(EXPANDED FROM 8/7/2023)
Today fastbacks are so mainstream that you can find them on the most conservative family sedans. Indeed, the rakishness of their rooflines can be more extreme than even the sportiest American cars of the late-60s and early-70s. That represents a return of a styling trend that died in the first half of the 1950s.
In retrospect, it strikes me as utterly fascinating how fastbacks became so unpopular in Detroit. In the second half of the 1950s and early-60s you simply couldn’t buy one from a U.S. automaker.
As the 1960s wore on, fastbacks started to make a reappearance in Detroit — but only on two-door models. While one can point to some luxury-oriented cars getting the body style, they were mostly used to cultivate a sporty image.
That led to the fastback getting typecast. New York Times reporter Phil Patton (2009) showed how in describing the body style: “The very name fastback suggests speed and excitement — it was the jaunty rear sweep of glass and metal that . . . sold young people on fastback Barracudas and Mustangs.”
It didn’t have to be that way. Fastbacks could have continued to be used on family sedans for a practical reason — they improve aerodynamics. Alas, that wasn’t considered important in those days except on high-performance cars.
What do we mean when we say ‘fastback’?
Before proceeding I should clarify what I mean by the term. During the second half of the 1960s many two-door hardtops had relatively sloping rooflines. An example is the 1968 Chevrolet Impala and the 1968 Ford XL pictured above.
This article focuses on smaller cars with “full” fastbacks and more sporting pretensions. I am also not including as fastbacks General Motors’ 1968-77 mid-sized coupes. Although the 1968-72 models were early champions of the “fuselage” look, they were arguably closer to being notchbacks at heart. So too were the 1973-77 coupes, which shared trunk lids with four-door sedans.
Fastbacks were exotic enough that even many sporty cars did not offer them. This may have been partly due to practical issues. For one thing, rear-seat headroom was tighter than with a boxier, “notchback” roofline. By the same token, a fastback’s larger and more horizontal rear window could turn a car into a greenhouse on sunny days.
Fastbacks didn’t always pencil out very well
A less-discussed factor that may have limited the number of fastbacks offered by U.S. automakers is that they could be costly to develop. A fastback typically required more sheetmetal changes than a notchback coupe. The 1965-66 Mustang “2+2” fastback was a rare example of a fastback that did not use a unique trunk lid.
In contrast, when the Ford Motor Company redesigned its mid-sized lineup in 1968 it added a fastback body style that had a different trunk lid and taillights than its two-door notchback sibling.
When the Mustang was restyled in 1967, the fastback still shared taillights with the notchback but received its own trunk lid. That pattern was carried over with subsequent redesigns until the notchback was dropped in 1993.
Some fastbacks offered fold-down rear seats and a pass-through to the trunk that increased cargo-carrying capacity. This gave the cars a practical advantage over the standard two-door hardtop but required structural changes if the body was primarily designed for notchbacks. This cost more money, which could be a double-whammy if the fastback didn’t sell very well.
U.S. automakers differed in their approach to fastbacks
Ford was the biggest champion of fastbacks in the late-1960s. The automaker offered fastback versions of its full-sized and mid-sized cars as well as the Mustang. In contrast, Chrysler confined fastbacks to two halo cars — the 1966-67 Dodge Charger and 1964-69 Plymouth Barracuda.
General Motors was even more cautious. The only full fastback GM offered was the 1963-67 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. The 1966-70 Buick Riviera and Oldsmobile Toronado had partial, S-shaped fastbacks. So did most of GM’s full-sized lineups from 1967-68.
In the 1960s American Motors only offered one full fastback — the 1965-67 Marlin. When that car flopped, AMC resorted to semi-fastback designs for its Javelin and AMX. Their sweeping, concave decks were similar to GM’s mid-sized cars.
Fastbacks usually didn’t sell as well as notchbacks
Perhaps the best example of the fastback’s second-class status was with the Mustang. Between 1965 and 1973 this body style generated only 20 percent of the pony car’s production. However, as you can see from the graph below, the fastback’s proportion of total output varied over time.
