Tattered luxury is still beautiful

This 1950 Chrysler Windsor  was found on Craigslist for only $1850. Sadly the photos here(which are from the ad, not mine) were taken a year ago, and the car had been sitting in a field for that intervening time. We drove up to see it and ended up spending at least an hour helping the seller get the car started again due to a dead 6 volt battery and no good jumper cables.

Once it did start through the flathead straight six ran nicely and the car drove well around the field. I liked the car a lot, but sadly despite a completely rebuilt engine and little serious rust it was much more of a restoration candidate than something I could drive and enjoy relatively soon. If I had a garage and would have been able to work on it over the winter I would have seriously considered it, but as it was I wasn’t ready to get into it.

It did make me rather fond of Windsors though. The car was a fascinating study in the lap of luxury circa the late-40’s, including things like a heating system that wafts heat out the full width of the dash rather than blowing out a few vents. Also it  had some really amazing art-deco touches, like the fold-away window handles. This era of Chrysler has definitely moved up my list of desirable cars.

Some fins, a big chrome grille, teal green. Looks right to me…

I was once again obsessively searching perusing craigslist for classic cars and came across an ad for a 1956 Chrysler Windsor that had no pictures. Not knowing what one looked like I did some googling and came across this example at Country Classic Cars.

Maybe it is just that I play far to many video games but this car looks, for all the world, like a game designers idea of a generic “1950s” car. Mind you, it isn’t unattractive but the styling just confused & bland enough to look more like a pastiche of mid-fifties design than like a real car. This car looks distinctly like what it is, the gawky ackward evolutionary stage between the much curvier earlier models and the finarrirfic “forward look” 1957 models.

The car was only $1500 and supposedly in good shape, but looking at the pictures of ’56 chryslers I just wouldn’t know what to do with the car. It is lost between two design worlds, and while I love orphans I think this is one someone else will have to adopt.