When We Were Young: The Car and Driver/Sports Cars Illustrated Covers of the 1950s

Jun 19, 2015 | News

The world had its first look at our publication in the summer of 1955, when our cover showed a beautiful Jaguar XK140 roadster. For 35 cents, you could have bought a copy and joined us at the very beginning of our long journey, which has spanned more than six decades.---America was generally booming and prosperous in the 1950s. Most of the cars people drove here, however, were big and ponderous. Made popular by servicemen returning home from Europe after World War II, sports cars were a refreshing antidote to the cumbersome Chevys, Fords, and Plymouths that perpetually topped the sales charts. This newborn magazine embraced the nascent sports-car movement, so much so that it was titled Sports Cars Illustrated for the first six years of its existence.---The magazine's covers pointed readers to stories about Ferraris and Maseratis, Porsches and Gullwings, Corvettes and Jaguars, MGs and Triumphs. We often put racing cars on our colorful covers, and sometimes an image of an already-classic prewar beauty or even simply an engine beckoned from the newsstand.---These were our faces when we were young.

—–––––<img width="150" height="150" src="http://blog.caranddriver.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/1255-150×150.jpg" …read more

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