History What did people think of tail fins back when they were new?

The age of excess so to speak. I always recall Detroit's new full size cars of the late 50's and 60's as a time when the styling department gave the engineering department the what for and some of the most ostentatious, flamboyant, extravagant American cars ever built were the result. My personal favorite luxo-barge of that era is the 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser with a full Continental Kit.
This stuff was full custom from the factory. Yea, those are the antennas sticking out of the fresh air vents at the top of the windshield and the rear gl*** does go up and down.

 

Yeah, tell us what we want! A lot of good comments and I agree on the overdose nature of marketing. Fins got overdone and then disappeared. (Look what happened to disco!). Early on they looked good and were revolutionary not just evolutionary. I thought that Ford and Chrysler showed restraint but GM dosed their designs with steroids!

 

And yet, on Mercurys of the period, the fins were rather subdued - the design had enough going on already. Other than the 1957 Lincoln, Ford products never had really tall fins - yet they hung on to them longer than anyone but Cadillac (up to '63 on the Fairlane and T-bird).

 

Those were bogus antennae.

 

It was a time of the beginning of commercial jets, rockets being fired up into space and the cars reflected the excitement of the day. Cadillac took the fins to their logical conclusion and then fins faded away. Back then was way ahead of today's design. I use design in the singular as I firmly believe there is a guy somewhere in Switzerland who draw up a car and sends the one design to all the manufacturers. It was an exciting time to grow up in. You could tell one make from another and what year it was.

 

Another popcorn thread. I gotta start buying my Jiffy Pops by the truck load

 

I was born in 52 and was always ape **** over cars. I recall never much liking tacked-on accessories that were all over the place. I especially hated toilet seats (connie kits). Yes, the bumps out back gradually grew larger and by 56 they were definitely showing some size, at least in the Chrysler line up. I'll never foget my uncle showing up one day in a brand new 57 Plymouth Fury. That was about as perfect as it got for me. Then the sublime became ridiculous and we ended the 50's with **** like Cadillacs. Detroit began walking back the fins beginning in 1960. I think the 61-64 cars from most of the manufacturers were quite good looking (ok, maybe not Chrysler until 63).
Love them or not, cars of that era had style. If you had one, you were damn proud to be driving your big ole Belchfire 8. The "world" car designs they all peddle today do nothing to get my juices jumping. Then again, I am a 64 year ols curmudgeon.

 

My thoughts back then were,,,,,WHY ?

 

I remember them well, and thought they looked stupid. Some of the manufacturers claimed that they gave "stability" to cars at high speed, a claim I never believed. What I really disliked, though, was seeing customizers ape Detroit by adding fins to cars never designed to have them. The R&C "Dream Truck," the Bob Metz Buick, etc, might have been cl***ic customs, but ruined with big fins.

 

The finned cars of the '50s were some of the best looking cars ever built. I'm a surprised to hear all the disdain for them! America had lived with ugly, boring basic transportation from the '20s up through the war. After the war, America was optimistic and had money to spend. Everyone wanted a bright, flashy, longer/lower/wider, V8-powered jet-age push ****on wonder in the garage.

I think some of the bitterness from people here about "fins" are because they had to drive these cars in the '60s and '70s. By then the interiors were trashed, the engines were worn out, and the bodies were rusty. There was NOTHING less cool than a beater finned car during this time.

But the question was about "when they were new" and they were very cool then. Buyers had options to buy cars without fins. Take a look at sales figures for Nash and Hudson during the mid-late '50s to see how that worked out.

 

Cool as hell frozen over
Plymouth Sav's and Fury hardtops with tailfins made the car look like it had a factory top chop

 

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I didn't come along until the early '70s but have been in the car hobby my entire life. I always liked seeing the evolution of car styling. I agree with @Gotgas. When the depression hit the country where there was no money for things and everybody was about saving. Then everything went to the war effort. After the war people were still in conserve and save mode and were being tight with their money. I feel Detroit started adding flashy chrome and big motors to get the public back into the mode of buying things. The more accessories and options they could come up with the better. Even Paint colors got more flashy in an effort to create excitement in cars again. As the space race started heating up everything went to a push ****on marvel and a space age look. Every thing had a space age style from kitchen appliances to furniture. Some design ideas were over the top and downright ugly. Others were subtle and had a good flow. When I bought my '61 Dodge wagon back in '99 a member of the antique car club told me he always thought cars like mine were ugly but after taking a second look at it many years later he liked it.

