Lincoln 1953-58 Syling: Size Seemed to Matter

Ford Motor Company's Lincoln brand has had its ups and downs as this Wikipedia entry indicates. On very few occasions near the end of the 1990s did Lincoln sales top those of Cadillac, its main domestic luxury car rival. And for much of its existence, Lincoln was a distinct also-ran to Cadillac in sales terms.

I haven't time here to explore the entire history of the marque, instead focusing a period of exceptional interest from a styling standpoint, the middle part of the 1950s decade. To set the scene, Lincoln's first post- World War 2 restyling yielded 1949 models based on two basic bodies. One body was shared with the 1949 Mercury. The other, larger body was for the Lincoln Cosmopolitan and unique to the brand. 1952 marked the next complete restyling. The large Lincoln was abandoned and bodies were shared with Mercury, resulting in a comparatively small car at a time when top-of-the-line cars were expected to be larger than average.

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1953
This is a mild face-lift of the 1952s. It is an attractive design that was quite modern at the time, especially the low hood feature. Also stylish was the fake airscoop on the rear part of the side. It was a decorative element intended to break up otherwise potentially plain, tall sides. Ford and Mercury also sported fake side airscoops.

1954
The next model year found the fake airscoop reduced to a bulge, the chrome strip defining the location of the notional air entry point being replaced by horizontal chrome strips intended to make the car seem longer.

1955
To my eyes, the 1955 Lincoln was the last and best looking of its cars based on the 1952 body. The side bulge has been reshaped in a racier manner. Headlight bezels are now extended ahead of the headlamp faces (the term for this was "Frenching"), slightly physically lengthening the car. Further lengthening was due to redesigning the tail-light assembly as part of a rear fender extension.

1956
Cadillac came up with a (for the time) futuristic new body design for the 1954 model year. Cadillacs were more squared-off (less voluptuous) than for 1953, but the big styling innovation was the wraparound windshield. It took Lincoln two model years to catch up with this total re-design. The 1956 Lincoln was much larger than in 1955, yet was a clean, attractive design.

1957
Sales of nearly all 1956 model year cars were disappointing compared to record-setting 1955 sales. Lincoln management fought back with a major face-lift even though its restyled 1956s outsold its aging 1955s. I always thought the 1957 facelift was an aesthetic disaster, but the cars sold better than in 1956.

1958
For 1958, Lincolns were totally restyled again, this time being based on a huge, heavy unitized body. The result was aesthetically better than for 1957, but not as nice as the 1955s and 1956s. Sales were down, however.

1930s Automobile Front-End Styling Detailing

Modernist design purists during the first half of the twentieth century made avoiding decoration a central part of their design religion: Thou Shalt Not Decorate!

Easier said than done, once one moves away from architecture and perhaps furniture and dining-wear design. That's because it's possible to take functional elements of the object and arrange them in a pleasing and, yes, decorative manner ("function" was another religious tenet, especially for architects and industrial designers). Actually, one can do that for architectural objects as well.

During the mid-1920s, once automobiles became reliable to operate, it began to dawn on manufacturers that a car's appearance could become a selling point if customers no longer felt it necessary to shop with reliability in mind. So styling operations began to emerge in the larger companies as well as in firms specializing in providing car bodies.

Speaking of "function," an important function for any consumer-goods product is saleability, and a good designer needs to keep this in mind. Even if car stylists were of the modernist-purist school of thought, design proposals for production cars had to face approval by corporate officers whose fields included engineering and sales as well as general management. Which is why automobiles have almost always included styling elements that might be considered decorative.

The 1930s were years when automobile styling was becoming established along with the new field of industrial design. Those years also marked the transition in decorative fashion from what we now call Art Deco to "Moderne," a simpler style incorporating elements related to streamlining.

Below are some examples of front-end or "face" styling elements from that period. I took those photos during visits to various automobile museums over the past few years.

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Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow - 1933
Phil Wright's sensational (for its time) Silver Arrow is noted for his predictive design for the main body of the car: it includes a number of features that did not appear on mass-production cars until around the 1948 model year. The front end is not heavily decorated, this in keeping with early 1930s practices on the luxury end of the automobile spectrum.

