WHY 1959 WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR FOR DOMESTIC CARS

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It is no secret we at MyStarCollectorCar are big fans of Francis Albert Sinatra, so much so that we have mentioned him on numerous occasions, including a 2019 article when we talked about “very good years” for retro cars.

For the record, ‘It Was a Very Good Year’ was a huge hit for Frank Sinatra in 1966 after its December 1965 release. 

MyStarCollectorCar would like to revive the ‘very good year’ topic again-but this time we will only choose one year, specifically 1959 because that year was arguably the height of automotive coolness in our humble opinion.

Jim Sutherland

What made 1959 so cool? The obvious answer is ’59 was the height (literally and figuratively) of the finned car craze in North America, an era when tailfins reached for the sky in many cases, including the legendary ‘59 Cadillac Eldorado with its skyscraper rear fins.

Our ‘1959-was-a-very-good-year’ list would not be complete without the ‘59 Caddy Eldorado because the big car had fins so tall they had glaciers on top of them.

Another solid addition to our list is the 1959 Plymouth because of its rear fins. The ‘59 Plymouth was the second last year for that Mopar brand’s tail fin models, but we believe this version had the most stylish fins ever added to a Forward Look Plymouth.

“Forward Look” is a well-known term for Mopar fans who loved the tailfin era, a time frame that began in 1955 with modest fins on Plymouth models and ended in 1961 with rear deck stumps after a severe fin amputation on the ’61 Plymouths.

The Plymouth tailfin argument gets heated when one considers 1957 and ’58 Plymouths because both model years had very cool rear fins, but we believe the ’59 Plymouth truly embodied the Forward Look vision for Mopar genius Virgil Exner. In short, it made 1959 a very good year for Plymouths. 

A fin of a different style also deserves a place on our list about a very good year (1959) for North American cars. The car in question is the 1959 Chevy, a car equipped with radically designed tailfins that leaned heavily toward a horizontal position on the rear deck of the car.

The ‘59 Chevy’s horizontal tailfins gave the car a wildly different style that was reminiscent of the TV version of the Batmobile-even though the car from the 1960s Batman television series was based upon a Ford concept car from the late 1950s.

These days a well-preserved 1959 Chevy Impala will cost big bucks because of its cool style.

1959 was also a very good year for Buick in our opinion here at MyStarCollectorCar.

The ’59 Buick was blessed with a unique front and back end that featured factory canted headlights, along with horizontal tailfins the showcased the large round brake lights on the car’s back end. It was a striking overall design that separated Buick from the pack and ensured 1959 was a very good year for the upscale GM stablemate.

This article’s final addition to MyStarCollectorCar’s examples of a very good year for North American cars is the ’59 Mercury. The Mercury was a tweener car between low-end Ford models and high-end Lincoln models in the Blue Oval family during its long production run.

The 1959 Mercury had an unusual rear deck that featured horizontal fins around unique taillights that were mostly triangular, with a round design in their centers. The overall result is a car that enjoyed a very good year (style-wise) in our opinion here at MyStarCollectorCar.

For that reason, the ’59 Merc is a solid addition to our list of cool cars from a very good year that MyStarCollectorCar intends to revisit in the future.

Mainly because 1959 was a very good year for so many domestic cars.    

Jim Sutherland

BY: Jim Sutherland

Jim Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer whose work has been published by many major print and online publications. The list includes Calgary Herald, The Truth About Cars, Red Deer Advocate, RPM Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province, and Post Media Wheels Section. 

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