A New Breed Of Car

To contemporary eyes, nothing seems small about 1958 Chevrolets.

- Drew Hardin

But put the car next to the imposing figure that was Hot Rod’s technical editor Ray Brock (all six feet, two inches of him), and the magazine can rightly say the all-new Chevy Impala “displays a low silhouette,” even with a roof height of 4 1/2 feet.

Automakers like to throw around the phrase “all new” every time they make even a few refinements to a model. But in this case, Chevrolet’s sedans were truly redesigned from the frame up. The previous year’s ladder-style chassis was replaced by framerails with a central X-member that was “very resistant to the twisting forces that are transmitted to it,” wrote Brock in Hot Rod’s Dec. 1957 issue. In addition, the new frame’s “low-slung design permits minimum overall car height while also providing plenty of foot room for rear seat passengers.”

The front suspension “is about the only part of the new Chevy that resembles the ’57 models,” he said, describing the unequal-length A-arms and coil springs. New for the year was a front stabilizer bar for all V-8 models (but absent from six-cylinder cars).