switched to a very different look. In 1966 that design approach was carried over to mid-sized cars and, in the case of GM, personal coupes. A very different look from the 1964s.
That said, the 1964 GM mid-sized cars did anticipate some of the late-60s design trends. They just hadn’t yet adopted the full coke bottle look.
I agree with 1965, the year Cadillac said bye to the real fin. After that it became a stylized design que. I don’t think there were any fins left on any car by ’65
The other big change was the use of curved side glass. By 1966 everyone except for the Chevy II (and dying Studebaker) had it. That one design change made a huge difference.
The 1963 Rambler was the first lower-priced car to offer this feature; in 1964 GM’s mid-sized cars adopted it. Almost everyone else switched over in 1965 except for Ford’s and Chrysler’s mid-sized cars, which weren’t redesigned until the following year.
I was never around back then, but from my younger perspective the line for modern is after 64. 65 saw the intro of the boxy Fords and Mopars, as well as the bigger and hippy GM cars.
The Billetproof “traditional” hot rod shows only let in cars/trucks from 1964 and earlier. I thought I read before that that rule was specifically to exclude Mustangs, but I agree that there were a lot of styling changes happening around that time in the whole industry.
Back then there were three choices for car shows. The first was the professionally run annual new car shows, where all the local dealers got together at the local arena so you could see everybody’s new cars at once, pick up the flyers, and decide which dealer(s) you were going to visit for the serious shopping.
Then there was the antique car shows. Most likely 75% Fords, Model T’s, A’s and early V-8’s. Nothing newer than 1942. And only open to cars which were either in original condition, or had been restored to factory stock.
Finally, the custom shows. That’s where all that weird stuff, cars that were “worth the cost of the engine” (yeah, that’s how it was explained to me back then), the hot rods, dragsters, street rods, anything that wouldn’t have been allowed at the antique car show. And yes, there were age limits and serious standards. You didn’t just go driving in there with a factory fresh 1962 Biscayne 2-door with a 409, four-speed, and moon hub caps – unless you’d done some serious custom repaint, striping, louvering, etc. to it.
Cruise nights? Didn’t exist as a car show. That was what the teenagers were doing on a normal Friday night. And while the cars were important (as in, you needed to have one, even if it meant borrowing dad’s), the hunt for the opposite sex was way more important. Friday night was cruise night, Saturday night was reserved for the planned date (well, that’s why you were out Friday night).
What’s all this “back then” stuff? Billetproof car shows are happening today. The Viva Las Vegas car show has similar rules as well. My point was that that there is a whole car culture today that recognizes that a sea change happened in automotive design (among other things) right in the 1963-64 period.
http://www.billetproof.com/
http://www.vivalasvegas.net/car-show
I gotta get out to one of these shows someday.
I see what you’re talking about… I’ve got a ’63 Imperial and a ’68 Polara. You can really see that “something” changed in those years. The Polara looks much more modern and, when taking them to shows, the Polara gets much less notice.
Of course, Chrysler over-played the bug-eyed Imperials. Luckily, the corp ran out of money and didn’t apply the styling of the downsized Chryslers. Engle’s changes in ’64 provided a more modern look, I think.
I was minus-10 in 1963. But definitely some very, very cool cars around then so I look forward to the next few posts!
I was in junior high school in 1963 and have many memories from then. We had an open campus at school (as indeed we had had in elementary school) and at lunch we would walk 5 or 6 blocks to this cheap diner to eat greasy hamburgers, listen to the jukebox and play the pinball machines. For me the dividing line between old cars and new ones would be sometime in the mid-fifties. At point most car brands started to offer optional V-8’s (if they weren’t standard equipment), nearly all vehicles had gone over to 12 volt electrics, etc. However it was not as if someone through a switch and cars all became more modern all at the same time. One example would be brakes, U.S. manufactureres didn’t begin the widespread use of discs until the seventies. Before then you might be able to make one high speed stop with the drum brakes, or you might not; for sure you couldn’t repeatedly use the brakes hard and expect them to stop the car.
