1991-96 Chevrolet Caprice Sedan

Because of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the gasoline shortage it caused, also Federal regulations related to fuel economy, by the late 1970s American "standard size" car models were becoming smaller.  So by the late 1990s, Chevrolet's new Caprice sedans struck me as being almost too large.   Their wheelbase was 115.9 inches (2944 mm) and their length 214.1 inches (5438 mm).  That length was in line with most standard American cars of the 1950-1975 period.

Other B-body cars of that generation at General Motors were the Buick Roadmaster with the same wheelbase, and the longer Cadillac Fleetwood, both higher-priced than the $16,500-$18,500 Caprice (respectively around $23,000 and $34,000).

Ford launched its competing Crown Victoria for the 1992 model year.  That car was almost the same size as the Caprice, and it had similar styling features.  Interestingly, at that time I didn't consider Crown Vics as heavy-looking as Caprices.  A likely reason why can be found in the photo captions below.

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1991 Chevrolet Caprice Classic - via Car and Driver
Long passenger compartment greenhouse and comparatively short hood and trunk lid.  Also, six windows.

1992 Buick Roadmaster - car-for-sale photo
The Buick version had four windows, a large C-pillar zone, and a less-tapered aft roof profile.

1993 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham - car-for-sale photo
The wheelbase is 121.5 inches (3086 mm), length 225 inches (5715 mm).  That permitted a more formal greenhouse design.

1992 Ford Crown Victoria - Mecum Auctions photo
The Ford Crown Victoria  is surprisingly similar to the Caprice shown in the image below.  Greenhouses have six windows.  Doors and door post angles are similar.  Ditto frontal profiles and side trim.  I suppose basic dimensions and passenger packaging factors played a part in this similarity, along with wind tunnel test results.  Still, I have to wonder if there wasn't a whiff of industrial espionage going on during development of both designs.

1993 Chevrolet Caprice Classic - BaT Auctions photos
Note how the roof profile flows onto the trunk area.  I think this fairly small detail caused me to consider the design to seem "heavy," despite that huge amount of glass area.

A clean, though not exciting, design as seen from the front quarter.

The roofline flow seen from a normal viewing perspective.  Note how high the trunk lid is and how the flow relates to it.  Some visual heaviness is found here.

High quarter view.  The backlight window is huge -- larger than necessary.  The whole rear area seems heavy-looking, unlike the more conventional Crown Victoria.

Looking Down on a 1971 Pontiac Grand Prix

An automobile's styling is an aspect of marketing.  Its function is to help sell the vehicle.

Car buyers typically view prospects at dealerships -- inside showrooms or outside on dealer lots.  Their interest might well have been primed by seeing examples of a given model out in nature: streets, highways, parking lots, garages and such.

Most of this viewing takes place at normal eye-level.  The images I use to illustrate this blog often come from auction houses or used car dealers, sometimes from the manufacturer's publicity operations.  Many such images were photographed from perspectives at or fairly near eye-level.

All this suggests that proposed automobile designs are usually approved or rejected for production based on how they appear as seen at eye-level.

Yet cars are three-dimensional objects, subject to being viewed from above eye-level.  Plus, design models at less than 1:1 scale are usually seen from above eye-level perspective.  Which suggests that stylists can be tempted to pay more attention to how a car is seen from a high level than is strictly necessary.

I happen to enjoy finding images of cars taken from higher viewpoints, and use many of them in this blog.  Often the designs aren't especially interesting.  Sometimes they are.  One such case is that of a set of photos of a 1971 Pontiac Grand Prix found on a car-for-sale website and an auction one.  Examples are shown below.

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1971 Pontiac Grand Prix - car-for-sale photos
The design as normally seen.  It stems from the era when Bill Mitchell was at the peak of his powers as styling vice-president at General Motors.  I don't include it with Mitchell's best efforts such as the 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix or the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.  But it's still pretty nice.

Even viewed from eye-level, there is plenty of hood and trunk lid sculpting that can be appreciated.  Now let's jump higher.

1971 Pontiac Grand Prix - BaT Auctions photos
From here, the roof- C-pillar combination seems rather heavy.

The lighting dramatizes the sharp angles of the trunk lid's sculpted planes along with the central character line.  Ditto the narrow aft sections of the rear fenders.

The almost too-shiny paint job minimizes the hood-fender sculpting that echoes that seen in the previous image.

