For better or worse, 1958 showed us how elaborate and elephantine American carmakers could design their cars when unbound. Fins had yet to reach their pinnacles, true, but were on their way. Chrome spread like a wildfire. Engines grew more powerful. Cars grew in just about every dimension. All at a time of great recession and belt-tightening, and with an undercurrent of frugal cars recording some of their better years and Japanese cars first landing on our shores. For SIA #196, August 2003, Jim Donnelly took a look not only at the American automotive landscape of 1958, but at many of the individual cars sold here that year, shedding light on one of the most controversial model years in American auto history.