Roadside Encounters: California, Winter 2012

I like to travel by car. I've driven in every state of the USA except Alaska. And I've driven in a number of countries in western Europe. (Though not in central or eastern Europe: I worry about encountering a "Danger, Bridge Out" sign written in languages I don't know such as Hungarian or the Slavic ones.) I even drove a jeep once in Korea many years ago when children played in the streets and much of the traffic was by oxcarts. But I let Sergeant Kim do all the driving after that because I was afraid I'd kill someone.

Car travel allows one to see a good deal of local detail while covering reasonably long distances in a day if need be. And it's usually easy to pull over to get a good look at something interesting.

Below are a few things I came across while traveling in California last winter.

Gallery

Senator Theatre, Chico, California
The Senator was built in 1928 when Art Deco or Moderne was the rage. Actually, the most Deco feature is the tower -- the roof is typical California tile and those arches at street level also hark more to Spanish Colonial than Deco.

1930s Packard - Chico, California
Not far away I noticed this late-1930s Packard with a nicely restored custom body. It is used by a nearby hotel.

City Hall - Nevada City, California
Nevada City is in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The city hall's Art Deco style is somewhat out of synch with the rest of the streetscape, yet charming to look at. The link suggests that it was a 1930s New Deal funded structure.

On side of shop, Malibu, California
Malibu is an affluent coastal strip city that's home to surfers and entertainment industry personalities. The sign shown above is probably meant to be humorous; well, that's the way I took it.

Studebaker Avanti: Desert Dream

The image above is a publicity photo of the Studebaker Avanti that was publicly unveiled 26 April 1962 -- nearly 50 years ago. It was a styling sensation that has withstood time better than any other car of its era that I can think of offhand; aside from narrow tires and a comparatively vertical windshield, it does not seem out of place when compared to 2012 cars.

The Avanti was a crash project initiated by Sherwood Egbert, the latest of a series of presidents attempting to save the dying Studebaker firm. Egbert asked famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy (1893-1986), who formerly was responsible for Studebaker styling, to take on the project. In turn, Loewy brought in Tom Kellogg, Bob Andrews and John Ebstein to do the design work under his general direction. Andrews was a veteran who used to work at Hudson and Kellogg's experience was as a student at the Art Center School. Ebstein was a long-time Loewy employee who handled day-to-day administration.

Rather than setting up shop in a Loewy office, the team was sent to Loewy's retreat in Palm Desert, California so that they could focus on the task and come up with a design within the span of a few weeks.

I have seen photos of Loewy's house which was designed by the expatriate Swiss modernist Albert Frey (1903-88). Frey was responsible for many of the early modernist structures built in the Palm Springs area in the years immediately following World War 2. Those photos were mostly taken when the house was new and plenty of desert land could be seen in the background. Nowadays Palm Springs is pretty well built up and growth is taking place farther down the valley. So up until the day before I drafted this post, I wondered where the Loewy house was. Then I bought a book about Frey that contained a sketch map indicated the locations and street numbers for some of his projects. And voila! -- on it was the information I needed. So I groped around northwest Palm Springs until I found it, stopping only to take a snapshot of it from the side window of my car.

Gallery

The Loewy House as seen from the pool

The Loewy House, showing his wife, daughter and Raymond Loewy; note the desert backdrop

The photo I took
Loewy's lot was pretty large, but the neighborhood looks to have been in place for a long time and contains plenty of vegetation. So I wonder if the property had been subdivided and whether much of the original views have been retained aside from those of the nearby mountains.

Jutting Ahead: 1938-39 Graham Cars

Although many makes of cars emerged in the United States since the mid-1890s, their mortality rate was high. By the start of the Great Depression of the 1930s there were only around 20 serious manufacturers remaining from hundreds that existed over the previous 35 years. By 1940 only 11 or so remained, three of which were on their last legs as car builders (war production kept some companies going in a different role).

One company on the way out was Graham. It nominally survived World War 2 to serve as the nucleus of the post-war Kaiser-Frazer organization, but the brand itself was dead by then.

Graham's next-to-last gasp (see the link above for more information about its final attempt to stay in the business) was the 1938-39 "Spirit of Motion" styled car, popularly known as the "shark-nosed Graham." It proved to be a sales flop, a few more than 8,000 being sold over the two-year run. Nevertheless, I've always rather liked the styling. It's outrageous rather than functional, which makes it lose points in a purist's reckoning. Me? I think the car is fun to look at, which is more than can be said for many cars having functionalist styling-snob approval.