Studebaker - 1933
Studebaker (which at the time owned Pierce-Arrow) presented a transitional front end, also typical of 1933. Decorative elements include the radiator cap "mascot," the crest on the grille V-divider and those curious, sad-looking oval headlamps.

Chrysler Airflow - 1934
Chrysler's radical, but ill-fated (sales-wise) Airflow used several Deco/Moderne elements. The front seats featured chromed tubing as frames. Above the radiator intake opening are extensions of the vertical grille-bars over the hood's sheet metal as a decorative element that are shown here. Also note the winged mascot coupled with the Chrysler blue ribbon symbol.

Hudson - 1936
Hudson came out with a completely new body for 1936 and for a reason I cannot fathom, Frank Spring's styling crew planted a bizarre grille design on it. "Fencer's mask" (noticeably convex) grilles were the rage across the industry that year, but they took the form of uniform bar or mesh patterns. Instead, Hudson opted for a central section featuring vertical bars that was flanked by areas of thick mesh created by perforating some sheet metal. Note the baroque curve along the top end of the grillework that transitions to the centerline of the hood. The oddest detail is that winged, aerodynamically-shaped amber-like plastic mascot. It resembles a winged cigar. Hudson used a different mascot for its 1937 cars for some strange reason.

Hispano-Suiza - 1937
Shown is one of the last of the famed Hispano-Suiza line of luxury cars built in France. Very conservative in terms of decoration, though the shapes of the hood, grille and headlamp-fender ensemble has a decorative cast. Pseudo-streamlining was the rage by the mid-30s, so we see teardrop-shaped front fenders and blended headlamp housings offsetting a hood-grille combination more appropriate for 1931.

Lagonda - 1939
lagonda was a British luxury automobile, and British styling at all price levels was conservative well beyond World War 2. The Lagonda grille-hood grouping is rounded as a bow to aerodynamics, as are the fenders. But the headlamps, fog lights and exterior-mounted horns make for an interesting older-fashion decorative counterpoint.

Plymouth - 1939
The 1939 Plymouth's front end is in line with American Streamlined Moderne styling of that year. Note that the headlamps are buried in the front fenders and the grille in in the process of transitioning from a vertical to a horizontal shape. The mascot is a streamlined version of the good ship Mayflower that deposited the Pilgrim Fathers and their families at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts in 1620; Plymouth used similar mascot designs for many years. The most decorative bits are the thin chromed strips that define the grille openings -- flutings, speed lines and similar touches being the height of fashion in those days.

Same Basics, Different Looks: Sonata and Optima

As I've probably noted before, automobile makers can reduce expenses by having different brands share important components such as motors and the basic body shell. This has been done in many places for many years. Sometimes the strategy has been effective and sometimes not. Certain British makes during the 1960s were noted for their "badge engineering" (differentiating brands through small changes in exterior trim) as did Chrysler's brands from the 1970s on. A low point was encapsulated in Fortune magazine's 22 August 1963 cover showing identically painted cars from four different General Motors brands positioned so that they looked essentially the same. Implicit was a contrast from the days when GM brands had distinctive appearances even when sharing major body components.

Avoiding this problem costs money in the form of having differently shaped sheet metal for different brands using the same underlying components. I could cite a number of good examples, but for this post I'll use the current Hyundai Sonata and Kia Optima models. At first glance, they look entirely different. But statistics show they share the same basic dimensions -- wheelbase length, for example. And close inspection of the shapes of doorposts, cut lines and other body essentials confirms underlying commonality.

Let's take a look.

Sonata front 3/4 view

Optima front 3/4 view
Note the shape of the windshields (the black parts behind the glass, not the exterior metal shapes), and the shape and locations of the front and center roof pillars. Also look at the cut lines of the doors in relation to other features such as the front wheel well openings.

Sonata rear 3/4 view

Optima rear 3/4 view
These views offer a different perspective regarding the same features just mentioned, especially the cut lines and pillars.

Which car's styling do I like better? I find the Sonata more dramatic, but the sweeping side creases seem a little awkward as they wrap around the rear of the car. I marginally prefer the Optima. In particular, I like the way Peter Schreyer's "Tiger Nose" grille shape is echoed along the top of the windshield.

