Let’s take another look at cars and their people in the ’50s and ’60s. This time, paying attention to those early import adopters in the US. As such, it’s the second gallery with the theme, and it features more or less the expected suspects of the period; a good deal of British roadsters, with other brands that left US soil long ago. And then, a few that have remained to this day, growing beyond the scope of anyone’s imagination.
These are great. Love the contrast of the MGA with all those big bulbous American cars. Those Opel Rekords were not uncommon. The one I’d most want is that new ’53 VW.
The yellow “Toyo” is awesome! The “semi excited”, gent leaning out the window of his spiffy beetle is a cool pic .
The bronze-colored ’55 or so VW is familiar. The first VWs I saw were in 1955, and had that color.
I liked my ’55 Beetle. It was the most basic model, with a cable braking system just like a pushbike. No hydraulics. Its fuse box was directly atop the petrol tank, meaning if a swing axle-induced rollover didn’t kill you first, then you’d burn to death.
My dad wanted to bring a “VW” back to the states. Long before I was born he was stationed in “Kaiser Slautern”, GM.
My sister went to “pre school there. One brother was born there.
Anyway, ,my mom was against it and finances apparently didn’t favor a car..lol
It would a been a “53-4” model year I believe.
The military buying service could , supposedly, get really good prices for the guys.
For JT this indicative quote from clubvw.org.au, re those “really good prices”.
“1947
The Australian Scientific and Technical Mission, based at the Embassy in London, applies to the Ministry of Supply to purchase eight Volkswagens. These are intended for use by the Australian Reparations Plant and Stores Team, located in Germany. The VWs’ purchase price is £160 each.”
The export model for the US market had hydraulic brakes and fully synchronized transmission.
They all look so much fun to drive! And the owners all look excited about driving them too, with a number of them actually IN their cars, no time to just pose!
VERY cool AH! Looks like somebody was having fun with an unusual coupe in 1965! Not a Dove, innit?
What fun! That Healey looks awesome in green with racing stripes!
Young man with a TR4 is always a bittersweet thing for me 🙁
Only one surprises me here. The Opel. Having moved to SoCal in 1966 I started to see the TR4, MGA, MGB, Beetle, Datsun, Mercedes, and Toyota in the Valley before moving to San Diego in 1968 where it continued. I see the yellow Toyota has a 69 Cougar in the background
Trying to figure out where that Dauphine on the ferry is. From the signs on the boards looks like it’s the Clark Fork River in Montana. Beautiful area!
This pictures remind me of my parents, who were also early import adopters in the 1960s and had several of these cars. They bought a TR4 and VW in the 1960s (also had a Peugeot and a Karmann Ghia).
I am waiting to see an English Ford from the late 50s in one of these shots. They were quite popular for a very short time, then went extinct. I guess I’ll have to settle for the Dauphine.
Those ‘breezeway’ Anglias were fast but delicate. A friend had one in ’68, drove it hard and broke off the shift lever. He then shifted with his foot.
There was an earlier surge of British cars in the late forties in the export or perish period. MG TCs, Austin A40s, etc. I recall that when we had the June 1949 flood in town the Anglia in the garage of the house next door got a good soaking. My mother, bless her, was across town in our ’41 Chevrolet, out of the mess.
There was a baby blue c. late 50’s Ford Consul convertible in my small Nova Scotia town in the early 60’s. At the time it seemed to have a ‘junior T-bird’ look 🙂 . Definitely one of the more successful attempts to adapt American styling to British car sizes.
oops…locked photo
As a boy in Pittsburgh, I remember the British sports cars, the Dauphine, early Coronas, and of course the Beetle, but don’t recall ever seeing an Opel until the release of the Kadette B in the 1966 model year.
Me as well. Neighbors got a new, “67 Kadette”, wagon. I thought it wa soo cool.
Remember riding in back with them, delivering “phone books”.
Rust, I later learned, did it in relatively quick though.
Got replaced with a “69” beetle. ((both were about the same color red))
I admire early adopters, but they have as many misses as hits. For every Beetle, Toyota, Honda, IPhone and Microsoft PC, there were Austin Americas, Simcas, Betamaxes and Mac Lisa’s. I think the verdict is still out for EV’s. Range is improving and initial costs are lowering, but reliable charging options are still a problem. And, what happens when a 10 year old EV needs a new $10,000 battery? Not as simple as swapping in a rebuilt ICE and you’re good for another 10 years. Then, there is the question of the disposal/recycling of the old batteries. They seem great for low mileage commuter cars in urban areas, but I don’t know about rural America. Perhaps American ingenuity will prevail and solve these issues. My mind is open, but I’m not quite there yet.
It’s amazing how American that Opel looks, everything else is recognizably foreign but the Opel looks like a ChatGPT 55 Chevey
Good description! Familiar, but somehow a bit off.
Designed in Detroit.
The first Renault Dauphine was awesome.
It looked like a toy car bought from the Americans of the time.
The first pic of the lady with her Renault Dauphine was taken in a nice setting. I’d like to shove that Dauphine right off that dock into the water for the miserable build quality those had!!
Inspiration for the “Aston Marina”.
Great set of photos, Rich.
