Mercedes-Benz 1957-Vintage Four-Door Hardtop

A body type fashion that began in America for the 1955 model year was the four-door hardtop sedan which lacked a visible B-pillar when windows were rolled town.  This was an extension of the hardtop coupé concept that General Motors first mass-produced for the 1949 model year.  The idea was to market a design with a fixed metal roof having the grace of a convertible coupe/sedan.

It took European manufacturers slightly longer than GM's major American competitors to produce four-door hardtops (Ford and Chrysler marketed theirs for 1956).  Today's subject is the Mercedes-Benz 300d (werknummer W189) launched in August, 1957.

The W189's Wikipedia entry is here. I wrote about the closely-related W186 large Mercedes 300s here.

About 3,100 W189s were produced 1957-1962.  Their styling was close to that of the W186s, aside from the "pillarless" feature.  Unless noted, the images below are factory-sourced photos.

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A 1960 W189 with windows rolled up.  Aside from the thin, chromed pillars, it looks much like W186 sedans.

Probably an early W189 at a factory photo shoot.   Here all the windows are rolled down, creating a large, open expanse below the roof.

Another rolled-down view, this with a driver and four smiling passengers.

Side view of the lakeside W189.  The open window area creates a somewhat lithe appearance for what otherwise is a fairly heavy design.  I wonder how the structure would respond in a rollover accident.

Now for two Hyman photos of a 1960 W189.  Here only the door windows are rolled down.  The aft windows could either be rolled down or remain upright.

This is more clearly seen in this rear quarter view.

Now to place the W189 in context.  This is a 1955 Oldsmobile Supper 88 Holiday four-door hardtop, one of the first General Motors offerings.  Note that the aft side window is a clean, one-piece affair when rolled up.  No extra vertical elements as in the W189 or the Chrysler Corporation example below.

1956 DeSoto Firedome Seville, Mecum auction photo.  Chrysler four-door sedan aft doors were not shaped so as to allow retraction of one-piece window glass.  So a quarter window was necessary, and Chrysler engineers had to come up with a means of retracting it along with the main window.

The result as seen in this for sale '56 DeSoto Firedome worked, but was awkward appearing when the windows were partly lowered.  Mercedes' quarter-window solution was better.

Crosley Hotshot: Micro Sports Car

An American sports car that probably few people are aware of was the 1950-vintage Crosley Hotshot (Wikipedia entry here).

The car was tiny, having a wheelbase of 85 inches (2160 mm). Its engine was a 44 cubic inch (724 cc) 26.5 horsepower straight four.  It performed well in competitions for cars with motors in the 750 cc class.  Hotshots were derived from Crosley sedans and station wagons that I wrote about here.

Below are some Hotshot images.


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Publicity photo of a Crosley Hotshot. The people provide a sense of its scale.

1949 Hotshot -- Mecum auction photo of the very first one off the assembly line. Its wheels are tiny, making the car seem more toy-like than it actually was.

Rear quarter view of a for sale 1949 Hotshot.  The car has no trunk lid, so the spare tire is mounted atop the trunk.

Front view.  This and the following images are Mecum photos of a 1949 Hotshot.  The air intake is below the bumper.

Overhead view.

Seen from the side, but from an unnaturally low angle.  However, this provides a sense of the styling.  If the car had a door, there could be a clean profile from front to rear.

BMW 7 Series Recent Grille Design Evolution

The BMW 7 Series, the company's line-topping model, first entered production in 1977.  In theory, upscale sedans tend to be more conservatively styled than lesser models.  Even so, the most recent 7 Series cars have features grille designs that strike me as being excessively large.

Let's take a look.  So far as I can tell, all the images below are sourced from BMW or client agencies.

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1933 BMW 303
This is a very early example of BMW's iconic "twin nostril" grille design.  It is large, but in those days grilles were sized to cover the radiators behind them.

1939 BMW 335
By the later 1930s BMW grilles had become narrower, sized to the width of the hood.

1968 BMW 2002
An example of the classic 1960s grille design.  The "nostrils" are small and flanked by essentially rectangular openings.

1995 BMW 7 Series
The main radiator air intake for this 7 Series BMW is below the bumper.  The grille elements are now horizontal in keeping with the still-boxy body design.  A nice, dignified solution to tradition and brand identification.

