When cars were designed to resemble jets and spacecraft they were made right here by proud Americans who looked forward to some future where things would always be getting better, faster and more efficient. Gasoline, then, was ubiquitous and cheap so the image of a fire breathing steel rocket was of no concern, nor was the government spending billions on space exploration. Images of the Gemini rockets and the first space walk were still vivid in the nation's conscious when this beauty rolled off the line. As were the images of Soviet rockets on the ground in Cuba. But we weren't going to let a little money or the distraction of the civil rights' movement or even a developing conflict in a country called Vietnam stop us from from dreaming big , and then chasing those dreams down with a stick. We weren't going to just build rockets, we were going to drive them (remember, the jet-packs were always right around the corner). This photo is of the much weathered rear end of a 1965 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport. With tail lights that could double as octopus suckers or robot eyes, it seems that it could easily open like some giant bivalve and consume a dairy cow. They were likely meant to convey the appearance of booster rockets, an effect enhanced by the recessed chrome rings that imply a swivel mechanism. The message here was clear: Go Fast and Explore. Wrap yourself in a missile. Encase your body in steel. Cars have always been clothes, or armor, or doppelgangers, but it's been awhile since they were designed to resemble our wildest dreams. But maybe that's because we don't have dreams that wild.
When this vehicle was on the drawing board, the man, or men, responsible for tapping into our dreams, the car's designers, still had the fresh image of a violent assassination in their nightmares. But you move on. It takes more than the death of a president to shake us and, after all, wasn't it Kennedy's dream to begin with? At least, he made it his dream in the moon speech; which was really his I have a dream speech. Those two dreams, equality of space and equality of race defined a set of ideals we were just not ready to accept and between JFK and MLK the muscle car took off. Three years after this very car hit the streets they shot him too, but nothing was going to stop our rockets. We had to escape. The moon was all we had left - so snowy white and smooth. We sure needed a sea of tranquility. We needed a summer of love. But nobody sees this when you look at this car. We don't see a steel vault of dreams. We don't see a golden age of possibility and promise as embodied by the hands of labor - Michigan manpower, Pennsylvania steel, Madison Avenue sex appeal, good old American know-how, Detroit iron. Aepyceros melapus. High-horn. Black foot. The impala. A Zulu word for gazelle. A fast antelope from Africa, the cradle of human kind. Our first hunts, our first chases were for antelopes. Speed, power, grace. This is a car we're talking about. Or is it? This is us. This is what we imagine that we are. To drive is to inhabit a machine, like some mech-warrior on the asphalt plain. But when was the last time you got in your car and became something else? Something tangible? This was a dream you could wrap your hands around. Long, wide, streamlined, shark-like, ray-like, manta, skate, sea-life like - and after all isn't the undersea world as delivered to us by Jacques-Cousteau the closest thing we can get to space? Chevy got us to space in metal sea creatures that hovered in the air at 70 mph. And we're right there, inside that dream again. All this from a tail-light.
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