The Transitional 1949 Dodge Wayfarer Line

The "Big Three" American automobile makers -- General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corporation -- held off introducing post- World War 2 redesigns until the 1949 model year.  (Exceptions were 1948 Cadillacs and Oldsmobile 98s.)

The prewar notion that streamlined-looking fastback styling was the wave of the future was largely abandoned, though every GM division did market some fastback models for 1949.  Chrysler did the same, but on a much smaller scale.  Plymouth built an entry-level fastback 2-door sedan, and Dodge had a semi-fastback similar in character to Mercury's '49 roofline.

And there was even more Chrysler experimentation in Dodge's Wayfarer line.  This experimentation required extra tooling expenses for what turned out to be fairly low-volume cars.  In those days, Chrysler Corporation ranked ahead of Ford in sales and was doing well financially, so its management must have thought that the risk of losing some money to gain market knowledge was worthwhile.

Let's take a look at Dodge's Wayfarer line.  Color images are of cars that were on Internet for-sale sites.

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Let's first view a 1949 mainstream Dodge Coronet 4-door sedan to provide context.  The sun visor above the windshield was a popular accessory in the late 1940s and early 50s.

This is a 1949 Wayfarer business coupe.  Business coupes had only one bench seat, but this allowed for larger trunk space for hauling business-related items.  That body style was dropped early in the 1950s.

And here is the Wayfarer Roadster, essentially a convertible version of the business coupe.  Only a small proportion were true roadsters with side curtains instead of roll-up windows -- most Dodge "Roadsters" were built with the latter.

Front three-quarter views of '49 Dodge Wayfarer sedans.

A 1950 Mercury showing its semi-fastback / semi- bustle-back styling.  The Dodge's bustle-back is smaller and gives the impression of being mostly a fastback.

Rear view of a '49 Wayfarer.  Compare this to the 1949 Plymouth P-17 fastback below.

This car and the Dodges shown above used the same roof tooling, the main difference is that the Dodge's B-pillar slants and the Plymouth's is vertical.  The Dodge bustle-back is due to a 4-inch longer wheelbase and 14 inches (35 cm) more overall length.  This added length would have required a different, more expensive fastback roof shape towards the rear, so the cheaper semi-fastback option was taken.

Finally, the Dodge Wayfarer sedan's fastback competition, a 1949 Pontiac Streamliner 2-door.  Much sleeker than the Dodge, but perhaps with a bit less trunk space -- a problem that led GM to dropping  fastbacks after the 1952 model year.

Fiat 2800: Italy's Answer to Mercedes

That's a glamorous (though not well painted) Italian lake district scene in the Fiat publicity image shown above.  And the car?

According to this Italian language Wikipedia article, Benito Mussolini proposed to Fiat that they create a model that would compete in terms of prestige with Mercedes-Benz.

And Fiat tried, with its 2800.  Nearly 630 were built over 1938-1944, about a third being military adaptations of the chassis.  Fiat 2800s were used by Mussolini, the Pope and some affluent Italians.

The English language Wikipedia entry is here.

Here is a 2800 four-door sedan.  The short, downward curved hood runs against the 1930s expectation that prestige automobiles have long, prominent hoods.  It does look a bit racy, which is what one might expect for Italy.  Aside from that, the front ensemble is in line with 1936 American styling practice, but is a little dated for 1938.

This side view shows that the sedan had an integral trunk and not quite something obviously tacked on.  The passenger compartment styling above the belt line is also obsolescent compared to some new 1938 General Motors cars, and obsolete in relation to most 1940-41 American car designs.

Some cabriolet 2800s were built.  Stabilimenti Farina made a few four-door versions, and might have built the two-door shown here.  (I can't determine who actually did the work.  It might even have been done by Fiat.)

This nice 1939 Fiat 2800 coupe was by Touring.

1954 Cadillac Park Avenue Concept

The 1954 General Motors Motorama traveling cars-plus-entertainment show was particularly rich in terms of show cars / dream cars / concept cars (take your pick).

Cadillac exhibited three such cars, two of which (El Camino, La Espada) were variations on a two-passenger theme.  The other was a comparatively conservative four-door sedan, the Park Avenue.  It is the subject of this post.

The 1954 model year was when General Motors startled the buying public with completely restyled Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs.  These cars featured low hood and trunk lines (compared to previous designs) and panoramic (or wraparound) windshields.  The effect was quite futuristic at the time.

The next Cadillac redesign would be for 1957, so when the Park Avenue was conceived, 1957 styling was still somewhat in flux while the market reaction to the new '54s was being evaluated.  Even so, the Park Avenue anticipated several features found on the 1957s.

The Park Avenue was more rounded than 1954 Caddies, a feature of the '57 redesign.  1957s also saw the low hood and matching front and rear wraparound shapes.  The Park Avenue was fairly compact, something definitely not the case in 1957.

Here is a 1957 Cadillac -- a coupe, not a sedan, however.  Another Park Avenue carryover is the rear fender design.

A not-so crisp image of the Park Avenue's front.

And this is the front of a 1954 Cadillac, photo by Owls Head.  Headlight housings, upper grille shape, grille grid pattern and bumper styling are in the same spirit.  Front styling for the '57s had most of the main theme features, though details were different.

