1960 Plymouth XNR Concept

First called the Asymmetrica, Chrysler Corporation's 1960 Plymouth sports car concept was renamed the Plymouth XNR after Virgil Exner, the Corporations's styling vice president.  Some authoritative XNR background by Ken Gross can be linked here.

The Asymmetrica label was appropriate, thanks to some body shaping only on the driver's side of the car.  I have no objection to this in principle: it depends on how it is done.

For example, above is a 1963 Studebaker Avanti that I photographed in Baltimore many years ago.   Note the raised part of the hood positioned in front of the steering wheel.  This asymmetrical solution works well.

And what about the XNR's asymmetry?  Let's take a look at some factory photos.

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Seen from behind, the asymmetry is emphasized by the cross-shaped rear bumper.  This was a show car feature not likely to have survived had the XNR ever entered production.  That is, the upper vertical element has little realistic protective function.  (Okay, if it were resilient, it might help the driver's head from being smashed from behind by the headrest fin in a rear-end collision.)

The front lacks the cross theme.  Instead, there is somewhat puny bumper that surrounds a grille that is substantially blocked by quad headlights.  This also would not likely see production.

An exhaust pipe with a muffler is on the driver's side of the car only.  This is a sporty touch, but the hot piping might burn the leg of someone standing too close to it.

The asymmetrical feature on the hood has what seems to be a functional air scoop at its front.  It then extends to the passenger compartment where it becomes a short hood over the top of the instrument panel.  This has a logic to it, though I feel that the shaping is too heavy, unlike the Avanti's hood décor.

Fenders are actually decorative items canted outwards to tight-radius character lines.  This is in keeping with the passenger compartment body sides that also are wider at the top than at the bottom.  Viewed from the side, as in this photo, the car seems lean and mean.  But in views from higher, as in some of the images above, the car seems wide and somewhat heavy despite the relief of the front and rear asymmetry sculpting.
My conclusion is that the XNR is a example of Exner's declining ability to style pleasing automobiles.  There are too many visual gimmicks that don't always work well together.

1956 Chrysler Norseman Concept, Lost at Sea

It was built by Ghia in Italy, but didn't have the Italian-influenced styling of many Chrysler concept cars of the early to mid 1950s.  Rather, it had the look of a potential American production car.

I'm referring to the 1956 Chrysler Norseman that was lost when the Italian liner Andrea Doria sank following a collision.

According to some accounts I've read, it was intended to test the concept of a roof cantilevered from a robust C-pillar -- there was only a "hardtop" type stub B-pillar and no structural A-pillar.  This was probably not a realistic idea even in 1956 and something that would strike today's safety-conscious bureaucrats, engineers and car buyers with horror.

That said, the Norseman -- why was it given that name? -- was a very attractive mid-1950s work of styling.

Due to its brief lifespan, few images of the Norseman exist.

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Styling staff rendering.

Front quarter view.  The bumper-grille ensemble is more show jazz than practical.  Semi-ditto the clamshell headlight covers.  The body-color section of the roof is likely the cantilever structural element, the light colored panel probably being normal roof cladding.

Rear quarter.  Interesting that the car is a fastback and not a conventional bustle-back design.  Fastbacks were phased out of American production a few years earlier, so this aspect of the design was not practical from a potential marketing standpoint.  Nevertheless, it looks good.  The rear bumper set is more car show jazz.  Plus there are low tail fins suggestive of forthcoming redesigned 1957 Chrysler Corporation line styling.

General Motors' New 1942 C-Body Two-Door Fastbacks

General Motors' essentially top-of-the line C-Body was redesigned for the 1940 model year.  Body types offered were a four-door sedan, a coupe, and convertible versions of those.

The line was expanded for 1942 as part of GM's push to add fastback styles to its portfolio.  This was in the form of a two-door fastback that marketers variously referred to as small sedans or coupes.

These were attractive cars, as the images below might suggest.  They were found on the Cadillac 62 Series, Oldsmobile's top-of-the-line Ninety-Eight Series, and on the Buick Super and Roadmaster series.  Image sources are of cars for sale unless noted.

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1942 Buick Century Sedanet
This is a B-Body two-door fastback, a type GM introduced for 1941.  Rear seating was fairly cramped, and the aft side windows were smaller than on the '42 C-Body equivalent.  Another car-spotter's tell is that the B-pillar leans forward here, but is vertical on the C-Body cars.

