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.

Railton: Hudsons with English Clothes

England's Railton (Wikipedia entry here) marketed cars 1933-1940.  It was a niche brand, producing 1,460 cars based on Hudson chassis' and eight or six cylinder motors with custom coachwork made in England.

The earlier eight-cylinder models were essentially upper-class hotrods with, at the time, plenty of horsepower (100, later 113) and comparatively light weight.  Which might justify the use of Reid Railton's name for the brand, Railton having designed land speed record-breaking cars.

I suppose those imported Hudson components were tariffed on top of transatlantic transportation expenses, though there was some compensation in that bodywork was farmed out to less-prestigeous, less-expensive coachbuilding firms.  Another expense for buyers was the horsepower tax.  The formula for Hudson motors having three-inch cylinder bore diameters was 18.8, meaning a very high tax rating.

As for the coachwork, Railtons were generally attractive in the British context of their time.  Based on photographic evidence, it appears that Railton furnished hoods and grilles, Rolls-Royce fashion, though it's also possible that coachbuilders were ordered to follow specifications for those parts.  It seems that Railton usually sought the cheapest bodies to offset Hudson-related expenses.

Below is a chronological sampling of Railton bodies.

Gallery

1934 Railton Drophead Coupe by Berkeley - HandH Auctions photo
Bentley-like mesh grille guard.  Forward louvers are intake, not outlet.  Cowling "scuttle" shape is peaked, echoing the the grille framing.

1935 Railton Straight Eight Light Sports - car-for-sale photo
Fenders do not extend down to the rear, making me wonder how useful they were outside racing events.  There are louvers along what appears to be chassis framing.  This might actually be related to the exhaust system, though a similar Railton's exhaust was strung below frame-level.  It seems from web images that while this Railton variant was basically the same, cars I examined did not have identical detailing.  Also, I have no information regarding the coachbuilder.

1935 Railton Eight Special Saloon by Carbodies - Bonhams Auctions photo
Railtons featured nice, long hoods (bonnets) to house their long Hudson eight-cylinder motors.  The rest of the body seen here is nondescript.

1936 Railton Eight Mk. II Drophead Coupe by Coachcraft - Bonhams
Nice, clean, English-style design.  Coachcraft was a smaller, low-budget coachbuilder, but was responsible for more Railton bodies than other vendors.  Chief designer was Geoffrey Durtnal.  London's Coachcraft was unrelated to the Hollywood Coachcraft of the 1940s and 1950s.

1937 Railton Straight Eight Cobham Sports Saloon by Coachcraft - HandH
Now for a mini-walkaround of an attractive four-door saloon.  The grille design has been sharpened, with a vertical divider strip added.

Interesting two-tone paint scheme that helps highlight the long hood.  Flow-through of the hood fold to along the upper edge of the paint divider to the top of the vertical side of the trunk is continuous, and a very nice professional styling feature.

Large "touring car" type trunk.  Modeling of the aft of the passenger compartment greenhouse and the trunk is similar, another professional touch that adds thematic unity to the design.

1939 Railton Eight Claremont Drophead Coupe - car-for-sale photos
A late Railton, coachbuilder unknown to me, though the fender fronts are similar to the car's in the precious images, suggestive of Coachcraft.

Tidy rear, though the folded-down top (hood) is rather messy.

1948 Studebaker Land Cruiser Walkaround

The 1947 Studebaker redesign was shockinly modernistic in those post- World War 2 days where the other "legacy" American carmakers could happily sell all the facelifted 1942 models they could build.  (The exception was Kaiser-Frazer, for practical purposes a new car builder, that offered postwar styling.)

The most famous postwar Studebaker body design was the Starlight Coupe that I wrote about here.  But there were other body styles in production, including one-seat coupes, convertibles, two-door sedans and four-door sedans.

Today's featured car is Studebaker's top-of-the-line Commander Land Cruiser four-door sedan.  For 1948, Studebaker had two model lines: entry-level Champions and higher-priced Commanders.  The Land Cruiser was a larger Commander.  Wheelbases were: Champion 112 inches (2744 mm); Commander: 119 inches (2916 mm); Commander Land Cruiser: 123 inches (3014 mm).

Photos of the feaured 1948 Studebaker Commander Land Cruiser are from Mecum Auctions. The other photos are of Studebakers listed for sale.  The paint on the pictured Land Cruiser is not original.  While there was a "Silver gray" available, it was a little darker and less shiny than what is shown below.  I do like how the car is painted because it shows the body sculpting better than alternatives.

Gallery

Fenders are now integrated into the body, though the rear ones are what was called "applied," retaining a separate appearance while not being essentially separate.  Redesigned 1948 Oldsmobile 98s and Cadillacs featured the same concept.  Moreover, all three brands with that configuration had fenderlines dropped short distances below the beltlines, like the Studebaker seen here.  These features served to reduce visual bulk from what otherwise would have been "slab-sides."