Yes, that first photo of the Dauphine is taken in Western Montana. On the Clark Fork River, near Paradise. Somehow, that driver seems rather brave to me for having a Renault in Montana in the late 1950s/early 1960s. It would have probably been a long drive back then from Paradise to get parts or to find a mechanic with metric tools. I have a friend whose family in DC had one of those that defied issues of reliability and repairability until the early 1970s. At that point, the car was totaled by a bicycle (which along with its rider slammed into the rear of the Dauphine at the bottom of a long hill).
I guess my own family has always been in the early adopter category as well. We started with a Renault (an 8) in the early 1960s so early that I barely remember it..and also because it didn’t last more than about a year before my parents traded it in for a Simca. That was one of 2 family cars until that was traded in for a Fiat. But by then (mid-1970s) goofy little European cars weren’t all that unusual.
We tended to live in the Northeast and/or college towns, so there were always plenty of non-sports car European cars around. VWs, Saabs, Volvos, , Mercedes, Peugeots and the like.
My favourite is the Corona hardtop,even with that curious wheel swap.
It must have been strange back then, to have all these ‘new’ brands coming in, with cars in so many varying sizes. Here in Australia we were used to small cars, mostly British but some European, but in the fifties there were some brands coming seemingly out of nowhere. Fiat and Renault we knew, vaguely – but Borgward? And then the Japanese brands appeared. I still remember Dad (b.1910) asking me in all seriousness who made Toyota – like he expected me to say GM or BMC or something. Rather like the Chinese brands today.
So many great cars and memories here ! =8-) .
IIRC that Dauphine was the second generation . I had a ’63 for a while, I never was able to sort out the semi-automatic “Ferlic” clutch .
I _LOVE_ the gray MG TF ! I had a ’53 MG TD in Alaska Yellow, I think it went to a good home .
I don’t recall what year my red MGA Roadster was, the engine was kaput so I shoveled it full of dirt and planted flowers in it, circa 1971 .
Those Open Rekords were *very* popular for a few years, I remember seeing more than a few still doing Yeoman Duty in Washington state in the Summer of ’69 . my crowd always thought they were cribbed from the ’57Chevy .
Sharp looking Austin 3000, I thought only old men wore coveralls when driving their Sports Cars, notably Corvettes .
The ’53 VW #113, I wonder of it was one of those fly by night “dealers” that at that time before VWoA was created, would buy a few Beetles and curbstone them .
Tim, yes your non U.S.A. #111 standard Beetle did come with cable brakes (and a full crash box trans too !), no, VW never, EVER put the fuse box on top of the fuel tank . in 1955 there was a headlight fuse box _next_ to the fuel tank on the left side .
In 1972 (?) we briefly had a midnight blue Triumph TR4a, it has been badly wrecked and should have been scrapped as it “Dog Tracked” badly, we thrashed it mercilessly then abandoned it .
The yellow Toyota RT4? Coupe ~ _THIS_ is the little Toyota I lusted after for many years and mention here now and then . the ’67 models the horn half ring was also the turn signal switch and when fitted with Dealer Air Con the vents took u the entire glove box, they remove the door .
I too preferred the factory steelies with full size hub caps but good luck finding one today .
THANK YOU for another happy walk down memory lane ! .
-Nate
Gentle in the white jump suit with grease smudges
IIRC, these were a common with owners of Britannia type vehicles. As many hours were spent under the hood as behind the wheel.
Yet, so rewarding when you sorted out the latest issue with the car.
Mom and Dad only owned one new car in their 25 years of marriage (at which point Dad divorced Mom – no new cars afterwards, either). That lone new car was a 1958 VW Beetle, in which I came home from hospital after my birth a few years later.
The Beetle was quickly replaced with a Biscayne 4-door, and Dad bought a Hillman Husky as his work car – I have very vague memories of riding in it when I was perhaps four or five years old – it had no rear seats, so me and my next-younger sibling just rattled around in the back. It was replaced with a Rambler American 4-door.
We had powerful R8 Gordinis here in Montreal but the budgets have since been reduced.
No R8, but my Dad bought a new ’68 R10 to replace his ’59 Beetle after it was totalled parked in front of our home…we lived in Burlington, Vt at the time (mid 60’s) and Montreal was the closest big city to us.
My Dad was an early adopter of foreign cars, though his first car was American (’56 Plymouth Plaza) before that when he was in the US Army stationed in Germany he was assigned some early 50’s VW Beetles which I guess they used in place of Jeeps (maybe the Jeeps were in Korea at the time). Startling with the ’59 Beetle, my Dad’s 2nd car was always foreign, up till 1980, when he bought a Dodge Omni and never bought another foreign car the rest of his life.
He was early adopter of computer things…he bought a Tandy TRS-80 back in 1978 and in 2001 he bought the original “Disk on Key” which of course he overpaid for the privilage of being early, probably several hundred dollars for maybe 8 MB, something that is now so small I doubt you can find that capacity, and routinely companies give away USB sticks with far greater capacity (with their advertising on it of course to compensate for free cost). He was a semiconductor process engineer since 1956, and in 1959 he worked at Hoffman Electronics in El Monte Ca, making the first solar cells that went up on the Explorer 6 satellite that took the first picture of earth from outer space (guess they didn’t want to risk nuclear power and batteries wouldn’t last long enough). Still (later on) he wouldn’t allow solar cells to be put onto the roof of his home so he was selective what he’d go for.