1971-1973 Ford Pinto

Ford Motor Company marketed its subcompact Pinto line over model years 1971-1980.  Its WIkepedia entry is here.

In 2016 I posted "Ford's Controversial, Good-Selling Pinto."  Today's post elaborates somewhat.

Ford wasn't alone in that market segment.  American Motors Corporation launched its subcompact Gremlin the previous model year, and it continued in production in the USA 1970-1978.  General Motors' Chevrolet Division's subcompact Vega lasted model years 1971-1977.

By "good-selling" in the title of my previous Pinto post, note that Pintos out-sold combined totals of Vegas and Gremlins.  Pinto production was 3,173,491 according to Wikipedia.  Vega production was 2,006,661 and Gremlin's was 671,475 in USA/Canada, also according to Wikipedia.

Pinto suffered from deaths caused by fires started by rear-end collisions, a blot on its record.  Vegas experienced a variety of quality-related problems.  As best I can tell, Gremlins lacked serious problems because it was a shortened version of AMC's successful Hornet compact car that had a longer (three-year) development process than Pinto (25 months) and Vega (about two-and-a-half years) according to Wikipedia entries.

The Gallery below focuses on Pinto coupes' aft ends.  The basic model had a simple trunk lid, but the Runabout variant was a hatchback.  The Pinto station wagon is not dealt with.  Pinto images are from the first (1971-1973) generation, as defined in Wikipedia.

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1970 AMC Gremlin - factory photo
Wheelbase: 96 inches (2438 mm).  Forward of the B-pillar, we see what is essentially an AMC Hornet.  In its entirety, not an attractive design.  But buyers might have considered it "cute" or "funky" or whatever else was countercultural at the end of the weird 1960s.

1971 Chevrolet Vega - factory photo
Wheelbase: 97.0 inches (2464 mm).  A clean design, but basically a shrunken version of standard and intermediate size cars of that era.  I suppose the intention was to appeal to conventionally-minded buyers.

1971 Ford Pinto - factory photo
Wheelbase: 94.0 inches (2388 mm).  Pinto styling is attractive, while acknowledging its subcompact size.  Appropriate, in other words.

1973 Ford Pinto - Mecum Auctions photos
Plenty of front overhang that adds to hood length, making its profile more balanced than it otherwise might have been.

The basic rear end.  The backlight window is fixed, the trunk lid a separate item.

1971 Ford Pinto Runabout - car-for-sale photo
Pinto hatchbacks were called "Runabouts."  Early ones such as this over-decorated 1971 car had reshaped backlights with substantial sheet metal linking it to the taillight panel and bumper.

1973 Ford Pinto Runabout - car-for-sale photo
Later runabouts received large backlights that occupied most of the hatch's geography.

1953 Nash Statesman Hardtop Walkaround

Around 1940, Nash cars were nicely styled, fitting well into the preferred mode of the time; I wrote about that here.  But when the American automoble industry launched its postwar redesignes around 1949, Nash became a styling outlier.  I posted about the '49 Nash redesign here and here.

Those 1949-1951 Nashes were bulky, having streamlined shapes that observers, including elementary school age me, called "upside-down bathtub."  Then Nash pulled another Old Switcheroo for its 1952 redesign.  Streamlining was abandoned, replaced by boxiness.

The major carryover feature was that front wheel openings were essentially eliminated, replaced by front fender sheetmetal.

Today's post featues a 1953 Nash Statesman 2-door hardtop, the short-wheelbase (114.25 inches, 1902 mm) alterative to the longer, more expensive Nash Ambassador.

Those enclosed front wheels and rounded slab-sides suggested that Nashes were quite wide.  Let's put that in context.  Nash Statesmen were 78 inches (1981 mm) wide.  Pontiacs were 75.8 inches (1925 mm), DeSotos 74.3 inches (1887 mm), Buick Specials 76.7 inches (1948 mm), and Mercury, also redesigned for 1952, 73.5 inches (1867 mm).  So most competing post- World War 2 cars launched prior to 1952 were two or three or even four inches (50-100 mm) more narrow.  One wider example is the Buick Super, whose width was 80 inches (2032 mm).

The car featured below is a 1953 Nash Statesman Country Club hardtop coupe listed for sale.

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Pinin Farina was credited by Nash publicity as the designer, though actually most of the design was via Nash's styling group and the NXI concept car designed by William Flajole.

Nash Ambassadors had longer hoods, so had slightly better proportions.