The front fender's trace extends to the rear while the "applied" rear fender has a separate upper line, unlike the General Motor design just mentioned.  Doors latch on the B-pillar, making the rear door a "suicide" type.

This is a 1948 Commander sedan.  The length difference with the Land Cruiser is in the area of the C-pillar.  The Land Cruiser's passenger compartment greenhouse is longer, as is its rear door -- note the wider window and its two-piece glass.

A 1948 Champion 4-door sedan.  Its body is the same as the Commander's abaft of the firewall/A-pillar, but shorter forward of there.

Studebaker trunk lids sloped rather sharply to the rear, making them less practical from a luggage-hauling perspective.  Aesthetically, the trunk blends with the fender lines in a satisfactory way.

The central crease on the lid is a touch that seldom fails.

Backlight windows are two-piece and strongly curved for those days.  Starlight Coupes used those, but added two more to create a truly panoramic backlight.

The windshield is neither flat nor really curved; it's subtly bent in the middle.  Seen from the side here, its lack of flatness is (barely) apparent.

Air vents for the cabin are on the front fender, a feature retained on the 1953 redesign.

Commanders had more elaborate grilles than Champions.

The dashboard.  Stock steering wheels were not padded like the one seen here.

Pinin Farina's "Silver Streak" Alfa Romeo 6C Berlinetta

Automobile styling of the 1930s has always interested me because most of the transition from boxy cars with separate features such a headlights and fenders to "envelope" or highly-integrated shapes took place then.  War-shortened 1940 production and the postwar seller's market yielded the final touch circa-1949: "through-fenders" and slab sides such as found on the iconic 1949 Ford.

Today's featured car was designed in the mid-1930s.  Features such as headlights and front fenders were still separate from the main body, but they were rounded, somewhat teardrop-shaped in the quasi-faux streamlined idiom of that time.  The angularities of 1930 and earlier were gone.

One detail that especially interested me about this car from a leading Italian coachbuilder was that a prominent detail seems to have been borrowed from a lower-middle range American brand.  This is shown in the Gallery below.

The car is a 1937 Alfa Romeo 6C 2300B Berlinetta with a coachbuilt body by Pinin Farina.  Ignorance on my part led me to believe that, in the early years of Farina's firm, Pinin himself did all the styling.  Not so.

According to the carrozzieri-italiani.com web site, the stylist was Conte Mario Revelli di Beaumont, an independent designer who produced designs for a variety of coachbuilding firms.  Background on Ravelli in English is here.  His Italian language Wikipedia entry is here, and his entry in French is here, noting that in the second half of the 1930s he worked with Pinin Farina and Bertone.  That was not all: this link (when it's working properly) features a gallery of designs he had a hand in for coachbuilders including Stabilimenti Farina, Viotti, Allemano, Balbo, Fissore, Moretti, Ghia, Boneschi, Castagna, and a few others.

Gallery

1937 Alfa Romeo 6C 2300B Berlinetta by Pinin Farina - Bonhams Auctions photo
A very pleasing design apart from perhaps one detail: that bold swath of parallel chrome stripes running along the centerline of the hood, then dropping down to the bottom of the grille opening.  It looks familiar to American eyes.

1935 Pontiac - unknown photo source
Aha!  Behold a 1935 Pontiac, the first featuring what was marketed as "Silver Streaks."   I described their evolution from 1935 through 1956 here.

1935 Pontiac Eight Deluxe - car-for-sale photo
Frontal view of those Silver Streaks that Ravelli surely was aware of.

1937 Alfa Romeo 6C 2300B Berlinetta by Pinin Farina - unidentified photo source
Why he borrowed so blatantly seems odd for such an accomplished designer.  Or could they have been added by Pinin himself, another very accomplished designer?  After all, it was his firm, and he must have given final approval to the design.  We will never know for sure.

1937 Alfa Romeo 6C 2300B Berlinetta by Pinin Farina - unidentified source of photos
A poor-quality front quarter view.

It seems Ravelli was quite interested in aerodynamics.  Note the strong curve of the aft body.  Plus the tiny tail fin on the trunk's door.

Strong, harmonious shaping.  Note the thin, chromed glass pane divider on the backlight window here, as well as on the windshield.

Very nice sculpted composition.  But those chromed circles on the hood venting seem as superfluous as the Silver Streaks.  I have a vague feeling these too were borrowed, and can't find an example... oh, wait!!

1935 Plymouth DeLuxe 2-Door Touring Sedan - Mecum Auctions photo
Another feature from another 1935 American car.

Marmon Sixteen Overhead Views

Photos of car designs from an overhead perspective can be interesting.  I find this particularly so for cars of the 1930s.  That's because body elements such as hoods and fenders had not yet become integrated with the main body.

The subject of this post is the 16-cylinder Marmon produced 1931-1933.  They were styled by pioneer industrail designer Walter Dorwin Teague.  LeBaron built nearly all of the bodies, but apparently did not do design work on most of its Marmon Sixteens.

I previousy wrote about Marmon Sixteens here.

