Call me Tasteless, but I love all these space age designs far-FAR more than pretty much every 'standard' car design post 80's.

As a young designer at GM, I was working on the 59 Pontiac design, when Jordan got a bunch of the studio designers to see these brand new ‘57 model Plymouths, Dodges, Desotos and Chryslers just rolling off the assembly line. He wanted to see if we were as shocked as he was by what he had seen earlier that day on his way into work. Well, we were. Jordan went back and convinced his boss Bill Mitchel to immediately start reworking all our ‘59 design programs. Mitchel took quite a brave risk to do this without first approval by Harley Earl. Earl ultimately agreed with the changes we all came up with.

It’s just mind boggling that they could put out completely different models on a yearly basis.

These designs were not mistakes but rather amazing. In fact, they're the most creative and beautiful cars that GM ever made.

@1:18 that little red Studebaker I call the bullet nose car. My mom almost died in 1964 was "Teed" on passenger side, Mom's in and dad was driving, we kids weren't with them. She was in a coma for six days, they didn't expect her to live, plevis broken in 37 places, they didn't even sew her ear rt. on yet till they knew she had a chance at living. My poor mama. But she lived and raised us and thank you mother for being our mom. We were 9, 7 & 3 little girls ages we were. Body cast for a long long time in hosp. over a year or two. I miss you mom. RIP Mother Dear. See you in a few years in Heaven. xo

I worked in an automobile repaint shop during the early 1970s, and how I remember what a nightmare it was to prep and mask those rolling jukeboxes against overspray.

When you could tell a make, model and year from a block away shows how unique and creative car designs were.

Cars from the 40's-60's just have way better styling than anything now in my opinion, and I think I share that opinion with a LOT of people.

Though some people may prefer the cleaner designs, I think the over extravagance of chrome is iconic in its own way and holds its place in looking good.

My grandfather had a 1958 Oldsmobile 88 Holiday Coupe. He said he bought it in part because it had the most chrome you could get on a car.

Some of the most beautiful cars ever built came out of the 50's and early 60's. Maybe because I was coming of age then, but seeing cars of that era inspire me more than any other styles.

For many years, dashboards changed year to year and engineers did some fantastic work in styling! A lost art. 58s are problematic in terms of restoration due to difficulty in getting oem parts. They still are very beautiful and special.

I may be an oddball, but I love the '58 GM line. Completely over the top. My uncle had a lower end Oldsmobile in black for a short while when I was a kid. Probably '85-'86, it was a Minnesota car and a rust bucket, but that chrome always had a polish to it!

I saw a 58 Chevy for the 1st time on craigslist in a 2 car package project. One car was really rough but ran and was complete. The other one had a good frame, body and floors already done, a spare NOS quarter panel and extras with no drivetrain. I bought them both for $3200 delivered to my house. Frame off restored the better one in 2018 in my garage, I love the 58 style for some strange reason. I found a '68 396 bbc shortblock unassembled fresh from the machine shop (stored 20 years) and put it together with a 700r4 trans. I found a deep blue "firemist" color online which was a cadillac thing and very heavy on the metallic. "Neptune blue firemist" and artic white 2-tone. 2nd car i ever painted and it was a passion project. I repaired every piece of stainless myself which was tedious but rewarding. Its the stainless and chrome that make the car "shine". I spent more time wetsanding and polishing than actually painting the car. i painted every piece off the car.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks cars have faces with expressions! My grandfather owned a Mobil service station. Chevy was our family’s brand. The grandparents would buy a new car every few years in the 50’s and hand down the old car to one of the kids. My mother finally got her first brand new car in 1965, a Chevy II, a very attractive car!

A real piece of art, not just a car design!!

This video gave a seventy four year old guy a surge of nostalgia. The production and presentation is in my opinion, fantastic! You earned another subscriber as a bonus for your hard work.

Yes! I remember when you could look at a car.... just about ANY car and know right away what year it was. Try doing that today, and you'll be hard pressed to even discern the difference between MANUFACTURERS.

