The 1950s was the jet age, with air travel becoming a reality for more people and space exploration on the horizon. Car makers played on this with designs that were increasingly outrageous with their use of fins, and while the trend began in the US it would spread around the world before dying out in the 1960s.

So while we could have filled this gallery with American classics of the fifties, we've cast our net rather wider to find the finest fins ever made: