1958 Ford La Galaxie Concept Begats Chrysler's Turbine Car

The late 1950s was a time when American car styling was at the height of one of its Baroque, (Rococo, even) periods.  The nub of this was use of jet fighters and science fiction space ships as the basis for ornamentation that was further elaborated by two and three colors paint schemes that were sometimes arbitrarily placed.

A reaction set in around 1960 when simpler designs began reaching the market.  And given the three or so years lead-time from sketchpad to production, stylists were probably thinking of simplification as early as 1957.

An example of incipient change might be the 1958 Ford Motor Company show car called La Galaxie.  It included some jet plane detailing, but lacked tail fins and a three-tone paint-job.

There are few decent photos of La Galaxie on the internet.  Some of the ones shown below had to be cleaned up, and still aren't top-drawer quality.

Headlight assemblies resemble jet fighter air intakes.  But the rest of the details seen from this angle are not from that source of inspiration.

Viewed from the side, La Galaxie's styling is fairly clean.  Much of that is due to the simple fender line and skirted rear wheels.  Visual boredom is reduced by the character line on the rear fender area and the decorative panel straddling the front wheel opening.  Note that the angle at its aft end is echoed  by the window sill interruption and the cut of the transparent roof panel.  For some reason, I've always been fond of the side window treatment of La Galaxie even though it's not practical for notional back seat passengers.

La Galaxie's rear aspect strikes me as being more science fiction inspired than jet fighter based.  Those huge "exhaust outlets" are out of scale to the rest of the car.  The continuation of the rear fender character crease into these zones helps tie the ensemble together, however.  The reverse-angle backlight (rear window) was a detail toyed with during the 1950s.  It saw production on 1958 Lincoln Continental Mk. IIIs, for example.

This low-quality image shows La Galaxie in color.

This is Elwood Engel, the man in charge of Chrysler Corporation styling.  In the 1950s he worked at Ford.  Behind him is the 1963 Chrysler Turbine Car powered by a gas turbine engine conceptually similar to those in actual jet fighters.  Around 50 Turbine Cars were built, many intended for testing by ordinary drivers.  Most were destroyed later.

The headlight housings have a jet-intake appearance in the same spirit as those on La Galaxie.

The aft end of the Turbine Car bears even closer resemblance to La Galaxie's.  The parts of the body between the ends is similar to some Ford Thunderbirds and Continentals.  The front and rear end designs make the Turbine Car impractical for normal use -- poor front protection and inconvenient trunk access at the rear.  But the true production killer was the impracticality of gas turbine engines for automobiles.  The jet fighter styling cues are appropriate for once, given the presence of the engine.

When Ford's Grille Spinners Went to Germany: 1952 Taunus 12 M

For model years 1949-1955 American Fords had grille designs featuring spinners -- shapes similar to streamlined propellor hubs on some aircraft or the tips of artillery shells.  I wrote about these here.

It happened that spinners were not a strictly American thing: they appeared on German Ford Taunus 12 M models produced 1952-1954.

One difference was that the Taunus spinner was not part of the grille design.  Instead, it was placed at the high hood opening, almost on line with the headlights.  And it looked odd, out of place.

Gallery

The spinner's first appearance: 1949 Ford.

The spinner arrangement on 1952 Fords.

Also for 1952, here is the frontal design of the Taunus 12 M.  The fairing on the hood aft of the spinner face adds clutter to a fairly small car.  The vertical grille section divider creates a T or perhaps cross pattern, but it too adds more detail than necessary for the basic overall design -- though absent the spinner-related bits, it would have been okay.

Publicity photo of the 12 M.  The greenhouse has the feeling of the 1949 American Ford's.

A slightly later 12 M.  It would have looked better without the spinner.  But spinners continued to appear on Taunus 15 M cars through the mid-1950s.

This shows the rear design.  Unlike the front, it is uncluttered.

1955 Ford Mystere Show Car

One mid-1950s Ford show car that I've never liked was the 1955 Mystere.  The name might have been inspired by the French Dassault Mystère jet fighter that first flew in 1951.  Moreover, its ornamentation includes several jet fighter motifs, as we shall see below.

The Mystere falls into the dream car / flashy concept category.  That's because it was almost entirely impractical and, with the exception of the tail fin color scheme treatment, was not predictive of future production Fords.

Gallery

1955 Ford
To set the scene, here are views of 1955-57 Fords featuring the J-shaped side trim theme also found on the Mystere.  It first appeared for the '55 model year.

