1957 Ford Fairlane 500 Town Sedan

"Color strikes a glorious keynote in the '57 Ford. There are lively, daring, vital hues that reflect the flashing spirit of the car itself. There is color harmony inside and out matched to the spectrum of your own personal taste. Raven Black, Starmist Blue, Woodsmoke Gray, Flame Red, Inca Gold . . . the very tones themselves conjure up a magic mood."

The combination of an exotic color scheme and tropical sunlight make for a truly intriguing look of this Ford Fairlane from 1957. Although the silver/purple hue wasn't a factory option, Ford had some wild color schemes on offer in that year. A two-tone paint job was de rigeur for all but the most frugally optioned cars, and adding the golden, anodized aluminum trim of the Fairlane 500 as a third accent color, Ford could offer a multitude of possible color combinations. Ford's advertisers made the equation: "There are 13 new body colors available for '57 in Single Color or stunning, new Style Tone combinations."

This color choice orgy was quite symptomatic for the most daring new Ford since the turnaround 1949 models. In 1957, Ford "invaded" the market with no less than 20 models, running on two different wheelbases and with the choice between an inline Six-cylinder powerplant and five V-8 engines.

Read more about the 1957 Fords here and here.

1959 Buick LeSabre 4-door Hardtop

"You can own a lot of future when you buy a Buick now! This Buick makes your money look ahead in a way other cars can't do. In a Buick, for instance, you own the clearest and cleanest example of a new styling trend that will be here for years  . . .  style that caused editors to name a Buick 'best looking overall' of all 1959 cars. Let your Buick Dealer help you discover how much future is here, and how easy it is to own today."

What a flash car! This Buick LeSabre from Havana really epitomizes the tremendous progress that American car design had made within just a decade.

Incidentally, the look of the 1959 Buick was the result of an internal uproar at the GM Design Center: chief designers of different GM divisions, among them Buick studio chief Ned Nickles and Harley Earl's eventual successor, Bill Mitchell, managed to look at pre-production 1957 Plymouths, months before their presentation to the public. The designers were stunned, if not shocked, by the nimble look of these "Forward Look" cars, that was so contrary to the clay models for the 1959 Buick which were already in the works, but looked at this stage like an evolution of the 1958 lineup. The conviction that something had to be done spread rapidly within the GM Design Center. When Harley Earl, who preferred much fuller volumes and loads of shiny decoration, was away in Europe, the clay models were heavily modified to appear much more linear and slender, too. Upon his return, Harley Earl avoided an open confrontation and nodded his consent to the proposals. Anyway, he was already nearing GM's mandatory retirement age of 65.

Thus, the radically revised Buicks for 1959 stirred quite a sensation upon their presentation in September 1958. Indeed, they looked amazing: tilted double headlights sat below chromed "eyebrows" and were connected with the taillights by a single chrome strip that emphasized on the car's length, while the new "floating" hardtop with its extremely thin C-posts and wraparound rear glass made the car look low and light. The rearview was dominated by large, slanted tailfins that resembled rather wings than fins.

Customers, perhaps, weren't just shocked by the unexpected look of the cars. In an unprecedented move, Buick had ousted all of its signature elements, too: portholes, sweep-spear chrome trim, "bomb-sight" hood ornaments and even the long established model names were thrown overboard. Instead of Special, Super, Century or Roadmaster, new Buicks now were christened LeSabre, Invicta and Electra.

Fortunately, the fabulous Buick look was backed up by a matching Buick ride. A lighter chassis meant much more agility, and propelled by a "Wildcat" engine on the LeSabre, and the even more powerful "Wildcat 445" engine on the Invicta and Electra these Buicks were truly made to roam America's highways. Road testers were impressed by the strong brakes, too: fading and underpowered brakes had been an eternal problem on the heavy American cars, but this time, Buick seemed to get it right.

For Buick dealers, though, the year 1959 wasn't any better than the horrid previous year. Keep in mind that these were "compact car times". The economic recession of 1958 was just about to fade away, and customers still sat taut on their wallets, ignoring Detroit's full-size chrome monsters and embracing thriftier and inexpensive cars. If not, we would certainly see much more 1959 Buicks in Cuba, today.

1962-1968 GAZ M21 Volga Series III

"The 'Volga' is a durable car and needs but a few spare parts. All the units of the car are strong, durable and need adjustment only as specified in the Operation Manual. Thoroughly cared, the car will always serve its owner."

At a glance, it might pass for Detroit Iron, but our featured car comes from the other side of the Iron Curtain. Meet the first model of a proud dynasty of "luxury" automobiles for the Russian people, oh wait, actually not. These cars were principally driven by the brass of state-owned businesses and government officials, became police cars, taxis or, usually in black, the transport of KGB agents, but not many private buyers could ever get in possession of such a fine car. Limited supply and an astronomic price tag, for the average communist salary, made sure that owning a Volga remained a dream for most. Fast-forward five decades in Cuba, our pictured Volga certainly is written off the government inventory since a long time, and thus has found its way to the private car market.

The Volga was conceived as a representative car that should equal the American "competition" in style and technology. Lead engineer Alexander Mihajlovich Nevzorov and lead designer Lew Eremeew began working on the first drawings in 1953. The designers certainly took a close look at American automobiles of that era, namely the Ford models. The result was a pretty decent looking car, which appeared quite modern for its time. The ambitious engineers even contemplated to implement a russian version of Chrysler's new "Hemi" engine with hemispherical combustion chambers, but this option soon was ditched.

When presented to the russian press in 1955, however, the car was still far from being production-ready, and it should take two more years before the first Volga finally was delivered. By that time, car styling in America already had progressed big time. The Russian prestige project now looked pretty dated and certainly was no good match for Detroit Iron anymore. Yet, more than 650,000 select customers could take possession of a Volga between 1957 and 1968, before the larger GAZ-24 Volga replaced the aging M21. The shape of its chrome grille characterizes our pictured car as a later model, called Series III, which was produced between 1962 and 1968.

Interlude

Frequent readers of this blog will have noticed that we didn't update Cubanclassics for quite a while now. The reason: we've been on another trip to Cuba. A month of absence from the "informed" world, without Internet connection, and with but scant bits of international news, most of them coloured in red, the preferred ductus of a state owned, socialist press. In Cuba, major headlines read like this one: "The distance between Cuba and India is just geographical." It wasn't all bad, though, as it teaches you upon return into our connected world, that the planet actually isn't turning as fast as one is tempted to believe. And that many of the "news" that we are exposed to every day are, well, merely a distracting noise.

But we've also spent four weeks full of impressions from an island that seems to exist in a strange parallel universe between past and present. And, of course, we've had a lot of interesting conversations with vintage car owners of very different background, be it the detail-obsessed pistonhead, or the Taxista who just sees his car as a tool to make a living.

Now we are back, having the SD-cards filled with new material for Cubanclassics. So, fellow readers, stay tuned for news on a rare Continental, some nice classic cars from Germany and England, and, of course, Detroit Iron aplenty.