1940-1941 Packards: Tradition's Last Stand

Packard was America's leading luxury automobile brand before, during (especially), and for a while after the 1920s.  All premium brands were hit hard by the Great Depression of the 1930s, but Packard was able to survive.  In part, this was because it added a more mid-range model, the One-Twenty, in 1935 and then went further mid-range with its Packard Six (later 110).  The price the company paid for its survival into the 1940s was a lessening of the brand's prestige.

While becoming more competitive with Buick than with Cadillac, Packard made sure to retain its highly distinctive grille design on all its models from the lowly Six to its luxury V-12 line (dropped after the 1939 model year).

But a price had to be paid here too.  While competing brands began to feature more streamlined  looking front ends and horizontal rather than vertical grill formats, Packard's retention of traditional details made its cars increasingly old-fashioned looking.  Finally in the spring of 1941 Packard introduced its non-traditional Clipper whose body became the standard for all 1942 model year Packards.

The images below show some 1940 and 1941 pre-Clipper Packards along with competing Buicks that were far more up-to-date styling-wise.

Gallery

1940 Packard One-Twenty Sport Sedan - Barrett-Jackson photo
The body shown here dates from the 1938 model year.  Due to Packard's styling conservatism, the area from the front axle line aft is no more advanced than the same parts of General Motors' 1935 Pontiacs and LaSalles.

1940 Buick
The body on this Buick was new for 1940.  The grille's layout is becoming horizontal, and door hinges are now hidden by body panels, as is the running board.  Its overall appearance is sleeker than the Packard's in the previous photo.  The most out-of-date feature is the positioning of the headlights; they are not quite fully integrated into the front fenders.  GM was slow to follow other brands in this regard even though it otherwise was the auto industry style leader in those days.The 1940 Packard has exposed running boards and free-standing headlights, not to mention exposed door hinges and that tall grille.

1941 Buick
Buick's 1941 facelift finally integrated headlights into the fenders.

1941 Packard One-Twenty Sedan - Auctions America photo
Meanwhile, Packard had its own facelift that gave the old body style better front-end integration.  The front fenders were restyled and the catwalk raised to blend with them.  Headlight integration is about on par with the 1940 Buick, nevertheless a significant modernization from the previous Packard.  Speed stripes on the fenders are in line with current styling fashions.  The rest of the body looks old-fashioned compared to the Buick.

1941 Packard One-Twenty Sedan - Vaultcars sales photo
The extreme rear part of this Packard is not far out of line from 1939-40 competing brand styling.  But by 1941 several other makes were featuring streamlined-looking "fastback" designs.

1941 Packard One-Sixty Touring Sedan - sales photo
Here is a side view of a Packard One-Sixty, a luxury level Packard.  Despite the various old-fashioned (for 1941) details, I can see that a car such as shown here would appeal to a rich, conservative clientele not quite ready to buy a more trendy '41 Cadillac.

The Packard Predictor That (Sadly) Didn't Predict

Packard was a dying brand in 1956.  The last "true" Packards were still being built, but 1957 models would be based on Studebakers.  Still, a flicker of hope appeared in the form of the Predictor show car.  There are several Web sites that have posted about the Predictor (just Google on Packard Predictor), and this is one of those containing useful background information.

For me, the most frustrating aspect of the Predictor is that something like it might have revived the Packard brand in the luxury market.  That's because it was an example of a restrained 1950s style, unlike the direction Cadillac, Lincoln and Imperial took over the next few years.

The Packard Predictor still exists.  You can find it in the Studebaker museum in South Bend, Indiana.

Gallery

It's a little hard to make it out, but the top of the vertical bar at the front is shaped in the form of the traditional Packard radiator grille.  Since this protrusion is susceptible to damage, a production version would probably have to be modified in some manner.  The horizontal swaths are a Richard Teague motif introduced on 1955 Packards.  This grooved version works well.

Tail fins were becoming a styling fad, especially after the introduction of the 1957 Chrysler Corporation line.  The Predictor's are fairly tastefully done.  The tail lights are exaggerated versions of those on 1955 and 1956 Packards.

Side views showing the theme of angled continuation lines.  Note in the lower image that the C-pillar edges converge (by extension) to the lower endpoint of the horizontal side grooved strip.  The character line along the side begins at the front bumper and terminates in the rear bumper ensemble.

The Predictor has a wrap-around / wrap-over windshield, something that would appear on all General Motors cars for 1959.  But by 1960-1961, panoramic windshields were on the way out.  This might have caused Packard some trouble had something like the Predictor entered production.  But perhaps not a great amount of trouble, because reversion to a conventional windshield design would not have destroyed the appearance of the car.

