It’s been about a year since we paid a visit to the Hawaii of the past, and it’s due time to check out the islands again. While today’s gallery is of reduced size, I feel it covers a good amount of the islands’ ecosystems and car life. On the car front, with images featuring parking lots, average roads, and tourist enclaves. Of course, Hawaii has quite a few interesting sights beyond cars, so I added a few photos that capture a little of its feel.
I’m opening with the Chrysler limos at a hotel of some sort in the lead photo, because… how could I not?
St. Joseph’s Church, Molokai Island.
Iao Needle, Maui – with a Ford Anglia and a Datsun 510 on the parking.
Road in Lahaina, Maui.
Pineapple fields along the road.
Parking in Honolulu, Oahu.
View of Honolulu, from Punchbowl Crater overlook.
The average residential road.
Kalakaua Ave., Honolulu, Oahu.
Hotel Tour Buggies, in 1968.
Ala Moana Mall, Honolulu, Christmas 1960.
Pan Am Airlines on the tarmac.
Whole lot of imports! Fiat 1100, Fiat 500, Hillman Husky, Vauxhall, Anglia, maybe even an NSU Prinz.
Is that a Fiat 1100 in the lead photo, or a Datsun 310 (Bluebird)?
It’s a Datsun. Fiat 1100s had either thicker door window frames with a 1949 Ford-style rain gutter splitting the C pillar(up to about 1960) or a flatter roof with more wraparound rear window (after that).
I love big limo six doors. It the first chystler of that style I seen
Eight doors even! Assuming that the other side has as many doors 🙂
I think that 1962 Newport station wagon is also a custom-bodied airport limo. The production model had a very different greenhouse.
Paulson, that’s a `61 New Yorker-based limo. Same model as the `60 next to it.
You must have a good eye. I did not see the Husky.
There’s a red Triumph Herald convertible, a Metropolitan and a baby blue Triumph TR3a.
I liked seeing the two Valiants (not sure of the correct model), the one with the typical lines. Did not know they were that popular.
Doesn’t look all that much different from when I was there in 1983. The only time I won something was when I won a one week vacation for two to Hawaii in a raffle. My girlfriend and I ended up in Waikiki and spent the week driving around Oahu in a rented car. Not much in the way of crowds at all no matter where we went from North Shore, Nu’uanu Pali lookout, Hanauma Bay, Honolulu, Arizona Memorial. So spoiled by that that I can’t bring myself to go back to what has gotten crowded and changed so much.
One drive we took was along H1 to the west side. We were told not to drive out to the west side as it was undeveloped and where native Hawaiians lived who didn’t take kindly to haoles. Well my girlfriend was Chinese so we went anyway. Along the way we got to see the proverbial Hawaiian wall which was an endless row of derelict cars dumped alongside the highway. North side if I remember correctly. Just like in states with snow and road salt the ocean air does a number on cars pretty fast back then.Don’t recall any makes but am sure it is all gone now as I can see from Google it is way different from 1983.
Big island has lots of rusting abandoned vehicles on side of the road and usually pickups in the front yards in rural areas. I have been watching a 70’s vintage F-series dissolve near the end of the road at the NE corner of the island for decades.
My wife was lucky to spend 8 years of her childhood on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. Here she is with the family car at the time, a 1955 Plymouth Belvedere V8.
What’s the small white car visible above (beyond) the trunk of the red Opel on Kalakaua Ave in Honolulu? The 510 and the Anglia are such a contrast, in so many ways – and not just the design and technical specs.
On my last/only trip to Hawaii, around 2010 (Big Island) I reserved a “mid-sized” car for the four of us, including our 6’ + tall son. When we got to the counter we were told it was either a Pontiac G6 coupe or we’d have to pay for an upgrade. I didn’t want to make a fuss so I went for a Ford Escape which I really enjoyed. But in hindsight this was probably been my last chance to drive a Pontiac. Instead, the last time was a really miserable GrandAm in Vancouver BC about ten years earlier.
I think the red Opel is a Vauxhall Victor/Epic Envoy. But like you I’m stumped on the small white car facing us. Possibly a Fiat 600?
Austin-Nash Metropolitan too
Looking at comforting photos while uneasily contemplating a day of history. This is what history is like. 🙂
The 50’s and 60’s might be thought of as “the good old days” but certainly nobody in my family was going to Hawaii at that time.
If I could go back in time and space I would pick the Datsun 510 as my touring car.