2002 BMW 7 Series
A more aerodynamic body here.  The grille elements and headlight assemblies are approximately the same size.  That, and their shapes make for an awkwardness that's otherwise hard to pin down, though the amber turn indicator elements add to the shape/proportion confusion.

2009 BMW 7 Series
A cleaner solution here as the grille grows taller.  I think the bumper- lower air intake ensemble shaping is a bit too simple.  Reshaping its upper part a little to slightly wrap the bottom of the grille area would have been an improvement.

2016 BMW 7 Series
The following 7 Series generation has a busier appearance.  The grille now begins to wrap up into the hood.

2020 BMW 7 Series
The most recent 7 Series design now has a too-huge grille.  The hood-wrapping segment is solid, with faux-openings between the bars.  Some BMW SUVs also have massive "nostril" grilles that also strike me as being too large, too aggressive.

2020 BMW Concept i4
Just for fun, here is the front end of a recent electrically power concept BMW.  The "grille" is non-functional, included for brand identification purposes.  Its perimeter shape is dictated by adjacent body sculpting.  It's possible that the next (2025?) 7 Series might include such a design. UPDATE: something much like this is a feature of the forthcoming 2021 BMW 4 Series Coupé.

Some Non-Pontiac Ad Art by Art Fitzpatrick

1963 Pontiac Grand Prix at Monaco's Hotel de Paris
Arthur "Art" M. Fitzpatrick (1919-2015) is famed in illustration circles for his classic 1959-1972 series of illustrations for Pontiac made in collaboration with Van Kaufman.  Fitzpatrick rendered the cars and Kaufman furnished the settings and people.  There was some overlap in that settings and people might be reflected on the cars. I previously wrote about him and the Pontiac illustrations here.  Also, I met him about 15 years ago at the Pebble Beach Concours and still have his business card.

Fitzpatrick's Wikipedia entry is here.  An interview of him is here, and includes the following regarding his way of working on Pontiac ads such as that shown above:

"I photographed a car [for General Motors testimony at a congressional hearing] … same position/view with 3 different lenses, 35, 50, and 120mm. Photographers, for reasons that continue to escape me, were using long lenses, which shorten a car, making the rear wheel look bigger then the front ones. I always used a 35mm lens (wide angle). I made a pencil line drawing of an exact tracing of 35mm photo, and on another sheet over that did my “enhancing”.

Further detail regarding the "enhancing" is here, including this snippet:

"To produce his famous "wide" look, Fitzpatrick traced photos of the new car, cut the racings into pieces, then "stretched" the car into bolder proportions. "We wanted pictures that were different," Fitzpatrick says. "Impact is the name of the game, so we went with predominately front views -- even cropping the cars so that they looked too big for the page."

Fitzpatrick began his illustration career in 1946 with a contract for Mercury.  He freelanced for other brands until 1953 when he and Kaufman began working for General Motors.  He did Buick illustrations at first, then in 1959 began the famous Pontiac series.  Following Pontiac, he and Kaufman made some advertising illustrations for GM's (at the time) Opel subsidiary in Germany.

Below are a few examples of his illustrations for brands other than Pontiac.

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This illustration is of a 1948 Mercury "woodie" station wagon.  Fitzpatrick was still early in his advertising image career.  The perspective is a bit distorted (probably intentionally), and proportions of some of the details such as the headlights seem incorrect (possibly not intentionally).

A 1949 Mercury convertible.  Now we see a typical "Fitz" rendering of an automobile.

I do not know for certain if Fitzpatrick made this illustration of a 1952 or '53 Nash, but it looks like his work.

The same can be said for this 1953 Plymouth illustration.

Illustration of a 1954 Buick by Fitzpatrick.

A 1956 Buick illustration.

1971 Opel, posed in front of Paris' famous Café de Flore on the Left Bank.  Note the Citroën camion in the background that adds to the atmosphere.

1971 Opel Manta.  These Opel depictions have a more solid feel than the Pontiac illustrations -- probably intentionally to make them seem less Pontiac-like..

Illustration of a 1972 Opel Commodore.