1940s Small-Backlight Convertible Tops

I've never liked the styling jargon term "backlight."  It refers to the rear window of an automobile, but taken more literally one would think of a light placed somewhere on a car's aft end.  Alas, I'll go along with the jargon, so be advised that this post deals with small rear windows (oops, backlights) found on American convertibles in the 1940s or thereabouts.

I am by no means knowledgeable regarding this detail, so what follows is speculation.

In the images below, you will notice that the convertible tops have rectangular, removable panels that house the small backlights.  Sometimes, convertibles would been driven with their tops up and the panels gone, perhaps to provide better ventilation on non-rainy days.  The reason for the small windows (and here I speculate) is that they were made of glass or a stiff piece of clear plastic for good vision to the rear.  Glass is heavy, and the canvas tops were not strong enough to support large windows.  So convertible backlights had to be small if they were glass or a heavy plasitc.  The downside to this is that small windows greatly restricted the driver's rear view.

Later convertibles tended to feature larger backlights made of thinner transparent plastics.

The following images are of cars offered for sale, usually at auctions.  Presumably, their convertible tops are of authentic design, even though they might be replacements for worn out originals.  I cannot  guarantee authenticity in all cases, however.  That said, what is striking is how similar the backlights are for so many brands over so many years.

Gallery

1940 LaSalle Series 50 Convertible - Auctions America

1940 Packard Super 8 Convertible - Barrett-Jackson

1941 Cadillac 62 Convertible - Barrett-Jackson

1948 Chrysler Town & Country - auction photo

1948 Lincoln Continental Cabriolet - Barrett-Jackson

1948 Cadillac 62 Convertible - Barrett-Jackson

1948 Packard Custom Eight Victoria Convertible - sales photo

1950 Hudson Commodore Six Convertible - Bonhams

1951 Mercury Convertible - Barrett-Jackson

Curiously Impressive 1948-50 Packard Convertibles

Packard (history here) did not market a complete post- World War 2 redesign until the 1951 model year.  Instead, an unfortunate facelift of its Clipper design was put in place for 1948-50.  I'll write about this facelift in another post.

One model the Clipper lacked was a convertible, so Packard added them as part of the 1948 facelift project.  Packard sedans of that era were massive and bloated-looking.  Due to their lack of large, fixed tops, the convertibles appeared less massive than the sedans, though they were still more ponderous than competing cars.

The primary styling flaw is the pontoon fender and the slab-sided look it produced.  A crisper fender line and separate rear fenders such as were found on 1947 Studebakers and 1948 Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs would have been a major design improvement.

Seen from nearly 60 years after their introduction, the postwar Packard convertibles possess an impressive kind of charm despite having a mediocre design.  Something due to nostalgia, perhaps.

Gallery

1948 Packard Super 8 Victoria Convertible - Jay Leno Collection, NBC photo
Jay can afford the best, and this is pretty much it so far as '48-50 Packard convertibles are concerned.

1948 Packard 8 Convertible - sales photo
A lower-priced '48 convertible.  Differences include a simpler grille theme and one less side chrome strip.  The wire wheels were not production items.

1949 Packard Custom 8 Convertible - Auctions America photo
A top-of-the-line convertible with its top retracted.

1949 Packard Victoria Convertible - Barrett Jackson photo
Rear aspect of the less expensive convertible.

1950 Packard Custom 8 Victoria Convertible
Top-of-the-line Packards echoed the grille's egg-crate theme above the rear bumper.  Side chrome and tail lights were redone for 1950.

1950 Packard Custom 8 Victoria Convertible - Mecum auction photo
Another fine example.  But here, too, the wire wheels were added later.

1950 Packard Custom 8 Victoria Convertible - Mecum auction photo
A nice view of the egg-crate grille found on the most expensive Packards.

Bloated Delahaye 135 by Guilloré

Guilloré was a French coachbuilder that specialized in creating custom bodies for Delahaye during the last 20 years of both firm's existence (1934-1954).  The Wikipedia entry on Guilloré is here, and in French only.

Some French carrossiers such as Chapron, Franay, and Faget & Varnet continued pre-war styling themes on Delahayes during the first few years after World War 2, but Guilloré was one of the firms that attempted contemporary styling.  This often did not work well because the proportions of pre-war Delahayes were not really suited for postwar styling themes.  I wrote about postwar Delahayes here, and included some Guilloré designs.

The present post deals with what I consider one of Guilloré's design failures, a pontoon-fender Delahaye 135 from 1949.

Gallery

1948 Packard Super 8 Victoria Convertible - sales photo
But first, here is an American design that might have influenced Guilloré.