1942 Cadillac 62 Club Coupe
Cadillac's two-door fastback showing the longer side windows and vertical B-pillar.  All GM cars except for some limousines had front fenders overlapping front doors for 1942.

1942 Buick Roadmaster Sedanet, Mecum Auctions photo
The top-of-the line Buick version.  Here the front fenders touch the rear fenders.

1942 Oldsmobile 98 Dynamic Cruiser Club Sedan brochure illustration
I haven't been able to find suitable (known-source) images of the Oldsmobile version, so this brochure illustration and the doctored photo below will have to do.

1942 Oldsmobile 98 Dynamic Cruiser Club Sedan airbrushed publicity photo
General Motors marketers in those days relied heavily on retouched publicity photos.  This probably had to do with the poor quality of screened photos in newspapers -- the retouched images carried through better.

1951 DeSoto Sportsman Hardtop

A popular body style in America from the late 1940s through the 1970s was the "hardtop convertible" -- at first a coupé without a B-pillar.  That is, no pillar was visible when the side windows were rolled down.  The result was a sporty-looking car without most of the advantages and defects of a true convertible.

I wrote about General Motors' pathbreaking hardtops here, and hardtops from competing manufacturers here.  Read those posts for some background information if you aren't familiar with that body type which was phased out for reasons of rollover protection.

This post deals with a Chrysler Corporation hardtop, the 1951 DeSoto Sportsman.

Chrysler was a successful firm from the mid-1920s until the very early 1950s when it began to falter. In my opinion that decline was due to a mistaken styling theme for its first post- World War 2 redesign, its 1949 models.  The entire line from Plymouth to Chrysler Imperial was rather tall, stubby, and boxy compared to competing brands, especially those of style leader General Motors.  Chrysler's 1953 redesigns did not go far enough to correct the problem and the company never really recovered even though it had occasional periods of strong sales success.

Chrysler Corporation's first mass-produced hardtops appeared for the 1950 model year.   I wrote about the DeSoto hardtop here.  The following model year saw the corporation's cars get modest facelifts, the most visible detail being rounded-down noses in place of ship prow hood lines that had contributed to the boxy appearance.

The '51 DeSoto Sportsman is shown here because I found images of a beautifully restored example (click on them to enlarge somewhat).  Unless otherwise noted, images are of cars advertised for sale.

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A 1951 DeSoto sedan showing the facelifted front and the boxy remainder of the body.

And here is that restored DeSoto.  From today's SUV-influenced perspective, the styling seems reasonably presentable.  But in its day, it seemed dowdy to many potential buyers.  One factor that kept Chrysler Corporation sales from collapsing back then was the company's strong reputation for good engineering.  I suspect that most actual buyers ignored the styling and bought Chrysler products either for the engineering or due to habit.  By the way, that 1951 Washington license plate's letter B represents Pierce County (Tacoma), the state's second most populous county -- King County (Seattle) got A and Spokane County cars had C in those days.

Rear quarter view.  The general appearance of the top, including the C-pillar and back window, is direct borrowing from GM's first-generation hardtops (see the first link above).  Unfortunately, the shape is not nearly as lithe as what Harley Earl's crew was able to produce.

Side view.  The car is refreshingly chrome-free seen from this perspective.  In part that might have been because of material shortages due to the 1950-53 Korean War.

DeSoto sales where never strong because the brand was squeezed between Dodge and Chrysler.  Fewer than 9,000 Sportsmen were sold over the 1951-52 model years.  Above is a competing hardtop, the Hudson Hollywood whose annual sales were similar.

Bracketing the Sportsman's price point in 1951 were Oldsmobile's Ninety-Eight Holiday (above) and Super 88 Holiday (below, Mecum Auctions photo).  Granted that Olds sales in general were higher than DeSoto's, but these more stylish hardtops together outsold Sportsmen by a factor of about seven.

Buick Super and Roadmaster Riviera hardtops shared bodies with the Olds' and also price-bracketed the DeSoto.  Shown here is a Super Riviera.  They outsold Sportsmen by a factor of about 16.

