1958 Edsel Corsair Walkaround

A while ago I posted "Making 1958 Edsels from 1957 Fords and Mercurys."  Ford Motor Company's Edsel brand was marketed only 1958-1960, and very few '60 Edsel's were built because production was halted very early in the model year.

Ford intended Edsels to fill some mid-range market gaps in its Ford, Mercury and Lincoln hierarchy.  For '58, there were four Edsel models.  From entry-level to top, those were: Ranger, Pacer, Corsair and Citation.  As noted in my post, Rangers and Pacers were based on bodies shared with Fords, and the others were Mercury-based.

My post "1958 Edsel Pacer Walkaround -- A Rather Pleasing Design" (link here) features a Ford-based model. And now it's probably time for a Mercury-based Edsel.

Rangers and Pacers came in six or seven (depending) body types, whereas Corsairs and Citations were available only as hardtop (pillarless) coupes and sedans.  The car featured below is a hardtop sedan, the best-selling of the lot.

Images of the 1958 Edsel Corsair hardtop sedan shown below are of a car listed for sale.

Gallery

The famous (in late 1950s USA) Edsel grille.  Most grilles had horizontal layouts, and even more traditional grilles such as Mercedes-Benz's were more square than strongly vertical.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, Edsel front end design would have been improved with dual, not quad, headlights.

1958 Edsel Ranger hardtop sedan, photo via Ford.  This is the Ford-based, entry-level equivalent to today's subject car.

Ford Motor Company cars (save 1955 Lincolns) had panoramic windshields model years 1955-1959.

No fashionable tail fins.

The backlight window is panoramic, but the C-pillar zone seems, fussy, awkward to me.

The curves dropping towards the center of the car are a consistent theme.  But they are not well-related to one another from top to bottom.

Bold, two-tone areas are consistent with flamboyant late-1950s American car stying fashions.  At least the dark area's chrome outlining ties into elements at the rear.

There is also some sculpting around the dark paint area, which is why the forward chrome strip does not touch the two-tone framing.  The sculpting also echoes the slight fenderline profile flow point.

A busy design with many elements seemingly "tacked on" rather than integrated.

1956 Oldsmobile: Maximum Ovals

Following some rather busy designs -- especially that for the 1942 model year -- Oldsmobile styling settled into a pattern of comparatively simple grille designs.  I wrote about that here.

The general grille frame theme was a half-oval.  That is, assume an oval horizontally positioned.  Then sliced in half horizontally.  The detached upper half roughly approximating the grille framing. 

That continued until model years 1955-1957 when the framing became essentially ovaloid.  Leading up to this was the presence of oval details elsewhere on the cars.

The peak-oval model year seems to have been 1956, as shown on today's featured car below.  For 1958 and beyond, Oldsmobile styling went on other paths.

Gallery

1953 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday Coupe - via Hemmings
The oval theme is seen on the bumper guards.

1954 Oldsmobile Dashboard
The first year of 1954-1956 bodies.  The main items are circular or nearly so.

1956 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday Coupe - car-for sale photo set
But for 1956 they became oval.

Plenty of curves that aren't actual ovals, yet harken to the idea.  Note the non-circular, non-rectangular, sorta teardrop wheel openings.  Plus the side chrome trim the can be interpreted as distorted-oval.

Rear styling lacks the oval-derived them seen elsewhere.

Ah, the grille framed by the bumper.  Basically a stretched oval.

Four-Door Ford Thunderbirds 1967-1971

Ford's sporty Thunderbird line (Wikipedia entry here) was produced model years 1955-2005 save 1998-2001.  For all but five of those production years, Thunderbirds had only two doors.  But for model years 1967-1971, four-door Thunderbird sedans were also marketed.  Wikipedia calls this the 5th generation, and its write-up about that is here.

During 1967-1970, two-door Thunderbirds has wheelbases of 114.7 inches (2913 mm), trivially lengthened to 115 inches (2921 mm) for 1971.  Four-door T-birds were based on a 117.2 inch (2977 mm) wheelbase that was shared with the Lincoln Continental Mark III starting 1968.

Early sedans sold fairly well in 1967 and 1968, but production numbers dropped rapidly after that.  Production for '67 was about 25,000, and around 8,400 in 1970.   So the sedan idea was dropped for the 1972 redesign.

