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.

1956 Buick Centurion Dream Car

I think the 1956 General Motors Motorama car-show-plus-entertainment extravaganza was the last of the interesting ones.  Decline was already happening, as evidenced in the mix of concept or dream cars (as they were called back then).  My favorite of that batch is the Buick Centurion; the GM web site discusses it here.

The Centurion is a mix of the practical and styling studio dream car show-off fluff.  Some features hint at future production, others are simply jazzy.  All the while, the car has styling cues that clearly identify it as a Buick.

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Buick identification is in the form of the Sweep Spear chromed strip on the side that also serves as a paint tone divider.  The car seats four, unlike many Motorama cars, giving it a practical feeling.  The fender treatment between the extreme front and rear is one that easily could appear on a near-future 1950s production car.  The windshield is doubly wrapped-around.  This will be seen on some late '50s production cars, but not in such an extreme manner towards the roof.  A nice touch is the C-pillar's rake that complements the rake of the A-pillar -- a nice, logical symmetry seen here and there when panoramic windshields were in vogue.

An impractical styling fetish that has yet to die of natural causes is the transparent roof.  I feel very sorry for that poor model at the wheel being subjected to the Miami sun and the greenhouse effect caused by the roof.  True, the windows are rolled down, but that gal surely earned her modeling fee that day.  The pickle fork front treatment seen in plan view here makes for an interesting composition, but is impractical for real-world parking conditions.  Even so, from this camera angle, the Centurion has strong, clean lines without any serious disruptions: a fine show car.

The Centurion's rear is more problematical.  The wing-like rear fenders combined with the boat-tail-cum-jet-fighter trunk is nothing but dream car flash, devoid of practicality.

A glimpse of the interior showing the rear-view TV screen.  That feature is common today thanks to miniaturizing technology, but was too bulky and costly for production use in 1956.

Here is a 1957 Buick Roadmaster four-door hardtop.  Its Sweep Spear and the A- and C-pillar angles are carried over from the Centurion (that was designed when the general form of this Buick was pretty well established).  So to some degree, the Centurion was intended to get potential buyers used to coming styling attractions.

And this is a 1960 Mercury Montclair (a cleaned-up 1959 Mercury Park Lane) also featuring complementary A- and C-pillars.  It has a compound-curve windshield, but not nearly so extreme as the Centurion's.  For 1961, Mercury dropped panoramic windshields, as did Buick that same model year.

What Were They Thinking?: Buick's 1985 Wildcat Concept Car

General Motors' Buick Division has made considerable use of the name Wildcat over the year, as this link attests.  There were three Motorama dream car Wildcats in the mid-1950s, production Buicks with the Wildcat name in the 1960s, and finally another concept car in 1985 that is the subject of this post.

The General Motors web site has this to say about the '85 Wildcat that was developed while Irv Rybicki was in charge of GM styling.  Rybicki's production designs tended to be cautious, but this concept car was quite the opposite.  Perhaps that was because it was a pure show car and not the type of concept car intended to preview production styling features.

The '85 Wildcat was odd looking -- poorly proportioned, and its front and rear designs looked like  they belonged on the opposite ends, as will be shown below.  This was largely due to its mid-engine layout.  I saw this Wildcat at Expo 86 in Vancouver, and it did not impress me.

The Wildcat's puffy fenders and aerodynamic pretensions strike me as being characteristic of GM styling studio thinking in those days.

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The front is strongly cabover.  The curve that's not interrupted by a cowling looks like a mid-1940s fastback (if the glass is disregarded).

The rear looks more like a front: pretend the backlight is actually a 1950s style wraparound windshield.

In the best hot rod tradition, the "mill" is exposed.

This is the car's "door."  Not practical in a rainstorm.

Side view when everything is buttoned down.  I just can't help thinking that the front is at the left.

The Fencer's Mask Grille Fad of 1936

Even when American automobile design was evolving from discrete collections of parts to unified, "envelope" bodies during the period 1929-1949, fad and fashion did not take a holiday.

One styling fad was that of the "fencer's mask" grille that started in the 1935 model year, peaked in 1936 and was largely done by 1937.  These grilles were convex affairs that extended engine compartment ensembles about as far forward as the fronts of the fenders.

Which I think is why the fad collapsed so quickly.  Even in fairly minor frontal collisions, fenders and grilles could suffer damage.  The fenders could be pounded back into shape fairly easily in such events.  But the grilles with all their decorative bars and other details were more expensive to fix or replace.  So 1937 models featured grilles that were moved back a short ways and lost much or all of their convex shapes.

Roughly two-thirds of American brands took part in the fencer's mask fad.  Those that essentially didn't included Cadillac, LaSalle, DeSoto, Ford, Lincoln-Zephyr, Packard and Studebaker.  Those that did are shown below.

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1935 Oldsmobile
One the first fencer's mask grilles was on redesigned 1935 Oldsmobiles such as this one I photographed in Brussels a  few years ago.

1935 Pontiac with actress Helen Twelvetrees
The other early "mask" was on the '35 Pontiac that shared the Olds' body.  It also was the first year for the brand's famous (at the time) Silver Streaks.

