The 1950s Automobile

The 1950s automobile has a special place in the affections of classic cars enthusiasts and the decade saw many unforgettable cars on the roads of America and Europe.

While today ownership of an automobile is almost taken for granted, that was no so in the 1950s.

Back in the 1950s automobile ownership was something of a status symbol. And it gave freedom as well as status in the neighbourhood to the lucky owner.

The Great Depression of the 1930s had seen a slump in the number of people able to buy new vehicles.

But by the 1950s automobile ownership became wide spread. The boom in the post war economy and the ready availability of cheap loans led to 80 per cent of American households owning an automobile by the end of the 1950s.

And where the depression years had seen Americans desperately hang on to their old bangers for as long as possible, the 1950s saw most people regularly changing their automobiles, often within two years.

The demand for 1950s automobile saw the American car manufacturers develop and manufacture an increasing array of automobiles, some of which have become classics. Buick, Cadillac, Dodge Studebaker and Pontiac are just some of the American manufactures who produced wonderful 1950s automobiles.

There is still a great demand for 1950s automobiles and enthusiasts are prepared to spend small fortunes for these examples of automotive beauty, particularly as they become ever rarer. For most of us the only opportunity of seeing 1950s automobile is by looking at photographs or watching films from that era.

Should anyone go on holiday to Cuba they are very likely to see the 1950s automobile in every day use. Cuban motorists have been forced to keep on driving these old beauties, relics of life before the island's communist revolution, because of the United States' economic blockade.

But sadly these 1950s vehicles will not be seen at their original best, as drivers have had to fix and mend over the decades to keep these once proud automobiles on the road. But even in their battered sate, these old 1950s automobiles still show the depth of design which has seen them become classics in the modern era.

The 1950s were a golden age of car production, when freed from the shackles of a war economy of a decade earlier, the manufacturers were able put a vehicle on the driveways of most families, and the ownership of an automobile became very much part of the American dream.

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