Some Badged First-Generation British Minis

Today's Mini brand is from BMW.  But the 1959 original Minis were products of BMC, the British Motor Corporation, that was the result of a merger of Austin and Morris. Some background is here and here.

The first Minis, produced 1959-1967, were the Morris Mini-Minor and the Austin Seven, the latter a long-time Austin model name.  Two years later, BMC launched Mini-based cars for two of its lesser brands.  These were the Riley Elf and Wolseley Hornet.

Although there may have been some mechanical differences between these various Mini-based brands, from a styling perspective it seems to have been a matter of what is called "badge engineering" -- cheaply implemented superficial differences intended to preserve brand identities.

The original Mini concept was successful in its day, but in the long run BMC, Austin, Morris, Riley and Wolseley all disappeared from the automotive scene.

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1962 Austin Mini-Cooper

1964 Morris Mini-Cooper
By far the most popular versions of British Minis were from Morris and Austin.

1961 Riley Elf
The Elf received a small bustle back and extended fenders.  The hood and lower front fender cuts lines are carried over from Morris and Austin.  A small version of a traditional Riley grille was added, along with "whisker" openings as part of the lower light ensemble.

Wolseley Hornet
Wolseley Hornets received treatments similar to the Elfs, the grille being characteristic of Wolseley.  One difference seen on the car illustrated here is the smoothed front fender -- the angled sheet metal join is missing.

Those Look-Alike 1982 General Motors Cars

Above is the embarrassing (to General Motors) Fortune Magazine cover of 22 August 1982 showing A-body cars from four different divisions with the same paint color.  Some background on the matter is here.

The similarity was a cost-cutting measure at the time the corporation was beginning to experience financial constraints due to loss of market share.  Thereafter, GM made a greater effort to make its various brands more visually distinctive again.

This post features front end designs of the models shown in Fortune in order to show what effort GM had made on that critical part of the car's brand identification.  The Fortune cover cars were posed to maximize their similarity.

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Taking the brands in alphabetical order, here is the 1982 Chevrolet Celebrity.  It features rectangular quad headlights paired with rectangular running and turn-indicator lights.  Between is a typical Chevrolet grid grille sporting the brand's traditional "bow tie" emblem.  The bumper is an unadorned horizontal element.

Chevrolet is GM's entry-level brand, whereas Buick in those days was slotted between Oldsmobile and Cadillac.  Shown here is a 1982 Buick Century from a Canadian brochure.  It too has rectangular quad headlights, but turn indicators are at the front of the fenders.  The grille, mounted higher than the Chevy's,  has a more elaborate grid design and there is a Buick badge at the center,

The 1982 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera has a grid grille with a center plate holding the Olds badge.  This design was on other Oldsmobile models of that time, adding some brand flavor.  However, still other Olds models had different grille themes, so the effect was watered down.  Lights are arranged similarly to the Buick's.  The bumper is cut down a little to accommodate the grille design.

The '82 Pontiac Phoenix lacks quad headlights and has a version of the brand's divided grille theme put in place around 1960.

The sides of the four cars are indeed pretty similar though a close look reveals some character line and other subtle differences.  Brand differentiation was largely carried by the front ends, each version having identity cues similar to previous or concurrent models.  Besides the grilles, hoods were given different metal stamping treatments related to the shapes of the upper edges of the grille openings.  That entailed extra tooling expense, though the results are too subtle for most people to distinguish unless examples from the different brands were placed side-by-side.

My personal experience at the time was that while I could distinguish A-bodied brands from one another, I was strongly aware of how similar the cars seemed overall.  When the Fortune issue was published, I nodded in silent agreement.

UPDATE:

A reader (in a comment, below) with sharper eyes than mine notes that the appropriate Pontiac was the 6000, not the Phoenix. This becomes obvious when looking at four-door models rather than the two-door variety. Here is an image of a 4-door 6000 that I quickly grabbed off the web.

