1955 Packard 400 Hardtop Coupe Walkaround

Packards were restyled for model year 1951, allowing "pillarless" hardtop coupes to be added to the line.   Through model year 1954 they were based on Packard's shorter 122-inch (3099 mm) wheelbase.   For 1955, the Packard line was massively facelifted.  Clipper hardtops retained that wheelbase, but a hardtop line was added to the longer, 127-inch (3226 mm) wheelbase used on the more luxurious Cavalier and Patrician 4-door sedans.

Those longer hardtops were called Packard 400s (Wikipedia entry here).  This might have been somewhat confusing because, for model years 1951-52, the label 400 was applied only to Packard's top-of-the-line sedan, not to hardtops.

Those 1955 400 hardtop coupes were impressive cars.  So is the set of images below of a '55 Packard 400 hardtop coupe listed for sale.  They were found on Hemmings web site.

Gallery

1953 Packard Mayfair - car-for-sale photo
An earlier hardtop coupe based on the shorter wheelbase.  The design below was a massive facelift.

1955 Packard 400 photo set
In order to keep up with American car styling fashions, the main structural difference was the panoramic (wraparound) windshield.  The front end was restyled with a less-massive grille.  The rear fender has a more squared-off leading edge.  Plus the wide, ribbed chrome swath from the front wheel opening to the rear fender.  Result: a new personality for Packard.

The rear fender is pretty massive, but that chrome swath and two-tone paint scheme distracts the eye from it.

Taillight housings were called "cathedral" by some observers.  A better solution than seen on 1951-54 senior Packards.

The shapely trunk lid was retained.

Fenestration is conventional early 1950s American.  Unchanged from previous Packards: looks good.

A handsome design by styling director Dick Teague who later led American Motors' styling.

The upper side chrome strip blends into the upper grille frame.  Headlights assemblies also relate to that.  Very professional touches.

Headlight housings also have that cathedral touch.  The upper grille frame and hood sculpting are modernized versions of traditional Packard themes.

Dashboard / instrument panel.  I find this the least-successful feature.  The brightwork looks like it could cause annoying light reflections.  That V or checkmark at the right helps fill space, but seems silly.  I would have simply extended the lower frame from the center to the right edge.  And used a different, non-reflecting material.

1961 Dodge Dart Seneca Sedan Walkaround

My post "Dodge's Odd 1961 Facelift" featured hardtop coupes.  Now I'm following up with a walkaround of a 1961 Dodge Dart Seneca sedan.  I selected this base-model Dart because it has almost no ornamentation.  That lets us see the basic body shaping better.

In the post linked above, I noted:

"It seems that Chrysler Corporation's sales were not going well.  The highly successful 1957 line with its prominent tailfin theme was becoming stale in the eyes of potential buyers.  The corporation's 1960 line was based on unit-body construction, replacing traditional body-on-frame assembly.  This made drastic facelifting more difficult and costly than before."

The facelift involved the front end (hood, front fenders, gille, headlight assemblies, etc.) and rear (revised tailfins, trunk lid, etc.).  The passenger compartment zone was essentially untouched, as it was most affected by expensive-to-retool unit body construction.

The basic body was shared with various Chrysler models, and an example is provided below.

Gallery

1962 Chrysler Newport - Mecum Auctions photo
Model year 1962 saw the disappearance of tailfins on most Chrysler Corporation cars.  This image shows the basic body's design essentially at its best for 4-door sedans following the cleanup of the styling shown in the walkaround below.

1961 Dodge Dart Seneca - car-for-sale photo set.
Yes, that paint color (or something close to it) was available for Dodges in 1961.  As I mentioned in the post linked above, "But that taut, hood / front fender shaping for 1960 was reduced to a flabby frontal theme for '61.  The front fender line is soft, having no character.  The concave grille also lacks character, though 1962 Plymouths featured similar shaping.  Those little horizontal slots along the upper and lower framing of the Dodge grille might be echoes of similar shapes on early 1950s Dodge grilles -- though that link's probably way too subtle for most folks, I suspect."

1961 was still a tailfin model year for Chrysler Corporation.  In the previous post, I noted: "Besides the flabby front end, we find that the tailfin profile has been reversed, the high point being forward instead of aft.  That reduces the fin's prominence.  But now the fin seems odd because it has no aerodynamic stability functionality.  It's simply an odd shape."

