Car magazine from 1954 shows how advanced the US motoring scene was

We found a vintage car magazine from 1954, and despite it being printed in the UK, it shows just how advanced the US motoring scene was.

This was a Christmas edition of Autocar magazine, released on December 24th, 1954, and it’s a real slice-of-life look into what the auto writers of the time were talking about and what accessories and cars were up for sale.

It contains a piece covering the Los Angeles fifth annual Motor Revue and Motorama, and shows the biggest and most popular hot-rods, classic cars, and cars of the future – even though it was the ’50s.

Turns out what was considered the world’s fastest roadster 70 years ago differs quite a bit from today. But it’s always nice to see auto enthusiasts and journalists alike sharing an age-old passion: loving cars.

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Being car journalists ourselves, it’s always fun to discover evidence of what your lifestyle may have been like in the past, and according to this magazine, it doesn’t look too different.

An unnamed journalist from Autocar magazine had been sent out to LA in 1954 to cover the Los Angeles fifth annual Motor Revue and Motorama and wrote about their experience in the Christmas edition that year.

The cars on display showed the innovation and ‘beauty, individuality, design, performance, and rarity’ of the best and the fastest cars of the 1950s.

While we ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ at flying and furry cars at the Shanghai auto show, these journalists were marveling at cars made from the canopies of fighter planes and cars with newfangled fibreglass bodies.

The 1950s seem to be powered on ‘nitro fuel’, with this Sorrell chassis car sporting a twin V8 engine and a ‘bubble’ on top. Using regular gas, it’ll reach 450HP, but with nitro, it can reach a surprising 610HP.

Attendees also marveled at a bizarrely-shaped Troutman-Barnes special car, which used torsion bar suspension and a Ford engine.

A Star Wars-looking ‘twin aircraft tank streamliner’ was also reported on by the journalist, who said one side was for the driver and one was for the supercharged De Soto engine.

A lot of elements of these cars have been incorporated into vehicles we see today, like ‘bubble’ glass and twin V8 engines that can kick out tonnes of horsepower.

But all this innovation, which seems benign to us now, built the foundation of the motoring world as we know it today.

The most interesting vehicle on show at the LA Motorama back in 1954 was by far the ‘world’s fastest roadster’.

We know the world’s fastest roadster at the moment is probably the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+. But back then, the fastest was described as a ‘modified Ford, which recorded 202.07MPH’.

Powered by two Chrysler engines, this speedster is a long way from qualifying for the current top 10 fastest supercars. But these kinds of speeds were extremely exciting back then.

Some things never change, but it’s thrilling to see how the world of motoring has changed over the years. At least we know that whatever the year is, people will turn up to see cool cars and marvel at innovation.

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