" Sometimes as a European, it's hard to empathise with what turns people on about classic hot rods. The history of rise and rise of the stripped down DIY form is so essentially American, you get the feeling to be turned "
Las Vegas Car Culture, 1958
Regular Influx devotees will realise that we spend a righteous amount of time scouring the World Wide Web for vintage images that reflect car culture down the ages in order to share their beauty.
It’s an addictive, time-consuming pursuit but one we think is worthwhile.
If you’re not aware of the past, so goes the saying, you can’t make proper plans for the future.
With that dictum in mind we were stoked to find these beautiful shots of Las Vegas that date from, we would guess, around 1958.
Wrought in the cult-provoking and recently discontinued film stock known as Kodachrome, they shine an incredibly intimate light on a bygone era – and illustrate perfectly how the colour and variety of car design from that American boom time has these last 50 years been so influential on popular culture the world over.
Not being experts of chrome-clad Yankee iron, we can only make an educated guess: we think the off-white car in the foreground of the shot above is a ’57 Chevy (look closely and dig the glamorous girl in white shades riding in the back).
We would appreciate the feedback from any of you American car experts out there to name the rest of this colourful assemblage.
The shot below, meanwhile features a beautifully framed Ford Thunderbird, offset nicely by the otherworldly architecture of 50s Vegas.
Imagine what shots from these exact perspectives would look like in 2010?
Images via A Continuous Lean.
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The white beauty on the left of the image with the 'love-it-or-hate-it' grill is an Edsel Citation (around 1958). This was a rare car at the time as most people hated it and it was a sales disaster for Ford. Worth a fortune now but people are still divided by that grill…
Hi there. The car on the car left with the yellow licence plate is a Ford Edsel. The 2-tone car in gold/creme looks like a De Soto (or a similar Mopar stablemate). The blue car is a Buick Skylark, or possibly Roadmaster.
The brown and white car is a 57 dodge made by chrysler. It had pushbutton control for the auto trans. The edsel was named after Henry Fords son Edsel Ford and it too had pushbutton auto trans control in the middle of the steering wheel. This hub did not rotate just as in the modern Citroens. I have ridden in each of these cars at one time or another and passed my test in another chrome barge of the fifties a 1957 Mercury which was quite futuristic for the period, also with push button auto control.
Further to my other post the Edsel is a 1958 the first year of production as the grille was toned down in the fifty nine with more emphasis on the horizontal. Behind the brown and white Dodge is a Lite blue Frogeye Sprite. Between the Dodge and the blue Buick is a 55-56 Cadillac and the red convertible could be a 55 mercury since the headlamp cowling resemble's this make.
Through the windscreen of the blue Buick is a 58 Ford and through the windscreen of the 57 Chevy is a 59 Plymouth and behind the Plymouth is an Oldsmobile.
The Dunes shot is a 55 T-Bird.
Beautiful pics. Makes me nostalgic for a time I never knew. So much colour. The digital world is erasing itself.
Great photographs, the is the Las Vegas we see and know from the old Hollywood films, would love to visit one day.