The trunk lid folds under in conjunction with the after ends of the tailfins.

Tail lights are set low, squeezed between the fold mentioned above and the bumper.

Side from the end pieces, the rear bumper doesn't seem to offer much protection for the sheet metal.

In summary, the front end seems too soft and the fin seems unnecessary.

A better view of those slots that remind me of early-1950s Dodge grilles.

A visually busy dashboard.  Egonomically, there seems to be too many similar buttons and dials placed too closely together. 

1949 Small Lincoln in Context

For model years 1949-1951 Ford Motor Company's Lincoln brand featured two separate body platforms. Topping the Lincoln line was the Cosmopolitan series that I wrote about here.  The lesser Lincoln, which had no modifying name, shared the body of Ford's mid-range Mercury brand.  It's the subject of today's post, and its Wikipedia entry is here.

For model years 1949 and 1951, the smaller Lincoln slightly out-sold the Cosmopolitans.  And for 1950, their sales advantage was larger.  Cosmopolitans had comparatively strong sales despite being priced around 20 percent more than the basic Lincolns.  That suggests that those basic, EL-type Lincolns might have been perceived as being simply fancy Mercurys -- which to some degree they were.  Or as an inexpensive means of buying a real Lincoln -- also likely true.

There are far more online images of Cosmopolitans than small Lincolns, another reflection of how the latter were perceived: few have been preserved.  But I found enough photos for the Gallery below.

Unless noted, images below are of for-sale cars.

Gallery

1949 Lincoln
Introductory view.  All images here are of four-door sedans for comparative purposes.

1949 Lincoln
Side view.  Compare to the Mercury image below.

1949 Mercury
Seen from the side, Mercurys and small Lincolns are nearly identical.  The most visible difference is the placement of the long chrome strip.  

1949 Lincoln
Rear-quarter view.  Compare to the Lincoln Cosmopolitan image below.

1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan
Although bodies are different, both Lincoln types shared the same taillight and trunk handle designs.

1949 Lincoln - factory photo
Comparing front end designs ...

1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan - factory photo
Despite the different bodies, frontal designs appear to be identical.

1950 Lincoln
Mercurys and small Lincolns had rear ends facelifted for 1951
in the same manner.  Here are comparative images.

1951 Lincoln
The backlight window is enlarged and reshaped.  Rear fenders are lengthened to provide more of a "squared-off" side profile, anticipating the boxy 1952 redesign.

1951 Mercury Coupe
Not a 4-door sedan, but it's the aft end treatment that matters.  The bumpers differ, but the placement of other features such as the trunk lid latch and tail light assemblies are the same, saving Ford some tooling costs.

1962 Plymouth's Evolution

The focus here is how the controversial styling of the redesigned standard size Plymouth was facelifted in more conventional directions over that body's 1962-1965 model year run.

Some background on the 1962 Plymouth's design is here in my post "1962 Plymouth Walkaround and Overheads."  And I wrote about "Plymouth's Emergency 1963 Facelist" here.

In short, the 1962 Plymouth was given smaller proportions than its earlier styling theme models, so the result was a less-attractive version of a styling theme that itself was somewhat at odds with new, early 1960s styling on General Motors and Ford Motor Company cars.  A further result was fewer sales than anticipated.

As mentioned in the second link above, Elwood Engel was brought to Chrysler as a replacement for Virgil Exner.  And there was a crash facelift project intended to make the '62 design more conventional looking.   That effort was limited by the basic 1962 body dimensions.  Yet the facelift had to be the basis for standard size Plymouths until the scheduled redesign for the 1966 model year.

The present post shows Plymouth styling features over that four-year (1962-1965) period.

Images below are of cars listed for sale unless noted otherwise.

Gallery

1962 Plymouth Savoy
The redesigned 1962 starting point.

1963 Plymouth Belvedere - BaT Auctions photo
A two-door sedan sporting the major initial facelift.  See the link cited above for details.

1964 Plymouth Savoy
The following model year saw a restyled grille and slightly extended front fenders..

1965 Plymouth Belvedere
For '65 the grille was again new.  Front fenders got reshaped again

1962 Plymouth Fury
The initial rear end design -- this time featuring four-door sedans.

1963 Plymouth Belvedere
The facelift result.  Changes for 1964 and '65 were minor here.

1963 Plymouth Fury
Now for side views of hardtops.  The window profile is the same as shown above for the 2-door sedans.

1964 Plymouth Belvedere
But for 1964, the roof was redesigned, notably with respect to the C-pillar that's narrower at the bottom than at its top.  1965 models looked essentially the same.  The 1966 redesign retained the hardtop's greenhouse theme, though with different proportions.

