Why the 1938 Graham's "Shark Nose"?

A late 1930s design that always interested me -- I saw a few around Seattle when I was elementary school age -- was that of the 1938-39 model 96 and 97 Graham.  Officially, the style was called Spirit of Motion, but popularly it was referred to as the Shark Nose or words to that effect.

I wrote a whimsical take on its similarity to an Army Air Corps bomber here.

Its principal designer was Amos Northup (1889-1937), who was in charge of the Murray body company's stying section: more information here.  As mentioned there, Northup slipped on Ice, fell, and died of head injury a few days later.  Consequently, the Graham design was finalized by others, though Northup's theme was retained.

In the Gallery below, I suggest that his theme was gestating in the form of his redesigned 1937 Willys cars.  Further, I speculate that a side (or intentional?) effect was creating a longer hoodline on what otherwise might have been a stubby-looking design similar to those of other, similar size, cars on the market.

Unless noted, images are of for-sale cars.

Gallery

A Graham and Similar Size 1938 Sedans

1938 Chrysler Royal
Its wheelbase is 119 inches (3023 mm).

1938 Buick Special
The wheelbase for this Buick and the following two examples is 122 inches (3099 mm). Its hood is comparatively long because it had to house an in-line eight cylinder motor, rather than a shorter six-cylinder engine.

1938 Packard Six - Mecum auction photo
This entry-level Packard's hood seems shorter than those on the other similar-size cars.

1938 Pontiac Eight

1938 Graham
Wheelbase is 120 inches (3048 mm), 25 mm longer than the Chrysler and 50 mm shorter than the other cars.  Note the longer hood, both actual and as a proportion of the car's length.

Some Grahams Plus a Willys

1937 Willys - advertising image
Willys was redesigned for 1937.  Northup's hood/grille ensemble thrusts forwards, though not as dramatically as on the 1938 Graham.  Headlight assemblies are atop the fenders, another feature used on the Graham.

1937 Willys
Willys' hood would have been extremely short had Northup not thrust it forwards.

1938 Graham
Front quarter view emphasizing the hood and headlights.  One might estimate how much shorter the hood would have been had it truncated near the radiator.

1938 Graham walkaround
The front end is dramatic in a Moderne, sort of streamlined way.  I rather like it.

The front is stretched in what might be called an artificial manner.  But that makes the car less stubby looking.

The Graham's rear is conventional late-1930s.

Low-Level 1930 French Headlights

Nowadays headlight heights above the road are regulated.  That didn't seem to be the case in France during the 1930s.  Whereas most French cars had headlights placed fairly high relative to their grilles and fenders, there were some cases where they were closer to the ground.

This styling fad ended around the 1937 model year, aside from some Puegeot lines.  Their 302s and 402s were essentially pre- World War 2, and 202s were built for a few years after.

Examples of French cars with low-mounted headlights are shown below.

Gallery

1935 Renault Nervasport
Here is an example of headlight placement on a Renault, the leading French manufacturer.  Compare to the automobiles pictured below.

1930 Bucciali TAV 30 La Marie Torpédo Sport Type Cannes by Saoutchik - Bonhams photo
Bucciali was an especially exotic French brand.  Here is an early instance of low headlights.

1933 Panhard 6CS Coupé
An early example, this by an important French manufacturer.

1935 Avions Voisin C25 Aérodyne - Gooding photo
Voisin was a builder of exotic, expensive cars.

1935 Peugeot 401 Cabriolet
An important French carbuilder.  1934 401s had normal headlight placement.  For 1936 the 401 gave way to the 402 that was clad "Fuseau Sochaux" style.

1937 Peugeot 302 "Fuseau Sochaux"
Peugeot 302s appeared for 1937 with the same styling theme as the 402.  Headlights were distinctively placed behind the grille for models 202, 302 and 402.  They are not as low as seen on the 401 in the previous image -- but they aren't very high either.

1935 Vivastella Grand Sport - factory photo by Robert Doisneau
Low-mounted headlights were on Renault's most expensive lines for the 1935 and 1936 model years.

Some Postwar Delahaye Sedans

A few years ago I wrote about 1949 Delahaye cars with "pontoon" fenders by carrossier Guilloré.  This was one aspect of the firm's attempt at keeping up with post- World War 2 styling trends that were largely driven by General Motors and other American carmakers.

Unfortunately, Delahaye was undercapitalized and, being a builder of upscale cars, received little benefit from France's Plan Pons that favored production of entry level automobiles.  So motors, chassis, and other engineering details were pre-war.  And this yielded long hoods and comparatively short passenger compartments while American cars were getting shorter hoods and longer trunks and rear overhang.