For example, in 1966 the fastback accounted for less than 6 percent of Mustang volume, whereas in 1970 it surpassed 47 percent. Higher fastback sales were significantly driven by the popularity of the Mach 1 series, which was introduced in 1969.
Meanwhile, the 1970 Mercury Cyclone saw volume modestly increase in a generally down year for mid-sized sporty coupes when it switched from a full to a semi-fastback.
Perhaps most dramatically, Dodge produced only 37,300 Chargers in 1966 and less than half that amount in 1967. It wasn’t until the car switched to a notchback that sales soared to over 96,000 in 1968 and 89,000 in 1969.
Plymouth’s Barracuda fastback sold unusually well
The fastback body style was not always the main reason a sporty coupe didn’t do well. For example, the cleanly styled 1967-69 Plymouth Barracuda fastback regularly — if modestly — outsold its notchback sibling.
The 1967-69 Barracuda notchback is perplexing. The fastback body style was one of the cleanest — and most “European” — of late-60s American sporty coupes. Yet the notchback was an utter disaster. Its pronounced hunchback look gave the car a short-hood, long-deck look.
I don’t think that the core problem was that the Barracuda did not have the Mustang’s proportions. Ford designers lengthened the car’s wheelbase in front of the cowl and shortened it behind the B-pillar while chopping the deck. That gave the Mustang sportier proportions, albeit at the expense of rear-seat room.
The 1968-70 Charger illustrates how the Barracuda could have turned its more sedate proportions into an aesthetically appealing sporty coupe. The C-pillar needed to be moved farther back and perhaps more of a tunnel-back roofline used (go here for further discussion).
Ford was most successful with mid-sized fastbacks
The 1968-70 Charger’s success arguably had as much to do with the iconic quality of its design as its body style — particularly compared to first-generation models.
I wonder if the 1966-67 fastback would have looked better if designers had not made the C-pillar so massive. A more rounded and tapered treatment could have done wonders for the car’s proportions.
Ford was more successful with its mid-sized fastbacks. The Torino GT fastback outsold its sister notchback coupe by a three-to-one margin in 1968-69 and the entire Charger line in 1970. More surprisingly, the Fairlane 500 fastback’s output was roughly even with that of the notchback during 1968-69.
The post-1966 Mustang fastback arguably displayed the ideal proportions for a fastback body style on an American car. The relatively long hood and short deck gave the Mustang much better proportions than the mid-sized Ford. This is particularly apparent when you compare the images below of a 1969 Cobra and a 1968 Mustang.
The Mustang’s fastback was usually the most popular
By putting all of the fastbacks in one graph, you can see how the Mustang was often the most popular in the 1960s — with a few interesting exceptions. In 1966, Barracuda output surpassed 38,000 units, which was a few thousand higher than that of the Mustang fastback. And in 1968 the Torino GT fastback handily outsold its smaller sibling.
Once the Camaro shifted to a fastback in 1970, it outsold the Mustang fastback — but not the overall line. In 1972-73 the Torino GT’s successor, the Gran Torino Sport, also outsold the Mustang. In contrast, sales of the Cyclone/Montego GT fell so low that its fastback body style was dumped for 1974.
By the mid-70s the fastback boomlet was mostly over
By the mid-1970s fastbacks were largely the province of subcompacts and pony cars. This may partly reflect the U.S. market’s shift away from sporty-looking coupes to ones that embraced the brougham look. The 1971-73 Buick Riviera was the last of the big fastbacks; the 1974-78 AMC Matador coupe was the last of the mid-sized coupes.
Well, sort of. When GM downsized it mid-sized lineup in 1978 it gave the Buick and Oldsmobile sedans and coupes a somewhat fastback roofline. I’m not sure I would consider it a full fastback because the greenhouse was fairly squared off rather than being given a continuous arc downward like on the 2025 Hyundai Elantra and Honda Accord pictured near the top of this article.
The mediocre sales of the GM’s “aeroback” body styles reinforced Detroit’s attitude that fastbacks should be relegated to either sporty cars or small econoboxes. And that pattern usually played out for years until a greater emphasis on aerodynamics helped push the auto industry toward fastbacks even in family sedans and some sport-utility vehicles.
