Looking over a few old catalogs last weekend, I came across a few vintage auto accessories most people have probably never seen. Some are quite practical, some are not, and some are insane. Here in this first installment, we review some of the good, the bad, and the just plain ugly accessories designed to make your motoring experience more comfortable and convenient.

1. Automotive Swamp Cooler -These were quite popular in the Midwest and dry regions of the Far West – it was basically an evaporative cooler that hung on the passenger-side window and with all the windows up, took ram air from outside the car and drove it through a fiber mat that was wet with water. You pulled a window-shade cord on the inside about every fifteen minutes to rotate the drum through the water, and you refilled the water tank when you stopped for gas. Out on the highway in a dry climate it actually worked pretty well, but it was pretty useless in town. Some deluxe models incorporated a fan in the intake that was powered from your cigarette lighter so that the cooler would work in slow traffic. That part wasn’t too impressive, but for your summer vacation on the road, for about $30 - $40 you couldn’t beat it.
   
   
2. Highway Hi-Fi - A Chrysler accessory in 1956 that was not heavily marketed after the first year of issue (Chrysler’s “Forward Look” styling got all the ink from ’57 on). It was a rather conventional looking turntable slung under the dash that played special 7” 16-2/3 rpm records. As many as 45 different records were available to purchase from the Chrysler library, and considering the state of the art in automotive radio at the time (AM only, mono) it sounded a bit better than the AM radio, but was nowhere near the performance of even the 8-track players of the late ‘60’s and ‘70’s. Chrysler updated Highway Hi-Fi for the ’62 model year, producing a much better turntable that loaded from the bottom. Because it turned rather slowly and had an ingenious balanced needle, it didn’t skip as much as you’d think, but it was not entirely trouble-free. The disks would play for about an hour, so you could carry a fair amount of music around with you in a 12-disk album. However the disks had to be about double the normal thickness of an LP to remain dimensionally stable in the hot interior of the car. Highway Hi-Fi was actually a reasonable product, but it would only last through the 1962 model year. It was just a generation ahead of its time.
   
   
3. Sun Visors – Still seen on a number of early ‘50’s show cars, the sun visor mounted over the windshield and extended like the bill on a cap. They were very practical back in the days before air conditioning, keeping the sun from beating down on the windshield and heating the car. Depending on the style – and the car they were mounted on, they could look cool or strange. Paired with fender skirts and a lowering kit, they were required for your lead sled.
   
   
4. Dashboard Accessories – Here we had a range of products that ranged from purely decorative (fuzzy dice, skeletons, your girlfriend’s scarf) to the functional. The decorative products hung from the mirror, to advertise your social statement to the world. For the more practical, a couple of other standout items might include a compass and a “traffic light finder” – a prism that helped you look upward to see traffic lights – necessary in a car with that cool sun visor that didn’t permit vision above 8 feet above the pavement. The compass was only useful to your father – we kids knew where we were going.
   
   
5. Necker’s **** – Clamped at the proper position on the rim of the steering wheel, it allowed you to drive left-handed while securing your girlfriend in the seat beside you with the right. In the days before power steering when you couldn’t “backhand” the wheel when making a 90° turn, it was absolutely necessary . . . although it could endanger the continued use of your hand when a lot of caster combined with a square corner caused the wheel to “unwrap” suddenly, giving you a solid rap on the knuckles or dislocating a finger.
   
   
6. Lit Cigarette Dispenser – While handling a Zippo like a butterfly knife or a matchbook with the cool of James Dean, performing the one-handed strike was considered de rigeur for any teen with a car, there was an aftermarket accessory that made those skills obsolete. A Raymond Lowey-styled Bakelite and chrome cigarette case on your dashboard would, at the touch of a button the Pres-A-Lite would dispense your Camel or Lucky already lit. Just depress the lid, wait a few seconds, and up popped your smoke, ready to inhale. Withdrawing it from the stylish box was one of those elements of cool we wouldn’t see equaled until the first of the Bond films debuted five years later.
   
   
7. Pressure Cooker – For those long road trips, there was a pressure cooker available in which to prepare your end-of-the-road meal. It attached to your rear bumper and directed exhaust gases through a chamber in which a sealed canister that contained your dinner awaited. A couple hour’s drive, and there you were, chicken, ala exhaust fumes. It supposedly worked OK for some simple dishes, but was not known for consistent results. Stick with regular roadfood.
   
   
8. Destroilet - During the early years of the motorhome craze in the early '70's Dodge came up with a environmentally friendly toilet for its semi-captive brands, Travco and Sightseer. One of the major advantages of a "self-contained" trailer or motorhome was a functional toilet. Ladies that wouldn't be caught dead in the dirt and bugs of the outdoors, loved having their own kitchen and bath that traveled with them. With mom on board, dad at last was free to exercise his inner caveman from the comfort of a recliner in the deep woods. The problem was the supremely icky task of dumping the holding tank - not a task enjoyed by the unhappy camper, and it led to occasions when, like Cousin Eddie, some clown would just let it fly in the storm sewer. Dodge had a better idea - the Destroilet.
   