Shown below are four-door sedan designs by Letourneur & Marchand, illustrating how difficult putting postwar features on prewar chassis could be.  The Delahaye 148 L (for Léger) cars are probably 1948 models, though one of my best sources on French automobiles claims they first appeared in the Fall of 1949.

Gallery

1948 Delahaye 148 L Berline - by Letourneur et Marchand - likely a for-sale image
This design was used for a small "production" run by the coachbuilder.  Unlike Delahaye's prewar custom sedan bodies from its various carrossiers, the beltline below the windows did not curve downward.  This made the car look more postwar.  The front fender extend across the forward door, terminating at the aft door cutline, an awkward touch.  However, the doors are hung on the B-pillar creating a front "suicide door" that at least lacked the complicated fender-related hinging that an A-pillar attachment would have required.

1948 Delahaye 148 L Berline - by Letourneur et Marchand - for-sale photo
Probably the same car as in the previous image.

The "notch-back' is somewhat in line with General Motors' thinking, though the curved backlight window is a little small by contemporary American standards.  Perhaps a matter of French car window glass forming technology compared to that in the USA.

1948c Delahaye 148L Berline - by Letourneur et Marchand - Hyman photo
This car, found in the USA, features wire wheels.  It lacks the chrome rock guard on the rear fender.  The front fenderline is more horizontal than that of the other 148 L.

1949c Delahaye 148 L 4-door by Letourneur et Marchand
Here Letourneur & Marchand placed a "pontoon" fender on a 148 L.  Slab-sided to begin with, the long expanse between the front door cutline and the wheel opening exaggerates the slabiness.  More modern, more ugly.

1949 Delahaye 135 M 2-door coupé - Dyler photo
Probably by Guilloré, whose designs I featured in the first link above.  Perhaps Letourneur & Marchand were reacting to cars like these when the sedan in the previous image was built.

1954 Mercury XM-800 Concept Car

A concept car (or "Dream Car" as we called them in the 1950s) serves several potential purposes.  Some concepts deal mostly with wild, "futuristic" styling department ideas serving to show the public that the carmaker has The Right Stuff.  Others are thinly disguised versions of designs in the preproduction pipeline, intended to prime potential buyers to accept forthcoming new features.  Then there are concept cars that explore potential future production styling themes and features.  Such was the case of today's subject, the Mercury XM-800.

The book "Ford Design Department — Concepts & Showcars" by Jim and Cheryl Farrell devotes a section to the XM-800.  It seems that by the early 1950s Ford Motor Company was aware that it needed to fill an upper-middle price range slot that its Mercury brand was not covering well.  (This is further explained in Thomas E. Bonsall's book "Disaster in Dearborn: The Story of the Edsel", especially pages 73-74.)

At first, the idea was to launch a more luxurious Mercury, making more use of the name of its brand-topping Monterey line.  The sources seem to hint that Monterey or Mercury-Monterey might become more distinct from ordinary Mercurys, perhaps a quasi-new brand.

As it happened, a new brand was created, the famous (to car history buffs and folks my age) Edsel.

Below are images of the XM-800 that provided early design thinking on the project as well as details later used by production Lincolns.

Gallery

Publicity photo of the XM-800.

Front quarter view, same setting as the previous image.

A 1956 Lincoln.  Compare the front wheel opening, "frenched" headlight assembles, as well as the general feel of the front end to the XM-800 in the previous image.  Nothing identical, but suggestive that this design theme was in the back of stylists' minds circa 1954 when the '56 Lincoln's basic features were largely set.  However, Ford's 1953 X-100 concept car (some background here), featured the same sort of detail influence on the '56s Lincoln.  And likely influenced the XM-800 as well, being a slightly older design, though the rest of the X-100 was quite different.

Now for some RM Sotheby's auction photos of the restored XM-800.

Very early-mid 1950s thinking.  Panoramic windshield.  Long fenderline thrusting fore and aft to enhance both visual and actual length.  The rollbar-like C-pillar was chosen because it added freshness.  The semi-covered front wheels were retrograde, despite being carried over to the '56 Lincoln.

Rear quarter.  Hints of tailfins a few years before Chrysler featured them on its cars.  The heavy, chromed rear centerpiece strikes me as being Dream Car fluff, not likely to be retained in full on a production version.  An actual production car line would surely include four-door sedans, so the massive C-pillar would have to have been modified or eliminated with respect to that body type.

Creative Mid-1950s Aft Window Designs

I think the period 1948-1961 was the most interesting in terms of American automobile styling.  That's interesting -- not best; other time frames might have produced more outstanding designs, though I haven't yet given such comparisons much thought.

Today's post deals with creative -- not standard, large-volume production -- approaches dealing with the C-pillar - backlight window zone of "bustleback" cars.

