By JERRY GARRETT
from The New York Times

Each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth,” the poet Arthur O-Shaughnessy wrote. The year 1957 was just such a time.

Humphrey Bogart, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Joseph P. McCarthy, Eliot Ness and Louis B. Mayer died that year. Significant 1957 births included Donny Osmond, Katie Couric, Scott Adams, Bill Ford and Osama bin Laden. The future seemed limitless for the United States. Postwar prosperity seemed as though it could go on forever, and Detroit automakers introduced a lineup of new models that seemed as invincible as America.

“I think 1957 was a high-water mark for Ford design; Chrysler as well,” said Greg Wallace, manager of General Motors- Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, Mich.

The enduring popularity, not to mention collectibility, of Chevrolet’s 1957 cars “speaks for itself,” he said, adding, “The -57 Chevy was quite simply the best-looking car of the entire postwar era.”

It was a Golden Era, but a fleeting one. It would end before the year was out.

Fifty years ago, things were very different for the now-beleaguered Ford Motor Company. Ford’s 1957 lineup was all new for the first time in five years. The 21 models included a restyled Thunderbird sports car, a new generation of F-100 pickups, the car-based Ranchero pickup and the Fairlane 500 Skyliner - the first American convertible with a retractable hardtop. Sales were way up - so much that Ford outsold Chevrolet for the first time since 1935.

Together, Ford and Chevrolet accounted for fully half of American car production.

The public viewed the Chevys and their General Motors siblings as somewhat dowdy compared with competing 1957 cars. Critics derided the G.M. designs as passé because they were essentially makeovers of the 1955-56 models, with high rooflines, voluptuous fenders, short wheelbases and stubby overall lengths - the shoebox look favored by G.M.’s styling czar, Harley J. Earl.

read more at The New York Times

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