Cool Old Press Photos: '57 Ford Skyliner

[cjforumadmin]

http://www.bangshift.com/blog/Cool-O...-Skyliner.html

[nesabo]

My dad always wanted one of those. He bought a crown vic instead when he was in the navy in the late 50's.

[Andamo]

I can remember walking home from school and stopping into the Ford dealer showroom and watching them put the top up and down on a retractable. It was sort of a pink and gray colored car and later someone in town bought it. Even now when I see one at a car show or cruise, I have to walk over and look at them. The 57's are one of my favorite Fords.

[JRoberts]

There was one of these for sale at an estate auction near here not long ago. Full of bondo and rust and still went for 10K from what I was told.

Once a nice red and white one was parked near where I was at a car show and the guy was putting the top down and it got stuck. They spent most of the afternoon trying to track down where the problem was. One of those relays, switches or what have you shorted out. They finally got it fixed and the top back up. I know how heavy they are, how much trouble they can be, and really that they are not the best looking examples of a '57 Ford, but boy do they attract my attention whenever they are around.

[Boog]

I remember one of these being for sale a used car lot in my hometown way back when....If we only knew....

[Turbo Regal]

I have a friend with a 58 retractable. He wows the kids when he puts the top down!

[58yeoman]

Since, i don't have you.......

[squirrel]

Nice cars....pain to fix

The 59 lincoln marks had a similar mechanism on the convertibles, a panel in front of the trunk opened up and the top went down into it, then the panel closed.

I've got to work on a couple, the one that kicked my butt had nothing wrong with it except the repop battery was getting old and didn't have enough reserve capacity to keep the voltage to the relays high enough to hold them closed when the "down" motors engaged.

[Loren]

Interesting cars and mechanisms. "Screw pins", I don't know what else to call them, came together into sockets which, when turned by speedometer cable-type drives, pulled the stuff together to seal the weather out... The huge trunk had a rectangular fence in the middle of it where you needed to reach over to put your luggage into as all of the perimeter area needed to be kept clear for the top to go...

When Cadillac came out with a retractible hard top a few years ago we were amused to see it demonstrated at a car show...it malfunctioned and 3 or 4 people fiddled with it for a half-hour to get it fixed. We weren't left with the belief that we should have one.

[mlcraven]

Gimmicky...I'm always amazed on those very rare occasions I see one in action at a car show that it even works.

But hey, no worries about software glitches!!!!