Although this may seem like ancient history to some, it really isn't because it was less than 55 years ago when Chevy had an epiphany in styling and the result was the 1955 Chevy BelAir. Until that time, Chevys were pretty stodgy corporate affairs made with plenty of metal and plainly old styling.
They were to modern styling what the Wright Brothers' original aircraft was to the 747. There just wasn't any competition at all.
To be truthful, the 55 Chevy BelAir was a real leap of faith for the automaker. It didn't know whether the public would go for the radically styled and complex windshield design. The automaker seemed to be schizoid in its thinking: on the one hand, it loved the new lines of the 1955 Bel Air, but on the other it said to itself, does the public really want a windshield that swept up from the corners at the A-pillar and was full of reverse curves and radically rounded.
The automaker need have worried because when all was said and done the new style Bel Air stood atop the sales charts for 1956 as the market leader. And there's little wonder why, people were tired of the stodgy fenders-out styling where the fenders seemed to have been hung on the body as an afterthought. Look at the 1954 Chevy and you'll see a narrow body that sweeps up from the narrow front end, though a passenger compartment that seemed to have been designed for one of he clown/midget shows that grace fairs all over the country and on through a radically sloped and narrowed rear end with a trunk that was just hung on, it seemed as an afterthought. Then, the wheels, fender and quarters were also similarly "designed in." The design seemed like the old joke about the eight blind wise men who were placed at various parts of an elephant. One feels a leg and it felt like bark and so he concluded the animal was a tree; a second grabbed the trunk and received a shower and assumed the animal was like a water fall and so on. When they compared notes they came up with an animal that couldn't exist at all on this plant and that's what it seemed like the 54 Chevy had become.
Enter the 55 Chevy with its "longer, lower, wider" look and its "See The USA..."slogan and the race for first place was done. Americans snapped up the new design as fast as they showed up in showrooms. There was something to the public's desire for the Sweep Eight wrapped windshield that sat atop the new body.
Actually, the new Bel Air sat on the same 115-inch wheelbase as its predecessor, it's just what they did with it. The design was modern and balanced. It also sported Chevy's first truly modern 265-cubic-inch V-8 that became the basis, a couple of years later for the famed 289 short block and the rest, as they say, is history. Interestingly from concept to casting took only 15 weeks, an unheard of time back then.
Bel Air was available as a convertible (top-of-the-line) as well as a two-door wagon, and the famed Bel Air Normad with its hard roofline.
The 1955 Bel Air served notice to the car industry that Chevy was there to stay and to compete and that the industry has better be prepared to play catchup, because what it would do.
If you love America classic cars then it's worth checking out www.carsandstripes.com which rounds up everything from classic car dealers to parts suppliers and articles about old cars.
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