Alvis Airline Sports Saloon by Bertelli

RM Sotheby's 2025 Monterey auction offerings included the Alvis "Airline" Sports Saloon pictured in the Gallery below.  Its web page featuring that car is here, mentioning:

"Car number 18039 was prepared by the Alvis works as a 3 1/2 Litre show chassis, and in that form appeared at the Paris Motor Show, sans coachwork, in October 1935, then the following month at the Scottish Motor Show.  After these appearances, the chassis was purchased by Henken Widengren, a Swedish racing driver...

"Mr. Widengren commissioned the latest, most modern coachwork for his automobile, produced by Bertelli of Feltham, Middlesex, the small coachbuilding firm operated by Enrico “Harry” Bertelli, brother of the owner of Aston Martin.  Only five Alvis cars were bodied by Bertelli, and the 18039 was the sole 4.3 Litre—Widengren having had the chassis raised to the latest specification while his car was being completed."

So the car was technically not a production 4.3 Litre car, nor a 1936 4.3 Litre, as the Sotheby's headline indicated: the production 4.3s were technically 1937-1940 models.  Though the chassis was bodied in 1936, and an early, 1936-built 4.3 engine seems to have been used.

That said, what matters here is the design.

The book "A-Z British Coachbuilders: 1919-1960," (here), describes the Bertelli firm as follows:

"Enrico 'Harry') Bertelli was the brother of Augustus Cesare ('Gus') Bertelli of Aston Martin fame.  After Gus had taken over the the running of the firm he brought in his brother to supervise the body-building side at Feltham, and indeed to act as body designer.  In 1929 Harry started E Bertelli as a separate coachwork business, on the same site, incorporating it as E Bertelli Ltd a year later.  In this form he was permitted to body other chassis, although in the firm's ten year life probably only a couple of dozen such chassis were involved.  They included some Alvises (four or five in total), two six-cylinder Rileys, two MGs, two Lagonda Rapiers, a Type 57 Bugatti, a 3 1/2-litre Bentley and an Amilcar racer." Along with some others.

Photos below are via RM Sotheby's.

Gallery

I've mentioned many times that the 1930s English "Airline" style bodies probably contributed little in terms of improved aerodynamic efficiency.  That was because the cars' front ends remained aerodynamically "dirty."   Setting that aside, Airline saloons and coupés based on long-wheelbase chassis could be very attractive cars.  I wrote about an outstanding Rolls-Royce based example here.

That assessment includes the Alvis featured here.

Unlike some '30s "streamlined" cars, the backlight window is placed low enough for the driver to have some useful vision to the rear.

Although the roofline tapers in profile, the passenger compartment and trunk (boot) do not taper in plan view.  Which they should, for a touch more aerodynamic efficiency.

The "teardrop" theme seen on the fender profiles is partly echoed by the roof profile abaft of the B-pillar.  Also regarding the B-pillar, as was the case for many Airline designs, the beltline is horizontal forward of the pillar, then curves downwards abaft of it.

All things considered, a very attractive design for its time.

All that frontal clutter is what prevented true aerodynamic efficiency.  Incidentally, that car has a front bumper, but none at the rear.

1952 Kaiser Manhattan Club Coupe - Brief Walkaround

Kaisers (Wikipedia entry here) were redesigned only once, for the 1951 model year.  I wrote about the 1951 Kaiser redesign here.

Previous Kaisers were all 4-door models.  But the redesign included 2-door models, a sedan and two coupes.  These accounted for about 17 percent of 1951 standard-size Kaiser sales and around 10 percent of 1952 Kaiser sales.  So they are pretty rare cars.

Images below of a 1952 Kaiser Manhattan Club Coupe (263 built) are via Bring a Trailer Auctions.

Gallery

Kaiser's 1952 facelift included an improved grille design and larger taillight assemblies.

The passenger compartment greenhouse is shorter that that for 4-door sedans.

Four-door sedan greenhouses extended to the trunk hinges.

A fine early 1950s design.  Feminine.

Greenhouses were proportionately tall for that era.