When I was a child (1969-72 ish) a bloke up the road from us had loads of American Cars in his drive, probably 6-8 . . . He lived on a smallholding with a massive area to park. They were this era and I loved sitting in them and pretending to drive them. They seemed absolutely massive compared to our (UK) cars. . . Still LOVE them

... I was born in the US mid-atlantic state of New Jersey in 1951, and I grew up watching The Great American Lead Sleds zooming all over the place. They were simply amazing-- and they all had definite "facial expressions" which we kids delighted in mimicking with our own faces. We used to play a game where one kid would pull a "car face", and the rest of us would try to guess which car it was. And the Guessers were consistently surprisingly accurate. A good example is here at 0:39. That Imperial is popping the same sloe-eyed grin a rich drunk uncle would flash on the holidays. Then computers got hold of the designs, and now everything looks like a watermelon seed with headlights.

I remember these so well, plenty on the road when I was little kid in the late 60s and throughout the 70s. Their eccentric character and many variations were fascinating to me. Every outing was like wandering through a carnival midway. My family were Ford folk and the first car of ours I remember was a 59 Galaxie 500 with a rather determined expression on it's face .

I love those 59' Cadillacs. Absolutely over the top tail finns. Crazy, daring, a statement on its own. We shall never see their likes again.

The '58 Chevy and it's rounded fins has become recognized as a good looking car. I love them. The "batwing" fins on the '59 Chevy impala were the height of "fin" design. They were beautifully integrated into the design and didn't, at all, look added on as an afterthought.

I'm a car enthusiast and '58 is my favorite year with GM products leading the way. They were 'one offs' and even if they weren't well received at the time, go to any car show today and they, along with the '59 Caddy, will draw the most attention.

My father was a tool and die maker and in the 50s and 60s, he made the dies that stamped out the bumpers and trim for GM cars. He would bring home the first samples of the test stamping of the trim and would decorate the walls of our large garage/shop. I thought that it was a little tacky at the time. Now I wish that I would even have a picture of this. (BTW, my last name is Buick, but we were unrelated to the founder of the company.)

I was a "Keen Teen" in the late 50's and a close observer of the cars of the time. Among my peers, the '57 Chevy was considered the car to have, especially in the ultra-cool Southern California area. The '58 Chevy Impala was also in that category. Either of those two cars entitled you to jealous looks from the multitudes as you cruised a local Oscar's or Jack-in-the-Box drive-ins. My Dad bought a '58 Buick the day after we arrived back in the States in 1958 after a 2 year tour on Guam. That was the car I took the lovely Nancy O. to the THS Senior Prom and then to the Coconut Grove to hear the famed lady of song Gisele MacKenzie entertain. I felt like a king! Two years later when I returned from my own USAF duty station in far-north Japan, my Dad presented me with his commuter car, a very plain '58 Chevy Biscayne. But that unit allowed me to do my USAF duties by day (in Texas) and drive to my night time gig as a radio DJ on the #1 pop music station in town. Life was never better!!

I was five years old in 1958, and I could already tell you the make and model of most cars on the road. That's the kind of hold the American automobile industry had on the public imagination in those years. Inconceivable now, but those heaps of chrome held all the beauty and mystery of life!

My uncle had a 59 Oldsmobile 88. The amount of chrome on that thing was incredible/ ridiculous.The entire dash, and every knob attached to it, was chrome. I remember him mentioning how that dash could blind him with reflected light while driving at night.

1958: When cars were still considered works of art!

The '58 Impala is one of the most beautiful pieces of machinery ever assembled.

I love these designs. They were a product of the time, bold, often ludicrous, and a reaction to the illusion that mankind had transcended the great wars of the previous decades.- They were a manifestation of the zeitgeist. It's impossible to separate these products from their period of conception.

