Cute Neon

Chrysler produced a cute compact (in American terms) called the Neon over model years 1995-2005 with a body revision in model year 2000.  This is related by Wikipedia here.

Neons were a prime example of "badge engineering" whereby an automobile is marketed under two (or more) brand names with minimal differences.  In the Neon's case, those brands were Plymouth and Dodge in the USA, and overseas Neons were sold as Chryslers.  Basic first-generation Plymouth and Dodge Neons differed externally mostly via brand badges, though they also might have had different hub caps and other minor non- brand related items here and there.

Styling was of its time, featuring increased aerodynamic refinement compared to boxy Chrysler Corporation K cars that were marketed from the early 1980s into the 1995 model year.  Passenger compartment greenhouses were large and the rest of the bodies were comparatively short, features also in line with styling fashion in those days.  Ornamentation was minimal, this too a current practice.

The detail that made Neons seem "cute" and helped their marketplace success was the shape of their headlights and the smile-like effect of the lower air intake.  The story goes that Chrysler bean-counters objected to the headlight design on the basis of cost, wanting cheaper round ones.  This would have made Neons less distinctive and probably would have lessened sales.  Fortunately, the financial folks were overruled and Neons sold well, especially during the first model years.

The images below have captions based on what I found on the Internet: in many cases it's hard to tell if a Neon is a Plymouth or a Dodge when looking at a small photo.  Even the model years posted are problematical, though the Plymouth brand was dropped during 2001, so all USA Neons thereafter were Dodges.

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This is said to be a 1996 Plymouth Neon ...

... and this a 1996 Dodge Neon.  Two-door Neons such as this were produced only during the first generation.

1998 Dodge Neon showing rear-end styling.  First-generation Neons' front and rear bumpers and side trim had rub-strips at the same level, helping to integrate the design.

2001 Dodge Neon.  The general effect is quite similar to that of the first-generation design despite many detail differences.  The set of rub-strips mentioned in the previous caption is gone so far as bumper relationships are concerned.  The side strip has been joined by a character line above the door handles.  Headlights are a slightly different shape, but retain the "cute" theme of those on earlier Neons.

Rear 3/4 view of a 2003 Neon.  Different from before, but not seriously different.

Dodge Neon from late in the production run.  Its grille has been facelifted to incorporate Dodge's cross or "gunsight" theme that remains in place today.

Edsel's Three Model Years

Seated in the newly introduced 1958 Edsel are Benson Ford, William Clay Ford and Henry Ford II, the sons of Henry Ford's son Edsel, for whom the brand was named.  It became a famous marketing disaster for Ford Motor Company.

American automobile branding was far more structured from the late 1920s into the 1960s than it is today.  Almost all cars were based on what are now called "platforms" of fairly similar size.  For example, all Fords shared the same platform, the variation being amongst 4-door sedans and hardtops, 2-door coupes/sedans and hardtops, convertibles, and station wagons.  Nowadays, a single brand might market standard-size 4-door sedans, coupes and station wagons, compact sedans, compact coupes and hatchbacks, minivans, and crossover SUVs.

Today's proliferation of brand platforms leads to dilution of price/prestige hierarchies.  For example, aside from Minis, BMW cars range from moderate-price small cars to luxury sedans and high-performance sports cars.  But during that 1920s-60s period in America, brands were hierarchical in terms of price/prestige with some overlapping.

In 1955 Ford Motor Company marketed only three brands: Ford, Mercury and Lincoln (listed from low to high hierarchically).  Chrysler Corporation, smaller than Ford, had Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler and Imperial.  Dominant General Motors brands were Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac.  So Ford management decided to add another brand to their portfolio to help cover the then fast-growing mid-price field.

That brand became Edsel.  I won't go into all the reasons why the Edsel failed so quickly: some of that is mentioned here and here.  An even deeper analysis can be found in Thomas Bonsall's book "Disaster in Dearborn" that includes Ford management infighting as a factor.

For the purposes of this post, I will cite three considerations.  First, Edsel's target mid-price market suddenly hit the skids thanks to a recession that began around the time Edsels were introduced to the public.

Second, Edsels did not form a part of a coherent brand hierarchy.  Edsel and Mercury pricing for 1958 overlapped almost completely, if Mercury's top-of-the-line Park Lane models are ignored.  Thus the justification for adding a new brand to For's lineup was defeated.

