Chrysler Corporation's Redesigned 1949 Line

By the late 1930s Chrysler Corporation was using the same basic body for most models of its four brands.  This practice continued until the 1953 model year.  Passenger compartments were essentially the same aside from stretched eight passenger limousines and some sedans with front-hinged rear doors.  However, the upper end of Chrysler's line had longer wheelbases and greater overall length than did entry level brands.  Body shape differences took place mostly forward of the cowl/firewall.

Otherwise, the corporation's brands were given distinctive grilles as the key identification element.  Other exterior brand-specific ornamentation was limited, but interiors were increasingly luxurious moving up the line's price-prestige continuum.

For 1949, along with Ford Motor Company, Nash, and General Motors' Chevrolet, Pontiac and Buick brands, Chrysler Corporation introduced its post- World War 2 redesign, shedding bodies with prewar roots.  That redesign is the subject of this post.  Unless otherwise noted, the images below are factory photos or those of cars listed for sale.

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A 1946 DeSoto 4-door sedan, illustrating the general appearance of postwar 1946 facelifts given all Chrysler brands save Plymouth, which retained its shorter prewar front fenders.  Chrysler Corporation cars for the 1947-1948 model years were essentially not facelifted again.

1948 Chrysler Windsor side view showing the long hood given to top-of-the-line models.

Here is the redesigned 1949 Chrysler New Yorker.  Quite tall and boxy, unlike the sleeker postwar styling of most competitors (boxy exceptions were Kaisers and Frazers).

Side view of a 1949 Plymouth, the corporation's low-priced brand.  Its passenger compartment is the same as that of the Chrysler, which has a slightly longer trunk and a noticeably longer hood.

Lower-level brands Plymouth and Dodge were given additional fastback-style two-door sedan bodies, perhaps as a hedge against the possibility that the public might reject boxy styling.  Shown here is a fastback Plymouth Deluxe 2-door sedan.

Dodge, besides its boxy line, marketed this Wayfarer.  I posted about Dodge Wayfarers here.  Note that the cars in this photo and previous one lack the fender-top tail light assemblies found on the boxy '49s.

Chrysler continued its practice of having eight-passenger models with stretched passenger compartments.  Shown here is a Chrysler Crown Imperial Limousine.  It too has tail lights built into the rear fenders, something the entire corporation line will feature in the 1950 model year.

Rear-quarter view of a Chrysler Windsor showing the trunk and the Chrysler brand's version of the fender-top tail lights.

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Given the continued similarity of its basic bodies across its product line, Chrysler Corporation for 1949 followed the sensible General Motors practice of carrying over brand-identification décor elements from its 1948 Chryslers and DeSotos.  Shown below are 1948 and 1949 grilles for each of the corporation's brands.

Chrysler.  The first photo is of a '48 Town and County from Hyman auctions.  The second is of a '49 coupe.  The bold grille bars of the 1949 model are part of the large-element grill design fashion of the times.  The theme of the small peak atop the '48 grille is echoed on the '49.  Square turn lights are retained, as is the two-tiered grille theme defined by bolder, mid-level bars.

DeSoto.  DeSotos were given their vertical-bar grille theme for the 1942 model year, and this was continued through 1955.

Dodge.  First photo from a commons Web site.  Here the grille theme is not strongly retained.  Even the turn signal lights have different shapes.  Strong retention of brand identification items is mostly found for luxury brands and often hardly at all for entry-level makes.  Dodges were next to the bottom of Chrysler's brand hierarchy,

Plymouth.  The same can be said for entry-level Plymouths (upper photo taken by me at the LeMay museum in Tacoma a few years ago).  Interestingly, the 1948 Plymouth grille bars are bolder than those for 1949.  Also note that '49 Chryslers, Dodges and Plymouths have grilles separated into upper and lower elements by means of bolder mid-level horizontal bars.  (I posted about 1947-1955 Plymouth grille designs here

Ford's X-100 Influenced More Than Thunderbirds

Nowadays, many concept/show cars are thinly disguised versions of production cars due to be announced within the next year or two.  This was not the case back in the 1950s when Dream Cars (what they were often called then) were more likely to spin only a few details off to later production models.