Nash backlight windows retained this three-segment design through model year 1955; most competing brands went to one-segment wraparound backlights earlier.

Basically, a tidy design aside from the width.  Imagine how it would look with flatter, slightly narrower side.

Slab side appearance was somewhat mitigated by the sculpting below the windows and the low, lengthy chrome strip.  Open front wheels would have helped even more.  But Nash president George Mason insisted on covered wheel for (dubious) aerodynamic reasons.

I suspect the width was to provide halfway acceptable turning radius for the enclosed front wheels.  Were front wheels exposed in a normal manner, the sides could have been made narrower without affecting interior width.

The hood was low, front fenders high, both in keeping with early 1950s styling fashion.

The centralized instrument panel was more typical of car brands with considerable sales in regions with different driving positions.  I doubt that applied very much to Nash.

General Motors' Massive 1958 Facelift: Buick Hardtops Version

For around 30 years, General Motors was regarded as the America automobile industry's styling leader.   That was while Harley Earl was in charge of styling.  But around 1955, Earl was losing his touch.  He was having trouble deciding what redesigns of his successful 1954-1955 designs should be.

Earl seems to have had a preference for rounded, as opposed to more angular, sculpting.  Those designs introduced in '54 and '55 were less rounded than before.  So for the 1957 model year redesign of GM's more upscale  B- and C-bodies, Earl moved back to his preferred rounded surfaces.

Unfortunately for Earl, Chrysler Corporation redesigned its entire line for 1957 in a manner that made his new designs seem out of date.  Chrysler Corporation cars features low hoods, thin rooflines and bold tail fins.  That is, much less rounding than GM was doing.

Earl was nearing mandatory retirement age, and many on his styling staff began crash-project studies of angular designs for the 1959 model year while Earl was in Europe for his annual studies of new car designs there.

That's the story I've found in many places.  A story about the massive 1958 facelift of '57 Oldsmobiles and Buicks is lacking, at least in my reference library and results of some Googling on the internet.

Designs of 1958 GM cars were largely in place in the fall of 1956 when some GM stylists viewed forthcoming 1957 Chrysler cars in a storage lot.  Photos of 1958 styling models for Buick indicate that sheet metal changes were already planned, given normal tooling lead-times, before 1957 Chrysler styling was known to GM.  Trim detail alternatives seem to have been under consideration as late as early 1957, according to the book "Designing America's Cars: The 50s" -- Amazon reference here.  I think that might be a little later than what happened, given tooling and publicity needs.  Unless the '58 Olds and Buick facelifts were also crash projects.

Harlow Curtice was GM's Chief Operating Officer from 2 February 1953 to 31 August 1958. In the 1930s and'40s he was President of GM's Buick Division, and tended to favor it later as he continued his upward path in GM's executive hierarchy.  In those days, General Motors was financially rich, dominating the American automobile market.  It could afford major facelifts and crash projects.  Chevrolets and Pontiac were given major facelifts the final year of their 1955-1957 run.  Buick was given notable facelifts over its B- and C-body 1954-1956 run -- front end designs being changed both for 1955 and 1956.  I suspect Curtice was happy to approve tooling funding.

So there clearly was precedent for major facelifting of 1957 models for 1958.  And 1958 GM designs were not a reaction to the 1957 Chrysler line.  Nor could they have been, given development time requirements.  Those overly decorated 1958 Buicks and Oldsmobiles were largely a matter of Harley Earl in desperation for viable new styling ideas.

Unless noted, images below are of cars listed for sale.

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Two-Door Hardtops

1957 Buick Century Riviera Coupe - RM Sotheby's Auctions photo
First, B-body two-door hardtops.  The hood is flat, while the passenger compartment greenhouse roof is high and rounded.  Buick's traditional Sweepspear side trim serves define two-tone paint areas.

1958 Buick Special Riviera Coupe
Not shown is the revised front end.  The backlight window is larger.  Slight smoothing at the front of the rear fender.  Rear wheel opening reshaped to allow that large chromed shape on the rear fender.  It visually conflicts with, and encroaches on, the Sweepspear.  Surprisingly unprofessional detail styling from GM.

1957 Buick Century Riviera Coupe - RM Sotheby's
This rear quarter view shows the unfortunate backlight window design that was not popular with potential 1957 model buyers.  The problem is the rounded framing of the outer windows next to the central segment.  Sharp framing next to the sculpted flow-through from the roof to the trunk (not necessarily a bad thing, that sculpting theme) would have largely solved the defect.