1956 Ford
This is the 1956 version.  It's a bit more gracefully shaped than the 1955 version, but still is rather awkward.

1957 Ford
The best version of the theme was on '57 Fords where the aft part blends with the tail fin.  We see this on the Mystere.

General view of the 1955 Mystere dream car.  Its three-tone color scheme colors are similar to those found on 1955 production Fords.  It seems that the entire roof dome was hinged at the rear to allow it to be pivoted upward to allow passenger ingress and egress.  The air vent at the top is the only source of passenger compartment ventilation.

Note this early application of those awful quad headlights that began appearing on 1957 American cars.  Otherwise, the front design is fairly clean and sensible.  The rear fender area with the side air intake and tail fins is jet-fighter inspired as was much American car ornamentation in those days.  The intake looks functional, but I can't tell for sure from the photos.

Side view with a group of what are probably stylists involved in the Mystere project.  That's Alex Tremulis at the far right.  The color separation side trim is awkward and does not enhance the car's appearance.  It does relate to the trim on top-of-the-line '55 Fords and previews the link to canted tail fins that appeared for 1957.  The placement of the passenger compartment seems too far forward.  One reason for that is that the engine (which the Mystere actually lacked) would have been placed at the rear.

Rear view showing the jet fighter theme of fins and jet exhausts.

Color view of the rear along with a model to provide scale.

1962 Ford Cougar Concept Car

There's hardly any internet information on Ford's 1962 Cougar concept car.  The Wikipedia entry here is typical.  The Cougar name was eventually used for many years by Ford Motor Company's Mercury brand for various lines of sporty coupes.  Before that, it was found on show cars.

The '62 Cougar is not a famous concept car, but I find it interesting.  That's partly because it appeared right after American cars had moved out of the rococo era of three-tone paint jobs, swaths of chrome trim, and elaborate tail fins.  Yet the Cougar retained touches of fantasies dreamed up the Ford's advanced styling unit back in the 1950s.

Gallery

This general view sets the scene.  Most of the images of the Cougar feature its Mercedes-Benz inspired gull-wing doors -- an impractical sports car fetish that has yet to be abandoned.

The Cougar's grille is simple and integrated with the bumper as a variety of horizontal shapes.  Headlights are hidden behind the fender caps, though its not clear how they are exposed.  (Perhaps they are not there at all and those cut lines are dummies.)  Note the wire wheels, a sporty '50s fad that was fading by 1962.  The front of the car from the cowl forward is very simple.  Side trim is a single broad, tapering chrome strip that limits the height of the front wheel opening.  The windshield wraps around to A-pillars that slant backwards, part of the trend away from vertical or forward slanting A-pillars of the 1950s.  But the windshield does not wrap upwards even though compound-curved windshields were not unknown at the time.  The result is that odd, rather small transition panel that links the windshield with the gull-wing door openings.

Side view showing the nice, long hood and fairly short (for the times) rear overhang.  The gull-wing door openings have a slant at the rear conforming to the seat slant.  There is a single lift strut mounted at the rear.  The most visually jarring feature is the tubular lump atop the fender over the rear wheel.  It distracts from the otherwise pure fender line and seems to serve only as a tail light assembly holder.  Perhaps the fender line did need some spicing up, but those lumps simply add poorly-placed clutter.  They represent a seeming holdover of Ford's advance styling group's early-1950s obsession with jet fighter and sci-fi spaceship detailing.

This rear view indicating that, aside from the tail light arrangement  the design of the car's rear is clean.  A production version would have required a higher trunk lid for reasons of practicality, however.

Jaguar's Fancy Ford

In the days when Ford owned Jaguar, there appeared the happy idea that a smaller, entry-level model would help boost both production and profitability.  So product planners decided to use the new, second-generation Mondeo (produced 2000-2007) as the basis for what became the Jaguar X-Type (produced 2001-2009).

The link above, as of early July when this post was being drafted, asserted that the X-Type had only about 20% of its components from the Mondeo.  Also noted was a Financial Times interview with styling director Ian Callum who stated that nearly all the styling was done in Detroit, not at Jaguar.

As it eventuated, the X-Type sold fairly well compared to Jaguar's more up-market models.  But sales levels were far below expectations and the X-Type was eventually dropped after that Mondeo was phased out.

In the Gallery below, Mondeos in various poses are shown along with X-Types  in similar perspectives so that the extent of the facelift can be seen.  Ford's effort clearly went far beyond simple "badge engineering" (superficial detail changes between brands using the same body platform).

