Chevrolet Nomad

Think of a time when things were going so well for the American car manufacturers that one of them could produce  a new model based on what many might view as a practical joke. And then imagine that the version  that resulted from that joke–the Chevrolet Nomad–would go on to be acclaimed by legions of fans around the globe as the ultimate station wagon, a car that turned the station wagon stereotype on its ear because it was so utterly cool.

Sterling status in early ’50s

If you can’t  envision just such a thing, let us turn back the clock to about 1952 when Chevrolet’s reputation was, well, pretty much like Chevrolet’s reputation right now–a leading producer of dull cars for the masses. The only  discrepancy, then and now, is that the Chevrolet of the early Fifties was America’s sales leader, a position the brand would dearly love to have today. And, perhaps another disrepancy–in 1952,  General Motors had a vision for its number one brand, a multi-faceted scheme that hung its hat on two things that American cars seem to lack these days–great styling and great engineering .  Similar to  having great pitching and great hitting, that combination is going to win you a lot of ballgames. So it would be like that with Chevrolet.

As 1952 dawned, and sensing that Ford was creeping up on his number one ranking, Charlie Wilson, GM president,   asked Chevrolet division head Tom Keating what he needed to hold off the Dearborn charge, and Keating’s response was simple, “Give me Ed Cole.” Cole was the genius behind Cadillac’s high-compression V-8 engine, but somehow he had been assigned to managing, of all things, a tank plant in Cleveland. Cole was quickly moved into the Chevrolet chief engineer post, and before he left Cleveland he was already designing a new, high-compression 265 cubic inch V-8 for his new division.

Equally important was the ascension of Clare MacKichan to head of Chevrolet design. Now,  there was nothing wrong with predecessor Ed Glowacke’s work–the 1949-54 Chevies were attractive cars, if a bit old-fashioned–but MacKichan was charged with turning out new designs that would place stodgy Chevrolet high on the list of a young man’s car–a big departure.

Shelved clay prototype gets instant life

Ultimately,  another piece of the puzzle was a full-size clay model that was languishing in legendary stylist Harley Earl’s studio. No GM division head seemed to want to take a chance on the 2-seat roadster that had been penned with an eye on the British sports cars that had crawled into the post-war U.S. market. Without  luxuries like rollup windows, the two-seater appeared to be too big a gamble, at least until Ed Cole saw it. He flipped, persuaded Keating to get on board, and the next thing we knew,  a show car called the Chevrolet Corvette was being displayed at the 1953 GM Motorama at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.

The Corvette produced shockwaves, especially when it was broadly hinted that the  small  car would go into production instead of remaining as eye candy. It was as if Boeing had announced that it was going to produce lawn tractors. What next? Lions sleeping with water buffalo? But Chevrolet management held true to its dream, and the Corvette did go into production, helping to erase the word “stodgy” from any sentence that contained Chevrolet.

Then, for the  succeeding year’s Motorama, the question became, “Okay, so how do we top the Corvette?” This is where the practical joke eventually came in. GM stylists decided to follow the primary  ‘vette show car with three (count ’em, three) Corvette show cars for the ’54 Motorama. One was essentially a prettied up version of the production Corvette but with exterior door locks and  real roll-up windows. The second was an astounding  fastback coupe version that bore the soon-to-be-legendary name, Corvair. And the third was GM’s Styling’s inside joke on their friends at Ford. It was a station wagon model of the Corvette that was dubbed Nomad.

Public reaction–amazing car!

The joke was almost surprisingly too perfect. Chevy stylists are aware  that Ford was right on their tail with the Thunderbird  2-seater, so they threw down the gauntlet-“Match this station wagon, guys!” The joke got even funnier when it turned out that the T-Bird would be  created on the Ford station wagon chassis. Funniest of all, Chevrolet’s practical joke concept car was a quick hit with the show audience. Harley Earl, seeing public reaction to the Nomad model, sent a frantic instruction to the brass at Chevrolet-“Get the Nomad into production!”

And, quicker than you could dream, it was so. When MacKichan got the word from Earl, he immediately set Carl Renner, who had been concerned in the original Nomad sketches, to work on fitting the distinct 2-door station wagon body to the new chassis, which would also carry the division’s all-new V-8 engine. The “Corvette Nomad” show car wasn’t built on a Corvette chassis, but was built on a standard 115-inch wheelbase ’53 Chevy chassis, so the proportions were right to build the production vehicle on the upcoming ’55 Chevrolet chassis. Further, apart from the Corvette front end and taillights, the car was fitted out with all the accoutrements of a  modern coupe rather than the barebones ’54 Corvette.  There, talk about all the planets aligning!

Striking  touches make a classic

Happily, the Nomad styling worked perfectly well with the new design of the 1955 Chevrolet Bel-Air. With its  somewhat bulbous hood and single, “eyebrowed” headlights flanking a Ferrari-inspired grille, the ’55 Chevy is one of the classics of the period. And the signature Nomad touches– forward-slanting tailgate with vertical chrome stakes, wrap-around rear glass, and the fluted rear roof section–harmonize beautifully with the clean ’55 styling. While all the ’55 Chevies are attractive, even the low-line versions, the Bel-Air Nomad is,  possibly, the prettiest of the bunch.

That’s as it should be, because the Nomad was also the costliest of the group. At $2,571,  the Nomad was $300 more than the conventional Bel-Air Beauville four-door station wagon and the Bel-Air convertible. The  unheralded and now forgotten Two-Ten Handyman 2-door wagon  was  priced $500 less.  Unfortunately, pricing would help spell the end of the Nomad era sooner than was expected.

Cool, speedy, and comfy wagon

But the initial Nomad was a revelation. Not only did it  provide  leading-edge styling, it also offered mechanical excellence–1955 marked the introduction of the soon-to-be-legendary small-block V-8 engine. In base trim,  it generated 162 horsepower from its 265 cubic inches, and when armed  with an inexpensive factory “power pack” of dual exhaust and four-barrel carburetor, horsepower production rose to 180. All this magnificence rode on the virtually all-new 1955 chassis with much longer rear leaf springs and a significantly improved  front suspension that featured  coil springs, ball joints, and unequal-length A-arms.

The ’55  celebrated a sea change in Chevrolet, and it vaulted the marque into a performance leadership status it would hold for two more decades.  Sadly, largely because of its high price and the limited utility of its 2-door wagon body style, the Nomad was left in the division’s wake. Despite warm reviews, only 8,386 ’55 Nomads were sold, a  small percentage of overall Chevy sales that year. The Nomad was updated to keep in step with the attractive ’56 and ’57 models, but sales of just 7,886 for the 1956 model year and 6,103 for 1957 doomed the Nomad to an immediate cancellation. After that,  four-door wagons would carry the Nomad name, but while they were more commercially successful, they never  attained the cult status of the practical joke that became one of the amazing cars of all time.

—© Studio One Networks—

Tagged with: Chevrolet • sports car • vintage automobile • wagon

Filed under: Top Classic Cars