Such was the case with Ford Motor Company's 1953 Continental 195X, soon renamed the X-100.  This was Ford's first Dream Car.

It was styled by Joe Oros, member of George Walker's squad of consultant stylists in the days when they had great influence on the company's designs, but before Walker was hired as styling vice-president.  It was Oros who came up with the grille spinner design that was the signature element of the great 1949 Ford design.  He later was in charge of Ford design, with Elwood Engle running Mercury and Lincoln.  However, the two interacted well and surely style concepts passed back and forth between styling studios with their approval.

When the X-100 is mentioned, sometimes it's noted that its taillight design was later used on 1961 Ford Thunderbirds.  The first link above mentions that Oros was keen on round tail lights that gave a hint of jet fighter exhaust pipes -- something very exciting then.  They first appeared on 1952 Fords and have occasionally reappeared since.

I suggest here that elements of 1953 X-100 also can be found on 1956 Lincolns.  Whether this was directly due to Oros or might simply have been picked up by stylists working on the new Lincoln design due to familiarity with the X-100 might be hard to determine this many years later.

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Ford X-100 seen from above.  Yes, the curved sides make it look a little bulky.  And there are those SciFi spaceship-cum-jet-fighter details front and rear.  Yet overall, its appearance is more pleasing than most later 1950s Ford and General Motors show cars.

Frontal view.  The grille contains elements of Oros' early version of the '49 Ford grille design.  His trial concept of split-open horizontal bars shown below is also found here in the overall grill ensemble.

Model showing proposed 1949 Ford grille design.

X-100 parked on Ford Motor Company grounds in Dearborn.  In the background are 1953 Fords.

Rear aspect of the X-100.  An early photo because it has the word "Continental" on its flank: this was replaced by "X-100."

Rear quarter view of a 1961 Thunderbird Convertible, Mecum auctions photo.  While not identical to the X-100, there is clear thematic resemblance.

Publicity photo.  Here "X-100" can be seen where "Continental" was.

1956 Lincoln Primiere Convertible, Barrett-Jackson photo.  Similarities to the X-100 include: strongly "frenched" headlight assemblies; abaft that, the fender shape as far back as the aft edge of the door; and the front wheel opening.

Stopgap "Hardtops" -- Vinyl-Covered Coupes by Mercury and Lincoln

As I posted here, General Motors' "hardtop convertible" body type, launched for 1949, proved to be quite popular.  Popular enough the competitors brought out their versions as quickly as possible, as noted here.

Chrysler Corporation was able to market hardtops as early as the 1950 model year, but other firms weren't able to do so until 1951, 1952 and even 1953.  Chrysler created hardtops using its redesigned 1949 bodies, as did Ford in 1951.  Studebaker's redesign was for the 1947 model year, and its hardtop version based on the body didn't appear until 1952.  Most other hardtops appeared when companies redesigned their product lines.

Ford Motor Company tried to offer sporty competition to GM's hardtops using the expedient of putting vinyl covering on two-door coupés.  The idea probably was the vinyl would suggest that the coupés actually had raised cloth tops.  Resulting models were the Ford Crestliner (I deal with that in a separate post), the Mercury Monterey and the Lincoln Lido and Lincoln Cosmopolitan Capri.

The basic body used by the Monterey and Lido did not lend itself well to hardtop styling, and potential sales volumes might not have been deemed likely to recover development costs.  The latter consideration almost surely was the case for the Capri, that name being continued for Lincoln's hardtop line when the redesigned 1952 cars were announced.

Below are images of Mercury and Lincoln faux-hardtops for 1950 and 1951.

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First, a 1949 Oldsmobile Futuramic 98 Holiday Coupe, part of GM's first-generation hardtop line that Mercury and Lincoln had to compete against.

1950 Mercury Monterey in a "for sale" photo.  The hardtop design language in those days worked best on boxier basic bodies.  The slinkier Mercury styling might have been a problematical, but not impossible, basis.

1950 Lincoln Lido, factory photo.  Lincolns for model years 1949-1951 used two different bodies.  Entry-level Lincolns like this one shared the Mercury body.