Gallery

As might be expected, similarities of these platform mates are strongest around the firewall/cowling area.  Compare the cowlings, windshields, and the front door cut lines.  The front air intake openings and lower running lights share the same locations, though not the same shapes.  Otherwise, the Jaguar's looks are different.  For instance, the aft part of the passenger greenhouse features a mild feeling (if not shape) of the well-known Jaguar "tuck" when viewed from this angle.

The Jaguar's frontal design has far more elements than the Mondeo's.  That was because stylists were trying to cram as many classic Jaguar large-sedan design cues as they could on a smaller, shorter-hood patch of automotive real estate -- the grille with the center bar and jaguar-head badge, for instance.  And the headlamps where the larger ones are at the edges of the car while the other two nestle against the grille.  But what is most troublesome are the not-quite-so-Jaguar-like various sculpted bits across the top of the front end.  From the left it starts with the curved top of the front fender: okay, so far.  But that is followed by a similar curve above the secondary headlight.  Immediately to the right of that is a more tightly radiused trailing edge of the grille frame.  Finally, there is a small, secondary plateau near the hood's centerline.  Way too much going on here.  I would have raised the fender line and main headlights slightly and replaced the fillets trailing the secondary headlights with a smooth catwalk with the raised part of the hood being more strongly tapered -- broader towards the cowling.  The front would still be cluttered, but less so at least.

Gasoline filler caps are in the same location on both brands.  Trunk cut lines and tail light assembly areas at the rear look similar, suggesting few body stamping changes were made.  The X-Type does have more of a bustle back.  Fender sheet metal and rear doors differ.  The Jaguar's rear styling is far less cluttered than at the front.

Ford's Cleanly Styled 1960 Galaxie

By the late 1950s, American automobile designs were in a rococo period of flamboyance.  Tail fins were common and their shapes elaborate, while swathes of chromed trim clad the flanks of upper-range General Motors cars.  Grille themes changed rapidly along with those of elaborate bumpers, annually churning the faces cars presented to the buying public.  And then appeared those awful quad headlights.  Ah, the curse of living in "interesting times."

All this was what could be seen on streets, highways and in parking lots.  But inside Ford's styling studios a sense of design sanity was starting to emerge as styling for early 1960s models was being finalized.  (The same was true at GM, though on a very slightly later timeline.  But Chrysler remained in the Virgil Exner zone of strange shapes for a while longer.)

The subject of this post is Ford's top-of-the-line Galaxie model (Wikipedia entry here) as restyled for the 1960 model year.  It was a considerably above-average design for its time that suffered the usual sad fate of being poorly facelifted the following year, 1961.

Gallery

1959 Ford Galaxie 500 - Barrett-Jackson photo
Setting the scene is the 1959 Galaxy, the final facelift of what was a nice new 1957 design that was badly corrupted for 1958.  Fords never had elaborate tail fins, and this Galaxie's rear fender features a fin transformed into small ridge atop a tubular shape.  The grille follows a fad for tiny shapes filling the air intake opening, a treatment first seen on 1958 Buicks and Cadillacs and currently being revived on Mercedes-Benz models such as the CLA.

1960 Ford Galaxie Starliner
Here is the hardtop coupe Galaxie, the nicest looking model.  The previous panoramic windshield has been replaced by a conventional windshield where the A-pillar leans backward.  In place of a tail fin we find a horizontally oriented blade running along the car's shoulder that ties into sculpting at the front of the car.  Quad headlights remain, but are better integrated into the frontal ensemble.

1960 Ford Galaxie Town Victoria
The four-door hardtop Galaxie has a less-graceful angular passenger greenhouse.

1960 Ford Galaxie Town Victoria
Even so, the greenhouse design is simple, relating fairly well to the rest of the car.  The large C-pillar is in the same spirit of previous Fords such as the tops on the initial Thunderbirds and even that of the unfortunate '59 Galaxie in the upper image above.  On the minus side of the design ledger is the considerable rear overhang whose only real justification is the trunk carrying capacity it created.

1960 Ford Starliner - brochure page
This shows the rear styling.  The side blades indeed have a jet fighter look where they terminate on the trunk lid.  By ending a little ways forward of the back end of the car, they reduce the visual bulk of the trunk and overhang.  Overall, a fairly clean design solution to the unnecessary problem created by all that overhang.

1961 Ford Galaxie - sales photo
Galaxie's 1961 frontal facelift was a step backward, though the concave grille is not a bad idea.  The problem is where the outer headlights "turn the corner" from the front to the car's sides -- often a difficult design task with modern, "envelope" bodies.  What we find here is a concentration of lumpy shapes instead of the cleaner separation of fender and grille found on 1960 Galaxies.