Back then, the stealerships would be hawking the ’64 model cars at this time, right?
Speaking of the Beatles, I saw Paul McCartney live last night promoting his new album and doing a concert for a school in New York. Entertaining show and the kids were loving it, too.
The dealership (not ‘stealerships’, guess you really hate anyone making a profit off of you – lemmee guess, you buy nothing but used cars, let somebody else take the depreciation) wouldn’t have been showing the new cars until sometime in October. I can even remember one or two years the introductions being held off until the first week of November.
And there would be absolutely NO selling of next year’s model before opening day. Yeah, my dad would sell one or two before hand, but the customer was buying something he hadn’t see, and wasn’t allowed to see. Dad would have the listing of the model and how it was equipped, and it was sold as a description on paper – delivered the morning of opening day.
I do remember seeing a 59 Chevrolet promotional video announcing the new cars would be available on October 16, 1958. So around this time I would expect the announcement of new 64s
Same out here the new release cars would already be sold but not given to the customer early. You paid and waited on the list for your car to arrive from the assembly plant.
I didn’t give cars a thought until about 1973 and didn’t notice them being different from one another except for color up to that year. My folks had a 1970 New Yorker, and my dad had a Beetle. 1973 was the year I remember hearing about model year changes and actually wondered what that meant.
So 1963 seems very historical to me, and any 1963 car seems very historical to me as well. American cars predominated their home market and the Beetle was the import car of choice. When all you could show on television was shades of gray, it was more exciting to see a new car in actual color at a dealer, wasn’t it? I would imagine that witnessing a new car in 1963 to be similar to arriving at Disneyland after only seeing photos of it.
Look at that cover of Life magazine. Black and white? Of that drooling murderous stooge? It is as appealing to me as would a black and white of Kim Jong-Il.
Perhaps this is why there are so many more memories of these cars for those alive at the time to live it? It was a bigger deal than today?
By the way, the “Birds” was far more funny than frightening to me, “Lawrence of Arabia” a three hour borefest, Fidel Castro an idiot ass, and the Beatles as excellent music at the Save a Lot. My brain cells are not even stimulated anymore by anything pre-1995, music-wise. Thanks Muzak!
1963 was a pretty good year… I was born 😀
I was also made in ’63, just celebrated my 50th in August.
+1 Always wanted to buy a car as old as me, but which one…?
Culturally, 1963 was the final year of the 50’s. The Beatles may have started releasing records (in England) but in the states we hadn’t heard of them yet. At least not until a few small, pictured articles in Time and Newsweek about this new pop music mania in England came up in the early fall of ’63 (which is where I first heard about them). Primarily notable because, for the first time, they wasn’t either a transplanted American act (Gene Vincent) or an English copy (Cliff Richard). England was inventing its own pop culture.
Styles? Skirts were still knee length or slightly over. Mini, as a term, belonged to an odd little English car that was occasionally seen in the states. Hair? Short. Still slicked back with Brylcream. The family vacation in July ’63 was in Quebec (seeing the Catholic shrines), and my parents were horrified at the Montreal inner city kids with their unruly long hair. It actually touched their collars and tops of their ears.
Rebellion? Oh that was the beatniks, still hanging around from the last seven or eight years. Just the same, some people are starting to play acoustic music in ‘folk’ clubs . . . . . . . I think that Zimmerman guy was still up in Minnesota, but looking at moving to New York City.
Then that horrible day in November – and within six months EVERYTHING had changed. The 60’s got born in Dallas. By the following spring, the 50’s were as dead as the president.
Me? I was in the eight grade, had (properly) discovered pop music and rock and roll (thank you Del Shannon) in the past year. Back then, you were a child, played with toys until you finished the sixth grade. Tweens didn’t exist. Then, during that summer between elementary school and junior high, you suddenly, desperately, tried to become a teenager overnight. Some had more success than others. I was definitely in the bottom percentile.