Cross-posted at: artcontrarian.blogspot.com

Evolution of the Ever-Growing Honda Civic Four-Door Sedan

A while ago I touched on the growth of Honda's Civic model as found here in America.  Now I want to add more detail regarding that growth as expressed in wheelbase length.  Perhaps that's because for many years I was professionally a "numbers guy."

The second link above is Wikipedia's Honda Civic entry that, with sub-links, offers information on what the writer(s) contend are ten generations of Civics.  According to the data panels in the generation sub-links, some generations either did not vary in wheelbase length or such variation was trivial (one-tenth of an inch, three millimeters).  In one instance (2012 model year in the USA), wheelbase actually declined, but I will not treat that deviation here.

Below are images of Honda Civics for each generation showing a noteworthy length increase.  Ideally, I would present the cars facing the same direction and sized for comparative scale.  But that was not possible, given the images I could find via Google.

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1973 Honda Civic
The first Civics imported to America were coupés such as this.  Its wheelbase was 86.6 inches, 2200 mm.

c. 1976 Honda Civic Sedan
A four-door sedan entered the US market later, with a wheelbase of 88.9 inches, 2288 mm.  This is the benchmark for the overall growth comparison.  It styling, like that of the 2-door, has a slightly rounded appearance that was at variance from the emerging angular look of European cars.

1980 Honda Civic Sedan
The next generation had a 91.3 inch, 2320 mm wheelbase, and its styling was now in line with prevailing fashions.

c.1986 Honda Civic Sedan
Not a sharp photo (from an unknown source), this angular Civic sedan's hood curves downwards toward the front, a Honda theme for many years.  Wheelbase: 96 inches, 2438 mm.

1988 Honda Civic Sedan
Styling is similar to the car in the previous image, but the wheelbase is now 98.4 inches, 2500mm.

1993 Honda Civic Sedan
The following generation Civic shows some wind tunnel testing influence.  Wheelbase jumped to 103.2 inches, 2621 mm, where it essentially remained for the next two generations.

2006 Honda Civic Sedan
Now the wheelbase is up to 106.3 inches, 2700 mm.  The body shape is more aerodynamic.  Perhaps this length increase was due to aerodynamic considerations.  Or it was simply more of the length-creep trend due to marketing, packaging, and other factors.

2016 Honda Civic Sedan
A recent Honda Civic sedan.  Sleek, yet fashionably Japanese-fussy.  Its wheelbase is also 106.3 inches, 2700 mm, though the car is longer (182.3 inches, 4630 mm versus 176.7 inches, 4488 mm).  Its wheelbase compared to the initial Civic sedan is 17.4 inches, 420 mm longer.

New York City in 1965 -- Photos That Include a Few Cars

From time to time I do a post categorized as "Streetscapes," showing old views of cities or towns with cars.

This post differs a little because the photos (scanned slides) are mine, and not sourced from here and there on the Internet.  I took them in June of 1965 when I was in the city for a few days.  Another difference is that the cars are incidental to the scenes I was shooting.  However, you might find interesting the (mostly) American-make vehicles seen in those days.  Click on images to enlarge.

Gallery

Looking west along 42nd Street from Tudor City.  The Daily News building is the one with the vertical stripes to the left, and near the center is the Chrysler Building.

Farther along 42nd Street, across from Grand Central Terminal.  The taxi seems to be a 1964 Dodge.

Central Park South from 5th Avenue.  That's a Mercury in the foreground.

Also Central Park South.  The Plaza Hotel is at the left.  In the foreground are a Rambler and a Pontiac.

More Central Park South.  The car with the fins seems to be a 1957 Dodge.

Unloading a Cadillac on Central Park South.

Same area, but here is a Chrysler-based stretched limousine.

East 70th Street, an upscale townhouse neighborhood.  The cars are a Buick convertible, a Ford Mustang and a Ford Thunderbird.

Roosevelt Avenue elevated railroad station, Queens Borough.  An Oldsmobile is in the foreground and the gray car behind it appears to be a Rover.

Rolls-Royce in Rockefeller Center.

West 42nd Street, just west of Times Square.  Not a fancy area, though that's a Cadillac at the curb.

The TWA terminal at JFK airport.  Plenty of cars shown here.  The queue at the right is led by a Mercedes, followed by an Oldsmobile, a Ford, a Cadillac and a Pontiac.