30 notable new cars of 1953

Post-war boom

Seventy years ago, the global automotive industry was booming.

The process of recovering from the Second World War was more or less complete, there was a big demand for new models, and design features which had seemed freakish in the 1930s were now fresh and exciting.

With a certain amount of anguish, we’ve cut down the list of cars introduced in 1953 to 30, presented here in alphabetical order.

For clarification, 1953 refers to the model year in North America (in which case the car might in fact have been introduced in 1952) and to the calendar year everywhere else.

1. AC Ace

The Ace sports car made its debut only six years after that of the AC 2-Litre, but it was so much more modern that a casual observer might assume they were introduced decades apart.

Power came from a variety of straight-six engines – 2-litre units created by AC itself or supplied by Bristol, or a 2.6-litre Ford.

Famously, the Ace was converted in the 1960s to accept a much larger Ford V8. In this form, it became known as the Cobra.

AC’s other new model of 1953 could hardly have been more different. The Petite was a three-wheeled saloon powered initially by a rear-mounted 346cc Villiers single-cylinder two-stroke engine, and later (from 1955) by a similar 353cc unit from the same supplier.

2. Alvis TC21

Like the preceding TA21, the TC21 was officially marketed as the Three Litre due to its 3-litre straight-six engine.

The new car was a development of the old, though in both cases the styling was restrained to the point of being unadventurous. On appearance alone, the Three Litre models of this period might have been introduced before the war rather than after it.

Performance wasn’t really the point of them, but an increase in the engine’s compression ratio gave the Grey Lady variant a top speed of just over 100mph, well beyond the capability of most family cars at the time.

According to the Alvis Archive Trust, 726 TC21s were built from 1953 to 1955, most of them Mulliner-bodied saloons.

3. Aston Martin DB2/4

The DB2/4 was a development of – and indeed replaced – the DB2 launched in 1950.

The most obvious change was the addition of two rear seats, accompanied by a raised roofline in the case of the saloon. More subtly, the earlier model’s split windscreen was abandoned in favour of a single piece of glass.

At first, the standard engine was the same 2.6-litre straight-six used in the DB2, and there was a drophead coupé for owners who preferred open-air motoring.

During the car’s lifetime, the engine capacity was raised to 2.9 litres, and a fixed-head coupé became available.
 

4. Austin-Healey 100

The first car produced by the joint venture between Austin and the Donald Healey Motor Company (and also the first now known as Big Healey) was a two-seat roadster powered by a 2660cc Austin four-cylinder engine.

It is now sometimes referred to as the 100-4 to distinguish it from the later 100-6, which went into production three years later and was fitted with the slightly smaller 2639cc BMC C-series straight-six.

In 1959, the C-series was enlarged to 2912cc, and in that form it was fitted to several BMC models.

The most famous of these was the last and longest-lived of all the Big Healeys. Known as the 3000, it was both a formidable road car and a major force in international rallies.

5. Bristol 403

1953 could be described as a transitional year for Bristol.

Of the two cars it introduced in that year, one looked backwards. The 403 was a development of, and looked very similar to, the 401, but had an updated version of the BMW-derived 1971cc straight-six engine.

The 404 was much shorter and had very different, and more modern, styling, plus it was more powerful.

Despite its more old-fashioned appearance, the 403 was the more successful of the pair, which is why we’re featuring it here.

According to the Bristol Owners Heritage Trust, 281 were built between 1953 and 1955, compared with just 51 404s in the same period.

A four-door derivative of the latter, inevitably named 405, survived for longer than either of them, remaining in production from 1954 until 1958.
 

6. Buick Skylark

The first of many Buick Skylarks was part of the Roadmaster range and, along with the Cadillac Eldorado and Oldsmobile Fiesta, one of three top-end General Motors convertibles introduced in the 1953 model year.

Despite being extraordinarily expensive for a Buick, it comfortably outsold the other two put together, even though only 1690 people were prepared to pay for it.

Sales figures weren’t really an issue, though. The Skylark wasn’t intended to be a money spinner, but to act as a halo product which would attract people to Buick.

It was also one of the earliest cars fitted with the brand’s first V8 engine. Measuring 5.3 litres in its original form, it was officially called the Fireball, though it soon gained the less flattering name Nailhead.
 

7. Cadillac Eldorado

Cadillac first used the Eldorado name for a 1952 concept car floridly described in a press release as ‘an expression of the ageless arts’.

The production model, which went on sale the following year, was similar in character to the Buick Skylark mentioned previously, and even more expensive.