The main designer of the Sharknose was the talented Amos Northrup who died from a fall on ice before the design entered production. For more information on Northrup, see here, here and, especially, here.

Gallery

Graham sedan - 1939

Graham two-door - 1939

Graham advertisement - 1938
I include this because it shows the sedan in profile.

Murray Body patent drawings
These suggest the forthcoming Graham design but include more advanced features such as the blended front fenders, though the flat, one-piece windshield was retrograde. The source of the image, along with information about Murray, is here.

Willys advertisement - 1938
This design with a slightly less aggressive nose was introduced for 1937, beating Graham by one model year.

Pennsylvania Railroad T1 locomotive - 1942
Another example of forward lean expressing potential speed.

Barney Oldfield driving "Blitzen Benz" - 1910
Photos of speeding cars taken in the early 1900s often showed a distorted image; the vehicles appeared to be leaning forwards. The was because of the design of the shutter for newspaper-type cameras of the day; they operated like two window shades with a slit-like gap between them, the gap moving upwards when the shutter was triggered. If the subject were a fast car such a Oldfield's Benz, the lower part of the car was captured first and the upper part last. Since the car was moving while the shutter was moving, its upper part was captured after it had moved forward a short distance, hence the distortion. (Note that the stationary flagman appears normal.) One result of this was that a symbol of speed to folks in the early 20th century was a forward lean such as was expressed by Graham, Willys and the Pennsy T1.

Lexus Goes for Baroque

Among the many technical advances over the years related to automobiles has been the capability of stamping sheet steel into increasingly elaborate shapes. Effects that are common today were only remotely possible, say, 60 years ago, and then only for car bodies created by hand at coachbuilding shops such as those thriving in Italy.

Once it is possible to do something, it also becomes possible to over-do it. Such is the case for the Lexus CT Hybrid, a luxury take on the Toyota gas-electric hybrid Prius (Lexus, in case you aren't aware, is a part of the Toyota empire). For more information about the car, here is the official Web site.

From what I glean from the automobile press, Lexus management has been concerned about styling in recent years. Early Lexuses featured smooth, rather bland styling and the brand quickly achieved success thanks to its luxury touches and excellent build-quality, not to mention the then-legendary Toyota reliability. Lexus styling remained bland for a long time while failing to include enough design cues to give the make strong visual identity as compared to rivals Cadillac, Mercedes and BMW.

This styling failure finally began catching up, so in recent years we have seen new Lexus cars sporting more aggressive looks, though nothing yet has emerged that strongly states "Lexus!" when one spies one on the street. The current sedan front end theme, for instance, has a grille with a V'd look and there's a sports model with inward-facing double-Vs on either side of the grille (think >--<). (Hmm. Perhaps those Vs are actually variations on the pinched L-for-Lexus logo found on different parts of its cars. Whatever.)

When Lexus introduced its luxury compact hybrid, as a cure for blandness the poor car got seriously Baroque sheet metal treatment. Baroque enough that the result is a confusing mishmash of curves, angles and planes. Dare we take a look?

It's the rear of the car that bothers me the most.

Working from top to bottom, we find dog-leg curve-reversals for the rear side-windows and for the wrap-around parts of the back window ensemble. Nothing wrong with this in theory, but on the Lexus the two reversals are not well linked and therefore clash. Plus, there an odd little crease from the inflection point of the side window curves running to and then along the lip of the back window's overhanging roofline terminus. This feature is cramped and fussy.

The rear face below the windows is little more than an incoherent set of smallish surfaces forming projections, recesses, lips, voids and Lord knows what other visual chaos. It reminds me of the visual clutter found on early post-World War 2 Japanese cars. The solution to this mess would be a large, controlling form supported by details related to function (the opening for the trunk-lid/5th door, for instance) and visual linkage to shapes and design elements on the adjoining sides.

Finally, there is that bulbous-yet-creased part of the rear bumper's plastic sheathing at the rear corners of the car. At the top is a faint echo of the shape of the wheel well opening that is broken into a drop conforming to the main surface of the bumper sheathing's impact plane. Admittedly a car's corners presents tricky situations for stylist to deal with, but the Lexus staff should have been able to come up with a better resolution. They didn't because, I suspect, they were expected to do some wild and crazy things as part of the scheme to jazz up Lexus styling.

And as for creating a strong styling theme for Lexus? Back to that drawing board, gang.

