Vintage Antique Cars

Vintage antique cars are classed as anything that was rolled off the assembly line over 45 years ago.

For the best vintage antique cars ever produced we have to go back to the 1950s – a golden age for motoring.

The best cars in the world during the 1950s were designed, built and driven in the United States.

Detroit was the world capital of 1950s automobile manufacturers. It had the planet’s best car styling departments and automobile designers and they were to come into their own during the decade.

In the early 1950’s the Chevrolet Corvette was rolled out to the American public’s acclaim. Foreign car manufacturers were also eager to cash in on the potentially huge market stateside. The Italian two-seater Ferrari 166 Inter-Ghia embarked on a tour of the United States to see how folk reacted to it.

American vintage antique cars of the 1950s are usually thought of big, brash and bristling with chrome. For most cars of the period that assumption is correct. But there was also a move to produce smaller and more economical cars. Nash Motors made a bid to seize their share of that particular market with the NXI. 

Intriguingly, Nash embarked in a major poll of public opinion to check that Americans actually wanted small cars, and the type of vehicle they desired. They shared their ideas with overseas car manufacturers such as Fiat in Italy and the UK’s Standard-Triumph. This led to the production of the Austin Motor Company’s 1200cc A40 Somerset range as well as Nash’s own Metropolitan which hit the showrooms in 1954.

Despite this market for the smaller cars, American tended to like their motor vehicles to be big and stylish. In 1956 DeSoto rolled out the high-performance Adventurer. ‘56 was a great year for the DeSoto as they provided a pace car for the Indianapolis 500 – always a great showcase for the motor industry’s wares.

The highly rated car stylist Virgil Exner was in charge of design, and typically for this styling genius, DeSoto models were adorned with tailfins that soared and triple tail lights. That did the trick for DeSoto as far as the American public were concerned as sales rocketed.

The Americans may have been kings of car production during the 1950s, but that did not mean that other countries were not capable of producing what were to become the vintage antique cars so admired today.

The British Bentley R-Type produced between 1952 and 1955 oozes pure class, while the Saab 750GT/850GT first rolled out in 1958 is acknowledged as one of the best models ever produced by the Swedish giant.

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