This leads me to wonder: What might the family sedans of the late-60s have looked like if the fastback had not been relegated only to sporty coupes?
NOTES:
This story was originally posted on March 30, 2016 and expanded on Nov. 16, 2020; March 23, 2022; Aug. 7, 2023; and Aug. 12, 2025. Market share and production figures for individual nameplates were calculated from base data found in auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006) and Gunnell (2002).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, Ill.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Patton, Phil; 2009. “Flashback! The Fastback is Back.” The New York Times. Posted Nov. 19.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- fordheritagevault.com: Ford Cobra (1969); Ford Mustang (1969); Ford Torino (1969)
- oldcaradvertising.com: Ford Gran Torino (1972)
- oldcarbrochures.org: AMC Javelin (1968); Dodge Charger (1967, 1968); Ford Mustang (1968); Ford XL (1968); Mercury Cyclone (1969, 1970); Mercury Montego GT (1972); Plymouth Barracuda (1968); Pontiac LeMans (1975)
Interestingly, the history of fastback body line continued pretty well in the 1970s and 1980s, because many manufacturers realized that, during the Malaise Era, the box design of a notchback was deemed problematic towards the aerodynamic efficiency. One example? The Challenger/Sapporo duo, which predicted that shovel rear glass some time before Chevrolet/Pontiac adopted into the aerocoupe Monte Carlo/Grand Prix of mid-1980s. Both cars were rebadged Mitsubishi Lambdas, but when their production ended in 1983, it was the moment GM decided to get back to NASCAR and make the G-body slippery through the air.
Had forgotten the ’84 Chrysler Laser fastback until the other day when I stumbled upon it. A very nice design!
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2014/05/08/lost-cars-of-the-1980s-1984-1986-chrysler-laser
The ’89 Ford Probe liftback was also impressive.
The 60s fastbacks that used clearly defined notchback rear fenders with a shoulder was a big part of their problem. The design needed to be pure like the fastbacks from the 30s and 40s and the ’70 Camaro/Firebird. The ’49 Buick fastback got away with sharing the notchback’s rear fenders because it was a design halfway between the two. The ’74 Mustang II fastback worked because the fuselage design integrated the notchback rear fender shape with the C-pillar.
The fastback “craze” of the 1960s had to be initiated by the 1961 XK-E type Jaguar coupe (not the early roadsters with the hard top), in my opinion. The experiments that led to the Ferrari 250 SWBs and GTEs evolving into the (real) G.T.O.s also had to capture the attention of Bill Mitchell, given his involvement with the Stingray race car. Mitchell’s styling statement was the fastback 1963 coupe. Most agree that Dick Teague’s Tarpon looked better on the American platform than the Classic platform and Chrysler finally achieved balance on the Baccaruda fastback in 1967. The problem with most fastbacks on a long wheelbase is that they appear, at least to my eye, to be tail-heavy. Most consumers wanted cars with trunks, so semi-fastback slippery notch-backs like the 1965-1968 G.M. B-body coupes, rather than the 1966-1967 Dodge Charger with no real enclosed trunk. The flying-buttresses of the 1968 Dodge Charger was a great compromise. Historically, smaller wheelbase cars make better fastbacks as the fenders can be transitioned from the roof and the front / rear proportions are more in harmony, hence the Mustang II looked well-integrated.
Notchback = formal, fastback = sporty – but also had a cheaper vibe compared to the notchback (eventually brougham) style. Mercury buyers were more likely to shop/accept the former in the premium price field, Ford buyers were more likely to be younger and could afford/were looking for the sporty car in the low price field.
Why GM used the aeroback on the Olds & Buick I could never figure out. It only belonged on the Chevy & Pontiac, who had a better version. At least it was confined to the lower series of each (never the Cutlass Supreme, etc.) and it was quickly replaced with a more upright style.
Although I am no doubt forgetting some examples, to me German imports were segregated in a similar way at that time. Fastback & hatchback cheaper VWs vs notchback M-Bs & BMWs. The practical vs the well-to-do.