Finned British classics: five of the best buys

How did tail fins come about? And what prompted British designers to embrace them? Nick Larkin looks back at Britain’s most stylish classics

60 years of Vauxhall’s PA

It wasn’t just school kids and boffins who were obsessed with anything involving aeroplanes and rockets in the immediate post-war years, not least in the US. Car designers were at it, too. Jet-age images were everywhere. Junior munching on his Tootsie Roll in Iowa would be soaking up the television adventures of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. Many films featured tales of wartime airborne derring-do or aliens invading earth, their flying saucers fashioned from car hubcaps and pieces of string. It’s hardly surprising then that in just a few years, the shape of your average Chevy or Plymouth switched from something upright and bulbous, to a sleek and stylised creation that NASA might have been interested in launching.

Svelte but slow and chrome-laden, cars would never be the same again –but it was what happened at the rear of the cars that really made Junior drop his popsicle in shock. Tail fins. Vast pointed creations sporting huge shiny embellishments and big red lights. They were works of art in themselves.

British manufacturers took their time to catch on, but eventually fell for fins too. Ford and Rootes both introduced them to Brit buyers in 1956, but we reckon that Vauxhall’s PA Cresta and Velox range – 60 years old this year – is where fins reached their zenith.