Third, Edsel styling was controversial, particularly its vertical central grille element.  This was contrary to the current fashion for horizontal grille orientations.  The reasoning for the Edsel design was that the cars should be so visually distinctive that they could easily be identified at a distance.  (I should note that the Studebaker Hawk model, introduced for 1956, featured a square grille format that the public seemed to find acceptable.  However, Edsel's narrow version was too extreme and invited derision.)

Apparently Edsel management quickly realized that the grille theme had backfired.  So the grille design for 1959 was a subdued version of the original requiring minimal body retooling investment.

Edsel staggered into the 1960 model year being based on Ford bodies (as shown below, early Edsels made use of both Ford and Mercury bodies).  Production lasted only about two months before the brand was killed.

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Edsel Corsair 2-door hardtop for 1958, RM Sotheby's photo.  The top Edsel models, Corsair and Citation, used Mercury bodies.

This is a "for sale" 1958 Mercury Monterey Phaeton Coupe using the same basic body as the Edsel in the previous image.

Edsel Pacer 4-door hardtop; Pacer and Ranger models used Ford bodies.

"For sale" photo of a 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 2-door hardtop.

Rear view of 1958 Edsel Corsair featuring a three-tone paint scheme.

For 1959, the vertical element of Edsel's grille design was made less distinctive.  This was accomplished by dropping the headlights into the grille ensemble and adding horizontal bars to the vertical element to echo the horizontal bar theme of the main grille areas.

Edsel Corsair 2-door hardtop.  Tail lights were lowered from the horizontal fins to the vertical aft panel.  Side trim was restyled in various ways on all Edsels, considerably changing the brand's character here.

Rear view of a '59 Edsel Ranger in a Barrett-Jackson photo showing in better detail the tail light redesign.

Here is a 1960 Edsel Ranger offered for sale.  The grille suggests the now-iconic two-element Pontiac grille introduced for 1959 (except Pontiac abandoned the theme for 1960 and then ran with it again starting in 1961).

Rear view of the same car.  A nice touch is the vertical tail lights and backup lights that harken to the original Edsel grille theme.

A 1960 Ford whose body was used by Edsel, having dropped all connections with Mercury that model year.

"Impression" -- Chip Foose's Reimagined '37 Ford Roadster

For a reason I've never been able to explain, I've never been a hot rod or kustom kar fancier.  Somehow, I always thought that tangible, production-based cars should remain stock.  This excepts those expensive classic cars of yore by coachbuilding firms that worked from a bare chassis-plus-frontal-metalwork.  Ditto concept cars.

The present post deals with what at first might seen to be a 'rod with a kustom body.  But it's not.  It's the Impression, an essentially-built-from-scratch (as best I can tell) car with modern components having a body inspired by 1930s Fords.

The design-builder is Chip Foose, trained in industrial design at the famed Art Center in Pasadena.   His web site is here.

Impression, a commissioned car costing a huge amount of money, appeared in 2006 and won an important design contest, as reported in Autoweek here.  The article mentions:

"That car was the one everyone generally acknowledged would go home with the nine-foot-tall trophy for America’s Most Beautiful Roadster. That car, the Impression, was designed and built by Chip Foose and is owned by Ken Reister. Other owners quoted costs from $1.6 million to $2.2 million, depending on how much they wanted to emphasize the gap between their cars and Foose’s. Neither Reister nor Foose would say how much it cost, and who really keeps track once they hit seven figures, anyway? But Foose did say the car sports 4000 handcrafted pieces and was started six years ago. True, it sat for about three and a half years while Foose and company tended to other projects, but this one got a lot of attention. ...

"'There’s some ’34, ’36 and ’37,' Foose told us, as he set up the display around the Impression. 'I took my favorite cues from those and from 1930s Mercedes influences. Everything was as if you took a ’36 or ’37 Ford and modernized it—if you had a stock ’36 or ’37 next to it, you would see the resemblance.'"

Below are paired images of Foose's Impression and a rare, non-customized '37 Ford so that you can evaluate his work given that starting point.  Photos of the 1937 Ford DeLuxe Roadster are from RM Sotheby's auction web site.  Those of the Impression were taken by me at the Petersen Automotive Museum in the Spring of 2017. Click on any of them to enlarge.

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This is the museum's plaque.  It refers to Impression as being derived from a 1936 Ford design.

Here is a 1936 Ford.  Little of it is apparent on Foose's design.  Below are comparison photos of Impression and a 1937 Ford.

Front quarter views.  The Impression is lower and therefore visually longer.  The grille is raked back at a greater angle, plus there are no hood side vents.  Also missing are bumpers, this allowing Foose's sculpting to be better appreciated.

Impression's driving position is farther aft than on an actual '37 Ford.  This side view shows its hot rod design heritage in its notionally lowered chassis and the resulting awkward relationships of the wheels to the fender wheel openings.  I hate those chromed wheels that totally contrast with the otherwise clean design.  But (sigh) it's supposed to be a hot rod, so we just have to deal with it.

The real Ford has a rumble seat, a detail Foose probably wisely omitted.

1937 Fords were designed by Briggs, the company's body supplier.  According to Henry Dominguez (here, page 146), Edsel Ford told Briggs to use E.T. (Bob) Gregorie's Lincoln Zephyr frontal design features.  Both the Ford and the Impression have functional headlight components behind styled glass facings.

Mercury Park Lane 1958-1960: Redesign and Facelifts Were Improvements

The Park Lane was the top of the Mercury line over the 1958-1960 model years.  I'm guessing that the name refers to the street in London that runs along the east side of Hyde Park.  That would seem to be obscure to many potential American car buyers, as massive jet air travel across the Atlantic was just getting underway then.  Maybe all the other ritzy continental names had been grabbed by then.  Or perhaps Mercury marketers figured that the old breed of ocean liner passengers along with 8th Air Force and pre- D-Day troops stationed in England in 1944 knew all about the Grosvenor House and such and would create a usable buyer pool.  Whatever ... Park Lane it was.  Sales were in the 8 -13 thousand per year range, so it wasn't a massive success.

The Park Lane Wikipedia entry is here, though I have quibbles with its remarks about styling.

What I find most interesting about the 1958-60 Park Lanes is that while the 1959 redesign was better looking than the previous design, the 1960 facelift created the best design of all.  Quite often, facelifting degrades designs over time.

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1958 Mercury Park Lane four-door hardtop.  It was a stretched, facelifted and upgraded 1957 Mercury Montclair: not a fresh design.  Questionable styling features include the grille openings in the massive front bumper ensemble, the awkward side and roof trim, plus the contorted back window that remained on the Mercury Monterey line through 1960.

This rear view of a Park Lane up for sale shows the rear bumper echoing the front bumper theme.  The ray-gun decoration on the tail light + side sculpting is a classic example of late 1950s silly styling.

The 1959 restyling most substantial on the greenhouse.  The windshield is now doubly curved, wrapping into the roof.  A big improvement is the new, cleaner backlight design.

The grille-bumper group has been simplified and made more conventional.  Side trim was also simplified and better integrated.  Losing the two-tone strip abaft of the headlights was a major factor here.

The rear bumper was restyled, but retained its two-element theme.  Ray-guns on the sculpting now look more like walking sticks.  The dogleg in the backlight echoes the windshield wrap-over, a nice, subtle touch.

Now for a set of photos of a 1960 Mercury Park Lane for sale in France.  The 1959 greenhouse design is retained, but most of the body sheetmetal has been reworked.  This is pretty expensive for the final year of a body design.  The entire front is redesigned, headlights being moved to the grille from the fender tops.

Side sculpting was totally restyled in a simplified, tasteful manner.  Those five vertical chromed bars designate that this is a Park Lane: lesser Mercury Montclairs only got three.

Rear styling is also pleasingly handled, though the tiny-tail-fin-plus-taillight grouping seem a little too cramped.

Some Isotta Fraschinis by Touring

I wrote about 1930 vintage Castagna-bodied Isotta Fraschini cars here. There were many Internet images of them available from various auction houses, but I found few pictures taken when the cars were new.  The opposite is the case with this post dealing with Carrozzeria Touring bodies for Isotta in the same era.  I found several old photos, but no pictures of existing cars.

