Hot Rods Bumperless cars & trucks

Back in the 60's I remember young guys removing the front bumpers from their cars,especially on '55 Chevy's and some added a tube between the frame rails.

None had straight axles but most sat higher than normal.

There were also other makes & models,was this a trend around the country or mainly just here in the South? HRP

 

Cousins had '57 Ford HTPs in the mid 60's with the front bumper removed.
Looked bad-***, but unsafe (who cared about safety back then ?)

 

I grew up in the Midwest and it was common around here too, was the drag race look. Less weight on the front end and supposedly let the front end come up faster for weight transfer to the rear wheels. A lot of the cars were raised up and level like the 55 Ford in your pictures.

 

Here as well.

 

LOTS of the 'style' here in CA., also. Started here in '61. My '46 Club Coupe lost its bumper in '62, when the 331 Hemi went in...Bumper went on the shop wall, along with its Mor-Drop dago axle.
Front end? Nowhere to go but 'UP'!
Soooo cool back then.

My old bud "Sneaky" said he was collecting '55-'57 Chevy front bumpers. In case they ever came back in style!

 

I would pull the front bumper offi of the front of my '56 Chevy once spring hit. I would usually put it back on for winter as it was my daily driver. My neighbor never had a front bumper on his '55 (12 second car) as long as I remember. A few guys in the neighboring towns were minus front bumpers as well.

It's amazing how ditching the front bumper made a 16 second car (mine) seem a whole lot faster and cooler. lol

This was Oklahoma in the 70's.

 

Does the term Poser come to mind?

 

My Chevy back in the 60's in Iowa. Thought it looked cool with no bumper.

 

Did this look as bad to you as it did to me ? Well except when it was finished off,how I thought it should be,with rolled pan an nerf bars=then it was custom vs trashy lazy looking

 

I think this was pretty much a nationwide thing. With the national publications of Hot Rod, Car Craft et al, styling trends spread countrywide real quick.

 

In my builds Tri 5's - 64 X frame Chevies, I believe the cars look just fine with all the chrome just as they came from the factory. This includes bumpers and exterior trim. It's amazing how good these cars look after being lowered and the addition of decent wheels and tires. As an example attached is a picture of my 64 Biscayne. Can't see how removing the front bumper could make it look any better.

 

I may have told this story before, but here it is again. About 10 years ago I took the front bumper off my '57 Chevy for the "g***er" look. At a car show one of the guys asked me why I removed the bumper. I told him that the bumper on tri-fives was an option and I had found the original build sheet for my car. I told him the build sheet did not show the bumper so it must have gone straight to being a g***er. About an hour or so he came back and asked if I was pulling his leg.

When I first got the '57, the same fellow asked why I bought a Chevy as he always saw me driving my '50 Ford sedan. I told him I had to get a Chevy because I was getting too many speeding tickets driving my Ford.

About the missing front bumpers, I call it the "bumper delete option".

 

Never saw the need to remove the front bumper especially for posing. Increasing a cars engine performance is another story.

 

I liked the look and actually removed the front bumper from my '54 Ford,but it was bent and looked more like my car than a old man's car (that was my thinking before I became a old man.)

BTW,if I were to build a '55 Chevy for what it cost to plate bumpers today I believe I would leave it off.

I did the same thing with with the original spindles,brake drums,axles and wishbones when all the street rodders removed them and started using mustang II front suspensions.

My thinking was,it just looked cool and as they always said imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

 

...back in the 60's everyone in my area wanted that g***er look, removing the front bumpers was an easy thing to do to get yer car to stand out from daily drivers, and you had to raise the front to help the look..

 

I think this was a country-wide thing, not at all regional. It cleaned up the look on most cars and made them look a little more like drag cars. I recall a friend doing this to his 58 Chevy Biscayne in the 60s and the front end raised by 4" when the bumper came off! One heck of a lot of weight in those.

- EM

 

I like the look, I wasnt there back in the day as I wasnt born until 69 but to me, the no front bumper deal showed some muscle and was an inexpensive trick a young rodder could do to change up his ride a bit and make it look a little more hot rod and and less like their old mans car, that in its self is totally cool to me.

I hate the term "Poser" being used by people who are actually saying you cant be as good as me until you spend as much as I did?

 

My dad said in the 60’s kids that raced in Houston used to pull the front bumpers as a cheap way to help the weight transfer of the car.

He had a few strong runners and pulled the bumpers off the front of his cars when he raced.

 

'56 and '57 chevy look cool as hell with the grille and bumpers removed. Call it posing. What isn't? My whole life has been trying to look cool enough to get laid. That's the game we're all ultimately playing as dictated by evolution.

 

To quote the ZZ top song... Its bad... Its nationwide

 

Removing the front bumper was about the fastest way to reduce the weight on the front end, if you were drag racing or wanted to look like you were drag racing.
The activity was greatly reduced when the car model years past about 63 or 64. Most cars after that time didn't look nearly as cool without the front bumper, and many of those bumpers were pretty light, and more difficult to remove.

By the time I had something that would have looked cool without a front bumper, the trend had long since p***ed. The local police were not very friendly towards not having a front bumper on a street car by the early 70s. They had a problem with the exposed frame horns in accidents, if you dropped the front bumper, you had to add something to tie the frame horns together. Gene

 

Never cared for the "no bumper" look unless the car had a proper rolled pan.

Makes the car look "incomplete" in my opinion...

I do always delete the " bumperettes" if it has them!

 

had a '57 Chevy in High School - wanted the drag race look like my '55 that had been totaled in a wreck - but parents did not want me to do that - one day they went off to a party and would be gone for a while - immediately went out to remove bumper - but, my Mom forgot something at home -so, they came back and caught me red handed - bumper went back on, for a while

 

Some cars had super involved, heavy bumpers. First thing I always did was trash the front bumpers on all my old Pontiacs.......they were always all bent up anyway.

 

Some cars it looked good on, some it didn't. Tri-five Fords and Chevys generally looked good if the car had a race vibe, but you needed to remove the splash pan also. The one thing I saw down south that I never saw anywhere else was lifting the rear of the hood; kind of a budget cowl induction I suppose...

 

In my city, the cops would give you a ticket for having a bumper on a 55 Chevy!

 

I remember they used to sell fibergl*** bumpers for tri five Chev's for weight reduction. In Minneapolis in the 60's the cops gave us tickets for no front bumper, or if the bumper was too high. I had my straight axle 57 Safari wagon measured twice, it was legal by 1/2".

 

It does make a difference. Some good some bad. My A back in the 70's