Here the hood stamping seems the same as that seen on the other cars, or nears so.  Another likely win for the bean counters who influenced this unfortunate experience for GM.

Chrysler Cordoba 1975-77 Classical Details

Chrysler has a history of careening from prosperity to near-failure and back ... over and over again.  During the second half of the 1970s the corporation was in yet another downward drift, running out of money to develop new products while trying to comply with the increasing burden of government regulation of products.  Management became cautious regarding styling, in some cases marketing cars that looked quite similar to competing models.

There were a few exceptions, however.  One was the subject of this post, the Chrysler Cordoba (1975-1983), a sporty two-door model that sold well: background here.  Cordobas were given a facelift for 1978 that detracted from the initial styling theme, so I'll deal mostly with 1975-77 Corbodas here.

What interests me about 1975-77 Cordoba Styling is the inclusion of details borrowed from cars of the past.  There are three that matter.  One is the prominent rectangular grill and its integration to the hood.  This was nothing new, as Lincoln's Continental Mk. III of 1969 used Rolls-Royce as inspiration, and other makes were doing the same regarding Mercedes-Benz, as I posted here.  Another detail was small "opera windows."  The third was the arrangement of round headlights and running lights borrowed from Jaguar (see below).

What all this added up to was not "advanced" styling, but nevertheless a pleasant looking car until the facelift intervened and marred the theme.

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1975 Chrysler Cordoba

1975 Dodge Charger SE
To save its dwindling cash supply, Chrysler Corporation resorted to badge engineering on the Cordoba.  Above is the nearly-identical Dodge Charger.  The main differences are the grilles and the opera window treatment.

1961 (ca.) Jaguar Mark X
Compare this early-1960s Jaguar front end ensemble with that of the Cordoba and Charger shown above.

1976 Chrysler Cordoba - brochure spread
This shows rear-end styling.

1977 Chrysler Cordoba - front
The final front end before the facelift.

1978 Chrysler Cordoba - front
The facelifted front.  In place of the nice classical round lamps we find those ugly rectangular ones that polluted many designs during the 1970s and 80s.

American Motors' French-Based Eagle Premier

The car itself was normal, but the organizational circumstances surrounding it were not.  It's the Eagle Premier (model years 1988-1992) developed by American Motors using technology from its part-owner Renault.  But around the time it was introduced, American Motors was acquired by Chrysler, which was mostly seeking American Motors' Jeep line.  Eagle Premiers were marketed by Chrysler for several years, some as Dodges, but the car was unsuccessful in terms of sales.

That and more is dealt with in this Wikipedia entry that mentions the styling was by Giugiaro.

Eagle Premier styling is not distinctive, being one of many clean, "three box" efforts by the Italian master in the 1970s and 80s that look pretty much the same at first glance.  Perhaps the main difference from other ItalDesign creations was that it was larger due to its being for the American market.

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Renault 21

Renault 25
These Renaults furnished mechanical and other parts for the Eagle, but not complete bodies.

1989 Eagle Premier
A brochure spread when it was a Chrysler product.

1989 Eagle Premier
A glimpse of the rear styling.

1990 Dodge Monaco
The Eagle Premier in Dodge clothing; note the badge-engineered grille.  "Monaco" was a model name long-used by Dodge and probably slapped on the car to legitimize it as a Dodge.

Making a Hash From Nash

Early in 1954 the Hudson Motor Car Company and Nash-Kelvinator Corporation merged to become American Motors Corporation, a firm that continued in business for another 34 years.

This merger was not between equal partners, being essentially a takeover of Hudson by the Nash organization.  The Hudson design dating back to the 1948 model year was abandoned, and 1955 Hudsons were based on the Nash body design introduced for 1952; this link discusses that model year's Hudsons.

Creation of a Nash-based Hudson design was a crash project.  Most American car companies announced their 1955 models in the autumn of 1954, but there wasn't time to style and implement what amounted to a Nash facelift in that time frame.  I suspect the team working on the task did well by getting '55 Hudsons launched early in 1955.