Those T-bird sedans were marketed as "Landaus," having faux landau irons attached to Vinyl covered tops.  This was in an effort to position Thunderbirds as being upscale as well as sporty.  Landau coupes (with Vinyl covered tops, but no landau irons) strongly outsold their plainer stablemates 1967-71.

Below are images of 1967 Thunderbird Landau sedans and a 1970 facelifted version.

Gallery

1967 Thunderbird Landau Sedan - Ford photo
An almost too-simple grille design.  Edge sections pivot to reveal quad headlights.

1967 Thunderbird Landau Sedan - Barrett-Jackson Auctions photo
Plenty of front overhang provides a long hood line.  The landau iron flows downward from the chrome upper window framing.  That's a nice touch that almost (for me) justifies their phony inclusion.

1967 Thunderbird Landau Sedan - car-for-sale photo
Basically a nice, trim body design typical of 1960s U.S. styling -- a golden era for many car brands.

1970 Thunderbird Landau hardtop coupe - Ford photo
I don't have a good overhead photo of a '70 Landau sedan, so this image of a coupe will have to provide a view of the long-nose frontal facelift.

1970 Thunderbird Landau Sedan - BaT Auctions photo
Side view showing door cut lines.  Note how the rear door's cutline is partly framed by the landau iron.

1970 Thunderbird Landau Sedan - BaT Auctions photo
Doors-open view.  Like 1960s Lincoln Continental 4-door models, the rear door is "suicide" hinged.  Also note that there is a full-height B-pillar, making this a sedan, and not a hardtop (pillarless) sedan, as some might think, given the design's era.

1948 Ferrari 166 Coupés and Berlinettas

Many observers, me included, consider Italian car styling from the late 1940s through much of the 1950s to be a kind of design golden age.  Today's post presents some designs from early in that era.  All are based on the Ferrari 166 (Wikipedia entry here).

Details are in the captions below.

Gallery

1948 Ferrari 166 Inter Coupé by Stabilimenti Farina, Giovanni Michelotti designer
I wrote about this and other Stabilimenti Farina designs for Ferrari 166s here.  Lacking on this design is the Ferrari oval grille with egg-crate bars introduced by Carrozzeria Touring on the 166 Barchetta.

Ferraris had V-12 motors in those days, justifying a long hood.  The side view is pleasing, very classic postwar Italian styling.

1947 Cisitalia 202 Berlinetta by Pinin Farina
But the design strikes me as being highly derivative of the classic (honored in a 1951 exhibit at New York's Museum of Modern Art) Cisitalia 202, often cited as setting the tone for Italian design.  The basic Cisitalia design was by Giovanni Savonuzzi, productionized by Pinin Farina.  Cisitalias had small Fiat motors, so the car was small and the hood not as long as the Ferrari's.  Derivative items on the latter include the aft roof profile, the fender design, and the side window theme.  Stabiliment Farina also built some Cisitalias to the Pinin Farina design, so the firm might have been quite familiar with it when the Ferrari was styled.  The hood on the Ferrari is higher and shaped differently, so maybe that was much of Michelotti's contribution.

Unlike the Cisitalia, the Ferrari has a trunk lid.  The tail light/reflector ensemble is awkward.

1948 Ferrari 166 MM Panoramica by Zagato, Luigi Rapi designer - photos via carrozzieri-italiani.com
The lower body is in the spirit of Touring's Barchetta design, including a variation of the grille.

Where the design fails is the side windows that curve up onto the top of the roof.  Zagato built a number of cars with this unfortunate feature that I discussed here.

The car is something of a hatchback -- note the cutlines near the backlight window.  All things considered, the passenger compartment greenhouse is too tall relative to the lower, Barchetta-influenced lower body.

1948 Ferrari 166 Inter Berlinetta by Touring, Federico Formenti designer
Early postwar, Touring made many cars based on the Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 platform.  A common Touring feature there was sculpted character lines on both front and rear fenders.  That feature is seen here too.

The greenhouse's rear profile seems a little awkward, but that is because Barchettas often had back seats requiring passenger headroom, whereas Coupes did not.  That said, this car had only a bench in back that might be used as a seat briefly.