Perhaps this curiosity might be explained because Castagna did a lot of work on Isottas, whereas Touring seemed to favor Alfa Romeo and few or none of its Isotta Fraschinis survive.  My personal library has almost nothing dealing with Isotta Fraschini, so I hope readers can provide the needed information.

In the years around 1930, Isotta Fraschinis were powered by inline eight cylinder motors that required fairly long hoods.  However, hoods seen on these cars seem longer than necessary to house such engines.  Regardless, the proportions created by factory hoods made it easier for coachbuilders (who provided all Isotta bodies in those days) to create impressive designs.

Below are images of Isottas with Touring bodies.

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1927 Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8A Coupé.

1927(ca.) Isotta Fraschini Weymann Coupé.  The car in the top image also seems to have a wood-and-fabric Weymann type body.

1932 Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8B progetto "Tip-Top".

1932 Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8A SS Berlinetta.  This photo and the preceding one seem to be of the same car, though the captions derived from captions found on the Internet differ.

1932 Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8B Limousine

1935(ca.) Isotta Fraschini Limousine.

1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan

The original plan for the new post- World War 2 Lincoln is obscure to me.  What is known is that the proposed 1949 Ford was rejected by Ernest Breech, who Henry Ford II brought in to essentially run the Ford Motor Company.  The design was considered too large for its market segment, so the body tooling was used for the 1949 Mercury and an entry-level Lincoln.

The obscure part is what the original intention for Mercury was.  Apparently, it would share a body with Lincoln, rather than the case from the 1941 models onward where Mercury shared bodies with Ford.

Here is this photo of a model where the design is close to the eventual 1949 Mercury below the belt line, but with a heavy, fastback greenhouse.  Most likely, this dates after Breech ordered that Mercury get what had been the '49 Ford body.  So far, I've found no photos of full-scale clay models of earlier Mercury design proposals from around 1946 or '47.

In this book, Paul Woudenberg suggested that the original intent was for Mercury to have the bustleback version of the large Lincoln body, and Lincoln was to have a fastback version.   Somehow, this strikes me as being a questionable use of resources, given the postwar drift away from fastback acceptance in the marketplace.  Knowledgeable readers are urged to clarify all this.

In the end, only Lincoln got the large body -- in both fastback and notchback varieties.  This class of Lincolns was marketed as Lincoln Cosmopolitan.  And then there was a line of just plain Lincolns.  These were based on what was now the '49 Mercury body.  About 48 percent of '49 Lincolns were Cosmopolitans, but I haven't found what share of Cosmos were fastbacks.  Probably not a large percentage, because the fastback line was dropped for the 1950 model year.

Even though the numbers of '49 Lincolns and Cosmopolitans were almost the same, a glance at Google Images when searching on "1949 Lincoln" suggests that the majority of survivors in good condition are Cosmopolitans, including some fastbacks.  Something to do with prestige and rarity, I suspect: fancy rare cars eventually become more treasured.

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Here is a 1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan Sport Sedan, the 4-door sedan with a bustle back.

A full-size Lincoln styling model when the basic body shape had been determined.  Trim details were still in flux, though the grille is close to the production version.

This fastback model is interesting.  Just possibly it was made shortly before the one in the previous image.  It has hidden headlights, a feature planned for '49 Lincolns but rejected late in the design process.  Hubcaps show different Lincoln brand identification proposals.  But the grille features thin, vertical bars and has no upper chromed frame: these are features found on 1949 Mercurys.

Side view of a basic, Mercury-body Lincoln that was for sale.  This 1950 model is nearly identical to the 1949s.

A 1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan 6-Passenger Coupe.  Its profile is the same as the four-door Sport Sedan's, but its door is wider and window shapes differ accordingly.  Photo via Mecum.

Side view of a fastback 1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan Town Sedan.

Rounding out the Cosmo line was the 6-Passenger Convertible (Barrett-Jackson photo).

More views of the Cosmo Town Sedan.  Like many first-generation postwar designs it had a basic heavy appearance that the fastback styling exaggerated further.

Cosmopolitan Sport Sedan for auction by Barrett-Jackson.  The doors and side windows are same as on the fastback, but the bustle back style reduces visual bulk.  Backlight windows are three-piece affairs due to limitations in technology at the time.