A Brief Chronology of Dad’s Cool Cars

Growing up, I was blessed to have a father with good taste in cars—and a job that provided them. Naturally, I have some thoughts on the rides of my boyhood …

The Buicks

I spent my early childhood riding in Buicks: a 1947, then a ‘49, then a ‘51, each cleverly bought at one year old, after its first-year depreciation. As a little kid, I don’t recall much about the first two but fondly remember the ’51 as a very nice, dark blue, four-port Roadmaster sedan. It flaunted a huge vertical-tooth grille, a cool bombsight hood ornament and (soon-to-be-trademark) chrome “sweepspears” arching downward from the front fender to the rear wheel opening.

We took long cross-country vacation trips from our suburban Cleveland home to Grand Island, Nebraska, to visit my dad’s parents and brother, then on to the tiny town of Hugo, Colorado, to see my mom’s folks, then to far-west California for other family visits. We also drove due south to Florida for spring vacations. My handy father built a removable, padded platform that stretched across the rear floor at seat level so my younger brother and I could stretch out and sleep side-by-side when we weren’t fighting or reading progressive Burma-Shave signs. We were not allowed on the rear package shelf since any impact, or even hard braking, would propel our little bodies fast-forward into the front. Dad did all the driving because my mom had poor eyesight and drove only short distances on neighborhood streets, but at times on low-traffic roads, he would let me sit on his lap and steer … a serious thrill for a car-nut kid!

The Buick was powered by a straight-eight engine that once overheated on a lightly traveled desert highway. We stopped and waited—in the middle of boiling-hot nowhere with no access to water or a phone within miles—to let it cool, which eventually it did and was miraculously okay. I also remember him buying a cardboard box that mounted in the driver’s window to serve as makeshift air conditioning. Filled with dry ice (available at 1950s desert service stations), it slightly cooled the air flowing into it through a hole in its front over the dry ice and out a side slot into the car. With all the other windows closed, it provided a little comfort but had to be regularly refilled.

My folks drove the Buick each January to Dad’s annual business convention in West Virginia, and my mom related one year how they had been sailing way too fast down a curvy mountain road. Seriously frightened, she had begged my dad to please slow down. But he had just kept driving, barely making one curve after another, and saying nothing. Luckily, he was a skilled driver who had done some dirt-track racing in his youth, and after they had finally made it to level road, he told her that the brakes had failed. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she had breathlessly asked him. “I didn’t want to scare you,” he’d said.

I loved that car.

The Cadillacs

The brake issue may have led Dad to upgrade to a one-year-old 1954 Cadillac Series 62 sedan for his next car. Medium blue with a white top, it was a nice car with then-fashionable—but not yet outrageous—fins, with the gas filler cleverly hidden under the left one. It had a wraparound windshield, dual exhausts in its back bumpers, vertical chrome “vents” on its rear doors and bulbous front bumper guards … nicknamed “Dagmars” for a reason I would later understand. It served well as his daily driver and our family road tripper, until a job promotion earned him a company car.

That’s when we got our first new car, an all-white, tall-finned 1958 Cadillac sedan. This would turn out to be the last year before the famously outrageous ’59s literally raised the bar on rocket-ship fins, and I recall it as impressive but overdecorated. Its grille was an array of chrome buttons. Chrome side strips stretched from newly fashionable quad round headlamps to mid-front doors. Separate strips ran along lower body protrusions from rear doors to taillamps, and more gratuitous brightwork was seemingly slathered on everywhere. 

As a socially conscious kid, I was uncomfortable being seen in that Cadillac; we were far from wealthy, and I didn’t want to be perceived and judged as a “rich kid.” I walked or rode a bike to school, but the couple of times when Dad drove me there, I asked him to let me out a block away so I wouldn’t be seen getting out of that new Caddy. He didn’t quite get that but agreed. And I remember it went through a couple of automatic transmissions (under warranty) before one finally held together.

The Thunderbird

For his next new company car, Dad chose a powder-blue 1960 Ford Thunderbird coupe. The third year of the four-seat ’Bird, it looked like the ’58 and ’59 with canted tailfins and a hot-looking hood scoop, but better (in my mid-teen, car-nut opinion) thanks to chrome bars on its grille and triple taillamps per side versus the previous four-lamp rear.

I turned 16 when he had that car so got some dad-driving lessons in it, and since he very wisely ordered it with then-optional front seatbelts, he badgered me into the habit of always buckling up, whether driving or riding … a habit that years later would very likely save my life. As a fast and skilled but safety-conscious driver, he had always shot his long right arm out in front of my mom or us kids whenever he’d had to brake hard to prevent us from being pitched forward into the dash. Now we had belts in his T-Bird to do a much better job of holding us in place.   

The Bonneville

I fell in love with the crisp new look of the 1961 Pontiacs so recommended that, when it came time for Dad to turn in the T-Bird, his next new company car should be a Pontiac. And he pretended to listen. But would he downgrade in status from a “personal luxury/sport coupe” Thunderbird to a semi-sporty Pontiac sedan? I was driving my own super-cool car by then so didn’t much care what his next daily driver would be. Then I came home one day to find a gleaming gold Bonneville in our drive. It was a 1962, not a cleaner, prettier ’61, but pretty cool nonetheless.

It had a nice interior with fake wood trim, carpet on the lower doors, and a grab bar (for my nervous mom) on the passenger side. In addition to a fairly strong V-8 and Hydramatic transmission, it had all the important options—power steering, brakes, windows and seats, cruise control, air conditioning, and finned aluminum wheels. Maybe he did listen to my recommendation, as influenced by positive magazine reviews and my personal taste. I proudly saw it as a car-nut-son-to-father communication breakthrough. Then I was off to college.

Mom’s Cars

My poor-sighted, seldom-driving mom—after several years with her first car, a very uncool ’51 Chevy coupe—had just one cool car, a sexy ’57 Ford convertible, which I regularly stole and joy rode virtually every Friday night at the age of 15, before I was old enough for a license. I never knew why my dad bought her that car, unless maybe it was his “second-childhood” choice. After that came a plain-Jane compact Mercury Comet, then a Ford Torino she rarely drove and reluctantly sold after 18 years with very few miles on the clock, once she was too old to drive.

Yes, I was truly fortunate to have a farmer’s-son father who liked cars almost as much as I loved them and who was successful enough at his job that he earned company cars for himself so he could afford a Ford convertible for my mom when I was in my teens and cool sports cars for me once I was legal to drive. I had high-school classmates whose families had real money, but none of them got to grow up riding in and driving such cool cars. And with the expense of having me in college, my younger brother—a skilled skier and volleyball player but no car enthusiast—got a used Rambler when he turned 16, because that was what Dad could afford at the time.