1958 Buick Century Riviera Coupe
That framing was abandoned for 1958.  Tail light framing was reshaped and chrome added to the top of the rear fenders.

1957 Buick Super Riviera Coupe - Mecum Auctions photo
Now for C-body 2-door hardtops.  Again, low hood and rounded greenhouse.  These cars had longer wheelbases.  C-pillar slants back, conforming with the backlight window,

1958 Buick Roadmaster Riviera Coupe
Side trim changes the same as on B-bodies.  The fenderline now drops below the beltline, requiring new stamping.  The C-pillar is now chromed.

1957 Buick Super Riviera Coupe
Similar to B-body versions.  Some line-topping Roadmasters had narrow chrome strips running from the roof to along the trunk lid, dividing the backlight into three segments.  That was aesthetically okay, being much less ponderous than the window division scheme on B-bodies, as shown above.  Front fenderline is slightly dropped.

1958 Buick Super Riviera Coupe
Similar '57-'58 changes here.


Four-Door Hardtops

1957 Buick Century Riviera Sedan
B-bodies.  The greenhouse window profile is similar to the of the 2-door hardtop, but adjusted for the presence of the added doors.

1958 Buick Special Riviera Sedan
Unlike the 2-door hardtops, the fenderline is dropped below the beltline.

1957 Buick Century Riviera Sedan
Again, the unfortunate backlight framing.

1958 Buick Century Riviera Sedan
Same changes at the rear.

1957 Buick Roadmaster Riviera Sedan
Now 4-door C-body hardtops.  This monochrome car seems attractive in side-view.  Aside from the heavily chromed aft trim.

1958 Buick Roadmaster Riviera Sedan
The wide C-pillar is replaced by a small side window.  Front fenderline is a bit lower, making the hood appear, or perhaps slightly be, higher (something Earl liked).

1957 Buick Roadmaster Riviera Sedan
Those trunk lid chrome strips in some cased extended up across the backlight window and then over the roof, as noted above.

1958 Buick Roadmaster Riviera Sedan
Buick's new top-of-the-line model for 1958, the Limited, lacked the chrome swath on the rear fender.  Its outline trim piece was retained.  On the painted area inside it perimeter  were three sets of slender chrome slashes set at the same angle as the fender aft and.  This was more tasteful, but the frame continued to clash with the Sweepspear.

Finally, this is how front ends were changed.  Here is a 1957 Buick Roadmaster.  A reasonably simple design aside perhaps from the guards at each end of the bumper.

A facelifted 1958 Roadmaster.  Model year 1958 saw the introduction of quad headlights, a feature that degraded several car designs.  The distinctive multi-segment grille interior was difficult to repair following damage.  Trim at the front of the hood is excessive jazz.  Maybe only the word "Buick" should have been there.

1938 Hupmobile 822-E Walkaround

Hupmobile (Wikipedia entry here) was on its last legs as the 1930s ended.  Due to a corporate reorganization, there were no 1937 model year Hupps.  Redesigned sedans appeared for 1938.  They were built by Murray Corporation of America, according to Google's AI.

I have no information regarding the designer.  The pervious Hupp design was by Raymond Loewy, but for 1938 his firm was stryling Studebakers.  Presumably the new Hupp design was by Murray staff.  Prior to his February 1937 death, that staff was led by Amos Northup, but he has never been credited with the 1938 Hupp design.  I suspect he had a hand in it, however, given production lead-times -- assembly of '38 Hupps began in July of 1937, according to "Cars of the Classic '30s."

Photos below are via HandH Auctions, taken at the RAF Duxford aviation museum.  The auction site referred to the car as a 1939 822-E.  But for model year 1939, Hupp designated that sedan type as 922-E.  It's possible that the few '38 Hupmobiles shipped to England arrived during the 1939 model year or were registered or sold then.  Thus causing the confusion.  In any case, there was no significant appearance differences for the two model years that I am aware of.

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Basic design is in line with that of Buicks and other style-leading General Motors cars.

Most pictures of surviving '38 Hupps are of fastbacks such as this, though touring sedans with "bustle" trunk lids were also available.

Headlight and taillight assemblies are linked to side trim chrome strips, a fashionable touch.

Clean rear end.  Note the fuel cap discretely mounted on the inside of the fender, an unusual feature.

Some views of the car's right side ...

Headlight lens shapes are carryovers from the 1936-and-earlier designs.

Symmetrical placement of dashboard items.