Concept Cars: Forward to the Past

Back in the 1950s, 1960s and even through the 1980s American car makers created show cars that supposedly pointed to new directions in automobile style. One popular term for such a "concept car" (a term used a lot nowadays) was "car of the future."

But things changed for a while around 2000. Several concept cars appeared that were Retro, pointing to the past rather than the future. Those show cars weren't strictly old-fashioned; rather, they were modern aside from styling cues borrowed from designs from decades earlier.

Why did this happen? In part, Retro was fashionable -- in production were such designs as the Volkswagen New Beetle and the Audi TT sports car. Soon to appear were a Ford Thunderbird with styling cues based on the 1956 T-bird and the Chrysler PT Cruiser that hearkened to hot rods based on mid-1930s sedans.

Another factor might have been that the US auto industry was doing well enough that companies could afford to create a few show cars that diverged from the usual practice of presenting features planned or considered for production in the next few years.

Here are some of those Retro cars of the future:

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Chrysler Atlantic - 1995

Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantique
Only three Atlantiques were ever built, but the design is considered by many as one of the high points of Bugatti style. The Chrysler version pulls the body elements into a more integrated package, the strongest holdover from the 57SC being the shape of the side windows. The overall effect strikes me as being aggressively fussy, but nevertheless likeable.

Chrysler Chronos - 1998

Chrysler D'Elegance - 1953
The Chronos is inspired by early 1950s Chrysler show cars designed by Virgil Exner. It comes closest to the D'Elegance: note the grille, the side window cutout pattern and the treatment of the rear fender and its extension forward along the side. The D'Elegance also served as inspiration for the Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia sporty car produced from the late 1950s into the 1970s. A significant difference for the Chronos is that it's a 4-door sedan rather than a 2-door coupe.

Ford Forty Nine - 2001

Ford - 1949
I'm not sure what J Mays and his styling crew were thinking when they came up with the Forty Nine. That is, it's not clear to me if they had some sort of future production model in mind at the time; if they did, nothing seems to have come of it. The Forty Nine is rather bland, but so was the 1949 Ford. If I were in charge of the Forty Nine project, I would have insisted on putting a 1949-style spinner on the front, because that's what defines the original in my mind.

Buick Blackhawk - 2001

Buick Century - 1939
From what I read, GM styling supremo Harley Earl was disappointed in some of the visually weak grilles appearing on GM cars at the end of the 1930s. Surely the 1939 Buick front end was one of the weakest. So I'm wondering why the Blackhawk styling team selected that grille for their concept car. My best guess is that they thought it blended well with the body shaping. And they were probably right, though the addition of a front bumper would likely have diminished the grille's visual strength.

Back in Time: Saab 96 Series to the Ur-Saab

Not long ago Saab, the Swedish automobile firm (not to be confused with Saab, the aircraft manufacturer, though they once were one and the same) expired. I suppose there might still be a movement afoot to resurrect the corpse, but that would be a triumph of nostalgia over business reality.

I never seriously considered buying a Saab, though I never disliked the brand. The problem was that whenever I was in car-buying mode, whatever Saab was offering at the time was out of synch with my needs or financial resources. In recent decades, the problem was price. Thirty or 40 years ago, I didn't like the styling (take that!, model 99). In the late 1960s it was my concerns about the reliability of front-wheel-drive. Before that, it had to do with the fact that Saabs were powered by a two-stroke motor that required adding oil with every gasoline full-up.

Wikipedia has comprehensive coverage of Saab. Here is their introductory entry which devotes considerable space to the company's final crises. Below are links to entries about the Saab models in the photos.

The present post deals with the first generation of Saabs that were small and featured perhaps the most aerodynamic styling of their day. The photos begin with the final version of that series and work back to what some observers call the "Ur-Saab" -- the prototype Saab automobile. (The term Ur-this or Ur-that is a Germanic locution linking the name of Ur, supposedly the earliest city in the world, to class of something with a history. The Ur-whatever would be the very first known example.)

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Saab 96 - 1960-80
The Saab 96 was the last of the early Saabs that featured teardrop streamlining. A useful improvement over previous 9x Saabs is the wraparound rear window. The final 96s got a four-stroke motor, eliminating the need for continually adding oil.

Saab 93 - 1955-60
The first Saab that came to the serious attention of American buyers was the Saab 93, shown here. When Saab began exporting cars to the USA, they were only marketed in the northeastern states where severe winters and hilly roads in northern New England and Upstate New York made front-wheel-drive a desirable feature.

