Giving the 1940-1941 Graham Hollywood New Respect

1941 Graham Hollywood, Mt. Baker Washington - unknown photo source

1937 Cord 812 Westchester - for-sale-car photo
An interesting sidelight to the 1930s American automobile production/marketing/design situation was the use of basic car bodies from other carmakers.  Some of this happened previous to the Great Depression, but the best-known (in reality known mostly by folks seriously interested in automobile history) happened late in the decade.   For example, I posted "Failing Brands, Shared Body: Graham and Reo" here.  Today's post deals with the case of "Hupmobiles and Grahams with Cord Bodies" that I wrote about here.

Specifically, I'm featuring the Graham version of the facelifted, re-engineered Cord design marketed by that firm and Hupmobile.  The Hupp version sold in significantly lower numbers than the Graham Hollywood.

A Cord and Graham Hollywood are compared in the images above.  Below are images dealing with some aspects of the revised design.  In a sense, it's a mini-walkaround.  But a Walkaround post will appear later.

I need to add that, for most of my adult life, I held the Hupp/Graham design in contempt.  The Cord design was breathtaking to junior-highschool aged me when I saw a yellow sedan like the one at the top of this post cruising along Bothell Way in Seattle's Lake City Neighborhood.  The Hollywood? -- a disgrace!

Now I have mellowed.  I finally can set aside the Cord comparison and to some degree consider the Hollywood in its own right.  As this post's title states, I give it new respect.

Gallery

1941 Graham Hollywood - RM Sotheby's photos
Scattered Internet sources credit the Graham/Hupp facelift to John Tjaarda.  The grille design features a somewhat vertical element on the front of the hood and horizontal openings at the front of the catwalks.

Those freestanding headlight assemblies add visual clutter.  Worse, they were archaic style-fashion-wise in the early 1940s -- a potential marketing problem.  Otherwise, the facelift of the Cord design was largely successful.

Unlike Cord, the hood projects ahead of the fender.  And front fenders are more stubby than Cord's.  Other than a side-view such as this, there's no real aesthetic problem.

Like Cord, attractive from this perspective.

1941 Graham Hollywood - Driehaus Collection photos
The Driehaus Collection has a number of seriously fine styling examples, so having a Hollywood in the mix adds credibility to its design.

Nice view of frontal sculpting.  Essentially everything forward of the passenger compartment is the facelift.  Absent those headlights, this would be a near-classic design.