Few people remember the Ford Crestline, and really now, you can’t blame them. This model, which was available as a 2-door hardtop and convertible and 4-door sedan and station wagon, was produced for just two years, between 1952 and 1954.
It goes without saying not a lot of them ended up seeing the daylight, with its successor, the well-known Fairlane, eventually becoming a lot more successful.
But given it was manufactured for just a couple of years, the Crestline has become a pretty sought-after model among collectors, especially because finding an example that still has everything is very often mission impossible.
This 1954 Crestline Victoria is, at least at first glance, the dream of many collectors out there.
It comes in incredible condition, and it’s all thanks to how the car has always been stored. eBay seller yellaboimike says the Crestline has been parked in a garage exclusively, so it comes with zero spots of rust or any other metal issues.
Unfortunately, few specifics have actually been provided, so we can’t tell if the car has ever been restored or not. On the other hand, everything looks to be a pretty good condition, and the mileage (66,000 miles / 106,000 km) seems to suggest this is still an all-original Crestline.
This is not the most-perfect 1954 Chevrolet in existence, but it’s still in a museum.
With us, most of the cars aren’t perfect,” says Stanley Sipko, curator at the AACA Museum, Inc., in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It was that collection which led to me pondering this question, as there are very few of what you might call “thousand-point” restorations on hand. Points, of course, referring to the scoring systems used to judge competitors at numerous single-make shows held around the country each year.
Why wouldn’t museums seek out cars restored perfectly to factory-built condition? It’s because often those cars have no story to them beyond being representative of an agreed-upon ideal of what a particular car looked like when new. Museum exhibits rarely look to display that level of perfection because it’s not what the general public relates to when it comes to a museum. Automobiles matter most when considered in context rather than in a vacuum.
The context is provided by a museum’s mission statement, says Derek E. Moore, newly appointed curator of collections for the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tennessee; previously director of collections at the National Corvette Museum; former curator of transportation history for the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio; and one-time conservation specialist for transportation collections at The Henry Ford:
“My take as a curator is that it has to be for everyone. It has to be for the car people in this world and it has to be for the general public. That’s where it becomes a challenge. You could buy a warehouse, fill it with hundreds of cars, put out no labels, no nothing, but every car person would probably still come see it because it’s just fun to look at cars; but when you look at a museum, our job is to educate the general public as well and you have to make it interesting and relatable to everyday visitors.
“Be it the most-passionate automotive historian who may walk in our door, down to the least-knowledgeable visitor off the street. The hope is to make it great for them, so they tell their friends and come back.”
We’ve seen cars where the underside of the dash is as neat and clean as the topside, but being “driver quality” doesn’t prevent a car from also being museum-worthy.
From 1954 to 1994, Ford improved its engine casting process in many ways, as we can see from these two Ford-produced videos showcasing the cast-iron engine manufacturing at the Cleveland and Windsor plants, respectively. Computerization! Ergonomic work stations! Conference rooms? A gym?
But once you get past the preambles and the shiny new office furniture in the latter video, you start to see just how unchanged the process remained at its core (get it?). Molten metal still flows into molds; massive machines still bore, hone, grind, and polish raw castings; precision instruments adapted for mass production still ensure tolerances and consistency; line workers still put in long and arduous days.
Published by Ford’s public relation company, the film “Technique For Tomorrow” displays progess in automation of car fabrication in a production site of car maker Ford in Brook Park, Cleveland, Ohio. Jerry, McMechan, Pat Powers, Doris Reichbart
A look at the 1954 Oldsmobile Cutlass Motorama show car
Because the Cutlass had so many characteristics in common with its smaller companion, the Olds F-88 convertible, this dream car was simply called “the long wheelbase F-88” before its formal naming. Its wheelbase spanned 110 inches, compared to the 102 for the F-88. Other pertinent measurements of the Cutlass included an overall length of 188.5 inches and overall height of 51.5 inches. Shown is a GM Photographic promotional photograph taken near Miami just before the opening of the GM Motorama held at the Dinner Key Auditorium.