   After use, the idea was to flush the toilet into a steel chamber where the solid waste would be incinerated in a gas jet and it would be reduced to a fine ash that would be a small fraction of its original volume, clean, sanitary, and dry. Disposal might be postponed for a week or more, rather than every third night. The problem was that the Destroilet was a little cranky, expensive, and baking a load of poo in your living space and venting it outside was problematic. The Forest Service ended up buying larger models for unattended facilities in our National Parks, providing at least some market for the environmentally-conscious invention. Most folks happily stuck with the marine toilet and holding tank. Even cousin Eddie.

Next, the elements of automotive style that arrived from the aftermarket. Bolt-on customs from the Whitney catalog.

 

I have one of those original swamp coolers.
Made by Firestone in the mid 50's and use it on my old vintage VW's. Showing some patina but still works really well in our hot dry Vegas summers.

 

Necker ***** FTW!! Although we used to call them Spinner ***** same/same.

I remember seeing those on some 50s & 60s cars and my grandfather had one on his 72 Caprice even though it had power steering, I guess he was just used to using it.

I know fairly recently I've seen some big rigs that still have them on the steering wheel.

 

I suppose you just have to take the vagaries of fashion in stride. I remember the dual-buckle skinny belts and white buckskin shoes (predecessors of the blue suede variety) weren't much for practicality, and neither were some of the automotive fashions that precipitated some rather odd bolt-on styling accessories and a couple of serious custom projects. Let’s just say some were acquired tastes.

1. Dual Exhausts – It didn’t really matter that the straight 6 under the hood could breathe just fine through a single tailpipe, the illusion of performance was, as it is today, everything. Even a small 260 or 283 CID V8 could expel the products of combustion through a single pipe, especially when the intake side mounted a single Ball&Ball or Carter carburetor. “Duals” had to conform to the "rules": they had to hang below the bumper, they must be capped with a chrome exhaust tip that extended at least 4” behind the bumper, and they had to be LOUD. Glas-Pak or Cherry Bomb mufflers were not much more than a sop to the law that required you have a muffler in the first place. They muted some of the high frequencies, but were basically a straight pipe with holes that was surrounded by a glass wool “muffler”. It didn’t, much.
   
   
2. Carburetors, multiple - Naturally, the intake side got its share of bolt-on custom work, and most of it was a performance nightmare. Plenty of people wanted that 3-deuces look of three two-barrels sitting atop their V8, but in those days synching all those throttles was a real pain. Most kids just swapped a big carb onto the stock manifold to get "better breathing" - without the knowledge of air flow required to properly atomize fuel. Most of these set-ups ran so rich the engine was literally drowning in gasoline, and when that big 1100 CFM Carter AFB carb's accelerator pumps dumped about a half-cup of raw fuel into a 283's gargling cylinders, the results were usually an embarrassing flood stall. Lucky it wasn't hydrolock. I paid for a couple semesters of college with my roomnate and fellow gearhead buying some rich college kids trashed 'vette and undoing all of his engine "mods" before selling the car at a considerable profit to someone who could resist raising the hood.
   
   
3. Cams, performance and otherwise - Most teens had no idea of camshafts other than the "3/4 Race" and "Full Race" cams they read about in the hotrod magazines of the day. If someone had the restraint to install a "street" cam in their engine, (with appropriate lifters) they could get a mild boost in performance . . . but then some went nuts.
   
   One of the Corvettes we purchased with everything we had, could borrow, or take second jobs to support, came with what was called an "098" cam. This was a fairly common practice because it came out of the Chevy parts catalog - the 098 coming from the last three digits of the part number. Man, it made the engine idle rough - just like a full-race cam . . . but cheap. The problem was that this camshaft was designed for the fuel-injection engine, and was totally wrong for carburetors. The urban legend seemed to be that installing the "fuelie" cam in your bone-stock V8 would produce a stoplight killer . . . what it did was render the car almost undrivable. Sounded tough though.
   
   
4. Lakes Pipes – the only viable excuse for not having a pair of chrome exhausts sticking out from under your bumper was a set of these exhausts. Originally a chromed stub that stuck out of the front wheel wells with a cap bolted on, they were intended to be opened at the track to provide a minimal back-pressure outlet for your exhaust. They made your car look like a Saturday night racer, but they really sounded ugly – like you’d busted your exhaust manifold. In time, these pipes grew longer, running the full length of the rocker panel. If you loosened the front bolt on the cap and removed the rear, you could swing the cap up, partially uncapping the exhaust to produce a sound when combined with your Glas-Paks just this side of attracting Officer Krupke and his ticket book – if you pedaled it carefully in his vicinity.
   
