Today, the 1950s are seen as a golden age by many, a time of postwar prosperity, television, rock and roll, and McDonald’s.

Your mental image of the 1950s might be reduced to a girl wearing saddle shoes and a poodle skirt, sipping a milkshake at a diner while the jukebox blares, but the decade was much broader than that.

As part of MotorTrend ’s 75th anniversary, we're looking back at some of history’s most significant cars. A complete list would fill a book, so for each decade we've selected five notable cars that ...