Rear three-quarter view of the Park Avenue. No rear bumper, but show cars often featured sketchy protection.  All things considered, the Park Avenue was a nice design for its time, and was nicer looking than the too-large 1957 line it anticipated.

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.

Type 3: The Second-Generation Volkswagen

Volkswagen management wisely realized that the Beetle would not be a top-seller forever.  So a larger, more powerful model was planned during the late 1950s.  Retained was the Beetle's rear mounted, air-cooled motor layout, but otherwise the new car abandoned 1930s styling for more contemporary features.

This new model, variously known as the Type 3, 1500 or 1600, was produced 1961-1973 (Wikipedia entry here).

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The first Type 3s features notchback or bustleback styling.  I think the greenhouse is too soft in the C-pillar - backlight zone.  The wheels are commendably large (I dislike tiny wheels), and the front is sensibly styled.

The rear three-quarter view highlights what I consider the greenhouse weakness.  The lower body, thanks to the essentially straight side character line and fender profile is fairly crisp, though tempered by the curved front trunk profile and the slightly rounded bustle seen here.  As mentioned, the greenhouse strikes me as being too soft and, at the C-pillar, flimsy looking.  A more substantial C-pillar and a bit less back window curvature might have corrected this.

In 1962 the Squareback (station wagon, break) model was introduced.  The very nature of this kind of body eliminated the weaknesses of the notchback model's styling.

Then in 1966 a fastback version appeared.  Its styling was nice, so I have few quibbles to make.

Actually, the only change I'd be temped to make would be to shorten the aft side windows, most likely employing a dog-leg, BMW-type end treatment.  As the photo shows, the window extends abaft of the top of the rear seat, so there would be no adverse effect on back-seat passengers' views.

Rear three-quarter photo.  The Type 3 has a nice, trim appearance from this viewing angle.

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.

1956's Revived Lincoln Continental Coupé

Few dispute that the 1940 Lincoln Continental is a classic automobile design.  It began as a customized 1939 Lincoln cabriolet built for Ford Motor Company President Edsel Ford.  The designer was E.T. "Bob" Gregorie, Ford's styling chief.  Favorable reaction by Edsel's friends led to it becoming a production car for 1940. In addition to cabriolets, a coupé model was added.  More information on early Lincoln Continentals can be found here.

Aside from the World War 2 U.S. car production hiatus, Lincoln Continentals were produced through the 1948 model year.  But 1949 brought totally restyled Lincolns and Edsel had died in 1943, so Ford leadership was not motivated to continue the line even though stylists had sketched some proposals based on the new Lincoln Cosmopolitan body.

Potential buyers were unhappy with the decision to drop the Continental line and hounded Ford to build new ones.  By the early 1950s the company was prosperous again and there was money available to do just that.  Edsel's youngest son, William Clay Ford, was made head of the project.  As this Wikipedia entry indicates, the new car was called Continental Mark II and was cast as a separate brand, though marketed by Lincoln.  It was conceived as a super-luxury car, priced at $10,000 -- around twice the average U.S. household income at the time.  Only a coupé was produced, though Ford had a convertible built and some coupé owners later had their cars customized as cabriolets.

So far, I haven't been able to locate suitable examples from the styling competition for the Mark II on the internet.  When I find such images, I'll post about them.  For now, I'll compare styling of the original 1940 coupé with that of the Mark II.

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The Mark II was a lot longer than the original Lincoln Continental.  The long hood proportion of the original was retained, but rear overhang was much more extensive.  The most "Continental" details carried over were the blanked over rear quarter panels of the passenger compartment and the hint of the rear-mounted spare tire.

If today's acceptance of Retro styling had been in place during the mid-1950s the Mark II might have been styled to look more like the original.  Instead, John Reinhart's winning design was a conservative take on contemporary styling practice.  Such features include: "frenched" headlights; wraparound windshield; flow-through fender line; low hood; and the long rear overhang.  Fortunately, not all trendy items were present.  Some of these were: tail fins; chromed designs on the sides; two or three tone paint jobs; and jet fighter details.

From this angle, the passenger compartments have a similar flavor, though the Mark II has a larger rear window (backlight).  Its rear wheels are exposed rather than spatted.  Signature 1940 Lincoln Continental features included the boxy trunk design and the rear-mounted spare tire in its cover.  The Mark II's trunk curves down and the separate spare tire is evoked by a shape encompassing a spare.  It's rather like trunk sheet metal was draped over an interior spare tire that was propped up at a forward-leaning angle.  In fact, the Mark II's spare tire was inside the trunk and positioned in just that manner, even having a cloth covering to hide it.  Of course, that made putting luggage and other items in the trunk more difficult due to its blockage.

The Continental Mark II was not a sales success, only around 3,000 being sold over its two years on the market.   It high price was a limiting factor.  I think its styling was another contributor.  Despite its low stature, the car was massive -- not light and sporting looking like the original was.  Moreover its styling was dull, boring.  Making it look very mid-50s with fins and multiple paints might not have worked either.  The best solution from today's perspective would have been a shorter (but not too short) car with more Retro hints.  But that might not have sold well either, given buyer expectations in those stylistically flamboyant times.