Gil Spear and the 1942 Chrysler

The son of parents who worked as illustrators, Gil Spear, Jr. made a career as a car stylist; a summary of his career can be found here.

Whenever I think of Spear what comes to mind are a few renderings he made of what many people around 1940 considered to be the shape of cars of the (possibly near) future. Spear was working for Chrysler at the time, and the above link mentions that he might have had a hand in designing the grille for Chrysler's 1942 models.

Obviously, one doesn't see a lot of 70 year-old cars on the road, but 1942 American cars are an especially rare breed from the circa-1940 era. That's because the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the county's entry into World War 2 resulted in an order from the government that production of civilian automobiles be curtailed and then should cease by 22 February 1942. Chrysler brand sales for 1941 models were 161,703, but only 36,586 1942 model cars were produced and sold, most of these in the first months after their Fall 1941 introduction.

Below are examples of 1942 Chryslers, the first from an advertisement or a sales brochure, the others are restored vehicles.

So where does Spear come into play? Below is an image I grabbed from the link above that pairs a Spear concept rendering with a photo of the front end of a '42 Chrysler (click on the image to enlarge).

Indeed, the front of the concept car looks pretty similar to that of the production job aside from its hooded headlights and its prow that juts ahead on the main frontal plane. But this rendering was in no way a prediction of the 1942 theme because it is dated September 22, 1941 -- near the time when 1942 Chryslers were appearing in dealers' showrooms.

What I find most interesting are other features of the concept. It has a double-wrapped (horizontally and vertically) windshield not greatly different from windshields on some Chrysler models of the late 1950s. The roof over the passenger compartment seems to be transparent, a not-so-practical styling obsession that has persisted until present times on concept cars built for automobile shows.

But note the general shape that is also shown at a different angle in the car in the background. What we see is a "aerodynamically streamlined teardrop" shape beloved by car-of-the-future forecasters of the 1930s done up in a nicely stylish manner. It's not a pure teardrop because the motor is at the front, so a hood is required as is that windshield. Otherwise it fills the streamline styling bill of those days right down to the parallel chrome strips and the lack of open wheel wells. Note how the trunk lid is a double-opening type. Of course, a functioning version of the concept drawing would probably be more ungainly looking if it were to function at all; as pictured by Spear, the front wheels have no room to turn for steering and this would have to be fixed. Also, the design seems to allow for only one seat; the top slopes too radically for a rear seat. And what about a back window for rearward vision?: I see none.

By the way, those fighter planes look pretty nifty too. Too bad they're nose-heavy (the wings are mounted too far aft) and that the wing area is too small. But this is concept art after all, so why not let a stylist have even more fun than the cars offer?

Here are two more Spear concept renderings from the same period (once again, click to enlarge the images). These designs are variations of the one shown earlier. The cars have the same basic shape and clearly have no rear seat, though headlights are exposed rather than lurking behind doors and there is no top over the passenger compartment for either car. The car in the lower image seems to sport a small tail fin, a style item that would become the rage in the later 1950s, especially for Chrysler Corporation's brands. The diagram below the ladies indicates the position of grille openings and the radiator, so it seems that Spear was paying some attention to practical matters and not going totally blue-sky.

Once again, the aircraft designs are stylish and interesting. The upper image shows four-motor bombers with pusher, rather than tractor, propellers. This arrangement appeared in a number of actual aircraft design studies in those days, but the only American production bomber with pusher props was the B-36 which appeared following the war and served well into the 1950s. Spear's bomber has potent, though perhaps impractical, defensive armament; those guns appear to be something on the order of 37 mm or even larger.

The image immediately above features what appears to be a fighter and includes some interesting features. First, the pilot is in a prone position. This serves to reduce the cross-section of the aircraft and thus should lower drag and increase top speed. It also would lessen the likelihood of a pilot "blacking out" from blood loss to the brain during extreme maneuvering. This arrangement was tried out after the war, but proved impractical in a number of areas including rearward visibility, something important in combat situations. Spear places the propeller amidships in a rotating cylinder faired into the fuselage contour. I don't recall if this was ever actually tried, but defects include mechanical complexity and potentially reduced propeller surface for a given radius. But the propeller arc as shown in the airborne craft is so great that the propeller would scrape the ground on takeoff or landing rotation.

Nevertheless, a lot of fun for both Gil Spear at the time and for us 70 years later.