The backlight window is large for its time.  I think the design would be improved if it was a bit narrower and less high.

The 1948 Ford Muroc Concept Model by Gil Spear

One label for this post is "Concept Cars." But the subject never made it beyond the scale model statge.  One reason might have been because concept cars were not a thing in 1948 America.  The first post- World War 2 Dream Car / Concept Car was General Motors' Le Sabre that was revealed in a December 1950 Life magazine issue that I wrote about here.

Nevertheless, the 1948 Ford Motor Company's Muroc model received some exposure:

It's that red car at the upper left of this 1953 paperback book from Motor Trend magazine.

The book "Ford Design Department: Concept & Show Cars 1932-1961" by Jim and Cheryl Farrell credits (pp. 77-79) the design of the Muroc to Gil Spear, whose career is summarized on page 78.  He entered automobile design at General Motors, then moved to Chrysler Corporation around 1939-40 after a short time with Norman Bel Geddes' industrial design firm.   I wrote about his Chrysler work here.

He joined Ford in 1947 and the Muroc model was completed in late 1948.

The Farrells write:

"It was the first 3/8-sized concept car specifically designed by Spear for review by his still-skeptical bosses in the Engineering Department.  Spear knew he had a 'hot," different [sic] and an attention-getter, but that it also had to be within the package set by Engineering.  The hood could be lower than the package, because no one knew how low engines or radiators would be in the future, but Engineering wouldn't let the roof or windshield to be raked as Spear wanted... From the prespective of 50 years later, Spear still thinks the roof and windshield look stuffy."

Images of the Muroc are in the Gallery below.  They were originally from Ford.  Color photos were found on the Internet.  Black and white photos are from the Farrell's book.

Gallery

The Muroc as found on a 1952 Ford Advanced Studio display.  That's Gil Spear sketching it. The wide, vertical grille bars are suggestive of those later seen on 1950 Buicks.  The Farrells stated that it was completed towards the end of 1948, but did not mention when it was first revealed to the public.  1950 Buick Specials were announced 8 August 1949, so its grille design was probably set sometime in 1948.  Ford's Mercury brand cars had grilles with vertical bars starting in 1946, though these bars were very thin.

An image apparently scanned from a publication.  The basic body is unreasonably low, making the passenger greenhouse appear unreasonably tall.  The wheels and tires seem smaller than the American norm for 1948.  There are bulges above all wheel openings, though the front ones would have been unnecessary from a wheel jounce standpoint.

Same viewpoint, but with a model of a driver at the wheel.  The driver might not be at 3/8 scale, given the relationship to the steering wheel.  On the other hand, steering wheels were large in those pre- power steering days.  If the driver were indeed 3/8 scale like the model, then the passenger compartment would be excessively tall.  Since the model was built to Engineering's package specifications, I'll assume the driver model is a little below 3/8 scale.

Rear quarter view.  The greenhouse window patterns is awkward.  Trunk capacity (if there even is supposed to be a trunk) is negligible.  Those lethal looking "Dagmars" at the rear predate the famous ones on 1952 Cadillac front bumpers.

Seriously Rounded 1936-38 Hudsons and Terraplanes

In America, the 1930s saw the transformation to all-steel car bodies.  Sheet metal stamping technology limitations and perhaps a desirability to compactly stack stamped parts led to car designs featuring large-radius curved surfaces.

This styling variation reached its peak around 1935 or 1936 with new designs in the form of cars such as '35 Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles, along with '36 Buicks and Hudsons.  The latter is the subject of this post because I judge Hudson's styling ever-so-slightly more rounded than the General Motors variety.  That's mostly due to the shape of Hudson's grille.

Note that Terraplane offered what amounted to re-branded, less-expensive, shorter Hudsons.  For model year 1938, the formerly separately-branded Terraplanes became Hudson-Terraplanes, and for 1939 the name Terraplane was abandoned.

Examples of Hudson and Terrplane body types are presented below.  Unless noted, images are of cars listed for sale.