I agree completely. Culturally, 1963 was still the 50s. The 60s (at least as they are commonly thought of) didn’t take hold until 1964 and seemed to last to the start of the 1973 energy crisis. That was when the 70s really began.
I totally agree, it’s hard to put your finger on what it was and when it all changed, but a good example is just looking at print car ads from the era. The Pontiac ad on the right from 1961 shows a stylized casual setting yet still looks formal and really old fashioned compared to the Mustang ad on the left from 1965 that looks fresh and contemporary showing a real car and people doing real stuff. Hard to believe there’s only four years between them.
Actually that Zimmerman guy already moved to NYC in early ’61 & by ’63 was starting to be noticed as a songwriter via Peter, Paul & Mary’s cover version of “Blowing In The Wind”.
Del Shannon was pretty good, thought, wasn’t he?
Thanks for the correction. I’ll admit, I never followed the folk scene until I entered college (fall of ’68). To me, music was played by white guys with long hair and LOUD electric guitars. Didn’t notice Dylan until “Like a Rolling Stone” hit the pop charts (summer of ’65? or what that ’66?). I remember it running alongside “Satisfaction”.
Dad tricked me for years into believing Del Shannon was a Cockney really called Derek Shannon who sang in an American accent!
Although just a youngster, born in 1952, I remember the Kennedy era with a golden glow. Everything seemed better, although that’s almost certainly a child’s view. But I agree with Syke. In November, it all went away, and my roseate view went with it.
As for modern cars, I think they came in with 1958. Probably that’s because my mother ditched her Studebaker for a new Chevy Impala convertible. Yowzah! She would toss my brother and me in the back, drop the top and take off for the hot dog stand with her long dark hair flying. Great fun!
I was 6 a car mad tomboy,we had our first holiday in America in Florida it was so exotic after wet and windy Britain.Dad had a Mk3 Ford Zephyr 6 and Mum a Mk1 Consul both horrid shades of green.Dad hired a big Ford wagon for the 5 of us,it made the Zephyr look tiny.I may have the date wrong but I’m sure all our street came to look at a neighbours new Ford Corsair it looked so modern.I remember Kennedy being shot and the Beatles.,there were exciting times coming soon with cars especially in America.
Carwise? Dad was on his second Impala SS hardtop coupe, only this year finally had the shifter on the floor where it belonged. Mom had yet another Impala (or whatever they called it) six passenger station wagon.
I was still drooling over Corvairs. Yes, over the then-new Sting Ray. Helped by the realization that dad’s dealership got maybe two of them in that year.
1963 was the year I made the transition from graduate school to work. We had a 1955 Mercury Custom 2-door sedan, yellow with a white top and a 3-speed transmission. And a gray 1946 Mercury coupe that I’d bought from an old farmer south of Corvallis. And a dog who made so much noise when left home alone that she traveled everywhere with us, getting dog nose prints all over the rear quarter windows and hair all over the seat and floor. The job in Oregon came to a sudden end the day before I was ready to buy a new 1963 Falcon Sprint hardtop, and the year ended with us back in Tacoma, my wife working at the library there, and I worked part-time in Pop’s construction business while looking for work in my field of chemistry.
With all the 40’s through 70’s cars I’ve owned, the only 1963 I can remember was the bright red Chrysler 300 2-door hardtop with black and white interior that I owned for a couple of years in the early 1990’s.
Two timeless and long-lived (in production)designs had their debut in 1963: The Studebaker Avanti and the Jeep Wagoneer.
I was -20 in 1963. That year, my father turned 18 and finished his senior year in an (all-boys, of course) prep school (everyone in the yearbook photos had a crew-cut called the ‘Ivy League’ or ‘Princeton’) that spring, then headed off to college where many of the students were still wearing coat and ties and it still looked like a scene from ‘Animal House’ or ‘Take Ivy’. He was a college freshman drilling with the ROTC (perhaps still led by our editor-in-chief’s “cousin” Doug) when some one ran out to announce that Kennedy had been shot.