This did wonders for its exclusivity. Only 532 were sold, which made the Skylark look like a mass-production model.

Unlike Buick, Cadillac backed off considerably for 1954. That model year’s Eldorado cost far less to build and was offered at a correspondingly lower price. As a result, sales quadrupled to 2150.

8. Chevrolet 210

Ask a hundred people to name the most memorable Chevrolets in history, and you’d be lucky to find more than a couple who know about the 210.

This isn’t particularly surprising. The car didn’t have a catchy name, plus it was on the market for only five years.

During its brief life, though, it was one of the most popular models in the US, neatly placed between the less well-equipped 150 and the more expensive Bel Air, and available with as wide a range of body styles as could be hoped for.

In its original form, it was powered only by a straight-six engine. A thorough reworking in 1955 resulted in more modern styling and the introduction to the range of the celebrated small-block V8.
 

9. Chevrolet Corvette

Unlike some of the other American cars we’re looking at, the Corvette was introduced in the 1953 calendar year.

It went on sale in June, having appeared five months earlier as a show car at the General Motors Motorama.

Sold only as a two-seat convertible in its first generation, it was outstanding in that it had a glassfibre body, something which had never before been seen in a mainstream production model.

Surprisingly, considering the immense popularity of the Corvette in later years, sales were slow to begin with.

That changed in 1955 when Chevrolet introduced its small-block V8, which was so successful that it soon became pointless to continue offering the original Blue Flame straight-six.

10. Daimler Conquest

The Conquest was Daimler’s replacement for the larger Consort saloon.

It used the same body as the Lanchester Fourteen and Leda, but had a 2.4-litre straight-six engine rather than the Lanchester’s ‘four’.

This engine produced 75bhp in its initial form, but it was uprated (by means of twin SU carburettors and a new cylinder head) to 101bhp for the Conquest roadster which, like the saloon, was introduced in 1953.

Daimler went a step further the following year, combining the more powerful engine with the saloon body to create the Conquest Century (pictured).

11. DKW Sonderklasse

Sonderklasse (the German word for ‘special class’) was one of several names applied to DKW’s new compact saloon launched in 1953.

Another was 3=6, which referred to its 896cc two-stroke engine (a DKW speciality, like front-wheel drive). The point was that, although its had only three cylinders, it produced as many power strokes in a given period as a four-stroke ‘six’ would if both engines were running at the same speed.

A 981cc version of the same engine appeared in several cars badged as Auto Union 1000 (including the beautiful little 1000Sp sports car) until 1963, but never in a standard DKW.

Sonderklasses were produced in various forms until 1958. An early example was the first car driven in a circuit race by future Formula One World Champion Jim Clark, in June 1956.

12. Fiat 1100

The best-known Fiats of the 1950s are the little 600 and the even smaller 500, and in the same decade the Italian giant also produced the dramatic 8V sports car.

Compared with these, the 1100 seems insignificant today, but it was in fact a very successful model which remained in production for more than a decade and a half.

It was available both as a saloon and an estate, and was also the basis of the Trasformabile roadster and a variety of commercial vehicles.

The 1100 name refers to the 1.1-litre engine which powered most examples, though this was also available in 1.2-litre form in some cases.

13. Ford Anglia

Millions of people today are familiar with the Anglia with the reverse-tilted rear window because of its connection with Harry Potter, but that car was introduced in 1959 and therefore isn’t the one we’re looking at here.

The 1953 Anglia was a two-door, three-box saloon, and the first Ford of that name with unibody construction and headlights integrated into the bodywork.

A four-door version with marginally different styling, introduced later in the same year, was known as the Prefect. Three-door estates, which came along in 1955, were called Escort and Squire.

Another small British Ford launched in 1953 was the Popular, which was just the previous-generation Anglia with a new name.

Ford priced it extremely competitively, asking for just £390 including taxes (though you had to pay more if you wanted a heater) compared with £511 for the Anglia.

14. Holden FJ

The FJ was an update of the first Holden-branded car, the 48-215.

It was released in 1953 first as a saloon and a pick-up and, by the end of the year, as a panel van.

In all, 169,969 examples were built in four years. One of them, assembled in 1956, was the 250,000th Holden.

Much later, in 2005, Holden created the Efijy concept car. Partly a tribute to the FJ, which it slightly resembled, it was based on a lengthened Chevrolet Corvette platform and fitted with a supercharged 6-litre V8 producing about 10 times as much power as the FJ’s 2.2-litre straight-six.

