Ford Skyliner

How the dreams of youth become the monotonous remnants of middle age. So it is with the retractable hardtop, a phenomenon that made the mid-1950’s boy consider that in America, everything is possible, from putting a satellite up in space to creating a convertible out of a sedan before one’s very eyes. Sadly, today the retractable hardtop car, like many of our youthful symbols, has lost its novelty. They are, in fact, getting to be more common than the canvas-topped convertibles of old.

Modern hardtops in abundance

Mitsubishi was the car company that initiated  the latest retractable top trend. It started selling its 3000 GT Spyder with its ever-so-tiny folding hardtop in 1994. Mercedes-Benz then threw its vaunted engineering prowess into the arena with its SLK, which came into the market in 1996. Lexus started  offering its SC 430, and the floodgates seemed to open up. The marketing geniuses at Chevrolet (Chevrolet?) decided that a disappearing hardtop pickup truck was just what General Motors required to keep  its dipping fortunes afloat, while Cadillac topped its version of the Corvette (called XLR) with a collapsing hardtop.

That the American car makers latched onto the retractable hardtop is not surprising when one considers that it was an American named Ben P. Ellerbeck who is credited with imagining the first, ahem, practical retractable hardtop system way back in 1922. All of which is  just another  meaningless prologue, because to those of us who grew up in the Fifties,  the one, the only, the original retractable hardtop car was the 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner. How else do we know it?  Because Ford Motor Company told us it was when they launched it. And those of us who watched  the initial TV commercials for the car could scarcely believe our senses. Just watching that enormous steel roof disappear into that giant trunk was cooler than any Sputnik those Godless communists could build.

Pricey addition was meant for Lincoln Continental

Actually, the retractable roof  concept had originally been floated at Ford Motor Company design staff as a good gimmick for Lincoln, which was in need of a distinguishing feature to fight  Cadillac’s tailfins. A considerable amount of work (and an estimated $2 million) went into the said  project, as well as the construction of a Continental Mark II with a servo-operated retractable roof. The thing worked wonders, but the Continental Mark II was already priced beyond mid-Fifties reason, so the project was shelved.

But not for long, as it turned out, because in the summer of 1955,  arch-rival Chevrolet and Ford,  were locked in a dog-eat-dog battle for the U.S. sales championship. And each company was prepared to pull out all the stops to the market share, and most importantly, gain bragging rights. Witness the birth of the Ford Thunderbird,Chevrolet Nomad,  Chevrolet Corvette,  and Chevrolet Cameo over a few short years. None of these vehicular extravaganzas guaranteed  to make their respective divisions much money, but each of them sure got people talking…and visiting showrooms. So Ford brass decided to pull the trigger on the final  showroom “loss leader” in the form of a retractable hardtop they called the Ford Skyliner. Ironically, it was created  on the chassis of another traffic-builder, the Ford Sunliner, with its Space Age transparent top.

Gigantic engines still struggled

In everything but its roof mechanism,  the Skyliner was a very traditional American car of the mid-Fifties era. Its finned body sat on a muscular frame that highlighted  an independent front suspension and a live rear axle located by leaf springs, not unlike a Ford F150 pickup truck of today. And similar to the current Ford pickup, it sported a V-8 engine. Initially, the Skyliner provided a 272 cubic inch overhead-valve V-8. A 292 cubic inch V-8 was the standard powerplant in 1958 and 1959, and engine options included 312, 332 and 352 cubic inch marvels of cast iron. The 272 cubic inch engine produced 190 horsepower, and at the other end of the chain the 352 offered an even 300. Though, even packing 300 horsepower,  the heavy Skyliner was no speed demon. The dash  from zero to 60 miles per hour took a leisurely 10 seconds.

But nobody purchased the Skyliner for its on-road performance. The only performance most clients  were interested in was the one they could demonstrate in their own driveway. By flicking a switch they could activate  10 limit switches, 10 power relays, four lock motors, three drive motors, and eight circuit breakers all connected with a staggering 610 feet of electrical wire. This is what made that big steel top disappear  into the outsized, rear-hinged trunk or come back out again.

Ridiculously tiny cargo space

As befitting the top of the Ford line, the Fairlane 500 Skyliner was well-finished inside with lavish bench seating for six. While the interior was spacioius, luggage space was limited to a bin-like container that sat in the middle of what otherwise would have been a large trunk, and if you as a buyer went all the way,  you would also buy the fitted Ford luggage that maxed out the tiny cargo area. And the tiny cargo area was incongruous because, make no mistake, the Skyliner was a huge car. Riding on a 118-inch wheelbase, it was 210 inches long–slightly extended  than the typical Ford two-door of the era with the added length coming in the rear deck.

Amazingly, 20,766 souls bought 1957 Skyliners, considerably more than purchased 1957 Corvettes. Perhaps on the strength of the publicity generated by the Skyliner, Ford defeated Chevrolet for the sales leadership title that model year, despite the fact that ’57 Chevies are now considered prized possessions, while most collectors look askance at the ’57 Fords. The exception to that  policy is the Skyliner, which has gained a significant cult following. For the next model year, the Skyliner was altered with quad headlights, the big new-wave feature of 1958, but its styling was arguably less appealing than the ’57.  Obviously,  buyers thought so, because sales dropped to just 14,713. More styling tweaks and an even more tricky name were the big changes for 1959. The car was called the Ford Fairlane 500 Galaxie Skyliner, but even with more names for the money, sales dropped yet again to 12,915.

By that period,  Ford execs were convinced the genie was out of the bottle as far as the Skyliner was concerned, so they pulled the plug on the expensive-to-build wonder. And so, in three brief years,  the Skyliner retractable hardtop had run its course, thereby, proving yet again the wisdom of the old saying, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do something. But still, as the inspiration of countless school boy aspirations, the Ford Skyliner reverberates through the decades as an example of American ingenuity taken to its illogical extreme.

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Tagged with: Ford • top down • vintage automobile

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