Auto's - An Automotive Golden Age

An Automotive Golden Age

Serious classic car collectors will tell you the "Golden Age" of the automobile was in the late twenties and the thirties, when the very rich ordered bespoke coach-built bodies to clothe prestigious, powerful luxury chassis and create the cars recognized at Concours in the "Classic" categories.

That does not keep aficionados of the mass-market chromium and steel ebullience of the fifties from calling their cars "classics," of course. For them, the early days of the Rocket 88 Oldsmobiles, small block Chevy V8s, Chrysler 300 Hemis, and Thunderbird "Y-Block" V8s were a Golden Age of their own.

But there is an era that produced some of the most beautiful high performance cars ever made. There were more stunningly attractive modern cars designed and produced in this period than in any other. I refer, of course, to the sixties.

 

*This is the era of the split-window Sting Ray Coupe, the Jaguar XK-E and XJ-6, and the best of the Buick Rivieras.

*Muscle Cars from Detroit dominated the era in the US, starting when Pontiac equipping the compact Tempest under the table with a 389 cubic inch (6.4 liter) V8 to create the GTO. That started a drive to see who could put the biggest engine in their lightest chassis. By the time that era waned, Chrysler was shoehorning 440 cubic inch (7.2 liter) V8s with six carburetors into Plymouth Barracuda pony cars.

*Even the truck segment produced memorable examples, like the 1969 Chevy El Camino SS 396.
And it was the style in which they wrapped the best of those cars that makes them memorable.

*In the Steve McQueen crime drama "Bullitt," the better lines of the carefully restyled '67 Mustang are on prominent display, along with the muscular rumble of its unrestrained 390 Cubic Inch (6.4 Liter) V8, as were the bulging haunches and sweeping roof buttresses of the '68 Dodge Charger that shared the famous chase scene.

*Meanwhile overseas, engineers, coachbuilders and Carrozzerias were producing some of the most graceful, sensual, and powerful cars yet seen.

*It is no coincidence that this is the time during which the Maestro Giorgetto Giugiaro was working for Bertone and Ghia, and Marcello Gandini at Bertone. Each produced icons that enthusiasts today salivate over.

*Along with the mass-market but perfectly proportioned Alfa Romeo GTV, Giugiaro penned the sensuous Canguro ("Kangaroo") with its fenders rippling with muscle, the elegant but aggressive Maserati Ghibli, and the menacing-looking mid-engine De Tomaso Mangusta ("Mongoose") with its baleful stare and those butterfly engine lids over its Ford V8.

*Working at Bertone, Marcello Gandini designed the gorgeous and technically brilliant Lamborghini Miura, with its sideways-mounted V12 and skyward-staring retractable headlights.

*And one cannot ignore the Pininfarina Ferraris, particularly the shark-like 275 GTB, and the consensus "most beautiful" Ferrari, the 250 GT Lusso. Steve McQueen's recently sold at auction for $2.31M.

*There were flashes of design brilliance in later years, but US Government safety and emissions requirements had a stultifying effect that took a long time to abate, leaving the sixties as one of the true golden ages of automotive design.