One Body, Multiple Car Brands: GM 1949

Let's pretend you are the president of a major automobile manufacturer with several brand divisions in your stable. The marketing folks and divisional managers insist that each brand be distinct in order to spur sales. But the dreaded guys wearing those green eye shades are equally insistent that it's too costly for each brand to be totally different from the others; sharing parts among brands will save lots of money and help profits.

By the 1930s the accepted solution was to generally side with the bean counters, but attempt to retain a degree of brand uniqueness. Before the 1960s when multiple sizes of cars became the prevailing mode, General Motors had five car brands and built them using two or three different bodies that were trimmed differently for each brand. In those days GM divisions designed and built their own engines, which helped to distinguish brands in a meaningful way.

I'll probably return to this subject again because I find it interesting. For now, let's take a peek at the brands using GM's 1949 "A" bodies that were intended for the least-expensive cars.

The 1949 A body was all-new, the first of its rank since before World War 2. A new post-war "C" body for GM's expensive cars was launched for the 1948 Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs and, months later, for senior-range 1949 Buicks. A-bodies were used by Chevrolet and Pontiac for all their production and for junior-range Oldmobiles.

Gallery

1949 Chevrolet 2-door sedan

1949 Pontiac
As noted, all Chevrolets and Pontiacs used the A body. The brands had distinctive chrome trim that visually distinguished them, though from today's perspective the differences were surprisingly minor. Each make featured a rock guard on the lower leading edge of the rear fender, a functional necessity. Side chrome strips varied in placement and detail and the grilles differed. Pontiac also had its then-distinctive "Silver Streak" chrome stripes on the top centerlines of its hood and trunk. It also sported a short horizontal crease on the front fenders just aft of the headlights. The Pontiac shown is longer between the front door and wheelwell because it has an inline 8 cylinder motor and not a "straight six" as in the Chev.

1949 advertisement illustration showing Oldsmobile 76 and 88 models
These Oldsmobile series also used the A body. This artist's interpretation is slightly distorted, as was the norm in those days, but it serves to show the grille and trim used by Olds. Again, differences from Chevrolets and Pontiacs are not great.

1950 Oldsmobile 88 coupe
1950 A-bodied Oldsmobiles were almost identical to the 49s, the main difference being a chrome strip on the front fenders. Compare the body to the Chevy in the top image and note the overall similarity.

From brochure for 1949 Oldsmobile 98
This illustration depicts Oldsmobile's top-of-the-line 98 series that used the GM C body. The fender treatment is similar, but not identical, to that on the A body. And the upper part of the body differs even more. Oldsmobile stylists had the task of preserving brand identity across the two bodies, so grilles and other chrome trim details are similar. This assured buyers of 76s and 88s that they indeed were driving Oldsmobiles, a prestige step or two above Pontiacs and Chevrolets.

2011 Chevrolet Cruze

2012 Buick Verano
Today GM makes a greater effort to distinguish models from different brands such as the Cruze and Verano shown above. This effort includes different sheet metal on the fronts and sides, though the basic body structure is shared (note the doors and windows).

Vertical Grille Bars as Styling Theme

Today's cars often incorporate visual focus points and linear features at the front, sides and rear that serve as brand identifiers. This is nothing new: one of General Motors' styling section founder Harley Earl's desiderata was including styling details that would keep viewers entertained as they walked around the car.

But in Earl's day the main focal point was the car's front, or "face" that it presented to the world, and another desideratum was that a car's front should make the brand identifiable from a block or so away. These days the front and grille itself (because air is now usually drawn in through a slot below bumper-level) are no longer necessarily the main focal point thanks to side and rear detailing. (Yes, there are exceptions such as Cadillac Escalades and all Lincolns starting with the 2010 model year.)

Back in the 1940s, Earl notwithstanding, side and rear views of cars were often rather bland in terms of details and not particularly distinctive. So a distinctive grille was the main feature viewers could seize upon to identify what make a car was. For this reason, many brands strove for continuity in grille design themes. Examples are Rolls-Royce, Packard and Cadillac (which has featured an egg-crate motif since the 1941 models). Other makes such as Ford were less consistent.

1940 is also interesting because it was around then that grille openings assumed a horizontal (landscape) format after having been vertical (portrait) for about 30 years. This led some stylists to propose a grille motif featuring vertically positioned chromed bars. Each of the Big Three U.S. car makers had one of their brands assume this style which was retained for many years as an identifier. These makes were General Motors' Buick, Chrysler's DeSoto and Ford's Mercury; examples are shown below.

