Yanks and years

[V8covin]

When watching one of the multitude of American car shows on tv these days the one noticeable thing is how every car is described by its year....65 Mustang, 73 Cadillac,you get the picture.
Why is this ? Is it because the Yanks brought out a new model every year ?

[jagracer]

Yes

[Vipers]

Cadillac also changed the grill every year so people could tell if you had the latest car, or so they said on Classic restoration on telly last week.

[benny.c]

Possibly also because certain model years are more valuable/collectible than others? i.e. '68 Mustang GT due to the Bullitt connection.

[mph1977]

it's like the Aussies with their two letter codes because the names stayed constant for decade and the BMW F and E codes or Merc W codes ...

[Crafty_]

Cars changed every year to encourage sales. This happened from the early 20s until some time in the 80s or so.

look at http://carnut.com/photo/list/list.html

[jagracer]

I've got a 55 Bel Air and they seemed to change the design of the model every year during the fifties apart from I think 55-56 which only had a grill upgrade

[Crafty_]

55 vs 56 chevy have different front clip (hood & fenders), rear 3 quarter panel, side trims on some models, tail lights also different. The chassis/body is pretty much the same

[jagracer]

Crafty_ said:

55 vs 56 chevy have different front clip (hood & fenders), rear 3 quarter panel, side trims on some models, tail lights also different. The chassis/body is pretty much the same

I stand corrected, I didn't look properly.

[Crafty_]

Its just a typical example really. '57 changed all the same stuff again with the finned 3 quarters, it also had a new dash and bumpers.

'58 was a completely fresh design.

Many '55s were straight six cars, the now ubiquitous SBC was available in 265ci form for '55 and '56, in 1957 it was bored to 283ci and was available with a mechanical fuel injection system (now very desirable) and achieved 283hp. Folklore has it that the FI 283 was the first engine to achieve 1hp per cubic inch, but I've never verified that.

[chevy-stu]

Some cars do have different 'generations' similar to UK cars in the same way as Fords (like the Camaro/TransAm), but they still often had yearly updates and trim changes.

[LuS1fer]

They go by model year, because they are released the year before, So the brand new 2005 MY mustang was released in 2004 and you will see that the Press all refer to the 2015 Mustang, not the 2014 which is when they will be registered. They generally come out around October and I suppose it keeps them sounding new for a while.

It's important to know your model years because, for example, the 2001 and 2002 Corvette Z06 could both be registered the same year but one had 385hp, the other 405hp.

Edited by LuS1fer on Tuesday 18th November 19:33

[moparmick]

A lot of 60's cars would have yearly minor changes and a new model every 3 yrs or so.
Mick