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1954 Hudson Hornet - Barrett-Jackson auction photo
Hudsons were given a noticeable facelift just before the merger with Nash; I discussed the design here.  The grille design was a departure from a theme used since 1950, but was not carried over for 1955 even though it might have been.

1954 Nash Statesman - sales photo
This shows a pre-merger Nash.  Its basic design served as the basis for facelifted 1955 Nashes as well as for 1955 Hudsons.

1955 Nash Ambassador
General Motors introduced panoramic or "wraparound" windshields on all Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs for 1954.  Most other car makers, including American Motors, responded with their own versions for 1955.  The basic Nash body was retained, but besides the new windshield the facelift included a new grille/headlamp ensemble, reshaped front fenders and revised character lines on the sides.  The front wheel cutout was slightly enlarged, but this did nothing to relieve the slab-sided appearance.

1955 Hudson publicity material
Here is a partial view of the grille design along with material related to features inherited from Nash.  According to this book, that design was similar to what Hudson stylists had been considering for a facelift prior to the creation of American Motors.

1955 Hudson Wasp
The Wasp was Hudson's lower-priced model, but its styling was essentially that same as that of the top-of-the-line Hornet.  The main difference was Hornet's cowling to front axle line distance was slightly greater.

1955 Hudson Wasp advertising photo
Hudson retained the headlight placement of '54 Nashes.  Besides the grille and front fenders, the main differences from '55 Nashes were in the side character line and chrome trim and, especially, the large wheel cut-outs that largely eliminated the Nash's heavy, slab-sided look.

1955 Hudson Wasp - sales photo
A view featuring the rear.  The rounded forward edges of the backlight represent another slight change from Nash.

Hudsons for 1955 were stuck with Nash's bulky basic body.  But the hurried facelift resulted in a fairly pleasing result given the circumstances.  Unfortunately, Hudsons now were pretty obviously Nashes despite their disguise, and this probably did not help sales, which were around 20,000 units.  Worse were the facelifts given Hudson for the 1956 and 1957 model years, the latter I discussed here.

And why did I used the word "Hash" in the title of this post?  It's because that's a term some people applied to Nash-based Hudsons in those days; think Hudson+Nash = Hash.  The word "hash" has more than one meaning, at least for American speakers.  One has to do with a type of food that is a combination of bits of meat and bits of other ingredients -- something that might imply the Nash-Hudson mix.  Another meaning has to do with making a mix of things that yield an unfortunate result, as in the phrase "they made a hash of it."  That also might apply to American Motors' attempt to keep the Hudson brand alive.

Not-Quite Badge Engineering: Audi Fox, VW Dasher

Classical "badge engineering" usually is a matter of taking a basic car platform and extending it over more than one brand by varying a small number of styling details to provide a smidgen of differentiation.  The present post presents a case where a platform (Volkswagen's B1) was altered at the rear for Audi and VW variants, so changes were not as minimal as they might have been.

The cars in question are the Audi 80 Fox (1972-78), details here, and the Volkswagen Passat / Dasher (1973-81), Wikipedia entry here.  The names "Fox" and "Dasher" were used in America for marketing purposes.

The Audi design is a clean, classical 1970s "three box" theme featuring large amounts of glass.  The main aesthetic flaw so far as I'm concerned is that the wheels are too small.

The VW version is a 5-door "hatchback" with sail panels providing a fastback feeling.  I'm not certain of this, but it looks like the backlight windows are the same for the Fox and Dasher, keeping costs down.  The only other visible differences besides the sail panels and fifth door are the brand symbol ensembles on the grilles.

Although styling was basically well done, I wasn't totally pleased with my Dasher (yes, I actually bought a 1974 model) due to valve problems in the motor.

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Audi 80 "Fox" - ca. 1974

Volkswagen B1 "Dasher" - ca. 1974
I owned a '74 Dasher that looked like the ones shown in the first two VW photos.