   
5. Lowering Kits – the primary objective was to drop the rear of the car to produce a pronounced squat making the car appear to be in a permanent state of hard acceleration - even while parked at the curb. Occasionally someone would torch off a little front spring to drop the front end a bit too, but the rear was usually lowered by de-arching the leaf springs at the rear, or shimming the spring hangars and adding spring leaves to get the axle well above the stock position, dropping the rear of the car. The standard measurement of “cool” was having no more clearance under the rear bumper than would allow it to pass over a pack of cigarettes. Yeah, flat.
   
   
6. 90/10 Shocks – were designed for the drag strip, with 90% of their stiffness on the compression side. This allowed the front end of the car to rise to the top of the cylinder’s stroke quickly on hard acceleration – and stay there for most of the quarter mile – transferring as much weight to the rear end as possible through the first half of the run. It was impressive on the street, but totally impractical, making the car ride horribly. Of course the car rode like a lumber wagon anyway, what with the rear suspension travel limited to an inch or so by lowering it. Comfort had to give way to style.
   
   The combination of lowering, duals, lakes, put the entire exhaust system of your car in peril – but in the ‘50’s speed bumps were practically unknown. My own personal nemesis was my girlfriend’s steep driveway that could put a serious 45° bend in my exhaust extensions, and did on several occasions. I eventually went to a single sewer pipe exhaust, exiting just behind the passenger door.
   
   
7. Fender Skirts – All the expensive cars had them, whether full or partial skirts to enclose all or part of the rear wheel arch. The most desirable were the “Merc Skirts” – the full-length kind that extended all the way to the rear bumper, at first salvaged from junked 51 – 57 Mercurys, but demand got to be so high, they appeared in the aftermarket. Like any popular product, some were made too cheaply, often in fiberglass, with the same result many aero kits get today.
   
   
8. Hubcaps - In a time of OEM and aftermarket rims, hubcaps are the dodos of automotive fashion, extinct for all practical purposes. Back in the day, particularly in the mid-’50’s, there were only two desirable types: Checkerboards and Moons. The former looked like conventional full-disc hubcaps except that the inner 7 inches was stamped as a waffle pattern with white squares setting off a “spinner”, or a fake knock-off hub. Variously known as checkerboards, spinners, flippers, and a number of other street names, they looked best on ’56 and up cars that already had the squared-off lines that would be featured up through the late ‘70’s.
   
   Moon disks were first fabricated for land speed record cars on the salt flats for aerodynamic purposes. Made of spun aluminum, they were slightly domed and were screwed to the wheel to secure them with either machine screws or dzus fasteners. Later versions for the custom market went on like a conventional hubcap, secured by springs at the perimeter. Some were chromed, but you had to be very careful handling the cheap ones because they would dent easily when you installed them. It wasn’t obvious with a spun aluminum finish, but the chrome version when even slightly dented would look like a funhouse mirror, especially when turning. Not quite the macho race-car image you were after.
   
   
9. Continental Kits – Made to mimic the exterior spare tire on the 1939 Lincoln Continental, this was, by the early ‘50’s the fashion accessory par excellence. First intended to provide luggage space in luxury cars that had minimal trunks, the “Continental kit” found its way into the aftermarket and a bizarre variety of custom cars. It was actually offered as an option on the earliest Thunderbirds, and it became, if only in vestigial form, a feature on many high-end Ford and Chrysler products well into the ’70’s. You might say that some current SUV’s carry on the tradition, but for them it’s not a styling feature, but a practical means of getting that big spare tire out of the passenger space – just as it was in 1939.
   
   What most shade tree hotrodders found in the ‘50’s adding a Continental kit to your Ford or Mercury extended the distance from the rear axle to the end of the bumper – and those dual extensions behind . . . making your bumper a pretty effective guillotine for your exhaust tips when you entered anything more than a flat driveway.
   
   
10. Body Modification - You could start by chroming everything removable, or just "Frenching" the headlights, building up a slight rim that would make the headlights appear to recede into the fender. There were even kits you could weld on to accomplish this task much easier - and if you were going to paint the car anyway, it was a no-brainer.
    
    If you were a serious hotrodder, chopping the top by removing two or three inches from the roof pillars was a good place to start doing some subtle mods to your car. You had to consider the changes that would be necessary to the windshield and rear glass, to accommodate the change.
    
    Channeling was another option - to channel the body to lower it on the frame, or as practiced today, to lower the the frame over the suspension to permit the car to be dropped to the ground. In the '50's and '60's airbags were unknown, so if you dropped your car, you drove it like that - not always an attractive proposition and not too many did more than channel the body to make it appear lower.
    
    Finally, "Sectioning" was for deadly serious customizers only, consisting of taking a measured 3" to 6" horizontal strip out of the body below the beltline. You could chop, channel, and section a '54 Ford to look very much like a '54 - '57 Thunderbird if you had the time and tools. Of course you could BUY a '54 - '57 Thunderbird for considerably less, but then it wouldn't be a "custom", would it?