In the last few years people refer to 49-51 Fords as Shoeboxes. It seems it wasn't too many years before that, a Shoebox was a 55-57 Chevy. Wha hoppened?
Nothing to do with shoes. It's because they were the first years that the sides of the car did not have the bulbous separate fenders. 48 Ford - fat fenders.. 49 ford - slab sided. 54 Chev still had bulbous rear fenders - 55 Chev flat sided - you know, like a SHOEBOX! Mart.
Does that mean, the new Terras I got are worth more......... Damn Ford guys try to take all the good names..................
Beats me, but pre-HAMB the only car I ever heard referred to as a shoebox was a TriFive Chevy. Don't do that here though.... Seems to offend some HAMBERS if you make that mistake 'round here.
Here's the deal -- fat-fenders ran from the late '30s through the war years. Then the post-war cars came out. The 1949 Ford was the first of the Big Three to stop having either the front or the rear fender stick out from the body and just become part of the overall shape. IT WAS THE FIRST OF THE "BIG THREE" to GO "SHOEBOX" -- in that the whole car looked straight up-and-down on the sides. Yeah, we know, Hudson & Packard beat Henry to it, but they weren't rodding material back then. So listen close -- the Ford was the first "Shoebox" and desreves to be what you mean when you just say "Shoebox". But an equally-qualified nomenclature can be used for the first Chevrolet models that shed the bulbuous rear fenders -- the tri-five Chevys. So no one objects if you talk about a "Shoebox Chevy", but if you just say "Shoebox", you're talkin' about those '49-'51 Fords that were the first of the affordable rods to lose the fat fenders.
When I was a kid - late 50's -it was a "shoebox Ford" meaning a '49- '51, never heard it applied to '55-'57 Chevys till probably the 70's. For me it will always be the '49-'51 Fords. Charlie
It must be a local thing. Shoe boxes have always been 49-51 Fords in my area. I never heard a Chevy called a shoe box before the HAMB.
I had exactly the same question. I heard the term shoe-box-chevy years before shoe-box-ford. May be it's a generational things, or quoted from a bad movie or something. ****box=Dodge Omni (I think their all dead now though)
When I was a kid,my dad always refered to 49-51 Fords as shoeboxes. Never heard a Chevy called a shoebox til I started looking for parts at swapmeets. When I would ask if a guy if he had any shoebox parts,he would say"Ford or Chevy?" I would think,WTF? I can see why a 55 Chevy would be called a shoebox.
My username would indicate that I would prefer to 55-57 Chevies as a "shoebox" but no no no. I have always known shoeboxes as fords 49-51.
'49-'51 Fords were always the shoebox. The first time I heard '55-'57 Chevys called that was in Popular Hot Rodding Magazine around 1979. Some time in the '80s, early Chevy IIs were also called shoeboxes to add to the confusion.
It's interesting you brought this up. About 2 years ago it was bugging me too. A shoebox is a 55-57 Chevy. Always was always will be. When it came up last time, I went all the way to ask 100 people and only 23 said a shoebox was a Ford. Then I went to the weekly meeting of the local old timers, and asked them. They looked at me like I was crazy, and said a shoebox is a Chevy. So I asked them what a Ford was called back then. After a minute tey said they didn't call them anything really except, pieces of **** or Merc wanna be, cars. I fell off my chair laughing! It did get me wondering if it's a regional thing?
In MY part of the world and in the early car mags, a Shoebox has always been a '49-'51 Ford... I never heard of any Chevy referred to as a 'shoebox' until the past 10 years when life got confusing. The term was never applied to '55-'57s back in the day. They were known as 'stock car material' until the mid to late '60s..... BTW, here's a factoid that I read years ago in a '57 issue of Motor Trend. The rumor in Detroit was that the '57 Chev sales were so lackluster that the division considered bringing out the '58 models in the early summer of '57. Jan
That's as bad as Chevy II's being referred to as 'Deuces". That really bothered me when I first heard it and still does. Jan
49-51 Fords have been shoeboxes since inception. The Chevies being called that is a more recent thing How about the Ford's big brother..... The "Bathtub"! 1949-51 Merc
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