Episode 50? Holy crap! I just found this series, and I'm STOKED to find out there are at least 49 other episodes to binge watch! 👍

Your best video yet! GM may have been caught flat footed with their '58s, but their "rushed" designs for '59 ushered in the design language used by the entire industry in the 1960s. Take a look at the '60 Chevrolet Corvair, with its clean, horizontal lines and lack of unnecessary chrome. It and the wicked cool '61 Lincoln Continental, '63 Buick Riviera and '63 Studebaker Avanti were part of a wave of clean, sharp-edged design that is completely different than where we were headed in '58. By 1965, all cars looked completely different than they had just seven years earlier.

I think a lot of people just dont realize how much the Forward Look cars shook Detroit to its absolute foundation. It came from nowhere, from the manufacturer you least expect it. Imagine as if Chrysler launched a car tomorrow that looks absolutely stunning and like nothing on the road today, being a million miles away from their current lineup, being sold at a reasonable, almost cheap pricepoint, while Ford and GM are still playing dress up with their oversized tall hatchbacks

I'm 79 yrs old and what I remember most about those oversized chrome plated monsters was their tendency to rust. They would melt like a pop sickle on the sidewalk in July. It was hard to wear one out before it rusted away.

In 1958 I was 12 years old and beginning to get interested in cars. I instinctively felt that the overly chromed Buicks and Oldsmobiles were ridiculous and helped direct my dreams to clean lined and sleek european sports cars. My tastes have broadened and a half century later I'm still interested.

Man I've always thought that the 58 Cadillac was one of the best looking cars ever made.

As the current owner of an original 1958 Buick Century 2 door, I can say that these GMs from 58 are much more loved now than they were when they hit the showroom floors. Great video!

58 was my favorite year for styling. This narrator is nuts.

I was 5 yrs old in ‘59 and becoming all boy. I remember these cars and absolutely loved them. My dad had a used 1955 Pontiac Star Chief but in 1960 he went with Plymouth Valiant. We lived in South Jersey, in the summer, highways were an endless parade of these vehicles. Boy oh boy how I loved riding around with dad and looking at all the fantastic cars especially on Friday evenings going to McDonald’s where you could see tail lights on. My favorite was the Cadillac with the huge wings and the Impala with equally impressive wings. Man I miss those old styles…

What impresses me about these cars is how well crafted they look, real quality. When compared to today's autos, where one make of car so often looks like another make of car, it's great to see true imagination at work.

I like all the GM designs of 58. The 59 models though were the best. Actually all 59 models from the big 3 were outstanding. You could tell they were all trying hard to outdo each other. I owned a 59 El Camino in my younger days so I've always been partial to GM but I really can't imagine what it would have been like to walk through all the dealership showrooms in 59. Beautiful cars!!!

A co-worker colleague of mine who was as much of a car buff that I was, once quipped to me, complaining that all of the new cars from about 30 yrs ago, (1990's) all came out of the "Jellybean School of Car Design"... I had to chuckle and heartily agree.

I was only 10 when the '58's came out. Since my brother's new '57 Chevy Bel Air was so cool, I couldn't wait to ride my Schwinn bike down to the local Chevy dealer and see what they'd come up with for '58. I rode up to the showroom window, filled with anticipation. And there it sat. A bright yellow convertible with a strange new name... "Impala." As I stood there straddling my bike, my stomach began to churn. I was never so disappointed in my life.

The '58s were overall some of the best looking cars they ever built...it's not GM's fault there was a recession that year.

Yeah, I know GM’s chrome cars are supposed to be mistakes but I love them. The more chrome the better.

You really make it sound so dramatic! I kinda like those 58's. As a two-year-old I remember standing in the garage waving bye-bye to my daddy in a silver '58 Cadillac convertible. Those were the days!

While some models over the top, the majority were works of art! Classy, elegant and unique, most were absolutely BEAUTIFUL!

58 was not a mistake. There was a world wide recession and today most of my favorite classics are 58 models.

