I don't recall seeing it on anything until the mid late 70's. most 50's style customs have bitchin tuck n roll interiors. why would anyone want to hide that behind tinted windows
I think tint on cars older the the 80’s or some cars from the 70’s. Window tint looks funny , just my opinion but it seems to obscure lines on older cars and stands out instead of allowing the cars lines to blend in. on my slightly o/t 69 Lincoln I did a very , very light grey tint . Almost didn’t notice it but it got rid of the “ fish bowl “ look and I think helped the lines on the car by cutting down the glossiness or glare coming from the glass .
i recently heard a "green hornet" broadcast from the '30s where they solved a mystery thanks to the polarized glass windshield in "black beauty"...
Window tint seems out of place on cars older than the late 60’s to me. I have had it on some muscle cars in the past, but that is about as new as it seems acceptable in my opinion.
Some of the gassers back in the mid to late sixties had their windows tinted. I didn't like the look and left mine alone. I don't remember seeing fifties customs with windows tinted.
I was going to ask when did the use of tinted plexiglass come into play? I was going to say it seems like alot of the old gassers and race cars used them and I do remember a few old show cars that used them but it was very few and I really don't remember the Era. .
The windows in my 1954 Studebaker were factory tinted* { not the over dark crap of todays cars} but nice,the rear glass had more then the the others,an front was darker in the top,about 8inch's . Studebaker was one of the first.
In my neck of the woods back in the early to mid 60’s it was popular to tint the rear quarter windows of your street car to emulate the gassers of the period. There were sprays available to do it and very easy to butcher the job.
Window tint tends to bubble after a few years, and looks like crap , especially if you park outside in a really hot area. It is also annoying when someone pulls up next to you and blasts the horn, but you can't see who is in the car because of the tint. I had an early 60's Chrysler which had green tint inside the glass, when it had to go for an inspection in the mid 80's, the inspector told me to remove the tint, he wouldn't believe me that it was inside the glass until he tried scraping it off with a razor blade.
I have used lightly tinted safety glass but I would never use any kind of applied tint on an early car.
Maybe a light gray or green, but the darker stuff looks out of place. I don’t even like the dark tint on newer vehicles, it makes it harder to see out at night.
Yep, in 1965 I had a '40 Chevy street racer, and all the drag strip coupes had either blue or orange plexiglass it seemed. My car was bright orange so I used the spray can stuff to try out blue tint and then orange tint to make people think that they were plexiglass side windows. You had to actually apply a heavy line at the top of the window and then make sure that it continued to run all the way down the glass. Totally contrary to the usual rattle can spray paint jobs. It actually did dry clear and looked pretty good for what it cost.
My 55 bird has factory tinted windows. Available in green or grey, very light. To know what to order (factory instructions) you hold a piece of blank typewriter paper (remember those?) on the glass and look thru it. Pretty subtle, period correct. Mines green from the factory. makes sense on a Thunderbird Blue 55
Had a 39 Chev that was black with flames. Had limo tint on the side and back windows. Made the windshield appear dark (that's what the cop said). Way cheaper than an interior. But a real bitch to drive at night.
Some states have cracked down on window tint hard, check your local laws. In NY, they check it at the annual inspection. I went with the Ford factory green tint all around. Definitely traditional. For the windshield I splurged the extra $9 and got the top blue tint.
When I was in HS back in the late '60's I had a 2dr. Falcon wagon. The hot set up for wagons back then was to tint the rear side windows. I tired the spray on tint that @i.rant referred to and it was a total disaster. I ended up removing all of the tint and leaving the window untinted.
A lot of the tri fives I built over the years I used the replacement glass in optional smoked gray as opposed to the factory green tint. It just seemed to compliment my color choices better. the stock clear glass always seemed to have more of a Coke bottle look to it and shows smudges more. I do admit to loving the color tinted plexiglass in gassers in the 60's but it had to color coordinate to the car. lol Larry
I personally think a light tint is great, and gives some UV protection without looking too modern. I put all new glass in my '39 Chev when I built it, and most people don't even notice it's tinted. But it sure helps when driving, and I opted to get windshield and rear window as clear, so only the side windows tinted.
Like it....Mine is dark glass no tint film....To each his own....My 37 Chevy coupe I had in highschool back in the 60's had blue plexiglass windows...All the cars I have owned here in Las Vegas over the last 40 years have had limo tint on them...
I liked factory tint glass. All the major manufacturers had it and most was a luscious blue green tint. JC Whitney sold a liquid window tint in the '50s. I am not sure but maybe they still do. In '68 when I bought my first car I bought enough of the Rose color to do the windows on it. I wanted driving my car to be like "looking at the world through rose-colored glasses." That may have been substance induced. LOL The cops made me scrape it off my windshield, tinted windshield other than factory tint was illegal. Some show cars/race cars had tinted windows in the later '50s and earlier '60s. I recall seeing cars like that at the track and car shows. Usually, the tint was light enough for you to see in. Dope smoker windows were not popular until the '70s like Mr @Moriarity says. Popular colors from when I was a little guy was blue or orange. I would not try dark smoke tint and pass it off as trad.
Every time I have owned a car with that stick on shit all I think about while I'm fighting to get it off is how much I'd like to beat the crap out of whoever put it on
I recently found out I like the look of red tint. I understand though that it probably only looks good on drag/race/gasser style 50's, 60's,and 70s cars
What are you trying to achieve? If you are in AZ then keeping the heat out makes sense. Mostly gassers us color tints. There are some high performance tints that keep heat out now that are not dark.
In the mid 60s I used some blue widow tint in a spay can to do the top 4 - 6" of the windows along with the head lights on a black 58 Chevy. It also came in red and green, I believe it cleaned off with ammonia. The custom painter in town used it to do striping on glass.
This is my feeling exactly Dark Gangsta window tint does not belong on early cars period. Cars have come with the light green tint since the 50's GM called it EZ Eye glass. It cost a few bucks more than plain glass but wasn't dark. The "tint" that most folks are talking about above is not what the OP was asking about. He is asking about tint film or what is called limo tint glass unless I am sadly mistaken. Something like on this vicky that to me looks totally wrong for a traditonal rod. Besides if you go to the effort of building a rod you want folks to see who is driving it. Throw in that at night you want to be able to see out and my experience with my BMW is that I shaved the gangsta tint off the windows the first week I had the car because it is way too hard to see out of at night and around here we have too many fools who don't turn their headlights on until it is totally dark because they don't do that "back home". They are also the ones who love the dark tint and who very often pull out in front of someone and get broadsided.
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