Electel Blogspot

The Nash Rambler , launched during the 1950 model year was the most successful American postwar "compact" car.  Not so successful were the early 1950s Henry J from Kaiser, the Aero Willys and the Hudson Jet. Eventually, a redesign was called for, resulting in the 1956 Rambler from American Motors Corporation (AMC, created by a merger of Nash and Hudson in the spring of 1954).  Ramblers for the 1955-56 model years were badged as either Nash Rambler or Hudson Rambler.  Beginning in 1957, Rambler became a distinct brand. Given the lead-time required for the creation and production of a new design, it seems likely that styling of the 1956 Rambler line was started before AMC was created.   Edmund Anderson , a veteran of General Motors, joined Nash in 1950 and was responsible for Nash and AMC styling until his departure in 1961. The previous link suggests that Anderson might have been more an administrator than designer, but was good at hiring talented stylists.  Wha...

A common automobile industry practice is to have exterior trim variations for brand models that share the same basic body.  This is to allow viewers to distinguish entry-level, top-level and any intermediate level models from one another.  (A glance at interiors usually makes these distinctions obvious -- cloth-covered versus leather-covered seats, for instance.) Exterior differentiations have ranged from subtle to glaringly obvious.  For a subtle example, aside from the types of wheels, Toyota RAV4 SUVs of the 2013-2018 generation had just small chrome lettering on their rear doors: LE, LXE and Limited -- in increasing price rank. Towards the other extreme, the 1956 Ford line had distinct trim differences that I wrote about here . The current post deals with 1958 exterior rank variations for General Motors' Chevrolet brand, America's largest seller that model year.  Chevrolets were given redesigned bodies for 1958.  In addition, the two lowest ranking models w...