In the July ’21 issue of Hemmings Classic Car, we throw the word “icon” around fairly liberally - on the cover, on the title of the Tri-Five Chevy piece, in the text. It’s not hyperbole: There are precious few cars out there, in the general-public, not-car-people hive-mind, that have ever risen to the status of icon.

But why is it iconic? How did the Tri-Five Chevy, and the ’57 in particular, achieve this status? It’s more than simple nostalgia; lots of old cars allow us to apply the rose-tinted spectacles, but few have become symbols of their era. We actually touched on this once before but the answers were hardly conclusive; it seemed to boil down to, “It’s iconic because it is.”

Keep reading to find out why.