Introduction
Have you ever just thought to yourself, "How were the cars in the 1950s?" Yeah, me neither, but it's pretty intriguing. There was a serious event that year (1950) for car salesmen, that event was the re-imposition of Regulation W (limited purchases during and immediately after WWII. I bet that you didn't know that car sales were through the roof by the end of 1950, there was a whopping 7,987,000 cars sold!
Manufacturers introduced new cars during 1950, to meet the demand of a needed second car for middle income families and a car whose price placed it within the range of availability to people who previously had to buy used cars. In design, the feature of the 1951 model year was the extension of the “hardtop convertible” introduced in 1950 models. It was not a convertible, these cars embodied the lines of a convertible while having a fixed top. This style was stretched to include four-door sedans in 1951 models. Almost half of the 1951 models offered this styling. Most changes were cosmetic, they seldom changed a lot of things inside the car. There was an increase in the number of automatic transmissions during 1950. It was estimated that well over 1.5 million fully automatic transmissions were produced during the year. By the end of the 1950’s one in six working Americans was employed in the automobile industry. |
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