I’ll take the 707.
+1!
The old terminal without jetways. I love that Kona is still like that on my trips to/from there today. Old Hawaii vibe.
Picture #4 shows buildings along Front St. in Lahaina. Interestingly, the older white building (dated 1916) was one of the few structures in that area to survive the 2023 fires. It’s burned, but salvageable. The aerial image below shows that building, and how the rest of the block has been completely destroyed.
My dad never wanted to vacation there because he said Hawaii was just “Chicago with palm trees. And to a certain extent he’s right–but that applies mainly to the big island.
Big Island? Makes no sense. I lived on Hawaii Island, extremely rural and laid back. Do you mean Oahu (Honolulu)?
The added length of the Chrysler limo up top *really* messes with the shape of the long tailfin!
I was just logging in to say exactly that JPC! A car with fabulous flowing fins wouldn’t be my first choice to stretch as it does no favours to the fin or that to which it’s attached!
Hillman Californian, triumph TR2 and (I think an Edsel) in the mall Christmas parking.
And a Triumph Herald convertible 3 cars in by the Beetle in the Honolulu parking
Rich has written about those stretched Chryslers in Hawaii before:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/uncategorized/vintage-snapshots-the-chrysler-limousines-of-hawaii/
They were apparently operated by a Hawaii-based company called Mackenzie Tours that drove tourists all over the islands in those things. Nevertheless, Mackenzie seems to exist in a bit of a WWW deadspot as there’s just not much written about them online and even less (save the photos, most of which have wound up here on CC) about the cars. That’s a shame as I’d imagine that at least a few must still exist, albeit hiding in tangles of underbrush in someone’s back yard. I have a couple of work-related opportunities to go to O’ahu in the coming year, and you can be sure that I’ll be poking around as much as possible after work to find one of those things to photograph…if not to bring back to the mainland.
What’s a bit surprising about these is that they are unibodies, which makes the stretch a fair bit more challenging. It’s not just lengthening and beefing up the frame. They must have added quite a bit of strengthening steel to the undersides and sills.
If I recall correctly, Chryslers of this vintage still retained a front stub frame up to the firewall. Imperials including the limousine model kept their BOF construction until later in the 1960s.
I wonder if some imaginative parts bin engineering might have underpinned these Chrysler airport limousines making the conversion easier than it would appear at 1st glance.
Yes, they still had the front stub frame. But the rest of the body had significant changes, especially so in the floor and sills. I assume they just reinforced those areas significantly. There have been a number of unibody stretch limos in recent years; it’s certainly doable. But it would have been a new challenge for them at the time.
Lovely pictures, I too enjoyed seeing the early Datsun . (? “Blue Bird”?) .
My visit there was in the 1980’s it was still nice if crowded .
-Nate
I drive a red and white Nash metropolitan like the pink pictured from Greenville sc to White Plains NY with my aunt back following an uncle in a new Chevy not driving slow back in the day…. the carburetor shook apart in Washington DC… that was a life long experience not to be forgotten, to say the least.
I drive a red and white Nash metropolitan like the pink pictured from Greenville sc to White Plains NY with my aunt back following an uncle in a new Chevy not driving slow back in the day…. the carburetor shook apart in Washington DC… that was a life long experience
I love watching reruns of Hawaiian Eye and Hawaii 5-0 for the cars and trucks.
Wow; great pix this installment, Rich! As others have said, i’ve never seen the “airport limo” body style done on a sedan b4. I’ve seen late 60s & early 70s Chry Newports, & Checker Marathon airport limos plying up & down i-95 in NY & CT way back when, but they were always wagons. Might that small white car seen above the Vauxhall trunk be a Vespa perhaps? (yes, they made cars too, for a time!). Also trying to figure out the small wagon ahead of the 58 Ford, in the Pineapple Fields pix (maybe a “big” 60s Fiat; possibly an 1800 or 2300?). Am not able to zoom in with enuf clarity on my cheap phone! Great shots tho😊. Btw: I just googled “Checker Aerobus” & i see they DID indeed make a sedan version; but I haven’t ever had the fortune to see one.
These pics make the “Hawaiian Eye”, theme play in anyone else’s head? Or maybe the “Blue Hawaii” tunes?
“Hawaii 5 0”, too of course, except not so many “50’s, rides in the clips of that show.
I know this theme has been mentioned be, but look how well dressed the ladies in the Pan Am photo.
Today, it would be tank tops and lululemon stretch pants.