Ford thunderbird 1955 whitewall9/9/2023 Pricing pressure from the 1958 recession likely played a part in manufacturers backing away from standard heaters as well.īy the dawn of the 1960s, it seemed that something as basic and essential as a heater would stay on the option sheet forever, even if it were at this point an option that practically no one skipped. Studebaker also backed off from making heaters standard across the lineup in 1959, making it $71 option on the Lark. The era of specialty cars with standard heaters was short-lived, and by 1959 no Mercurys, Buicks, or Oldsmobiles had a heater as standard equipment anymore. In 1958, the Continental Mark III became the first Lincoln with a standard heater (it was still an option on the Capri and Premiere.) So standard heaters trickled in quite slowly, and mostly on luxury makes. Whoever caved first and made the heater standard was going to be at a base price disadvantage, as well as missing out on a revenue-generating opportunity. Throwing in a standard heater when virtually every customer was willing to pay extra for one (while offering no competitive advantage) must have infuriated the bean counters at Studebaker-Packard, as we shall see.Īnd here we see the real reason it took so long for heaters to become standard equipment: Charging upwards of $100 for something that virtually everyone was going to buy anyways essentially amounted to a back door tax, allowing manufacturers to advertise artificially lower list prices. This makes the $1,776 price point of the ’57 Scotsman (undercutting the cheapest Chevy by over $100) all the more impressive as they essentially gave you something for free (a heater) that Chevy was charging an extra $95 for. Studebaker-Packard in 1957 joined Cadillac in making heaters standard across their entire lineup, from the lowliest Scotsman to the most expensive Packard Golden Hawk. Pontiac no longer forced buyers to opt for a heater on their new-for-1957 Bonneville – it was standard as well. In 1957, the Turnpike Cruiser became the first Mercury to receive a heater as standard issue. In 1955, Studebaker, sticking their toes in the hot water, released their first model with a standard heater, the President Speedster.įor 1956, the Continental Mark II would be the first FoMoCo product to come with a standard heater, with air conditioning being the only option on offer. Of course that applies to just the standard single-zone manual heater: Cadillac’s multi-zone “automatic” heater system (about which more will be written in a future post) was almost always still an optional upgrade. Kaiser made a heater standard equipment on their upmarket Dragon for 1953.Ĭadillac, however, went one step further in 1953 and made a heater standard equipment across their entire lineup (the same year air conditioning became an option), from the base Sixty-Two to the range-topping Eldorado. Packard made a heater standard on their open-top Carribean convertible while being a $97 option across the remainder of the lineup. Buck similarly made a heater standard on just their 1953 Skylark model. Oldsmobile made a heater standard equipment on the 1953 98 Fiesta while keeping it as a $79 option across the rest of the lineup.
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