15. Hudson Jet

By the standards of US motoring in the early 1950s, the Jet was a compact saloon, though it had a 3.3-litre straight-six engine and could carry six people.

The development cost was enormous and, naturally, had to be passed on to customers, so this was not a cheap car. Nor did it look particularly attractive.

This combination led to disastrously low sales, and the Jet was abandoned after just two model years, during which only slightly more than 35,000 examples were built.

The dramatically unsuccessful project led to Hudson being merged with Nash-Kelvinator to form the American Motors Corporation in 1954. Even with this help, the Hudson brand didn’t survive for much longer.

16. Iso Isetta

The Isetta was the first car produced by Italian company Iso, and stood in stark contrast to the vastly more powerful sports models Iso would later become known for.

The tiny three-wheeler was launched in late 1953. In April of the following year, Iso was approached by BMW, which was perilously close to bankruptcy and needed a high-volume car that wouldn’t cost much to build.

The upshot was that BMW acquired the licensing rights, redesigned almost everything and put its own version on sale in 1955.

German production came to an end in 1962, when public enthusiasm for bubble cars was a shadow of what it had been just a few years before.

17. Lagonda 3 Litre

The 3 Litre was the second Lagonda produced after the company had been merged with Aston Martin.

Its chassis was similar to that of the earlier 2.6 Litre, but the capacity of the straight-six engine had been raised from 2580cc to 2922cc (so the 3 Litre name was a bit of an exaggeration) and the body styling was far more modern.

Two- and four-door saloons as well as a drophead coupé were all available during the production run, which lasted from 1953 to 1958.

After that, there were no more Lagondas until the Rapide arrived in 1961.
 

18. Lancia Appia

Named after the Appian Way, a Roman road which stretches from Rome to Brindisi, the Appia was a small family car built over three generations from 1953 to 1963.

It was powered by a 1.1-litre V4 engine whose banks were set at such a narrow angle that only one cylinder head was needed.

Lancia built the Appia only as a four-door saloon, though it also used the car as a basis for several commercial vehicles.

Independent coachbuilders went several stages further, producing two-door saloon, coupé, convertible and estate bodies.
 

19. Lloyd 400

Despite its Welsh name, Lloyd was a German brand which formed part of the Borgward group, and had nothing to do with the British Lloyd company.

The 400 was a tiny vehicle offered as a saloon, an estate, a convertible and a van. It was substantially more powerful than the earlier 300, though this isn’t saying much – its 386cc two-stroke twin-cylinder engine produced only 13bhp.

The same engine was reduced to 250cc for the Lloyd 250, which was introduced three years after the 400 in 1956.

Both models were discontinued the following year. By then, Lloyd was concentrating on the 600, which was produced from 1955 until 1961.

20. Mercedes-Benz 180

The 180 was the first model in the series of modern-looking Mercedes W120 ‘ponton’ saloons, which lacked running boards, and featured integrated front and rear wings.

Compared with the earlier W136 range, these cars were stiffer and more aerodynamic, and had more interior space.

The 180, which had a 1.8-litre four-cylinder petrol engine, was introduced in August 1953. It was followed five months later by the 1.9-litre 180D diesel.

These cars are widely regarded, including by Mercedes itself, as the earliest predecessors of today’s E-Class, though that name was not used until 1993.

21. Messerschmitt KR175

With a hinged transparent roof which doubled as a door, the KR175 was one of the strangest of all bubble cars.

Messerschmitt had very little to do with it. Previously a manufacturer of aircraft, it was temporarily banned from this type of work after the Second World War, and during that period it allowed engineer Fritz Fend to build his little cars in its factory, as long as he used the company’s name.

The KR175 had two seats, one behind the other, and was powered by an air-cooled single-cylinder two-stroke engine supplied by Fichtel & Sachs.

Production did not last for long. In 1955, the car was considerably reworked and fitted with a larger Fichtel & Sachs engine of the same type, and became known as the KR200.

22. Opel Olympia Rekord

Opel adopted ponton body styling slightly earlier than Mercedes for its Olympia Rekord, which replaced the Olympia in 1953.

Following American rather than European practice, Opel updated the design every year. For example, the very distinctive ‘shark’s mouth’ grille used in the early models was soon replaced by something a little less aggressive.

One thing that remained constant, though, was the use of a 1.5-litre engine which had first appeared as far back as 1937.

A larger model with a wider range of engines replaced the Olympia Rekord in 1957. It was given the same name at first, but later became known simply as the Rekord.
 

23. Packard Caribbean

The Caribbean was one of the last cars produced in Packard’s six-decade history.