Images below are via Mecum Auctions.

Gallery

1931 Marmon Sixteen Convertible Coupe
V-16 and inline-8 motors required longer hoods than did V-12s and inline sixes and fours.  Though the needed additional length wasn't very great.  The hood seen here and some other V-16s and I-8s is longer  than absolutely necessary, being more of a style or marketing feature.  Note the hood's aft cutline and the locations of the side air vents, indicating where the motor most likely was.

That long hood is complemented by a long section abaft of the passenger compartment.  This car has a rumble seat, as evidenced by the step near the right taillight.

1931 Marmon Sixteen Victoria Coupe
Teague's design is simpler, more austere than usual for the very early 1930s.  The grille seems rather architectural, perhaps because because some early car stylists and industrial designers had training in architecture, or like Teague, had a youthful interest in the subject.

The Victoria Coupe was rated as a five-passenger car, so there was no need for a rumble seat.  Built-in trunks, as seen here, were rare on multi-passenger cars in those days.

1953 Oldsmobile Fiesta and Cousins

For 1953, General Motors marketed three convertibles that were significantly more expensive than ordinary convertibles.  The reason, I believe, was that two of these featured panoramic/wraparoud windshields for the first time on American production cars.  This required some retooling around the A-pillar and related door hinging.  Also, all three cars featured sculpted, rather than horizontal, beltlines -- again needing some new tooling or skilled handwork.  So those high prices created a prestige image, while helping to defray the new expenses.

I wrote about the Cadillac version here.

The present post deals with the other car with the wraparound (as we called it then) windshield.  This was the Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Fiesta.  Production was 458, compared to the Ninety-Eight regular convertible's 7,521.  Respective prices were $5,717 and $3,229, a 77 percent markup.

The Fiesta is compared to the Buick Skylark and Cadillac Eldorado below.

Gallery

A Fiesta promotional item.

1953 Cadillac Eldorado - Barrett-Jackson Auctions photo
This is Cadillac's version.The windshield and beltline curving distinguish it from regular Cadillac convertibles.

1953 Buick Skylark - Mecum Auctions photo
The Skylark was the best-seller of the three, though its windshield is conventional, not panoramic.  It's difficult to be certain from these photos, but the beltline appears to be the same as the Cadillac's.

1953 Oldsmobile Fiesta - Broad Arrow Auctions photos
The Fiesta's beltline curve is far more subdued than those on the cars shown above.  Like the Buick, the trunk is higher than the Cadillac's.  Even though Olds ranked below the Cadillac and Buick in GM's prestige hierarchy, it got the wraparound whereas the Buick didn't, for some reason.

Although the 1950-vintage body wasn't designed with wraparound windshields in mind, GM's stylists did  good job of integrating it.

This two-tone paint scheme was unique for the 1953 Fiesta.  But it was used in 1954 on some Super 88 models and some Ninety-Eight sedans.

1933 Streamline Bentley Two-Door Saloon by Park Ward

The 1933 Bentley treated in this post is an early example of British "Airline" styling.

This term was applied to a comparatively easy means of giving existing designs some appearance of "streamlining" by creating curved aft body shape profiles.  While rear parts of cars seemed to be aerodynamically influenced, frontal parts retained "draggy" bits such as detached headlights and S-curved front fenders that could trap flowing air when the car was in motion.

I wrote about Airline designs here and elsewhere.

English automobile styling until recent decades was noted for being cautiously conservative, slow to adopt features found elsewhere.  For instance, the futuristic Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow appeared in America in 1933.  The truly aerodynamically-influenced Czechoslovak Tatra 77 appeared around the same time.

I don't know when the first British Airline design appeared.  But it probably wasn't much earlier than 1933 when our subject car was designed.  Its chassis number is B 41 AB, and was listed as sold to a G. A. Nicholson in February of 1934.  Its custom body was designed and built by the well-known Park Ward coacbuilding firm.

Unless noted, images below are via Gallery Aaldering.

Gallery

The front is actually cleaner than even some mid-1930s Airline cars, though the nearly-flat grille and distinct headlights are non-aerodynamic.  The rounded fender fronts help prevent airflow into the wheelwell.

The fenders also are skirted.  These on the front fenders are unusual for the time in England, and also the teardrop fender profile.  The windshield is raked, but not strongly so.  The beltline falls off abaft of the B-pillar, a fairly common Airline feature even later in the decade.

Some Airline backlight windows were placed too high for decent driver viewing to the rear.  But this one, while small by later standards, is somewhat useful.

Although the rear profile is curved, the car's sides are strongly vertical -- not important aerodynamically.  The body tapers slightly to the rear in plan-view, which can be aerodynamically useful.  Note the unusual, for the time, lack of running boards.

This, and the following image are via Bilweb Auctions.  The trunk arrangement is interesting, especially the placement of the spare tire and the trunk lid hinging.  The spare's wheel hub might potentially damage luggage as the lid is closed.

The dashboard and instrumentation.  Plenty of British woodwork.