1949 Delahaye 135 Béarn Cabriolet Bicolore by Guilloré
The two-tone (bicolore) paint scheme helps reduce the bulky appearance of the slab-sided pontoon fenders, but not by much.  Worse, the pre-war core of the 135 includes a high cowl and hood line.  It's a fairly tall car, as you can see by comparison to the woman shown about to open its door.The car in the upper photo has a staff attached to its front bumper.  It's not for a flag, however.  The Delahaye has the steering wheel mounted to the right in British fashion -- typical of high-price French cars prior to around 1950.  But one drives on the right side of the street or road in France, and the staff was intended to provide the driver a better sense of where the left-front corner of his car was so as not to drift into oncoming traffic.

1949 Delahaye 135 M by Guilloré - via clubdelahaye.com website
Shown here is a survivor.  It has bicolore paint, but the dark-light pattern on the sides is reversed from what is shown in the 1949-vintage photos above.  The small air vents or horn sound openings (I'm not sure which) below the headlights in the previous photos are absent here.  Either they were deleted or this indeed is a different car.  The latter case is more likely because Guilloré made several cars in this style.  At least one was a coupe, another was a six-window sedan, and yet another was a Delage cabriolet.  This car, like most similar examples, does not have spats covering the rear wheel openings which helps reduce the mass of the sides of what remains an awkward design.

Tacking on Tail Fins

Single fins of the vertical stabilizer kind found on aircraft occasionally were found on low-production, aerodynamically-styled cars during the 1920s and 30s.  But tail fins mounted on rear fenders of cars can, for practical purposes, be treated as something initiated in Detroit styling studios after World War 2, though the style also was adopted by several non-American brands in the late-1950s and early 60s.

For the most part such tail fins were decorative, having little or no value regarding improving directional stability at high speeds.  I recall an article in a contemporary car magazine stating that fin's shapes could easily be modified from one model year to the next as an inexpensive way to freshen a car's design.

Small tail fins appeared on 1948 Cadillacs and occasionally later as modest little humps on cars such as 1953-54 Pontiacs and Dodges.

Fins became a major styling fad when the sensational (at the time) 1957 Chrysler Corporation line appeared.  Fins for these cars were part of the original design, but 1956 Chrysler products featured fins tacked onto 1955-vintage bodies in an attempt to allow the car-buying public to become familiar with the concept.  During the rest of the 1950s some automobile makers included fins on new designs.  Others did what Chrysler did for 1956, adding tail fins to existing designs.

The present post deals with the "tacked-on" variety on American brands of that era.

Gallery

1956 Chrysler Corporation's Transition Fins

1956 Chrysler New Yorker - Barrett-Jackson auction photo

1956 DeSoto - Barrett-Jackson auction photo
Chrysler and DeSoto had a nice fender line for 1955, kicking up behind the door as seen here, but then running slightly down from horizontal towards the rear.  The 1956 fins destroyed the original design theme, so I never liked them even though my father owned a '56 DeSoto.

1956 Dodge - brochure page

1956 Plymouth Belvedere 2-door sedan - Barrett-Jackson auction photo
Dodge and Plymouth bodies were different from those of the senior Chrysler Corporation lines, so we find a different fin treatment.  This one works better because the basic fender lines are not altered.  At the same time, the fins are clearly fin-like in the context of a jet fighter or a Gold Cup racing hydroplane.  Nevertheless, they detract from the 1955 styling themes for these brands.

Competing Brand's Fins on Older Bodies

1957 Ford Thunderbird
Thunderbird was introduced for the 1955 model year with a design that included details found on regular '55 Fords.  One was the treatment of the tail light ensemble that gave T-Birds a slightly pinched look at the rear.  Ford sedans were redesigned for 1957, but Thunderbird had to carry its '55 vintage design until 1958.  One gift from large Fords to T-Birds was the canted tail fin shown here.  This is one instance where an imposed tail fin actually improved matters, adding interest to the rear and achieving better balance for the car's side appearance.

1957 Lincoln
I consider the 1957 facelift for Lincoln one of the worst, most character-destroying of its day.  (Though 1958 Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs managed to top Lincoln on that score.)  The fin shown here is an overly-large, characterless blade that doesn't integrate with the rest of the body.  A more modest, more vertical fin would have worked better but still would have degraded a nice design.

1956 Lincoln
I include this photo of a 1956 Lincoln to illustrate the damage done by those fines.  These Lincolns were large cars, but the '56 design was graceful.

1957 Hudson Hornet Hollywood
The final Hudson.  Whatever virtues its 1952-vintage Nash body design had are thoroughly corrupted  through ad-hoc ornamentation at this point, so the silly little tacked-on fins almost get lost in the confusion.