Cord 812 with an Auburn Boat-Tail

Automobile museums are seemingly everywhere.  One that I encountered in March 2020 was in the Riverside resort-casino in Laughlin, Nevada.  Since I don't gamble, I decided to view the main part of Don Laughlin's car museum at the facility.  Some cars were Laughlin's, others on view had different owners.

Perhaps the most interesting car on view was a 1937 Cord 812 with a boat-tail body that was labeled as being a Cord Speedster.

There was never such a production Cord, as best I can tell, so this was a custom job.  But when and were was it made?  I have no idea.  And the sign by it at the museum did not say.  Let us know in a comment if you have solid information regarding this fascinating car.

Let's take a look.

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My iPhone photo showing a front quarter view.  The blending of frontal Cord styling with the boat-tail cockpit and rear is very nicely done -- an interesting design.

Here is the information plaque that says nothing about the car on display aside from an estimate of its value.

Rear quarter view.  Very interesting.  Definitely something Cord might have marketed had the company the financial resources to do so.  Question: Where did the boat-tail bodywork come from?

Mecum auction photo of a 1936 Auburn Speedster.  The boat-tails of 1935-36 Speedsters are not like that on the Cord shown above.

Instead, its boat-tail design appears to be from an earlier Auburn Speedster such as this 1933 model (Mecum photo).

1958 Chevrolet Exterior Trim Variations by Model

A common automobile industry practice is to have exterior trim variations for brand models that share the same basic body.  This is to allow viewers to distinguish entry-level, top-level and any intermediate level models from one another.  (A glance at interiors usually makes these distinctions obvious -- cloth-covered versus leather-covered seats, for instance.)

Exterior differentiations have ranged from subtle to glaringly obvious.  For a subtle example, aside from the types of wheels, Toyota RAV4 SUVs of the 2013-2018 generation had just small chrome lettering on their rear doors: LE, LXE and Limited -- in increasing price rank.

Towards the other extreme, the 1956 Ford line had distinct trim differences that I wrote about here.

The current post deals with 1958 exterior rank variations for General Motors' Chevrolet brand, America's largest seller that model year.  Chevrolets were given redesigned bodies for 1958.  In addition, the two lowest ranking models were given new names to add to the hoped-for excitement: the One-Fifty line became the Delray, and the Two-Ten line was renamed Biscayne.

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1958 Chevrolet Delray, Mecum Auctions photo
The two-door model shown here is pretty much Chevrolet's entry car.  Little in the way of chrome trim aside from the piece extending along the side.  Compare it to the side trim shown next.

1958 Chevrolet Biscayne
Biscaynes used the trim from the Delray and were given an additional strip positioned slightly below the forward section and in effect extending the after Delray segment forwards.  Photo of a for-sale car.

1958 Chevrolet Bel Air, "for sale" photo
Top-of-the-line Bel Airs got entirely different side trim that was bolder, more elaborate.  The leading part of the front fender has four decorative hash marks, as does the side sculpting abaft of the rear wheel opening.  No mistaking Bel Airs from lowly Biscayne or Delrays.

1958 Chevrolet Impala, Mecum photo
The apex of the Chevrolet lineup was the Impala.  Besides having a different basic body (compare the thickness of the top with the other Chevys), Impalas received a fake air vent forward of the real wheel opening.  There were other differences, but here we limit the discussion to side views of the various models.

1930s French Drooping Beltlines

Once upon a time, say 50 or more years ago, the automobile industry was much less international than now.  Car manufacturing countries often had tariffs to protect domestic firms and each country had its own currency and exchange rates relative to others.  And there might have been cultural factors that led to cars having distinctive national visual tendencies.  American cars looked American, English cars English, and so on.

One distinctive design quirk for many French cars from 1934 to the early 1950s was beltines (that run along the lower edges of side windows) that drooped or fell off downwards towards cars' aft ends.

Most French brands did not have this characteristic.  But the country's "big three" car makers -- Citroën, Renault and Peugeot -- had models with just that touch.  So many French cars' beltlines drooped.

Most of the images below are factory sourced or are of cars for sale.

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1934 Citroën 7 A
A very early Citroën Traction Avant.  This popular car and its larger 11 CV sibling were the first mass-produced French cars with the lazy beltline, as best I can tell.

1954 Citroën 11 B Familiale, auction photo
Six-window cars were longer and made the effect more noticeable.  One thing I do not know is why it appeared in the first place.