1936 Buick - Barrett-Jackson photo
When Buicks were re-bodied for 1936, they too received a fencer's mask style grille.

1936 Chevrolet
The Chevrolet version's convexity was more restrained.

1936 Chrysler Airstream - for sale photo
Chrysler's fencer's mask fronts were extreme versions of the style.

1936 Dodge with movies star Ginger Rogers
Dodge shared Chrysler's body, but its grille is more restrained.

1936 Plymouth Mayflower - Mecum Auctions photo
Chrysler Corporation's entry-level Plymouth's grille thrusts about as far forward, but the painted central strip visually counteracts part of the convex effect.

1936 Hudson
Hudsons were redesigned for 1936 and received an especially fussy convex front.

1936 Nash Ambassador
The Nash fencer's mask version was clean-looking and raked back.

1936 Graham Cavalier - unsourced photo via Flicker
Like Plymouth, sheet metal diminishes the fencer's mask appearance on the Graham.

1936 Hupmobile - Streetside Classic photo
Hupp's grille is raked back in Nash's manner but nevertheless follows the fashion.

2015 Chrysler 200
This recent Chrysler 200 does not have a fencer's mask grille.  But its above-the-bumper grille-plus-headlights ensemble illustrates a theme on current cars that strikes me as being just as fad- or fashion-like as those grilles of 80 years ago were.

Buick Wildcat III as Predictor of 1957 Line

When it came to dream cars, I think the best General Motors Motorama years were 1953-1956.  Buick Division featured three different show cars called "Wildcat" over 1953-1955.  Each car was distinctly different from the others, so despite the same name, there was no consistent Wildcat theme.

Hemmings has an article dealing with all three here, and the General Motors historical site has this to say regarding the subject of this post, the 1955 Buick Wildcat III concept car.  My take on the Wildcat III is in the captions below.

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To set the stage, here is a photo of the 1953 Buick Wildcat I.  It's a two-passenger convertible with some styling features soon to appear on the redesigned 1954 Buick line.

The 1954 Buick Wildcat II is a sports-type car with a wheelbase two inches (49 mm) less than that of the Chevrolet Corvette that looks somewhat similar from the cowling aft.  Aside from the front bumper design (used in 1955) it did not influence styling of future production Buicks.

Unlike previous Wildcats, the 1955 Wildcat III show car could accommodate four passengers.  It was clearly more conventional than the Wildcat II.  Generally speaking, its design is pleasing, though the car's rear has some problems, as we'll discover below.

The windshield is doubly curved with a vertical A-pillar -- features not found on the upcoming 1957 Buick redesign.  The wide wheel openings would collect and display highway dirt and grime, so they too would not see production.  What did come to pass are the fender line, the design of the side Sweepspear trim and the termination angle of the rear fender.

Even though the Wildcat III was theoretically a four-passenger car, the back seat had little room for people.  The detailing on the trunk lid and rear is confused.  We find rounded bumper blobs with nearby thinly squashed oval exhaust pipe outlets that in turn have circular backup lights placed above them.  These items do not relate to one another.

Rear three-quarter view.  Items adapted for '57s include the chromed strips on the trunk lid, the aforementioned fender angle, and those large bumper stubs are the corners.

This is a 1957 Buick Roadmaster two-door hardtop.  As mentioned, the fender line and Sweepspear are like the Wildcat's.  The windshield here is a simpler curve and the A-pillars slant.

A '57 Buick Roadmaster four-door hardtop (Classic Car Auctions photo).  Its taillight assembly differs from the Wildcat's, but the fender termination angle is similar.  The bulbous bumper guards below the taillights are nearly the same shape as those on the Wildcat.  The chromed strips on the trunk lid are not inset liners as on the show car.  But they also relate to other aspects of the design -- in this case, the backlight segment separators.

Pinin Farina's Lancia Florida 4-Door Hardtop

For better or worse (for sentimental reasons, I'll side with "worse"), automobile styling is now pretty much internationalized.  That is, nowadays design students can cross borders for training by faculty members from several countries.  Styling studios usually employ designers from other countries along with native-born stylists.  Even design directors might be from elsewhere.  In addition, some car companies maintain styling studios in more than one country.

The internationalization process began in the 1930s when General Motors and Ford sent Americans to work at or manage design studios in some of their European subsidiaries.  But the phenomenon I'm thinking about actually started seriously at some indefinite time around, say, 1970.

Now consider the years around 1950.  Aside from Ford and GM subsidiaries and a few Detroit-influenced designs such as the Volvo PV 444 and Peugeot 203, cars tended to have a national look.  That is, French cars usually seemed French, English cars English, German cars German and Italian cars Italian.

But even in those days there were hints of internationalized designs to come.  This post's example is the Lancia Aurelia B56 "Florida" prototype cars of 1955 (short reference here).  It was designed by the Pininfarina carozzeria, but I'm not sure if Battista "Pinin" Farina himself was the designer or if the work was done under other hands.