Gallery

Buick

Buick - 1942
Buick introduced its vertical bar theme for its 1939 models and returned for a long run starting with the 1942s, few of which were built thanks to production being curtailed for the war effort.

Buick - 1949
By 1949 the grille bars were more rounded, but the 1942 theme was adhered to.

Buick - 1950
1950 Buicks sported an overhanging teeth look that was derided by observers who called it a "dollar-sign grille" and worse.

Buick - 1952
Buick dropped the overbite for its '51 line and the 1952 models were similar. 1955 was the last year for the vertical bar theme for many years; it crept back in during the 1980s.

Buick - 2012
Current Buicks have a strong vertical bar theme, carrying on the 1940s tradition.

DeSoto

DeSoto - 1942
DeSoto used the vertical bar theme on its 1941 line, but I'm showing a 1942 car because its "face" is distinctive and classic in its way. The grille is waterfall-like, for instance. But the important detail is the headlights covered by doors that opened when the lights were turned on. Hidden headlights were a fad around 1970, but DeSoto only had them on its war-constrained '42s.

DeSoto - 1949
The entire Chrysler line got its post-war restyling for 1949 and DeSoto featured grille bars of varying width.

DeSoto - 1953
The bars got chubby for the 1951 model year and that theme was continued in 1953 when Chrysler offered it next round of restyled bodies.

DeSoto - 1955
The 1955 model year (another completely new set of bodies for Chrysler) was the last for DeSoto's vertical bar theme. I like the way the grille opening makes those little hops above the bumper guards. Sadly, Chrysler abandoned the DeSoto brand during the 1961 model year.

Marcury

Mercury - 1946
Mercury didn't adopt vertical bars until 1946. Note how thin they are.

Mercury - 1949
The '49 Mercury is considered by many as the classic version of the brand. Grille bars are still fine, but their expanse is greater and the convex curve of the ensemble ads greater reflection from the sky making the grille seem bolder.

Mercury - 1952
I find the restyled 1952 Mercurys interesting because of their integral bumper-grille that was innovative. The vertical bars are found only at the bottom -- sort of like chopped-off remains of the 1950 Buicks' toothy overbites.

Mercury - 1958
By the late 1950s Mercury was drifting away from the vertical bar theme, though vestiges can be seen here. By the mid-1960s only the sporty Mercury Cougar line retained vertical bars.

Mercury - 2010
In the years leading up to Mercury's 2011 demise the vertical bars theme was brought back to the fore, perhaps as a last-gasp attempt to distinguish the brand's products.

Syd Mead: Famous Designer of Unbuilt Cars

So far as I can tell, car stylist, industrial designer and visualization renderer of future environments Syd Mead (born 1933) never had any of his automobile designs enter production. It's possible that some of his industrial designs were produced, but I don't know of any offhand.

Yet Mead is well known by styling and design practitioners and some of his efforts are famous to groups of the public at large. For instance, he designed the future Los Angeles for the movie Blade Runner and the vehicles for the original Tron. More recently, he has been involved with computer game settings. Mead's web site is here; it contains many examples of his work and even t-shirts that you can buy from his on-line shop.

I first came to be aware of Mead back in my army days at Fort Meade (of all places!) when a buddy of mine showed me a copy of a brochure with Mead's designs commissioned by U.S. Steel. Many of those illustrations were included in his first Sentinel book, a copy of which I own.

One aspect of Mead's work that interests me is that it's hard to distinguish which designs and renderings are recent and which were done when he was working on the U.S. Steel project in the early 1960s. (As can be seen below, his very earliest efforts are easier to spot.) So Mead seems to have attained a personal version of the future that was strong enough to serve him for a career of 50 years. Let's take a look.

Gallery

Blade Runner visualization
His Blade Runner designs are probably his best-known work so far as the general public is concerned; but they likely would not know who Syd Mead is.

Student design while at Art Center School

Illustration of Ford Gyron show car - 1961
These are examples of Mead's work from when he hadn't attained his mature sensibility.

Concept car for U.S. Steel

Design for U.S. Steel

U.S. Steel project scene
It's a little hard to believe that these designs and renderings are nearly 50 years old.

Commuter car designed for Philips
This design could be produced; it's not very futuristic, which Mead acknowledges by placing a black contemporary car in the near-background.

Futuristic scene
This was done more recently than most of the illustrations above.

Future horse race

Automobile design
Another design that's not totally blue-sky futuristic; note the costumes of the background figures aren't as wild as in the image directly above.