Photography Courtesy Gm Media Archive and Author’s Collection
Eight times from 1949 to 1961, General Motors staged lavish auto shows in major cities for the purpose of telling the public about its products. These shows included automobiles from GM’s passenger car and truck divisions, as well as its AC auto parts and non-automotive concerns such as Electro-Motive Diesel and Frigidaire. Essentially, GM’s road-going show (under the names Transportation Unlimited in 1949, Mid-Century Motorama in 1950, and The GM Motorama for the remaining years), served as a marketing tool for selling the current crop of new GM automobiles and other products.
Furthermore, it informed people of the company’s latest developments in scientific research and engineering. The traveling show was well known for its array of dream cars, or concept cars in today’s vernacular, which tested public reactions to innovative styling and mechanical features that would either be included in the near future, at some time in the more distant future, or perhaps not to this day (i.e., turbine engine power for automobiles). GM’s vice president of the styling section, Harley Earl, knew the public did not respond well to too much change too soon, but knew people could and would view changes in most instances as desirable if given in the proper doses over time. This was accomplished through interactive exhibits, orchestras and troupes of dancers, lavish décor, and, of course, through the dream cars—all done at GM’s expense and free of charge to the public.
Crosley Powered Roadster Proposal Resulted in “Panda”- Monium
By Robert D. Cunningham
Following Crosley Motor’s 1952 demise, it seemed as if the glut of intrepid entrepreneurs who gave birth to dozens of postwar baby cars was nowhere to be found. Then, Norwegian immigrant Finn S. Hudson stepped forward. Hudson was a mechanical engineer and one of few former Crosley dealers to come up with a viable plan to keep the Crosley dealer network afloat.
In February 1953, he established Small Cars, Inc.in an outlying section of Kansas City, Missouri. His stated purpose was to manufacture and distribute the Panda, a Crosley-based “small utility vehicle” — so described because of the public’s resistance to the term “sports car.” But Hudson’s Panda truly would be a sports roadster powered by the durable Crosley engine.
Tom Cotter sure gets around the country in his ultra cool Woody Wagon and uncovers the most amazing finds. As an author, Tom has continued to pen books on his travels and we’ve been honored to be in several of these over the years (thanks Tom). And as we shared last year with you, Tom has partnered with Hagerty and has nearly 100 YouTube episodes that you can view on his travels and “finds” throughout the country. Go get ’em Tom
What’s this? A 1954 Ford with a flathead V-8 instead of a Y-block? How can this be? Though Ford discontinued its famed flathead V-8 for the 1954 model year, Canadian-built cars continued with it until the 1955s came out. This handsomely hued Customline Tudor, a mid-range model, was actually built in Canada. So, this car is doubly historic as it represents the final year of the first-generation Customline trim level at Ford, and the final year of flathead production in Canada. Color schemes don’t say “Fifties” more loudly than coral and white, and this Ford’s got them. The seller of this trim Tudor says she’s never driven it in foul weather during her period of ownership, which dates to 2015
If you’re old enough, you may have seen this car before, perhaps when it was featured in the July 1958 issue of HOT ROD. Since then, the hot rod hill climber originally built by Bob Davis of Boone, North Carolina, has been a few places. Now it’s back, completely restored and updated to modern specs for hot rodding, hill climbing, and vintage road racing.
After that, though, the car spent more than 25 years in a junkyard in Waynesville, North Carolina, rusting away until vintage sports car enthusiast Jimmy Dobbs of Memphis rescued it from obscurity in 1992. The cost of restoration was so high that Dobbs sold the car to Chuck Rahn, a talented fabricator based in Phoenix. Rahn attempted to sell it to Jim Herlinger, who owned a similar car, the Baldwin Special, in northern California. Herlinger passed, but called a friend of his in Michigan to tell him about the car.
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