TBT: How Ford’s ‘Flip Top’ Innovation Took Cars From Sedan to Sun

With the NFL season kicking off tonight, and the Detroit Lions coming in with some of the team’s highest expectations since their last NFL championship in 1957, we’re taking a look at a car that was revealed around that time. One of those models, a 1957 Fairlane Skyliner belonging to a private owner, recently accompanied Detroit Lions players on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Ford was already the industry leader in convertible sales in 1957, with 40% of the booming market – almost twice as much as any other automaker and an increase from just 25% five years earlier. Internally referred to as Ford’s “Flip Top,” the Skyliner was the industry’s first retractable steel hardtop convertible, a significant breakthrough in automotive research and design considered as momentous as the first closed-cabin vehicle from the 1910s.

Sharing the fun

Ford bucked the industry trend of restricting the newest innovations to more expensive products with Skyliner, and its mass production helped keep associated costs of the new vehicle comparably lower than other convertible models, according to a company press release. Only four conventional convertibles in the market at the time of Skyliner’s debut, one of which was a Ford, were priced higher. Also, Skyliner was designed and tested to require less maintenance than other vehicles of that era, as a result of its simplistic design that took more than a decade to develop.  

The car could be converted from a closed hardtop sedan to an open-air vehicle in just 40 seconds with the push of a button located in the instrument panel. To ensure its proper operation, the retractable top was tested 10,000 times in an effort to simulate 30 years of use. 

The two-door, six-passenger car was the featured vehicle at the New York Auto Show in December 1956, and featured more than 500 unique parts, which differed from its Ford siblings, including the hideaway roof and its many related pieces, such as the decklid.

Special delivery

Shortly after the car’s introduction, a Ford employee from the Rouge Plant, where the Skyliner was assembled, delivered a modified model of the new car to Washington, D.C., for use by the White House. The machinery repairman was a Hungarian immigrant who fled the country months earlier. He and his family embarked on a “freedom tour” to the nation’s capital courtesy of the company after receiving a send-off from William Clay Ford, Sr., former Ford Motor Company vice president of Product Planning and Styling. 

Ford sold almost 27,000 Fairlane Skyliners in its first year on the market after the company predicted it would sell just 20,000. The innovative car paved the way for future hardtop convertibles and was one of countless advances that helped solidify Ford as a leader in the automotive industry.

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