1950 Lincoln Cosmopolitan Capri, Cosmos having a unique-to-Lincoln (and quite possibly profit-killing) body.  The thin B-pillars give Capris more of a hardtop look, though this is somewhat counteracted by the rear-quarter side windows.  For sale photo.

A 1951 Mercury Monterey for sale.  The final model year for this body saw a controversial "facelift" in the form of rear fender extensions and a reshaped backlight.  My reference library lacks sales data on Montereys.

Lincoln Lidos got similar bodywork modifications for '51, as seen in this "for sale" photo.  Only 10,230 entry-level Lincoln coupes of all kinds were built 1950-51, so the number of Lido versions must have been small.

A for-sale 1951 Lincoln Cosmopolitan Capri.  Cosmo coupe sales for these model years totaled 6,316, but I don't know how many were Capris.

Borgward Isabella Coupé

The original Borgward company had its best years sales-wise during the 1950s.  Its product line in those days included the small Hansa 1500 and 1800 models, the comparatively large Hansa 2400 and the intermediate Isabella.

The subject of this post is the Isabella Coupé of 1957-1961.  Its styling seems flawed to me, but there are many images of preserved Coupés found via Google, indicating that the car has plenty of fans.

As I will point out in the captions below, its styling was somewhat awkwardly done even in the context of its time. I'm also inclined to think that the Isabella Coupé was inspired as a product concept and even stylistically by Volkswagen's Karmann-Ghia coupé.

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An early, perhaps 1955, Karmann-Ghia: a classic design.  Its wheelbase was 2400 mm (94.5 inches) and its motor produced 40 or less horsepower.

Borgward Isabella Coupé publicity photo.  Isabellas had 75 horsepower motors and wheelbases of 2600 mm (100 in.), putting them in a higher class than Karmann-Ghias.  Its passenger greenhouse's C-pillar / backlight area somewhat resembles the K-G, and the seating arrangements are about the same.  Otherwise, design details differ considerably in part because the K-G's motor was in the rear and the Isabella had a conventional powertrain.

Another publicity photo.  Borgwards had those too-large diamond-shaped logo elements as part of the grille design: would have been better smaller.  "Frenched" headlight assemblies and the turn indicator lights atop the front fenders make for a fussy looking front.

The most serious design problem is the effect of the small passenger compartment coupled with the long trunk as seen in this "for sale" photo of a 1961 coupé.  The car would have been better looking if the passenger compartment were a true 2+2 layout and the aft end of the greenhouse was positioned approximately above the rear axle line.

A for-sale 1960 Isabella Coupé posed at an angle that demonstrates the design's too-long trunk proportion.

Shannons (Australia) auction photo of a 1959 coupé.  The car looks best from this viewpoint.  Even so, the fenders look poorly styled.  I think the front fender drops at too great a rate abaft of the cowling.  Raising it and enlarging the greenhouse along with tidying the car's face would have made for a better -- though less distinctive -- design.

Book Reviews: Pininfarina and Touring

The Italian publishing house Giorgio Nada Editore not long ago launched a series of books about some of the country's most famous carrozziari.  I happened to stumble across one about Touring while browsing a Feltrinelli bookstore in Rome a few months ago.  Upon my return home I ordered one about Pininfarina.  My reaction to these is the subject of this post.

Cover designs and links to Amazon:

Pininfarina: Masterpieces of Style

Touring: Masterpieces of Style
Amazon cites Luciano Greggio as the author of both books, though on the books' information pages he is listed as "Texts edited by" -- whatever that might mean.

I bought the books because I wanted reference material on Italian coachbuilders, especially their work from the mid-1920s to 1965 or thereabouts, a period that interests me greatly.  I was very pleased with the Touring book because that firm was active from 1926 to 1966, almost exactly hitting my time criterion.  (The name was resurrected in recent years, but that firm's work is not covered in the book.)  It is an excellent research tool for my purposes.

The Pininfarina book is another matter, partly because the firm has been active since 1930, nearly 90 years, requiring a similar-sized book to deal with a greater time span.  I did find the pre-1965 material useful, and the information regarding more recent designs should also be helpful researching material for this blog.