Man those magnificent flying machines and rock and roll . What great time to be alive👍🎸🍁

I think we all owe a big thank you to not only the genius designers at GM, but also to Chrysler for the pressure their designs put on GM. Competition breeds innovation.

I am the second owner of a coral pink 1958 Buick Limited. Seventeen different pieces of chrome just in the bumper. Ten-body trunk. Love it.

Gotta love the ' 58 Buick has a chrome grill weighing about 6 tons held on with 50 1/2 inch diameter bolts. Ahhh, childhood memories.

My first car was a 1958 Olds 88, 371 engine. You flipped over the driver side tailfin to put gas in it. I loved it.

You're right, that Olds looks like a main battle tank, and its glorious.

I'm an old guy, so I sure remember how exciting were the auto dedign changes during the 1950's. These days, it's all gone. Cars always look more or less the same for the last 20 or 30 years. Why would I want a new car? I'm still drivin' the same ol' Ford van (or is it a Dodge van?) for the last ten years.

My parents had a ‘59 Cadillac. But it was in the early 70’s. Not such a great car then (we weren’t poor, but nowhere near rich). It was Peak oil years, and besides it wasn’t so cool to be driving a 15 year old ‘car’… packed with your 4 brothers. Though looking back… it was a cool car! Thanks for the video.

I was born in 58 and as a youngster, Dad had a used 57 Pontiac Star Chief. In 63 he went back to Ford. The only 59 I like is the Buick and the 60 more so. I love seeing design concepts, what their ideas were.

Lol. I used to have a 58 Oldsmobile. It was a tank . I towed tow trucks with it. Great car. Great comments. Thanks for sharing.

I have my parents 1958 cadillac they bought in 1960 from a doctor friend of theirs. I was just 1 year old..lifelong Southern California car, in good shape, on the road. Mom knew I always wanted it, and signed it over to me in 1982. Palm Springs car so of course it has factory AC, power windows, and wonderbar radio. People frequently come up to me around town to ask about it. And it gets pretty good attention at the car shows. Since I literally grew up with this car, I never considered the styling to be anything but normal. Now, im 63, and she's 64 so were growing old together! Lol.

In the book "Engines of Change" it describes the GM designers going by the Chrysler test track and seeing the fins sticking out above the grass around the track. And their shock. Great book for anyone that loves cars.

When I was in the 8th grade (1964), Fisher Body had a competition for teenagers to design and build a specified sized scale model of one's own vision. They even sent the rubber tires at no charge. I built a sapphire blue painted basswood Olds Torando looking design (they had not been introduced yet so it was mere coincidence) . I thought that was pretty cool that they gave young people a chance to design a car and have it judged. Seems like first place may have been a college scholarship?

I'm only 35 and I absolutely love this era of cars. It seems that only now in the last 7 years or so have we seen cars finally go back to this extreme styling - just of a different age. When you let the artists express themselves, you reflect the society of the times - wealth, exuberance, imagination - all at the whims of the daily driver. Ah, what an age.

I've always loved the '58 Impala. Not only because of its uniqueness, but also because of its elegance.

I always find 50’s cars very interesting. Sure some might look ridiculous but I think in their own way they have a great style. The preservation on these things that I see today is amazing and definitely feels like a relic of a past era.

My dad had a '59 Chevy Impala in blue/white. Beautiful car! :)

Beautiful Iconic style of American car history... Wow !

I was born in 1954, and glad to remember all of these. The Chrysler imperial in 1959, we had a clergyman who bought one of these as a classic in 1975. He was so so proud of his black 59 imperial. I was a funeral home owner, a whenever we had a funeral cortège, with this pastor, he’d ask to lead the funeral through town to the cemetery gates. He’d “eat it up” with his proud Chrysler imperial. And I was glad he enjoyed it.

It was the SPACE ERA ! What did you expect ? Most of the cars were beautiful. Buick over did the chrome on their top model. The chrome and the fins were what they were pushing. I was 13, so I loved them all ! Every mfg. had their good year !