1961 Ford Galaxie - rear 3/4
The blade design is gone, replaced by rounded (and heavier-looking) fenders towards the front and small, canted fins towards the rear.  The fins and round tail lights recall the nice '57 Ford design.  In general, the aft end of the '61 Galaxie is a slight improvement over that of the '60 model.

Ford's Falcon: The Most Successful First-Generation Compact Car

Increasing market penetration by foreign brands, especially Volkswagen, along with rising sales by American Motors' compact Rambler in the late 1950s inspired America's Big Three car makers to introduce their own compact models for the 1960 model year.  I dealt with Chevrolet's Corvair here, and the Plymouth Valiant here.

The third 1960 American compact car was the Ford Falcon (Wikipedia entry here), the subject of this post.  Its first generation (treated here) was sold during model years 1960-63, and the third generation cars were last marketed for 1970.

Non-North American readers are reminded that an American "compact" car is roughly the size of a standard size European sedan. For example, the wheelbase for the 2001-2007 Ford Mondeo is 2,754 mm (108.4 in), and that for the current U.S. compact Ford Fusion is 107.4 in (2,728 mm).  Wheelbase lengths for the 1960 American compacts were: Chevrolet Corvair, 108 in (2,743 mm); Plymouth Valiant, 106.5 in (2,710 mm); and the Ford Falcon, 109.5 in (2,781 mm) -- all almost the same.

Ford's Falcon was the most conservatively designed of the three and its first-year sales about equaled the combined sales of its two competitors.  The Valiant featured odd, Virgil-Exner type styling and the Corvair had an air-cooled motor mounted at the rear, Volkswagen-fashion.  Here was a clear case of cautious, conventional styling and engineering winning over creativity.

Gallery

Although it was styled during the Baroque phase of Detroit's tail fin and wrapped windshield era, the Falcon reverted to a simple, three-box design.  With a bit of imagination or three glasses of wine, one might consider it a modernized classic 1949 Ford.

Here is more of a profile view for the four-door version.

And this is a side view of a two-door Falcon for 1961.  Also very clean-looking.  But I think Falcons would have looked better with larger wheels.

The rear styling was logical and simple as well, as seen in this Owls Head Museum auction photo.  Ford's traditional (for a while in the 1950s) round tail lights were dropped on standard size 1960 Fords, but continued on Falcons.

Ford Société Anonyme Française's Comète

The Comète was produced 1951-54 by Ford Société Anonyme Française, its body built by Metallon Facel.  It was passed on to Simca when Ford SAF was folded in 1954.  I find it interesting that Simca had a similar-looking car at about the same time called the Simca Sport that I wrote about here.  It seems that the Simca Sport body was also farmed out to Facel.

The best I can find for now regarding Comète's styling is a short passage by René Bellu in Automobilia Hors-Serie No. 20 "Touts les voitures française 1952, Salon 1951."  Bellu stated:

Les origines de cette jolie voiture remontent au début de 1951, lorsque François Lehideux a envisagé d'ajouter un coach luxueux à sa gamme des Vedette pour lesquelles il n'éproue pas une grande sympathie.  Le projet initial vient de Turin, plus exactment de Farina qui a soumis des plans à Poissy au printemps avant que la fabrication des premiers prototypes soit confiée à Jean Daninos.  La préparation des Comète d'avant-série devait s'effectuer avec une extrême discrétion, ceci à la demande expresse de M. Lehideux qui souhaitait, bien sûr, provoquer la plus grande surprise possible lors de la présentation officielle mais qui voulait surtout se prémunir d'eventuelles pressions de la direction américainne de Ford; pour cette raison, même les cadres supérieurs de Poissy ignoraient l'existence de la future Comète.

Outre sa silhouette élegante et ses proportions judicieuses, la Comète se singularise par sa forme « ponton » que Farina a parfaitement maîtrisée.  Sa présentation intérieure cossue et la grand soin de la finition s'ajoutent à l'esthétique pour hisser la Comète parmi les voitures françaises les plus séduisants... pour un prix somme toute très raisonnable.