One disappointment with the Pininfarina book was that its text struck me as being more like an extended press release than a scholarly presentation.  Here are two examples.

1984 Ferrari Testarossa
Text on page 148 includes the following:

"The second [1984] event instead concerned the presentation of the Testarossa berlinetta, unveiled in October 1984 by Sergio Pininfarina himself in the glamorous setting of the Paris Lido; this was a car with an extraordinary presence and stood out above all for the conspicuous slatted lateral air intakes in a softly rounded composition rich in aerodynamic appendages and the fruit of highly sophisticated research."

Not factually wrong, but there is a real public relations feel to it that I found annoying.

1995 Honda Argento Vivo
Part of the book's caption (page 177) for this photo reads:

"The Argento Vivo from 1995, an authentic star in terms of research and materials used, the car was born out [of] an emotive and technological research project by Pininfarina in collaboration with Honda...."

This is rather gushy, but care was taken not to say that the car was attractive -- I consider it something of a mess, styling-wise.

One serious (for me) defect in both books was that the actual stylists of the cars presented were not mentioned or at best only hinted at.

Also available at present is a book about Zagato that I am considering buying.  Forthcoming are books about Bertone, Ghia and Vignale.

Toyota RAV4 Restyled for 2019

The RAV4 crossover SUV is Toyota's best-selling vehicle in the United States.  Recently its fifth-generation version was introduced.  (For information regarding all RAV4 generations, link here.)

I own a fourth-generation RAV4 and am pleased with it.  Aside from front-end fussiness, its styling is pleasant.  Since mine is five years old, I was thinking of replacing it when redesigned 2019 models would be introduced.

Now that the 2019s are here, I'm not at all sure I want to buy a new RAV4.   That's because of the styling.  As I've mentioned a number of times here, automobile stylists nowadays are greatly constrained because they have to deal with overall body shapes dictated by wind tunnel tests.  To a considerable extent, they are simply decorating those shapes, whereas stylists of yore (say, the 1950s) were able to design shapes along with the ornamentation.

For many years Toyota cars featured rather bland styling and received increasing criticism from various sources for that.  A few years ago Akio Toyoda, the firm's president and member of the founding family decreed that Toyota cars get flashy styling.  The result was a shift from bland looking vehicles to garishly decorated ones.  And the new 2019 RAV4 has joined this sad design fraternity.

In the Gallery below I pair the facelifted (from 2013) 2016 RAV4 with the 2019 model.

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The 2016 RAV4.  The frontal design is aggressive, perhaps needlessly so.

The 2019 front is more of a flat, bulldog snout.  Thematically it's more coherent than the '16's in that the shape of the lower grille opening is echoed by the outline of the panel above it.  Also, the cliché sweep from headlight-to-headlight on the '16 is downplayed.  All that said, the '19 front strikes me as being out of character for RAV4s.  (Yes, there is a 2019 version kitted out as more of a recreational vehicle, so I suppose the styling staff was asked to create a truck-like front.)

The 2013/2016 side could have used a less-soft front, but the rest of the design is reasonably taut and well-balanced.

The character of the '19's side is far from the '16's.  Wheel openings are squared off, the aft has a totally new theme, and the rest of the side is cluttered with near-random sculpting.  Typical current Toyota overkill.

The previous RAV4's aft featured clichéd tail light assembly shaping that was poorly integrated with the rest of the design.  The overall rear configuration for RAV4's since 2006 was tall and narrow -- the styling made no serious attempt to camouflage this.

From this photo, the aft of the new RAV4 seems physically wider than previous RAVs.  Tail light assembly shapes relate better to the other design features.  These are fairly well done, having strong horizontal elements instead of the current cliché of having "swooped" sculpting.  The fussy element here is the sculpting in the zone between the rear wheel openings and the central panel where the license plate resides.

To me, the silliest, most unnecessary detail is that black strip which continues the backlight roof overhang to side window outline, running almost arbitrarily across the C-pillar.  How did this detail ever get approved?  This little joke is a design-killer, so far as I'm concerned.  I'll go shopping for a Honda CR-V even though I'll admit that the new RAV4 looks better in the showroom than it does in these photos..