I love the 59 Buick's 2 DHT design. And i love either the bad evil front lights and the jet tails. From the same year, GM used a lot of components suitable on Olds super88- Impala's - Buick- and of course the 59 Caddy coupe de Ville.

Outstanding video. Especially enjoyed the Iconic 1950's film footage. Thank you very much for taking the time and effort to compile such an enjoyable viewing experience. I look forward to and welcome your other video's.

As an owner of a ‘57 Chevy, it’s very nice to see why and how they made certain decisions to the cars that came next. And why Chuck chuckled… Great stuff again Edward. Enjoy your time in the States.

There is nothing "wrong" with any of them, stunning, I have a '68 Plymouth Roadrunner here in the UK for 38 years so this stuff is wonderful in comparison, went for a run out yesterday and the owner of the US Diner had a fully restored Olds eighty eight on show.

Owned a brand new 1959 Chevy Bel Air. It was gorgeous and had it for years. Loved that car and its way out fins

It seems to me, that with the advent of hybrid and electric engines and LED lights there is a spark of creativity in car design that has been missing for decades. Concept cars often look really cool, but don't seem to translate to real models. Thank you for the video. This is fascinating history!

Ed, this has to be the best Automotive channel on KZfaq. Maybe the best channel period. Anyone who says they like cars that doesn't like your channel. They're either lying or ignorant. Amazing stuff. Keep up the good work

Ahh, 1958, the best year!!! (I was born in 58). Ed, you really captured the chrome excess of GM cars!! The space race was in full bloom & the idea of more is better was running rampant!!! Thanks for sharing this fun video!!! 👍👍🙂

some serious research went under this episode. Good work. All of your narrative lined up against your findings, and it make for an excellent streamlined story.

THANK YOU for this fantastic vid! We were always a Chevy family because my father worked at the Chevy plant in N. St. Louis in the 1950's until they closed it and built a new one in Wentzville and the Corvettes went to Kentucky. Love the tri-five!. We had a 1957 Bel Air. Loved it even then, and I was only 6 at the time.

I really enjoy your videos. Great wit and opinions in well-produced episodes. Great job!

I'm a GM man.And I love what you have done here.Pat yourself on the back my friend you deserve it.

We had a '59 Chevy, the tailfins were enormous, and mostly horizontal. but for all of the bumpers & tailfins, I saw one used for a crash test comparison with a modern car, and I'm very glad to have had no accidents in the '59.

Gorgeous , outrageous, awesome. Gone are days when you could tell the difference between automobile manufacturers model years and the specific manufacturer & model. Chromeotherapy indeed!

You truly know your cars. I've watched your videos and have been impressed by your knowledge and your research. But in this video, you topped yourself on your research. When you mentioned the National Lampoon article about the "58 Bulgemobile, I was blown away. I read that issue when it first came out. Someone of your age who could find an obscure early '70s magazine and put it in your presentation, well it just shows your supreme dedication and research ability!!! Well done!!

Very well researched and presented in a truly great way! Thanks Ed - ik waardeer je video's enorm!

Great video.... enjoyed it very much. I was at a seminar back in the early 90's when the designers of that era GM cars, talked about styling the 59 cars. I videoed it, with their permission. Of course back then it was VHS and the video quality has diminished on the tape over the decades, but I did record the video playing with my GoPro on my TV from a VHS player I own that still works. I uploaded it to my channel, but it's kinda fuzzy with poor sound, due to the VHS tape being so old. By the way, I own a 59 Chevy.....

Beautiful, comfortable and creative design .. I remember riding some models...they were extremely comfortable...like riding a plume

The 58s and 59s were works art. Fabulous.

Aunt had the Oldsmobile Station Wagon Green & Chrome 1958 PUSH Button Everything- Big Wide- ONLY Five Cars made- Dealer said was a prototype test production run of 5 Units- this Specific Type by Oldsmobile and they had it for many years- it was cool- it was different Way different... Quite nearly a One of a Kind-Never saw another one like...