Saab 92 - 1949-56
The Saab 92 was the initial production model. Front end styling is a little different from the prototype. The production motor generated 25 horsepower, but the streamlined body allowed model 92s to reach 65 miles per hour (around 100 km/h) -- or so it is said. Note the size of the rear window in the 92 and and compare it to that of the prototype below.

Prototype Saab 92 (1947) - as seen in museum
The Wikipedia entry on the prototype Saab is here.

Prototype Saab 92 (1947) - showing front

Prototype Saab 92 (1947) - showing interior

Prototype Saab 92 (1947) - showing rear

Phantom Corsair prototype - 1938
The Phantom Corsair (Wikipedia entry here) was a prototype ultra-streamlined luxury car by millionaire Rust Heinz of the 57 Varieties Heinz clan. Sadly, Heinz died in a car accident in 1939, so any prospect of a production Phantom Corsair vanished with him.

I include this photo so that you can compare its styling (on a long Cord platform) with the Ur-Saab's rear styling on a much shorter platform. The little Saab's styling was extremely elegant in an era when streamlining created an awkward appearance. (See this recent post for examples.)

Colors Affect Automobile Styling

Many people choose white as the color for their automobile. Some simply prefer it for its own sake. Others who live in hot climates select white because it reflects the sun's rays and reduces the expense of operating the air conditioner.

But the way I see it, there's a major problem with white cars: it kills one's perception of the shapes of an automobile's surfaces.

To Illustrate my contention, let's take a look at some Mercedes Benz E350s.

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As you can see, darker colors show highlights that help visually define the metal sculpting that has become increasingly elaborate in recent years. Surrounding objects are also reflected much more strongly, which some people might find objectionable. Perhaps that's why silver is a popular color: it reflects sunlight while making the sculpting more visible than does white paint.

Upside-Down Bathtub Car Styling

For most of the 1930s and into the early 1940s automobile stylists assumed that the car of the future would feature teardrop streamlining.

It turns out that Harley Earl, General Motors' styling supremo from the late 1920s to the late 1950s, decided that the teardrop motif wouldn't do for his restyled 1948 and 1949 models. And in those days, GM styling ruled because the corporation claimed half the U.S. car market.

Due to either ignorance of Earl's plans or stubbornness, a few car makers went ahead with teardrop-inspired designs featuring "fastback" upper styling and fenders flush to the car's body and extending from headlamp to taillight. Some European car companies did the same thing.

Earl's styling judgment eventually failed him starting with the 1957 model year Buicks and Oldsmobiles. But he was on target in the late 1940s, deciding that teardrop styling resulted in cars with a distinctly bloated, awkward appearance; his 1948 and 1949 restyled lines were much more graceful and sold well. Competing lines that opted for the teardrop approach tended to look like bathtubs turned upside-down.

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Packard - 1948
The 1948 Packard was a major facelift of a fine 1942-vintage design. The most visible change was replacing distinct front and rear fenders with an awkward single fender bulge extending the length of the body. Sales were good the first year, but rapidly deteriorated thereafter.

Hudson - 1948
Hudson's postwar restyling was probably the most successful of the examples pictured here. That was partly because the cars really were low and partly because the crease along the side of the fender helped further lower the car's appearance.

Lincoln Cosmopolitan - 1949
The 1949 Lincolns used two different bodies. The one shown at the top of this advertisement was shared with Mercury. Its fender line stepped down from front to rear and counteracted the potential side bulk common to most cars of that period. The other car was the Cosmopolitan which had a larger, Lincoln-only body. Most Cosmos featured a "bustle back" style where the top stepped down to a distinct trunk at the rear. But for 1949 some Cosmos featured a "fastback" rear roofline in the teardrop fashion, and that's what's shown at the bottom. Fastback Cosmos sold poorly and the variant was scrapped.

Nash Airflyte - 1949-50
To me, the Nash was the archetypical upside-down bathtub design. Besides the heavy, rounded top, wheel openings were minimal and that made the sides look more ponderous than they otherwise might have been. But covered wheel wells were what streamlining was all about back around 1945 when the design was being worked up.