1956 Studebaker Golden Hawk - Mecum auction photo
The basic body is that of the classic Raymond Loewy 1953 Studebaker Starliner, but it got modified repeatedly after 1954.  It's interesting that the Golden Hawk got fins the same year Chrysler began that fad.  Moreover, they look better despite the intrusive two-tome paint scheme.

1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk
Still tack-on in the sense that the fins were not part of the original design, the '57 Hawk's fins are nicely integrated, as compared to most other examples shown here.

1958 Studebaker Commander
On the other hand, the fins added to Studebaker sedans are awkward, misshapen objects.

1958 Packard sedan - auction photo
Sadly, by 1958 Packards had been reduced to using Studebaker bodies such as the one in the previous image.  The fins shown here are fussy, two-tiered affairs that unbalance the basic design.

1958 Rambler - brochure page
Rambler's new fins are modest, horizontal affairs.  They aren't attractive, but the Rambler body introduced for 1956 was ill-proportioned and unattractive to begin with.

First-Generation American All-Steel Roofs

Before the mid-1930s, American closed cars had weatherproofed fabric inserts covering much of their roofs.  But the time for a change to all-metal roofs was at hand.  General Motors was first with its "Turret Top" line on many of its 1935 cars, and by the 1938 model year almost every closed car built in America had a roof of steel.

This post presents most of the brands having first-generation steel-topped bodies.  In almost every case, bodies had strongly rounded shapes in the "greenhouse" area and fenders.  This was due to limitations in 1930s sheet metal stamping technology as well as, in some cases, the need to stack body components in a nested fashion for shipment to assembly plants scattered across the United States.

Seen from today's perspective, most 1935-38 American cars looked awkward and dumpy due to the rounded body shapes that were enhanced by strongly rounded-off window corners -- especially those on General Motors cars.  GM's styling boss Harley Earl soon realized that all this roundedness was a mistake, and had his staff making corrections on 1937 cars, as I explained here.

Gallery

1935 Chevrolet Master De Luxe
Photographed at Berger Chevrolet, Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Chevrolet's hood and grille were not rounded much, helping to offset the softness of much of the rest of the design.

1935 Oldsmobile

1935 Pontiac 2-door sedan
More examples of General Motors' early bodies featuring all-steel roofs.  These designs had a "streamline" theme that marked a strong break from the more angular designs of previous years.  These cars look "softer" than the Chevy because their hoods and grilles are more rounded to fit the rest of the theme.

1936 Dodge advertisement
For the following model year, many other brands followed GM's theme of rounded bodies and all-steel roofs.

1936 Chrysler Airstream
Photo by Lars-Göran Lindgren, Sweden.  Another example of Chrysler Corporation styling for 1936, but this in a photograph instead of an artist's distortions seen in the Dodge ad above.

1936 Hudson sales material
Another brand with a completely new design for 1936.  The side windows aren't as rounded as those of GM cars, but the rest of the car looks awkward and dumpy.  Interestingly, Hudson stylists were able firm up the exterior to keep up with the trend away from "soft" designs, as I discussed here.

1936 Nash DeLuxe Sedan
A busy, awkward design, but not as soft looking as the cars shown above.  The stretched teardrop shape of the hood air vent is comical in retrospect, but probably intended as a serious nod to aerodynamics when this model was styled.

1936 Studebaker President
Studebaker followed GM's lead from the cowling back, strongly rounded windows and all.  However, this was offset in the top-of-the-line President shown here by a long, straight hood.

1937 Ford DeLuxe Tudor - sales photo
An unfortunate, stubby design.  The crisp styling of the grille-hood ensemble along with the comparatively large windows made the Ford seem less bulbous than most of the cars pictured above.

1937 Plymouth Special DeLuxe - Barrett-Jackson photo
Plymouth didn't get rounded Chrysler bodies until the 1937 model year.

1938 Packard Six - sales photo
Packard was late to the all-steel roof theme.  Windows are strongly rounded in the manner of the 1935 GM cars shown above.  This was a curious mistake, because the folks at Packard must have had inklings that GM and others were moving toward flatter roofs and small-radius window corners.

* * * * *

1936 Lincoln Zephyr
Now for examples of designs that were more graceful that those of most other brands.  The Lincoln Zephyr does have large-radius window corners.  But the rest of the design is sharper from the boat-prow front to the fastback rear.

1936 Cord 810
Photo taken by me at the National Automobile Museum, Reno, Nevada.  Cord styling was outstanding.  Side windows had tightly-rounded corners.  Like the Zephyr in the previous photo, its roof is not as bulbous as those of most of the other cars shown above.  But the key design element is the firm hood-grille ensemble that is strong enough to complement the curved elements of the rest of the car.