I'm loving this!! As a child I used to watch It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and I couldn't take my eyes off those big beautiful card that seemingly flooded every scene in that classic road trip loony caper. Now I see what inspired them all. Brilliant!

My buddy just had a 58 Buick Centry convert restored. Absolutely incredible over the top chromemoblie. It's so killer.

I thought the 58 GM cars looked great! Especially the 58 Chevrolet. We had a 58 Oldsmobile and really liked it. I don't think the 58 GM cars were ugly at all - but I can see how GM feared Chrysler corp was ahead pf them in styling. Still, I am glad this situation happened - leading to the redesign of the 59 models. This way there are even more cool 50s American cars with different body styles! Really, what was so awesome about this time period was the significant yearly redesigns. 57-58-59 were the most changes seen in a short period of time - but how cool for the rest of us to have seen all these changes and choices! Then in 1961 - again, totally different body styles! Imagine how old a 1954 model looked in 1961 at 7 years old. Or even a 1957 model in 1961 when it was only 4 years old! Think of how much less change there is, especially today. You have to go back to practically 1987 now for a car to look old. And it doesn't matter what company makes a car today - they all look the same. Very little creativity or interesting styling in today's cars.

I love the 58 Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Cadillacs... but the olds and Buick were just too far gone. 55-57 had been a very transitional period for GM styling and had already gotten heavier and clumsier each year. 58 was as much a natural progression as it was a massive attempt at course correction. The 59s by comparison, while wild, I think are pretty seminal and much cleaner than the 58s. Great video, especially the addition of the Mafia 2 soundtrack.

I had a 1957 Chevy 2 door Hardtop with the Power Pack 283 4 barrel. What an awesome car that was, Also loved th3 1963 Chevy impala 2 door hardtop Super Sport.

Crazy how cars back then looked so beautiful.

I loved the 50's cars. As a kid growing up, one of the most exciting times of the year was September when the new car models were to be revealed. The new models were kept secret as much as possible until announcement day and I can remember checking out the car dealers in town, trying to see if I could spot one of the next year's new models on the lot somewhere. It was so exciting to finally spot a new Buick or Pontiac or Chevy or Ford or whatever tucked away in the back of a lot somewhere (and hidden as much as possible from public view until announcement day) and see how much (or in some cases how little) they had changed from the previous year. One of the best years for change across all the makers was 1955. Our local dealer had a new 55 Chevy in the showroom with the showroom windows covered with paper to keep it hidden until announcement day. I was awe struck when I finally saw it and the 55' Chevy is still an all time classic today. I loved em all during the 50's...the Ford, Chrysler, GM, Packard and Studebaker products. Packard of course was gone by 1958 but of the lines that remained, I thought that 1958 was one of the best, style wise, especially Chrysler and GM (the 1958 Ford, not so much). I liked the Merc that year as well. The 1958 Pontiacs, Cadillacs and Chevys were outstanding, some of the best looking cars of the 50's or of any era for that matter in my opinion. I agree that 1958 was not a great year for Oldsmobiles. I thought their styling that year had misfired. Buick was fine but not great for 58. My dad had a 58 Buick Limited and even though it was a behemoth, it was stunning to look at, ride in and drive. There is none of that kind of excitement in the cars of today in my opinion. The cars all look like each other and you can't tell the difference in them from one model year until the next.

While not nearly as collectible as other years, I love the ‘58 Impala which was the “Caprice” of that year. There are a couple of great examples here on KZfaq. That model greatly surpassed expectations of the “value” image of GM’s low-priced division, in my opinion.

I'm probably twice your age, was never really into American cars to begin with, but after slowly getting hooked by your storytelling and unique voice, I surrendered.. Very good work, my good man! :D

Your graphic of a chrome cube on wheels with the Cadillac emblem on it made me burst out in laughter - glad I didn't have any coffee in my mouth!

Those were some of the coolest cars and people still LOVE these cars...