A few years ago I
wrote about what I titled "1941: Harley Earl's Very Good Year". My leading thoughts were: "I am not alone when I claim that the 1941 model year was the best for General Motors' styling chief Harley Earl, though I think 1949 comes close. Several designs were outstanding and the others were very good -- all this in the context of their times."
To take this further, I think the best designs were for
Cadillac. And those 1941 Cadillacs were the best styled Cadillacs of all time, though I also like the 1954 line a lot along with the 1967 Eldorado.
Setting aside convertibles, the sportiest looking '41 Cadillac was the 61 Series Five-Passenger Coupe, a two-door fastback design. The present post features walkaround views of one of those cars via the
Hyman, Ltd. consignment sales company.
Let's take a look.
Gallery
In addition, here is a view of the instrument panel/dashboard area.
Hyman didn't offer a side view, so here is one via Mecum auctions.
Most of the time for several decades GM had two or three basic bodies, all with a lot of matching dimensions. One for Chevies and Pontiacs and one for Cadillacs, with Oldsmobiles and Buicks using the Cadillac one for upper lines and and intermediate sized one for the cheaper ones. They were referred to by different letters I'm not gonna take the time to look up. Things got kind of complicated in the immediate postwar years, with Cadillac and others getting a postwar style body in 1948 for most lines while Chevy continued with a version of the prewar one. One way to tell which body is which is by the windshield and maybe the rest of the greenhouse.
ReplyDeleteBut meanwhile, isn't the postwar Chevy Fleetline aerosedan pretty much the same thing as this Cadillac? The windows all look the same. The Cadillac stretches out longer in back and front. The Chevy even has its own version of the chrome speedlines. So really one body for everything? (Chevy didn't offer a fastback in '41-42.
This Cadillac is the most postwarish of prewar Cadillacs, but it's really still a streamlined 1930's car. Another cool '41 is the Fleetwood 60 Special, in a totally different way. Besides everything else it had skinny chrome window frames like a 1960's car which went away after that. Wouldn't want to have to pilot one of these things before Chrysler invented power steering in 1951 though.
(I just did some quick Google Images and oldcarbrochures.com research.)
This period of GM clearly requires more investigation. Maybe previously done here.