Nicely Styled 1955 and 1956 Lincolns, Plus Some Context

Among the best model years for Lincoln styling were 1955 and 1956, and the 1952 models looked nice too.  Then for 1957 through 1960 designs became questionable, but were followed by the classic 1961s.  I wrote about late-1950s Lincolns and other cars with quad headlights here.

Let's go straight to the photos, and I'll provide narrative in the captions.  Unless otherwise noted, images are of cars listed for sale.

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1952 Lincoln Capri hardtop, RM Sotheby's photo.  The entire Ford Motor Company line was redesigned for 1952.  Lincolns became shorter, and to that degree were more competitive with Buicks than Cadillacs.  However, they were good-performing road cars and did well in the famous Mexican Road Race.  Styling was attractive.  Interesting elements included headlight assemblies where the lights themselves were "floated."  Integration of the bumper and grille was unusual at the time.  The most controversial detail was the faux air scoop on the car's flank.  Its non-functionality aside, it helped reduce the appearance of side bulk and added interest to what otherwise would have been a too-plain surface.

Lincoln styling was similar for 1953 and mildly facelifted for 1954, as shown here.  Bumper guards are canted outwards and the air scoop is now reduced to its residual sculpting overlaid by chrome trim.

Model year 1955 saw record-breaking sales levels for the American auto industry as a whole.  But Lincoln sales fell despite its attractive facelift such on the Capri hardtop shown here.  The reason for poor sales was Lincoln's lack of a panoramic (wraparound) windshield, a feature found on all other 1955 models save Studebaker coupés and the failing Kaiser and Willys marques.

Now for three Barrett-Jackson images of a 1955 Capri hardtop.  Headlights are now set within slightly "frenched" assemblies.  The bumper-grille ensemble is simple, yet having just enough variation due to the canted guards to make it interesting.

The faux air intake detailing is totally gone, being replaced by attractive, thrusting side sculpting.  Its chrome trim is nicely integrated and the carryover horizontal chrome strip helps keep the side design lithe.

The forwards-leaning theme embodied by the headlight assemblies and side sculpting is echoed by reverse-leaning tail light assemblies.  A very nice touch that helps add visual length to a comparatively short (for its price class) car.  Note the canted guards on the rear bumper: smaller than at the front, but they add unity to the overall theme.  My only complaint is the fussiness on the C-pillar.

A '55 Capri four-door sedan, rear quarter view.  Not as exciting as the coupé, but that's the cross most sedans have to bear.  Lincoln sales for '55 were only 27,222 cars despite the fine styling.

Lincolns got redesigned, larger bodies for 1956.  Above is a Premiere hardtop shown in a factory photo.  The essential (in the mid-1950s) panoramic windshield is now present.  Retained are the forward-leaning front and backward-leaning rear fender extremities.  These provide more physical and visual length for the fenderline.  Fender sculpting forward of the door handle was taken from the 1953 Ford X-100 dream car.

Frontal view of a 1956 Capri hardtop, Barrett-Jackson image.  Gone are the canted bumper guards.  Some variety in the grille ensemble is provided by the hood cutouts that echo the shapes of the ancillary light assemblies below.  This makes for an unusual composition because the emphasis is at the extremes and the center zone (the normal grille focus area) is contrastingly plain.

Although the body is new, the aft theme is carried over from 1955 Lincolns.  Altogether, a very handsome design.  Industry sales dropped from 1955 levels, but 50,322 Lincolns were sold -- the greatest number yet for the marque.

Side view of a '56 Lincoln Primiere sedan via Mecum auctions.  The logical, yet cramped and slightly fussy C-pillar feature made these sedans distinctive.

Rear quarter view of another sedan.  Somehow I can't take my eyes off that tiny quarter window.

Then all that good designing fell apart when Lincolns were heavily facelifted for 1957.  Pictured in this factory photo is a Primiere Laundau, the name given to the new four-door hardtop sedans.  Apparently stylists were told to add tail fins (the new, hot fad following wraparound windshields) and quad headlights (influenced by government legislation).  The buying public noticed, and Lincoln sales fell by about 18 percent.