It seems that the Simca Sport was styled by Pinin Farina.  And the Farina mentioned by Bellu is almost certainly Pinin and not Stabilimenti Farina, a coachbuilder that ceased doing business in 1953.  So these two similar cars whose bodies were built by the same firm apparently had styling from the same source.  Was there any coordination?  Or did the Simca Sport's existence inspire the relevant people at Ford SAF?  The cabriolet version of the Sport was introduced at the 1948 Salon de Paris and the coupe the following year.  The Comète was revealed to the press 17 August 1951, so the inspiration hypothesis makes some sense.  Yet the use of the same stylist and body maker, along with similar appearance makes me wonder if there was some coordination.  I'm sure there is a source someplace with the needed information, but it's not at my fingertips.

For general information on the Comète, its English Wikipedia entry is here.  The French entry has little detail for some reason.

Gallery

1952 Simca 8 Sport
This is a facelift of the original design, the major change being a bolder grille.  The Sport seats two people, whereas the Comète has room for four.  Another difference is that the Sport has a distinct rear fender, not a full-length "pontoon."

1952 Comète
Bellu's enthusiastic comments are well-justified.  I wonder if the central element in the grille is a nod to the "spinner" theme on American Fords of the early 1950s.

Side view.  The rear seat area looks pretty cramped.

Styling is classical late-1940s - early-1950s Italian.  The three-piece panoramic backlight and the bold grille bar are the only American touches.

Front view of the Cométe and of a model who, for some reason, does not seem happy.

Similar Aft: Ford Fusion and Chrysler 200

A year ago I posted regarding how the need for wind-tunnel testing for reasons of fuel economy has resulted in cars with highly similar profiles.  One result of this similarity is increasingly baroque sheet metal ornamentation along with a fad regarding angular shapes for headlight and tail light assemblies.

Even such detailing can wind up surprisingly similar for cars from different makers.  Here we consider the rear aspects of Ford's Fusion and Chrysler's 200.

2014 Ford Fusion

2015 Chrysler 200
To me, the Fusion and 200 look pretty much the same at first glance.  Aside from the similar basic body shape, we see that the side and rear window shapes are nearly identical, as are those lips at the lower edge of the bumper / strike panels.

Remaining design features differ in detail, but not by much: they are styled in the same spirit.  These details include the shape of the tail light assemblies, the lower side character shapes extending aft of the rear wheel openings and the depression where the license plate is housed.  The Chrysler has less sculpting at the top of the trunk lid and alongside the backlight, but these are minor in the context of overall appearance.

Side Trim Variations: 1956 Ford Line

Back in what some consider the glory days of the American automobile industry -- the 1950s -- there was for a few years a fad for two and even three colors for the same car.  Moreover, it seemed to be required that those different colors be splashed along the sides, separated by chromed strips of various sizes and shapes.

Two-tone paint jobs were around long before the 1950s.  Before "streamlining" and envelope bodies came on line, two-toning often took the form of fenders, valances covering the frame, and perhaps some other areas being painted black, the remainder of the body being in another color.  By the 1940s, the two-tone convention was that the "greenhouse" -- the part of the body above the "belt line" (roughly at, or just below, the lower edge of the windows) -- would be one color and the rest of the car another.

As noted, in the mid-1950s this convention had been abandoned and marketers were urging stylists to keep up with the competition by creating increasingly baroque color patterns.  Unlike nowadays, most brands were based on a single "platform" or basic body.  So stylists had what amounted to a single canvas to decorate using various color area patterns.

The present post features 1956 Fords.  The Thunderbird and station wagons aside, Ford offered three lines: the entry-level Mainline, the intermediate Customline and the top-level Fairlane.  Each had its side color/trim design.

Gallery

This shows the gamut of 1956 Fords (click to enlarge slightly).  The various lines are discussed below.

Top-of-the-line Fairlanes (named after Henry Ford's estate) carried over the 1955 checkmark color division pattern.  Proportions were altered and the horizontal segment was made wider with ribbing and other details added.  The white or cream color in this illustration covers the hood, trunk and part of the upper sides.

Customline Fords got a different color division design, though the roof and lower body (like the Fairlanes) received one color and the hood, trunk and upper sides another.  However another, traditional, color split was offered.  The green car at the lower left has a dark green top with the rest of the body painted light green.

Mainline Fords featured a variation of the Customline trim.  The upper part of the side trim on the large image above is part of the Customline package.  A lower horizontal chromed strip has been added to define an area of color matching that on the car's top.  The small images show one-tone paint jobs.  On these cars the secondary chromed strip just mentioned is absent.

This is a 1955 Mainline Ford, a bottom-of-the-line car from the previous model year when the two/three tone fad was less intensely followed.  Here there is no chromed side trim and the car is pained using only one color.