58: Info Snippet

["hugh hemphill" <hugtrees@xxxxxxxx>]

Thanks, Dick,

> These figures and an enormous amount of other information is found in
> "Encyclopedia of American Cars" by Richard M. Langworth.  I have the 1984
> issue - I assume later versions are extant.
>
> For 1955, your source left out Packard, which had a total production of
> 16,833 (not counting the Clipper models, which were not in the same league
> with the others cited.

I did indeed leave it out.  I only had a scrap of paper in the bookstore
with me and tried to write out the whole list of twenty, which were all
American makes, but it wasn't possible.
>
> For 1958, the totals were:
>
> Cadillac: 140,777
> Imperial: 16,133
> Lincoln:   6,859
> (Packard had no entry in the luxury class in 1958)
>
> Total sales of US made cars in 1958 was very much lower than 1955 -
without
> spending hours adding figures, I can say from personal recollection, the
> total was somewhere in the 5 1/2 to 6 million range.

Yes, there was a recession in '58.  Imperial sales were only half the high
water mark of 1957, when Imperial outsold Lincoln.  I had always been led to
believe that was not the same in 1958.  Is this because, briefly, the
Continental became a make in its own right?  It was listed separately in the
1955 totals, but it's sales were described as only negligible.


I bought a new car in
> 1958, and even I went to a non-us make!  (I bought a Peugeot 403, an
> excellent car for the times indeed.)
>
How dashingly continental of you.  Just like Lt. Columbo.  Do you have a
picture of it?  (My dad had a 404 wagon in the 70's.)

If any of you can recall what you were driving in 1958, or what you bought,
and still have pictures of the cars, if you send them to me I'd be delighted
to add them to my own 1958 page which already has enough 1958 trivia on it
to sink a battleship.  I shall have to check with my parents.  At one point
my mother had a Morris Minor convertible, but I think that was in Malaya.  I
may be wrong.  When I was a toddler my dad had a Standard Triumph of some
kind before getting a VW microbus to haul his six kids around in.  I've
mentioned this before but he hated the 1958 Imperial when he was here last
in 1998.  On the other hand, my mother loved it.  She's always had much
better automotive style.  She even liked my old '82Citroen 2CV, and always
had me open the roof if at all possible.  When she found you could drive it
in light rain with the roof open without getting wet, she was hooked.  All
that and four doors, too.

Hugh