Although the Florida is very much Italian-looking, it has some important features that are distinctly mid-1950s American.  These are (1) a wraparound windshield, and (2) having a four-door hardtop convertible body type.  The term "hardtop convertible" was used in the USA for cars with conventional steel tops, but lacking a passenger greenhouse B-pillar and thus having the breezy appearance of a convertible coupe with the canvas top raised and side windows rolled down.  For the 1955 model year, General Motors introduced four-door cars with the same feature, and other brands joined in as soon as they could.  B-pillarless cars left the market when strong rollover-related safety regulations appeared.

The first link above mentions that four Floridas were built.  Three had four doors and one was a two-door hardtop.

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Four-door hardtops were previewed at General Motors' 1953 Motorama by this Cadillac Orleans show car.  Like the later Lancia Florida, it features a wraparound windshield, four doors and no exposed B-pillar.

A poor-quality image of the Orleans seen from the side.  The rear doors are hinged by the C-pillar, but there seems to be a stub B-pillar to anchor the door latches.

As mentioned, production 4-door hardtops began to appear in 1955.  The example shown here (click on image to enlarge) is a Buick Special.  Unlike the Orleans, the rear doors are hinged on the stub B-pillar.

This is a four-door Lancia Aurelia B56 Florida from 1955.  It seems considerably larger than production Aurelia B10s and B12s, though the stretched B15 might have been about this size (though with a longer greenhouse and shorter hood).  An odd feature is the collection of lights at the front, especially those smallish ones on the fenders.

Side view.  The wheel openings are not classically rounded and remind me of those found on the 1954 Motorama Oldsmobile Cutlass and F-88 show cars, not to mention the production '54 Buick Skylark convertible coupe.

Interior view.  Note the complete lack of a B-Pillar.  Also the right-hand drive steering wheel position, a feature shared with production Aurelias.  As in France for many years, even though cars drove on the right sides of streets and roads, many luxury cars featured English-style right-hand drive.  A prestige or snob feature, I presume.

Rear three-quarter view.  The modest sail panels at the rear of the greenhouse blend into rear fender top-ridges.  This is emphasized by the two-tone paint scheme, yet another Detroit-influenced characteristic.  Those large tail lights suggest 1950s America and not Italy.  The recessed backlight is serviced by two wiper blades.

This is the sole two-door Florida.  Despite those major and lesser American touches, the overall design retains an Italian feeling.  Contributing factors include the basic proportions and the simplified major surfaces.

1953 Buick Wildcat Concept Car

Concept cars, show cars, dream cars -- whatever one chooses to call them -- come in two basic varieties.

Some are flashy, far-out designs.  A few might exist as excuses for young members of styling staffs to let off creative steam.  Others might be public relations gestures intending to cast the carmaker as a far-seeing firm.  Or maybe the two possibilities are combined in one car.

Other such cars are intended to prepare the buying public for features on production cars due for release within the next few years.  At one extreme are thinly disguised versions of future production models.  At the other are a few details on one of those flashy, futuristic dream cars.

General Motors' Motorama traveling shows of the 1950s included concept cars of all stripes because the company was rich and could afford both the shows and those custom-made cars.  The first major Motorama was held in 1953  Nearly all the concept cars in that show were geared to preview features on GMs major Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac redesigns for the 1954 model year.  Among these was the Buick Wildcat, the first of a series of Wildcat show cars appearing in 1953-55 Motoramas.

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Four Wildcats were built, one is known to survive.  The above photo was taken at an automobile show, but not at the New York Waldorf-Astoria Motorama.  Buick was not to produce a two-passenger sporty car for many years, so that Wildcat feature can be disregarded.

Here is a heavily retouched publicity photo of the '53 Wildcat.  GM used a lot of airbrush-enhanced photos in the early 1950s.  The objective was to clarify a car's features by eliminating distractions such as reflections of sharp highlights.  The result is an artificial look when seen in good-quality reproduction, but the photos probably worked best when coarsely screened for newspaper use -- the main publicity target in those days.

Two views of the black Wildcat displayed at the Waldorf.

One Wildcat was given a hard roof.  It also had a circular rear wheel opening, unlike the other Wildcats.  This car also carried a Sweepspear extension that flows over the opening, a feature already in production on 1953 Buick Skylark convertibles.

General view of a 1953 Buick Wildcat.

1954 Buick Skylark.  The curved trunk lid and ridges are watered-down versions of the Wildcat's.

1954 Buick Special convertible.  Its facial details were previewed on the Wildcat.  The headlight housings are about the same, and both originated on the 1951 Buick XP-300 experimental car.  The pointed "Dagmar" bumper guards are similar to those on the Wildcat.  The Wildcat's grille (derived from the XP-300) has concave bars, while the production Buick's are convex.  Photo from Auctions America,

These sales photos (lower from Auctions America) show the fender line on '54 Buick Special convertibles.  Aside from the sculpting where the rear fender starts, the fender lines of the Wildcat and these Buicks are similar, including the low humps at the rear.

Seen from the front three-quarters, the Wildcat has pleasing looks.  It would look better if those Buick "portholes" that normally were on front fender sides were not placed atop the fenders where they are hard to see.  They should have been eliminated.  The two air intakes on the hood do help enliven an otherwise bland surface, but other treatments might have done that job better.  The worst part of the design is the trunk lid -- oddly shaped, weird detailing.