With all the emphasis on a car's frontal styling, the appearance of its opposite end was neglected in the USA for the most part until the late 1940s and early '50s when tail light designs became more distinctive and badges with crests and other brand identification ornamentation grew more prominent. Since then, rear end styling has become increasingly more elaborate.
Given how long the process of adding interest to cars' rears has been going on, I suspect that few readers of this blog were car-conscious or even alive in the days before this transformation began. So as a public service, below are images of rear ends of many American brands for model year 1936. Missing are LaSalle, Lincoln-Zephyr and minor brands such as Cord, Hupp and Willys.
Photo captions are sparse because there is little to say. Unless mentioned, the photos are of cars advertised for sale. First are General Motors cars, then Chrysler Corporation, followed by Ford and independent brands.
Towards 1940, some Pontiac sedans had Silver Streaks on trunk lids as well as on hoods.
Behold a highly-decorated '36 rear design.
The brand medallion is clearly visible here.
Cadillac's medallion is tiny (discrete?).
Note chrome strip extensions to the trunk hinges.
Same treatment on this Chrysler.
Cars without bulged trunks often had the spare tire at the rear.
Packard symbolism here is the red hexagon on the rack framing.
When I was a kid there were still a certain number of 30's humpback cars around. I was always perplexed about that tumor on the rear. Why? Much later I realized that there were non-trunk models, and the basic shape was an evolution of a carriage, and the tumor was an integrated version of the steamer trunk strapped on the back.
ReplyDeleteThe awful (but eventually influential) BMW 7 series rear end was a sort of a throwback to these, only they look like the trunk lid from a different car was grafted on. BMW sort of fixed it as soon as they could.
Recently, inspired by seeing prewar cars in all those British series, I've realized how very artful a lot of 30's designs actually are on their own terms. That BMW will never achieve artfulness.
It's interesting that none of the designers of these cars had figured out that a tail light didn't have to be a round thing on a stalk. 1938 Fords had a teardrop tail light right on the fender, and Zephyrs had a vertical capsule shape on the fender though. I guess those were some of the first. By 1940 Fords had a chevron shape tail light. More of the beginning of identity from the rear view.
ReplyDelete