“Suspenders”

David Gaunt’s 1956 Pontiac Star Chief convertible. (Photo by Dan Lyons.)

—The July 2020 entry in my Tide-mark “Cars of the Fab ‘50s” calendar is a 1956 Pontiac Star Chief convertible.
In 1956 Yrs Trly was twelve years old. ’55 through ’56 cars are great to look at; not the turkeys of the early ‘50s, and not the over-styled glitz-wagons of the late ‘50s.
Our family moved from South Jersey to northern DE in late 1957, shortly after the new 1958 models came out. I remember a friend and I visiting a Buick dealer west of Haddonfield (NJ) shortly before we moved.
The dealer had the new 1958 Buicks on his lot, but they were under wraps because Buick hadn’t introduced yet.
The ’58 Buick had a chromed waffle-iron grill. “Are they kidding?” I exclaimed. “It looks awful!”
Acres of chrome and fluted chrome. A gigantic barge!
Chevy was over-styled too. I liked the new Impala, a cruiser based on GM’s larger wheelbase.
But compared to the grille-insert of a ’57 Chevy, the grille-insert of a ’58 was cheese.
There were lotsa things wrong with the styling of a ’57 Chevy, but fortunately four headlights wasn’t one of them.
And the basic ’58 Chevys were too big. (Bloated.) ’55 through ’57 were the right size.
Ford also switched to style-wagons. Canted fins set atop taillights made to look like jet exhausts.
And all Chryslers from 1957 on had “the Forward-Look,” way too much finning. I remember the fins and trunk of a Plymouth hanging out the garage of a house in our South Jersey suburb.
Cars of the early ‘70s also looked good. But by 1970 I was grown and married.
In high-school (’59-’62) cars of the mid-‘50s became supreme. Stylish, but not over-styled.
And perhaps best was the ’56 Pontiac, although the ’55 Olds looked great too. (I blogged it.)
Bunkie Knudsen (“NUDE-sin,” I think — I couldn’t get a pronunciation) had taken over Pontiac in an attempt to break free of the brand’s stodgy reputation.
Pontiac had a new overhead valve V-8 motor. It wasn’t Chevy’s vaunted SmallBlock, but Pontiac’s V-8 put their ancient flat-head motors out to pasture.
Suddenly Pontiac was no longer grandpop’s car.
I remember a cousin, older than me, having a ’56 Pontiac similar to this car, although his was a hardtop.
He was a navigator for Strategic-Air-Command’s air-to-air refueling planes. “What’ll it be, Regular or Ethyl?” 10-20,000 feet above the ground.
He came to visit our family once, and there in our driveway was his fabulous Pontiac.
For years I was smitten by Chevrolet’s “Hot-Ones,” ‘55 through ’57, but this Pontiac looks better — or maybe the ’55 Olds.
Which I’d prefer is a tossup, and current cars don’t look this good anymore.
This Pontiac also has “suspenders:” two narrow fluted chrome strips across its hood. Those “suspenders” were Pontiac’s last application of its chrome hood-trim: a wide single strip of fluted trim.
Getting away from that chrome trim-strip would release Pontiac from its “grandpop’s” car image. But that chrome trim-strip didn’t go easily. It was narrowed quite a bit, and doubled. And no longer was it center-hood.
1957 was the first Pontiac without the trim-strip.
Choosing between a ’55 Bel Air convertible, and this ’56 Star Chief, I’d take the Pontiac – and not the ’57 Pontiac, which didn't work.

• “Haddonfield” (“ha-din-feeld”) was an old Revolutionary-War town in south Jersey near where I lived as a child.
• The Chevrolet “SmallBlock” V8 was introduced at 265 cubic-inches displacement in the 1955 model-year. It continued production for eons, first to 283 cubic inches, then 327, then 350. Other displacements were also manufactured. The SmallBlock is still manufactured, though much updated. The “SmallBlock” was revolutionary in its time.
• “Regular or Ethyl?” is gas-station lingo from the ‘50s and ‘60s. “Regular” was low grade, and “Ethyl” was high-test, having tetraethyl-lead to make it more resistant to engine-knock. A gas-station pump-jockey would come out when you pulled in, then ask the driver, still inside his car, “What’ll it be, Regular or Ethyl?” —Now that driver pumps his own gas, and tetraethyl-lead has been banned.