It was offered mostly as a convertible, though a hardtop body style was added in 1956, the final model year.

The first available engine was a straight-eight, but V8s of up to 6.1 litres were added to the range.

Packard outlived the Caribbean, but not by much. The company merged with Studebaker in 1954, and before the end of the decade what had once been one of the greatest marques in US motoring was a thing of the past.

24. Porsche 550

Although it was designed for competition, the Porsche 550 was a road-legal, limited-production sports car of which 90 examples were built from 1953 to 1956.

The mid-mounted engine was a 1.5-litre flat-four. The earliest cars had pushrods, but from chassis 003 onwards a double-overhead-cam arrangement became the norm.

The 550’s motorsport career began splendidly with victory in a race for sports cars up to 1500cc held at the Nürburgring on 31 May 1953.

There was serious competition in the form of two formidable Borgward 1500 RSs, but Helmut Glöckler’s Porsche beat the faster of them by 3.5 secs in an event which lasted more than an hour and a quarter.

Sadly, the 550 is perhaps best remembered for being the car in which Hollywood star and amateur racer James Dean died at the age of just 24. He had recently bought chassis 055, and was driving it to an event in California when he was killed in a road accident.

25. Riley Pathfinder

The Pathfinder was the first Riley introduced after the brand became part of the British Motor Corporation, and also the last designed entirely by Riley itself.

It first appeared in public at the Earls Court Motor Show in October 1953, where it was revealed to be the replacement for the flagship RMF.

The large saloon was powered by the latest development of Riley’s well-established 2443cc ‘big four’ engine.

Production estimates vary, but are usually slightly on the high side of 5000.

The Pathfinder was replaced in 1957 by the six-cylinder Riley 2.6, which was essentially a mildly altered Wolseley 6/90.
 

26. Seat 1400

Although Seat is now part of the Volkswagen Group, it started out building Fiats locally for the Spanish market.

The 1400 was its first model, identical in every respect to the Fiat of the same name which was the Italian brand’s earliest car with unibody construction.

Within a year, the proportion of Spanish-made parts had reached 93%, and an annual production target of 10,000 was reached in 1956.

The 1400 was considered an expensive car in Spain at the time, and did not contribute to the country’s economic miracle in the way that the later (and smaller and much cheaper) 600 did, but it was an important part of Spanish motoring history all the same.

27. Sunbeam Alpine

Sunbeam used the Alpine name for a variety of cars between 1953 and 1975.

The first, known as the Mark I, was a two-seat roadster derivative of the Sunbeam-Talbot 90 saloon, and used a slightly uprated version of that car’s 2267cc engine.

The same engine was modified further for the Mark I Special, which was used in competition.

In all, 1192 regular Mark Is and 90 Specials are understood to have been built from March 1953 to September 1954.

The replacement car was known as the Mark III, not Mark II, perhaps because this was also the name used for the latest version of the related saloon.

28. Toyota RH

The RH story begins with the SA, a saloon car introduced in 1947.

Several related saloons and light trucks were produced over the next few years.

The RH was one of these, and the first to be fitted with Toyota’s new 1.5-litre R engine.

It was manufactured for only two years, but nearly 6000 examples were built in that time, a figure not even approached by any of its predecessors.

29. Triumph TR2

The long series of Triumph TR sports cars began when the TR2 was introduced in 1953.

The compact roadster was powered by a 2-litre Standard engine. Sourcing this was not difficult, since although Standard and Triumph started out as separate companies, the former bought the latter shortly after the end of the Second World War.

The TR2 was much admired, and was reported to be the cheapest British car capable of exceeding 100mph.

It was replaced in 1955, but despite many changes (including new body styles and rear suspension, and the adoption of a straight-six engine), it’s possible to draw a line all the way from the TR2 to the TR6, which was still in production in the mid 1970s.

Only the TR7 and TR8 bore no relation to the original car.

30. Volvo Duett

Volvo’s first estate car was based on the PV445, which resembled (and was related to) the unibody PV444 saloon, but had a separate body and chassis.

The body was only partial, the intention being that outside companies would convert PV445s into vans, hearses, ambulances, estates or whatever was required.

In 1953, Volvo decided to build complete PV445s itself, as either vans or estates, though it also persevered for a little longer with ones which required finishing by coachbuilders. The estate was called Duett to emphasise its dual-purpose role as a workhorse and as family transport.

An updated version codenamed 210 was introduced in 1960, and remained on the market until 1969. In total, 101,492 Duetts were built, including just over 4000 without full bodies.