Larry Edsall in Automotive News goes into more detail here. According to most stories, including Edsall's, Earl reacted by claiming that body engineers altered his staff's design. He used this (along with his friendship with Alfred P. Sloan) to gain final sign-off on future designs from his Art & Colour section.
I am a bit skeptical. So far as I know, there is no visual evidence of the designs Art & Colour prepared for various Buick body types. If this is so, then the matter cannot be resolved. My guess is that Earl's design did have that bulge. Checking with the styling history bible, "A Century of Automotive Style" by Michael Lamm and David Holls, I notice on page 91 that former Chrysler Corporation stylist Jeff Godshall is of the same opinion. I base my case on the reasoning that body engineers, a conservative lot, would never think of making such a major departure from strong conventions of the time unless they were under instructions to do so.
We begin with four images of 1929 Buicks. The notorious bulge is along the belt line.
Now compare these Buicks to some other cars of its vintage ...
A 1929 Chevrolet. Its body was designed around 1926-27 for the 1928 model year, so it has no real Harley Earl influence so far as I can tell.
A 1929 LaSalle. Earl's first styling project with General Motors was the 1927 LaSalle line. Its sides are typical of the times.
A 1928 Chrysler. Chryslers competed with Buicks, and potential buyers of '29 Buicks would have been familiar with cars such as this.
1929 Dodge. Its design probably pre-dates Chrysler's 1928 acquisition of Dodge. I include this image to provide some more non-GM design context.
So yes, that Buick bulge was definitely out of the American car body design mainstream during the 1929 model year.
3 comments:
Thankyou for your very excellent 1929 'Pregnant' Buick styling case presentation Donald and I totally agree with you!!! And contrary to popular moronic petty picking public criticisms, the 1929 Pregnant Buick was really quite an equally handsome impressive attractive style overall no worse than all the other car makes for its time!!!
These are the same Christian position imbeciles that couldn't understand the Airflow.
What an incredibly small design difference to nit-pick over.
Post a Comment