Gallery

1936 Hudson Sedan
This viewing angle shows the roundedness of the sedan body.  Items such as fenders and catwalk fronts  might be expected to be rounded in the mid-1930s.  The front fender seen here are quite wide, typical of that era in the USA.  What is less expected is how rounded the passenger compartment greenhouse is -- the curved roof shape and the window profiles.  Also note how the body sides tuck under towards the running board.  This appears light, contrasting with the body above the beltline that seems heavy by comparison.

1936 Terraplane Deluxe Touring Sedan - Burns & Co. Auctions photo
The rounded window profiles are seen better here.  The profile of the hood's front / fencer's mask grille is hinted.  Note the rounded rear wheel opening.  This was found on 1936 models and replaced by a smaller opening for 1937.

1936 Terraplane Touring Brougham
More rounding: after roof line, backlight window profiles, bulged trunk lid.

1937 Terraplane Utility Coupe
Terraplanes, had shorter wheelbases that accentuated rounding when seen in side views.  The smaller wheel openings at the rear result in more rounded fender sheet metal, creating a heavier appearance.

1937 Terraplane Super Convertible Brougham - Broad Arrow Auctions photo
Rear wheel openings are skirted.  The fender-mounted spare tire adds to the rounded theme.

1938 Hudson Terraplane Touring Sedan
This model year saw the first of Hudson's facelifts that kept its designs somewhat competitive through the 1947 model year.  For '38, the main change was the abandonment of the fencer's mask grille -- though the central chrome sweep theme was carried over.

"Breezeway" Mercurys of the 1950s and 1960s

A late-1950s - mid-1960s concept that reached production, yet did not become an American car industry fad such a tail fins and panoramic windshields, was the retractible backlight window.  This yielded what folks nowadays call "Breezeway" passenger compartments.  The idea being that air admitted from windshield area intake vents or "ventipane" windows would exit through a backlight zone at the rear.  The result would be a breeze from front to rear of the compartment.

Wikipedia's Breezeway entry is here.

I wonder how this worked when a breezeway car was at highway speed and the backlight window was rolled down.  Perhaps air turbulence aft of the top edge of the roof might be overwhelm the breeze flow and impact back seat passengers.  Let me know in a Comment whether that was the case.

The first Mercury Breezeways (model years 1957-58) were called Turnpike Cruisers, retaining some features from a concept car of the same name.   I wrote about the 1956 XM Turnpike Cruiser concept car here.  More Turnpike Cruiser background is here.

As noted in the Gallery, there were Breezeway Lincolns in the late 1950s.  Mercury reintroduced Breezeways on some models 1963-66, and some '63 versions are pictured.

Gallery

1953 Packard Balboa concept car - Packard photo
An early American breezeway design was this Packard concept car.  Note the slanted backlight window.  It was designed to roll down, but the mechanisms were never installed.

1956 Mercury XM Turnpike Cruiser concept car - Mercury photo
The concept Turnpike Cruiser.  The center section of the backlight was flat glass that was not retractible, alhough in theory a production version might have included that feature.  The XM's passenger compartment greenhouse extended over the trunk, and the spare tire was positioned centered below the aft edge of the greenhouse.  Since it certainly looks like the center window pane could have been retractible by reconfiguring the trunk, I'll call this an "honorary" Breezeway design.

1958 Lincoln Continental Mark III - car-for-sale photo
A rolled-down Breezeway window on a 1958 Lincoln.  Only Continental Marks III-IV (1958-60) had breezeways.  Total production was around 34,000, much less than Mercury versions.

1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser hardtop sedan - Mecum Auctions photos
Most production Breezeways were Mercurys.  Intake vents are atop the windshield.  Side window ventipanes also admitted air streams.

Again, the Breezeway window is retracted.

1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser hardtop coupe - car-for-sale photo
Mercury also made two-door Breezeway cars.

1963 Mercury Monterey Custom hardtop coupe - car-for-sale photos
Breezeways were reintroduced on some 1963 Mercurys.  This is a top-of-the-line version.

Rear quarter view showing the window arrangement.

1963 Mercury Monterey Custom hardtop sedan - Mercury publicity photo
The sedan hardtop's rear doors had small triangular upward extensions on the aft beltline.

1963 Mercury Monterey Custom 4-door sedan - car-for-sale photo
All Breezeway Mercury's and Lincolns had wide, V'd C-pillars.