Ford (France) Vedette - 1952
The fenderline of the Vedette is a scaled down version of what is seen on the upper Lincoln in the ad shown above. But some Vedettes had a fastback roofline yielding the awkward appearance seen here.

Borgward Hansa 2400 Sport - 1952-59
Yet another bathtub design, though its heaviness is mitigated a bit thanks to the large windows.

Standard Vanguard - 1952
The British were capable of making some attractive large sedans in the postwar years, but their small ones tended to be unfortunate designs. The Standard Vanguard shown here was truly an awkward, ugly little beast thanks to its short length combined with its roofline and fender styling. I never saw Vedettes or Hansas when I was young, but some Vanguards were sold in Canada and I viewed them in all their ugliness when visiting Vancouver.

Multi-Colored Cars

For quite a few years now, the typical new car comes painted in a single color. But from the 1920s through the 1950s and even beyond, many cars came painted with two or more colors, two being the most common variety by far. They were called "two-tone paint jobs" back in those days.

The purpose of using more than one color to paint a car is purely aesthetic, even cosmetic. Color choices might make a car appear a little taller or shorter or even longer, depending upon where the colors were applied. Or features such as fenders or aspects of body shape might be highlighted.

Why did two-toning fall out of favor. I don't know for sure, but offer two reasons that make sense to me. One reason had to do with a reaction by American automobile stylists against the excesses of the late 1950s when tail fins sprouted and three-tone paint jobs appeared. In the 1960s car design became more restrained and single-tone paint helped reinforce the new seriousness.

Another reason, more appropriate to the 1970s and later, was related to the movement to improve efficiency and lower the cost of building cars. In the 1950s, for example, car makers offered many options that a buyer could select or reject -- radio, air conditioning, type of transmission, powered versus hand-crank windows, bumper guards, and many more including choice of paint from a list of currently available colors. The number of such options reached the point that the number of possible combinations became astronomically large. Potentially each car on the assembly line would differ in some way from all the others. This was abetted by the fact that many buyers ordered a car with the exact set of options they wanted rather than accepting a car available on the dealer's lot.

A practical result of all this customization was a decrease in quality because workers had to vary their tasks according to the whims on a car's options tag. And it was difficult to make sure that required parts were available when needed.

By the 1980s American manufacturers were following the Japanese practice of offering a limited selection of options packages. One result was that a buyer usually couldn't get his exact set of desired options when selecting a car. Another was that manufacturers could build vehicles more efficiently with better quality results.

By eliminating two-tone color schemes, car companies greatly reduced the number of combinations moving along assembly lines. Consider: Assume four accessory packages and ten available colors -- that's 40 combinations. Adding an unlimited selection of two colors from the list would result in hundreds of combinations.

That said, let's harken back to the days when multicolor cars were common and take a look:

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1954 Pontiac

1947 Buick
These are examples of two-toning during its post- World War 2 heyday. The Buick has its top's color extending down a raised section of the hood. The Pontiac's top color does not cover the upper part of the doors, though Chryslers of that vintage had the top color extending down to a chrome strip mounted just below the bottoms of the side windows.

1956 Dodge

1956 Packard Caribbean
Here we have three-tone paint jobs. Actually, these were more limited than one might think; typically the colors were black, an off-white and a bright color of some kind. This prevented ugly color clashes that might make a company's cars look ridiculous and it simplified manufacturing. The Packard shown here is painted white along with two other colors. Most Packard Caribbeans of the 1955 and 1956 models years were like the Dodge, using black, a white and something else.

1933 Studebaker
In the 1920s and early 30s two-tone applications were similar to that of the Studebaker shown here, fenders having a different color than the body -- though the top of the body often shared the accent color of the fenders..

1929 Ruxton

1930 Ruxton
Here are two Ruxton survivors from the 300 or so ever built. These have multi-tone paint jobs, the colors selected and patterns designed by the prolific, highly talented Joseph Urban. The car at the top is in the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum, and seems to sport at least four colors. The one below is in the Blackhawk Museum in the San Francisco Bay area and I count six colors on it.

1925 Citroën B12
Finally we have a Citroën with a color scheme by modernist designer Sonia Delaunay. The only photo I can find is in black and white, so I don't know how many colors were used -- at least four or five -- or what they were.