TECHNICAL MARVEL IN ITS DAY
A ’58 Ford Skyliner love affair
I had just become a teenager when I saw my first Ford hideaway hardtop.
It was brought into my world on our new 17-inch Spartan black and white television. I, along with everyone else, marvelled at this new long and low 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 that magically transformed itself from a two-door hardtop to a full convertible in just 40 seconds — with the simple touch of a button.
It wasn’t until the next year, in my first year at a north Toronto high school, that I would see one of these miracle cars on the road. But this was no ordinary hideaway hardtop. It was a white 1958 model and it had been fully customized as a new car.
The Skyliner had been lowered with long cruiser skirts covering the rear wheel openings and sported dual spotlights doubling as adjustable outside mirrors. The front was modified with a grille from a Canadian-built 1958 Meteor, and the back end was like nothing I had ever seen.
The rear of the car had been completely changed with the installation of boomerang-shaped 1958 Edsel station wagon tail lights and a Continental spare tire. A low rumble came from the dual exhausts as this car oozed by my high school. I was completely smitten.
I would usually hear this car before I saw it. When I turned to look at it, the long low Ford would sometimes have the top up. On other occasions, the top was down, giving away its secret as a famed Ford hideaway hardtop.
The handsome young driver didn’t look much older than the teenagers I went to school with, yet he had this fabulous car — a car unlike any I had ever seen.
The sight of the car would remain engraved in my memory as I moved into adulthood and pursued my interest in cars. But I would not see another one of these cars as I moved from Toronto to Vancouver for a career as a television news reporter. That was, until a friend called me in 1976 to say a guy was in his driveway with a hideaway hardtop. He had to sell it that day. “Get over here,” he said. Two hours later, that Starmist Blue and Colonial White 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner was in my garage and I was $2,800 poorer. This reignited my love affair with these cars as the only classic I had ever seen that could do something amazing while it was standing still.
The first Ford Skyliner was introduced in 1954 as a Ford Crestline two-door hardtop with a green tinted Plexiglas roof insert over the front seat. It was a showroom sensation and helped Ford sell a lot of cars. The see-through roof was continued for the 1955 and 1956 model years as Crown Victoria Skyliners.
But then the innovation of a fixed sunroof began to lose favour, and only 603 Crown Victoria Skyliners sold in 1956. Passengers complained of being cooked in the cabin with the hot sun blazing down on them through the Plexiglas roof.
Meanwhile, a 26-year-old engineer named Ben Smith had been hired away from Fisher Body by Ford to design a revolutionary new Ford Skyliner — the hideaway hardtop.
The miracle car took the market by storm, with Ford selling more than 48,000 hideaway hardtops from 1957 to 1959. Buyers went crazy over the car with a trunk that would automatically open up backward and swallow the hardtop as it folded into position before the trunk closed. All this happened electronically with just the touch of a button.
More than five decades later, my attendance at the 2014 Toronto Fall Collector Car auction set in motion an almost unbelievable series of circumstances.
Toronto-area restorer Doug Pegg invited me to look at the 1957 Chevys for sale — it is our shared passion. At the auction, he introduced me to car collector Barry Pattison, who told me he had two Ford Skyliner hideaway hardtops in his stable of classics — 1957 and 1959 models.
Because I was back in Toronto, I launched into my story about seeing the phantom white Skyliner glide by York Mills Collegiate back in 1958 with a youthful driver who had completely customized a brand-new car.
Barry listened patiently, then asked: “Would you like to meet the owner? He’ll be here.”
Not quite believing him, I described the car from more than half-a-century ago once again. With its low stance, matching spotlights, cruiser skirts, continental kit and those amazing Edsel station wagon tail lights.
He assured me he knew about this car and was friends with the owner from way back when. The next day I was swept up in auction action when I heard my name and saw Barry with a group of friends.
“Tell me about the white Ford Skyliner you saw when you were a teenager,” he urged. As I did, one of his friends began to smile broadly.
“That was my car,’ said Jon Berlinghoff.
He told me the story of visioning the Ford Skyliner with Edsel tail lights and actually buying the lights before ordering his new Skyliner in the fall of 1957. After a three-month wait, he traded in his black 1954 Monarch convertible and paid the balance on the $4,900 list price at Toronto’s Elgin Motors.
He was just 19 and living with his parents in north Toronto’s suburban Willowdale. He did custom woodwork and his route to his job building houses often took him by my high school.
He explained how he loved his new 1958 Skyliner, but hated the square rear end styling with four oval tail lights mounted high on either side of the rear panel. After three months’ ownership, he and a friend who worked at a gas station cut the entire back end off the car.
“The next day, my father came running into the house yelling, ‘Jon! Jon! What happened to your car? Are you all right?’
“He thought I had been in an accident and was really upset when I told him what I’d done to my new car.”
In the ensuing weeks, Berlinghoff worked with a body man to re-sculpt the entire rear portion of the car in lead.
“We probably added two hundred and fifty pounds to the car with all that lead,” he recalls.
Despite his car having a 300 horsepower engine, the extra weight slowed his car down. In those days, it was all about having enough power to smoke the rear tires as you peeled away from a stop. So Berlinghoff installed an oil tank under his car, hooked to an electric fuel pump from an MG. He ran piping into each rear wheel well to squirt oil on his rear tires so they would spin on takeoff.
“Talk about smoke! It would smoke up a city block in a matter of twenty seconds.”
He kept his beautifully customized 1958 Ford Skyliner hideaway hardtop for just five years before trading it for a 1960 Thunderbird convertible — another hideaway but with a soft convertible top.
He saw his old car only a few times after that before it faded into custom-car history. He has just one photo of the car, having loaned his photos to a now forgotten person who didn’t return them. He would love to know what happened to his prized custom car and to have copies of any other photos that exist.
The impression that car made on me has lasted more than 50 years. I now have my own white 1958 Ford Skyliner hideaway hardtop with the Continental spare wheel. But I would never have the jam to cut the back end off it to get rid of those ugly tail lights. Besides, where would I find tail lights from a 1958 Edsel Villager station wagon anyway?