 

It all boils down to the free market. If a product is popular people will buy it. If the product isn't popular it will lanquish. Obviously, fins were popular.

Sent from my SM-N910V using H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Here is a Popular Mechanics article from May 1957 that shows what Plymouth owners thought of their new car. I think it gives a lot of real-world insight about how people thought of their cars in the middle of the fin era.

Spoiler alert: 64.2% of these owners "like tail fins"

 

I was born in 1945, so by the mid-50's, I was all over cars. I loved seeing the new models each year, and the fins became a big part of car design. The '57 Fords and T-Birds are still my all-time favorite fins. As others have said, the "bigger is better" mindset took tail fins into ridiculousness, then they faded away.

 

ROFLMAO!

 

I will agree on the fins on the low-line '57 Fords and the '63 fairlanes, they looked good. As I have aged, I have even come to like some of the Virgil Exner ****, but in a weird sort of a way, kinda like the way you can love a dog with one leg shorter than the other three, not because I see it as an epoch of automotive styling... Connie kits?? Sweet jesus! The very an***hesis of the hot rodding ethos! F*cking grotesque! Seeing that Merc someone posted, I'm glad I havent started eating my breakfast yet...

 

Thanks. You just affirmed exactly what I said...

"what the general population liked had little to do with what hot rodders and other real car people liked. "

 

Being 73+ myself,,,I find it out right funny,how some guys that were not there or to young to know what was going on really,have as much twisted up ideas as they do. Styling was eye of the time { in the late 40s to mid 60s,you would need to be ether just home from ww2 or Kor. or a teen in that time frame],an if you were not into cars,yes some were not,but most were. To have the eye in your brain,no amount of book reading gives you that,but it can at lest help. FINS WERE COOL AS HELL...................some much better then others an not always was biggist best

 

I grew up in a road-race oriented family. They were seen as the fifties equivalent of this...

Seriously...

 

You have some of this right, but your timing is off by several years. you are correct about Depression years and war time shortages. However, AFTER the War ended in mid/late '45, the pent up demand made a ready market for a whole range of consumer goods and most people had money to spend on them.

Problem was, re-converting from the War Effort to peacetime production took time and most manufacturers were affected. Automakers could only produce slightly warmed over pre-war designs until new designs, and most importantly tooling, could be developed. But sales in the immediate post war years were brisk, limited mostly by availability. By the '50s new designs were being produced and in quan***y and the Country was enjoying a post war boom/optimism and the economy was healthy leading to a record 15,000,000 cars sales in 1955. During 1958/'61 a significant recession hit and slowed things for a bit.

Ray

 

Hey, Gotgas;
Could you repost that article, so all of it can be read?
TIA.
Marcus...

 

Thanks for your revisionist history, but many stock 1950s cars would have no problem out performing a buggy-sprung banger or flathead powered hot rod.

I'm trying to think of the year where Nascar allowed dual carbs, fuel injection, and superchargers because factory cars were being built with all of them. Hmm...







Hey, you like customs, right? Some of those had fins and performed well too.

 

They sold a lot of them.

 

I forgot about the redesign and retooling after the war. Some companies were a little ahead of the rest as far style and design. Even though they are all GM I thought Oldsmobile and Buick were about half a year or a year ahead of Chevy. Dodge and Ford didn't catch up until later in the 50's IMO.

 

I am not sure who you THINK you are talking to gotgas, I have pretty much zero use for flatheads, in fact, I pulled a cherry 59A core out of my '39 and replaced it with an Olds. As far as one of these obese 4500 pound pillow sprung land yachts out-handling a buggy sprung 2500 lb hot rod, dude, you need to put the pipe down...
Fins lasted 3 short years, really took off in 1957, were p***e by 1960, pretty much a short term fad. So much for history...
You seem to have a BIG emotional investment here and are CLEARLY looking for a ******* match, so I will just back off now. Y'all have fun...

 

You got me riled up with this comment. lol

 

These may offer some clues... /\__/\