1936 Peugeot 402 Longues
Once Citroën launched the style, it was adopted by its main competitors, as can be seen on this six-window Peugeot.

1937 Renault Viva Grand Sport
And on this Renault.

1937 Delage Berline
A few other brands fell in with the dropping beltline fashion, including some exclusive Delage models such as this one.

1939 Hotchkiss Modane Coupé, Bonhams photo
The French seem to prefer four-door cars.  But this two-door Hotchkiss, low-production that it was, also followed the fashion in a stubby way.

Early Lincoln-Zephyr Body Types

The Lincoln-Zephyr, launched for the 1936 model year, was the best-selling mass-produced American car with advanced styling in the mid-1930s.

Its Wikipedia entry is here, and the first installment of a much longer profile can be found here.

The first Lincoln-Zephyrs came in two body types, a four-door sedan and a two-door sedan.  Three more types were added during the next two model years.  All are illustrated in the Gallery below.

Unless otherwise noted, images are factory-source photos.

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Near-overhead view of a 1936 four-door Lincoln-Zephyr.  I include this image because it shows the boat-shaped (in plan view) body and the teardrop-shaped fenders.  Oh so very 1930s Streamline.

A more conventional view of a '36 four-door.

Here is the 1936 two-door sedan.  For 1936 and later this body type was called the Coupe Sedan.  This body style sold poorly.

A coupe body was added for 1937.  It had the same wheelbase as the sedans, so its proportions seem a little odd.  Even so, coupes outsold Coupe Sedans by a ratio of more than three to one that year.

Another image from on high, this showing the long trunk of the coupe.  The back window (backlight) is almost the same as those on sedans.

Two views of a 1938 Convertible Sedan, Barrett-Jackson photos.  This body type was going out of fashion for the entire industry, so it isn't surprising that fewer than 500 were sold that year.

The new 1938 Convertible Coupe did somewhat better, with sales of around a thousand.  Image via RM Sotheby's.

1952 Mercury Walkaround

Ford Motor Company's mid-range brand for many years was the Mercury (Wikipedia entry here).  It, Ford and Lincoln -- the company's entire lineup -- were redesigned for the 1952 model year.

Ford and Mercury used the same basic body, and Lincoln's was similar.  These cars were Ford's second-generation postwar cars, and stylists had had the time to consider such matters as: dealing with flow-through (not separate) fenders; trends regarding size (especially height); and technology (mostly improvements in shaping automobile glass).

The result for Mercury was a tidy, rather squared-off shape of the kind later termed "three-box."  That is, the cars were bustle-back types.  Flat trunk lids echoed low, flat hoods up front.  One reason hoods appeared low was because fender lines were high -- at the passenger compartment, the fender line and the belt line were the same.

I have always liked 1952 Mercury styling.  However, when they first appeared they were criticized for having fake air intakes on the hood and sides.  Such criticism is valid from a strict form-follows-function standpoint.  But those faux airscoops and related sculpting can be seen a sheetmetal stiffeners and as a form of ornamentation.  In those respects, they are valid design features.

Unless otherwise noted, the images below are factory photos or pictures of cars for sale.

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To set the scene, here is a 1951 Mercury.

A 1952 Mercury four-door sedan.  Clean, simple stying that was quite modern at the time.  The side "airscoop" helps to break up what otherwise would be a flat, boring full-length fender design.

Rear quarter view of a two-door sedan, Mecum Auctions photo.

Mercury station wagons for 1952 were not "woodies."  Bodies were all-steel and the wood and faux-wood sheets are atop the side sheet metal.   RM Auctions photo.

A 1952 Mercury convertible.

Walkaround

Mercury's frontal styling was advanced for the time.  The bumper is high at a time when bumpers were low with all the grille placed above.  Mercury's then-traditional vertical grille bars are retained in a clever manner.

Front quarter view of the Monterey hardtop convertible.  I find it pleasing with virtually nothing to criticize.

The angle of the leading edge of the faux-airscoop aligns with the panel on the C-pillar and almost with the tail light chrome work.

The lean-forward theme mentioned in the caption above is evident in this photo.

My only quibble her is that the round medallion-cum-trunk-lock mechanism might be a trifle too large.

Continuing ...

The side chrome forms a Z-shape on the upscale Monterey.

A final view of this pleasing design.