Dad got to drive my grandfather’s ’63 Cadillac to a few dances his senior year. What a date car. In college, after freshman year, he picked up an old XK140, and when a friend wrecked it, moved on to Ford Galaxie convertibles.
My mother, on the other hand, was about 10 at the time and would not meet my father for another 18 years, by which time he’d already been married and divorced once. She never did have a car of her own until they were married
Dad never became a hippie or grew his hair especially long, but by his senior year (’66-’67) he did grow a moustache and after college went into the Peace Corps in Africa for two years, instead of heading to Vietnam.
My impression from his stories and my history major is that the totality of the “50s” didn’t end right away, but it started to fade pretty quickly. However, Dad always said things didn’t get really “out of hand” until after he graduated in ’67. That next year was when all the assassinations and the beginning of the campus protests, etc., really picked up. He always said he and his peers (all born in 1945 and the last pre-Baby Boomers) “just missed” the rise of the counterculture. They were the tail end of the prior generation/youth culture, at least his group, and knew more of mixers than of marijuana when they graduated. My mom’s generation, on the other hand…
1963 I was 5 and began school which meant walking there with my Dad on his way to work and learning what all the cars we passed were coz he knew. Ive owned several 63 model cars mostly Vauxhalls and one EH Holden I rebuilt and kept 8 years, a great year for Holdens as they gained the red 6 copied from Chevrolet but it gave Holdens superior performance to the rest of the Aussie stuff of the time even the 225 Valiant and especially the pathetic Falcon. That Holden was a good car though the first EH I owned rusted away the second one was basicly rust free and original 179 cubes with hydramatic 3 speed auto, wish I had it back though not really they do not steer or stop as well as my Hillman from 59.
1963 was memorable indeed. The Buick Riviera and Corvette Sting ray topped the automotive scene, along with the rare Avanti. As JPC said, there was a bit of a feeling of entering a new automotive age with these pivotal cars.
It was also the year I discovered that I could ride my bike (or the bus) by myself to the dealerships, which opened a new world in terms of total immersion into my favorite things.
I agree with the Sting Ray, as the only 1963 car that really impressed me back then. Oh, and dad bought a Rambler Classic 660 Cross Country that year, trading in the “bat wing” ’59 Chevy.
The British poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) memorialized the year 1963 from the perspective of 1974, with “Annus Mirabilis” (Year of Wonder).
“Annus Mirabilis”
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) –
Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.
Up to then there’d only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) –
Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.
FTR, the poem doesn’t imply that Larkin had been a virgin until age 41; what it means is that, for him, sex only became good at that age.
Larkin was, however, a 40-year-old virgin at driving. But (according to Wiki) he belatedly got his driver’s license in 1963, and bought a Singer Gazelle.
1963 was the last year of the sleek and stylish T-Bird. 1964 to 1966 was the square bird that looked like a 2 door box with lights. From 1967 to 1982, the T-Bird would morph into a wallowing bloatmobile before becoming stylish again with the 83-88 T-Bird.
Cadillac was partying like it was 1957 with those fins(though I like the 1964 Cadillac due to the minor grill changes and because Tubbs drove one in the original Miami Vice
Oh and in a non car related thing: The Dodgers won the 1963 World Series sweeping the Yankee (Go Dodgers!!!! Think Blue)
Tractor maker Lamborghini began making cars that should read.
Remarcably, it’s also Carrefour’s 50th anniversary too. Not that I want to give them free advertisement space but in the supermarket near from where I work they display cars from 50 years ago as part of the celebration: A lovely Peugeot 404 and a wonderful VW Beetle.
Looking forward to it, as I also came along in 1963, coming home from the hospital in a ’61 VW. The Cadillacs are my favorites of that year…though I wouldn’t turn my nose up at a ’63 Impala SS or a nice ’63 Buick Electra convertible I saw on the weekend.
The first Bathurst 500 was run in 1963, after 3 years at Phillip Island, and was won by Harry Firth and Bob Jane in a Cortina GT.
1963!
The most important year, in the history of the universe.