Chevrolet Impala 1959-1960 Second Generation

In 1959, Chevrolet finally gave the Impala its own model line instead of treating it as a Bel Air option package, and backed it up with a lowered, widened body sharing sheet metal with Buick and Oldsmobile, horizontal tailfins, and an engine range topping out at 315 horsepower. A year later, Chevrolet toned almost all of it down. Read on to find out what changed, and why some Impalas from this era were hand-built in Australia.

In 1959, Chevrolet handed the Impala something it had never had before: its own name on the fender, no longer riding as a fancy trim package tacked onto the Bel Air. That single change came wrapped in a completely reworked body, one that quietly borrowed sheet metal from Buick and Oldsmobile, sat lower and wider than anything Chevrolet had built before, and carried tailfins so dramatically horizontal they looked like nothing else on the road. A year later, Chevrolet would walk half of that styling back. What made the 1959 Impala’s most aggressive year also its most short-lived look?

A Name Finally Gets Its Own Car

Before 1959, “Impala” was simply the name of a high-trim option package layered onto the Bel Air, buyers didn’t so much buy an Impala as buy a dressed-up Bel Air with Impala badging. For 1959, Chevrolet gave the name its own standalone model, offered as a four-door sedan, four-door hardtop coupe, two-door coupe, two-door hardtop, or convertible. The change reflected how much weight the Impala name already carried with buyers after just a couple of years as an option package, and Chevrolet backed that promotion with an entirely new body rather than a simple badge swap.

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A Frame Redesigned, and Sheet Metal Shared With Buick

Underneath the new styling, Chevrolet revised the “X” frame chassis, adding a rail running up each side specifically to improve protection in a side impact. The body sat three inches lower than the outgoing model on a wheelbase 1.5 inches longer, with the body shell itself two inches wider than the previous year’s Impala, changes that came with a real weight penalty as the car put on noticeable pounds compared to its predecessor. In an unusual bit of corporate parts-sharing, some of that all-new sheet metal was shared with Chevrolet’s lower-priced Buick and Oldsmobile stablemates, a detail that rarely makes it into casual conversations about a car more often remembered for its tailfins. Buyers cross-shopping a 1959 Impala against a Ford Fairlane or a Plymouth Fury were, whether they realized it or not, looking at three completely different structural philosophies for solving the same full-size sedan problem, and Chevrolet’s willingness to share body panels across brands was a quiet preview of the platform-sharing strategies that would become standard across the entire industry decades later.

Tailfins That Went Horizontal, and a Rear Window You Could See Through

The 1959 Impala’s rear end became its signature feature: a huge rear deck paired with tailfins that, unlike the vertical fins popular earlier in the decade, ran horizontal, capped with long, horizontally configured teardrop taillights. Up top, the roofline was shortened across the entire Impala lineup, while the hardtop model wore a distinctive “flying wing” roof design. Behind that roof sat a pillar-free, wraparound rear window made from a single compound-curved piece of glass, a genuinely huge window for the era that gave drivers excellent visibility, including on the blind side, at a time when most cars still fought with thick pillars and small glass.

A Speed-Limit Buzzer Nobody Asked For

Inside, the top-trim Impala came loaded with details meant to feel genuinely upscale: door-mounted armrests front and rear, two sliding sun visors, crank-operated no-draft vent windows, and an optional Flexomatic six-way power seat. The dashboard gauges were repositioned under an overhang specifically designed to cut glare, and buyers could add either an electric clock or something stranger, a “Speedminder,” a reminder buzzer that sounded whenever the driver exceeded whatever speed they’d dialed in themselves. It was an odd, half-useful predecessor to modern speed-limit warning systems, decades before anyone thought to build one into a dashboard as standard equipment.

From a 283 Six-Cylinder Save to a 315-Horsepower Big-Block

Engine choices for 1959 spanned an enormous range. The base engine was the 283-cubic-inch Turbo Fire V8 making 185 horsepower, with a four-barrel carburetor option bumping that to 190. Buyers chasing real performance could step up to the W-Series Turbo-Thrust, a 348-cubic-inch big-block V8 producing as much as 315 horsepower for serious straight-line performance. At the other end of the spectrum, thrifty buyers could special-order the Blue Flame six-cylinder, saving $118 off the price of a V8 and bringing the car’s retail price down to around $2,849, a real discount at a time when the convertible carried a $2,967 sticker. Transmission choices ranged from a basic three-speed manual up through an optional four-speed and the Turbo-Glide automatic. The 348-cubic-inch W-Series engine itself had only entered the Chevrolet lineup in 1958, borrowing its basic block architecture from Chevrolet’s medium-duty truck engines before being reworked with higher compression and a more aggressive camshaft for passenger car duty, a lineage that gave the 348 a reputation for durability that the more famous 409 which replaced it in 1961 never quite matched.

1960 Toned It All Down

Just one year later, Chevrolet pulled back on nearly everything that made the 1959 Impala so dramatic. The lineup narrowed to a hardtop sport sedan, sport coupe, convertible coupe, and four-door sedan, with the convertible remaining the flagship at $2,847. Those horizontal teardrop taillights were replaced with three smaller, rounded units on each side, and the aggressive air intakes above the headlights disappeared entirely in favor of a cleaner, less flashy front end. Chevrolet compensated Impala buyers for the more conservative styling by adding noticeably more chrome trim than either the Bel Air or Biscayne carried, keeping some visual separation between the trim levels even as the overall look calmed down.

A Cruise Control Option, and Cars Built in Canada for the Southern Hemisphere

The 348 big-block remained available for 1960, now spanning 170 to 230 horsepower depending on configuration, and while fuel injection never made it onto the option sheet, Chevrolet did add cruise control for the first time, a genuinely useful option that quietly made the previous year’s Speedminder buzzer obsolete, even as that older buzzer option became a small collectible in its own right. Less known is that Chevrolet’s Oshawa, Canada plant built right-hand-drive versions of the Impala with mirror-image dashboards for South African, New Zealand, and Australian markets, with the Australian-bound cars actually hand-assembled at Holden’s own plant rather than shipped complete, a detail that turns a fairly common American car into a genuinely rare find outside North America. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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