Curbside Classic: 1959 Chevrolet Biscayne

Paul Niedermeyer
by Paul Niedermeyer

Look at the picture above. Now pretend it’s your rearview mirror. That giant set of batwings is right behind you and gaining; now it pulls into the fast lane. A couple of teenagers grin as they zip by you ass-backwards at seventy miles an hour. The front grille of the ’59 Chevy slowly recedes in the distance ahead. If you spent any time on the roads of Cincinnati around 1969, this may well have happened to you.

The 1959 Chevrolet begs not to be taken seriously. It’s just way too over the top, which makes it an open invitation to pranks, abuse, stereotyping, ridicule, and even willful destruction. Think about it: if you were given the opportunity to crash test a sixty year old car against a new one, wouldn’t the ’59 Chevy be the obvious choice? Well, except maybe a ’59 Cadillac, but they’re too expensive, and folks might get seriously upset.

The ’59 Chevy is the apogee of late fifties American taste spun out of control; it represents the point at which the collective consciousness said: STOP! That’s quite enough! We’ve gone down this road as far as it can go. Time for a one-eighty, time to reel in the excess, time for the bubble to burst, time for a recession.

By 1961, a recession and a drastically slimmed down Chevy arrived. And within a few short years, the ’59 developed cult status, a rolling art object (forwards or backwards), as well as the favored object of creative destruction. I speak from experience as an early participant.

True confession: at the age of ten, I had a spell of shoplifting, and the sole targets of my kleptomania were model car kits. Since my inventory soon resembled a current Chrysler dealer’s, I would stage elaborate crashes in the driveway. Lighter fluid was the accelerant of choice, augmented by firecrackers jammed into the engine compartment and trunk. One of my first victims was a 1959 Impala coupe. It was memorable, watching those crazy batwings droop and melt into a puddle.

I say if you’re going to blow something up, make it a colorful object. The Chinese tumbled to this thousands of years ago. So I can totally relate to those IIHS guys and their choice of the ’59 Bel Air. Admit it: it was a beautiful destruction. Like a samurai warrior in his finest garb ready to meet death, the Bel Air glided gracefully to its spectacular end. Would you rather have seen the bland blob of a ’59 Rambler American take on the Malibu? I think not.

At Towson High, our dope dealer drove a Biscayne sedan just like this one. What a perfect rolling billboard. Everyone could see him coming blocks away, and we’d head across the parking lot to buy our dime bags of ditch weed. His eyes were about as squinty as the eyebrows on the Chevy. And his product was about as effective as those fins adding aerodynamic stability at speed.

One day at lunch time, we were lined up to make a transaction across the driver’s window sill, when someone said “Look, up there on the roof!” The Principal was standing on the flat roof of the auditorium, peering at us through binoculars. The dealer panicked, dumped his stash out the window, slammed the Chevy into gear, floored it, and clipped the stout back bumper of a school bus with his right front fender. Kapow! Another ’59 Chevy sacrificed to a higher calling.

The 1959 and the slightly-toned-down 1960 models were GM styling chief Harley Earl’s swan song. There are two ways of looking at them. As vehicles, they left a lot to be desired. With their huge overhangs, narrow tracks (inherited from the ’58 underpinnings), “Jet-Ride” soft suspension, undersized 14″ tires with a recommended 24 pounds of pressure, and flexible “X” frame, handling was atrocious. Build quality was mediocre and performance suffered under the bloat, up some 500lbs from the trim ’55-’57 models. Where the small block 283 offered sparkling zip in the classic tri-fives, now a big block 348 was necessary for decent momentum, unless you ordered it with the self-destructing Turbo-Glide automatic. In that case, you’d be gliding to a stop on the shoulder all too soon.

But life would have been so much less colorful without them. They’re a rolling testament to the blowout of late fifties irrational exuberance. And a magnet for creative minds. Like those that created the ass-backwards Biscayne that prowled Cincinnati.

It sprang from the same creative source that created Cadillac Ranch, and the other innumerable memorials to Harley Earls’ unchecked expansiveness. A friend who grew up there told me about it. A couple of high school classmates had the brilliant idea to lift the body off a ’59 Biscayne sedan, and drop it back on backwards. And unlike most wacko high-school inspirations, they acted on it. Why not? How hard could it be? These kids back then actually lived out their craziest fantasies in metal, not bytes, thanks to an uncle’s garage and welder. Try

suggesting the same thing today to some high schoolers with access to a ’99 Accord.

The result was crude but highly effective. Rough edged holes under the rear bumper for radiator air. A crude steering column held in place by a couple of welded steel bars. The one bench seat was somewhere in the middle. No instrument panel. Or wipers. Lights? Who cared; it ran, and some kid’s crazy fantasy inspired by the ’59 Chevy was realized.

But it had an unintended effect: it brought traffic to a dead halt. Folks simply freaked when they saw those bat wings coming straight at them. Before long, the police put an end to the innocent youthful fun. I saw it some years later, when I drove my friend to Cincinnati: the bat-out-of hell-mobile was moldering away in a weedy side yard, a testament to the ’59 Chevy’s ability to inspire, amuse, revolt, entertain and cause traffic jams. Now if only those IIHS guys had resurrected it, to crash into the Malibu ass backwards. Now that would have been truly spectacular.

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Paul Niedermeyer
Paul Niedermeyer

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  • Davepolzin6666 Davepolzin6666 on Sep 30, 2009

    Paul, great artice, but you forgot to mention that after hitting the school bus the "59 Chev continued to run for over 100,000 miles, has been restored and is still driven to car shows every weekend. It sure lasted longer than the dealer's stay at Betty Ford.

  • Flameded Flameded on Jun 10, 2010

    Well, I think the 59 chev is quite beautiful.(even tho it doesnt have enough lights.) However, its no 58. (off topic..) The best big chevys (my opinion) have 3 tail lights on each side (6 total ) ;) I remember as a kid ,recognizing them from a distance ..in all their bright red illuminated glory..and so started my love affair with the 6 light chevys. the 58...the 63 ..nice...the 65..mm..mm..the 68 oh, man ...these are my favs..

    • Cstoc Cstoc on Oct 16, 2010

      I also love those 3-light Chevies, especially the 66 and 69. But, I've always had a soft spot for the 59 because of its sheer outrageousness. A rear deck big enough to land an ultralight on, those podded instruments, the huge trunk and interior. A friend of mine with Dutch relations she visited in the 60's and 70's said at the time that entire gypsy families were living in 59 Chevies. Also, on the TurboGlide: my dad had a 57 Chevy with one. He said it was extremely smooth, but he never saw any problems because a friend wrecked the car when it was only a few months old. Oh well.

  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.
  • ToolGuy Ford is good at drifting all right... 😉
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