Nothing makes your heart sing the way it does when the bagger at the supermarket checkout takes one glance at the magazine you’re buying and says, “That car is so cool!”
The cover photo of a hot-red late-1960s muscle car arrested his eye, and your groceries pile up on the conveyor because he can’t quit looking at it. Cool bagger, you tell yourself – he recognizes an icon when he sees one.
Certain cars managed to capture attention when they were new and never let it go. Not all of them stayed hot and fresh, but all reflected their time. Here are nominations for icons for the decades.
1950s – Chevrolet Bel Air
At the height of the tailfin era, the Bel Air, born in 1953, offered a nod to the past, a wink at the future and a hood broad enough for four kids to pile on at the drive-in movie. You could check your reflection in the chrome, and the only way you’d bump elbows in the roomy interior was if everyone in the car lifted their double-deck hamburgers and malts at the same time.
The Bel Air’s tailfins have been described as “tastefully restrained,” never reaching the high-flying proportions found on Cadillacs, Buicks or Dodges. The car came in more than 50 color combinations, all perfect for dressing up the driveways of postwar tract homes. But looks weren’t everything; in 1955, Chevrolet offered a 265-cubic-inch V8, an option that became identified with Bel Airs. Buyers in 1957 could order fuel injection, too. Although Chevrolet produced Bel Airs through the mid-1970s, and in Canada through 1981, the ’55s, ’56s and ’57s won the most hearts.
1960s – Ford Mustang
We might have known the Mustang would have staying power from the moment Ford introduced it to the public in April 1964 at the New York World’s Fair. The term “pony car” was coined because of it and applied to sporty sedans with long hoods and short backs that looked like they could muscle slower cars off the road.
In the following 18 months, more than 1 million Mustangs were built, selling for a little more than $2,300 each. The Mustang’s success generated competing pony cars, such as the Chrysler Barracuda, AMC Javelin and Chevy Camaro. Eventually the competitors ceased production, the Mustang never did – and, in fact, over the years it has begun resembling once again the Mustang style so popular in the ’60s.
1970s – Chevrolet Vega
Once among the 10 best-selling cars in America, Vegas remain popular on the racetrack – but not on the road. The Vega arrived in the 1971 model year and stuck around through 1977, one of the first U.S.-made subcompacts competing against an influx of Japanese imports and just in time to run headlong into an oil crisis and a drive for fuel economy.
Featuring unibody construction, the Vega got 5 mph bumpers in 1974, leading to a redesign that some experts said made it heavy, cut its mileage and made it less desirable. Now, however, you can see Vegas outfitted with small-block V8 engines at respected competitors on the track – horsepower they never had in everyday life.