Three of the three examples chosen are drawings, and one is a low-production car (fewer than 20,000 examples).

Gallery

I wrote about this 1953 Wayne Takeuchi design here.  It's a sort of Old Switcheroo on early-mid 1950s hardtop coupes.  Such cars lacked a B-pillar extending from the aft of the door to the roof.  Instead, the side windows when raised were simply joined by thin chrome frame pieces.  Takeuchi's design features a conventional B-Pillar, but the C-pillar is a thin chrome join between the quarter windows and the backlight.  Analogous to the hardtop's missing B-pillar, this minimal C-pillar is non-structural.  A clever design that to my knowledge never saw production.

Another view.  The target car was a Lincoln, though Takeuchi was an Art Center student and not employed by Ford Motor Company.

This 1956 sketch by General Motors' Pete Wozena is one of the many wild idea concepts encouraged by styling executives over the years.  The objective was to create a large number of design possibilities, a few of which might be useful for production.  Here, the wraparound, wrap-over backlight is surely different, but impossible to manufacture reliably at the time.  Not to mention the visual distortion it would generate.  Plus, the shape of the wraparound windshield is different as well -- note the silly and structurally questionable A-pillar.  Credit Wozena for being highly imaginative.

This drawing and the following are by Carl Cameron when he worked at Ford.  These designs were made during the "Quicksilver" project -- planning the restyled 1960 Ford.

Both cars are "hardtop" sedans.  Note the aft side windows that have strongly stated shapes and provide an interesting transition from the side windows to the backlight.  That said, those designs strike me as being structurally flimsy.

The production example is the 1956 Lincoln Primiere sedan -- Mecum Auction photo.

The interesting detail is that small, triangular window with its adjoining triangular chrome panel.  That little window could easily have been eliminated because it had no functional value.  As a matter of fact, it was eliminated for the 1957 facelift.

Amos Northup Designs

In February 1937 Amos Northup, a leading stylist from the mid-1920s to mid-1930s, slipped on ice, fell, and died two days later.  He was 47 years old.  Had that accident not happened, he might easily have been designing automobiles as late as the mid-1950s, probably at a major carmaker rather than for a bodymaker, as those firms were extinct by that time.  Some background is here.

Michael Lamm and Dave Holls on page 77 of their classic book "A Century of Automotive Style" note of Northup: "Designers called him a designer's designer, and he had more impact on the [automobile] industry than he's ever been given credit for." 

Given the time of his career -- the years when professional styling was taking hold and the beginnings of the transition from boxy cars with distinctly separate features to more integrated shapes -- it today can be difficult to appreciate what Northup wrought.  In this post, "Styling Transition: Amos Northup's 1931 REO Line" I compare his 1931 design to the firm's 1930 models.  Differences might not seem great to us, but at the time they were significant.

Below are some, not all, of Northup's designs.  Unless noted, color photos are of cars listed for sale.

Gallery

Mid-1920s Wills Sainte Claire, body by Leon Rubay, Amos Northup stylist

1929 Hupmobile
Northup styled the 1928 Hupp: this 1929 model is essentially the same.  He also had a hand in the Raymond Loewy 1932 and 1934 Hupp designs due to his work at Murray.  Although the general appearance is 1920s, Northup's design is tidier than most.

1930 Willys Knight 66B, photo via Willys Overland Knight Registry
Northup's touch is mostly seen forward of the cowling.

1931 Reo Royale
One of his noteworthy designs.  The rounded body edges, slanted windshield and V'd grille were coming into play with the 1929 Cord, but Northup used them elegantly here, helping to set the trend to streamlining.

1932 Graham Blue Streak (1933 model shown here)
This car is posed in front of the home of Amos Northup (photo via Historic Vehicle Association).  The front fender valances were innovative.

1933 Willys 77
A short car, Northup having to make its front end as trendy as he could.  The curved hoodline and partly integrated headlights were advanced features.

1938 Willys 37
This is Northup's 1937 Willys redesign.  Note the thrusting hood-grille prow.

1938 Graham "Sharknose"
Northup died before the design was finalized, though his concept is largely intact, especially the thrusting hood-grille prow carryover from the '37 Willys.

Ford's 2021 Non-Mustang Mustang Mach-E

This is a Ford Mustang.  The original 1964 1/2 model.

This too is a Mustang, 2015 model year.

This is not what I would call a Mustang.  But officially, it's a 2021 Mustang Mach-E, a battery-powered SUV.
I saw my first one 20 March 2022.  Didn't know what it was at first because any nameplate it might have had was either obscure or missing entirely.  I did see outlines of Ford Mustang ponies here and there, finally realizing that this car was one of those electric Mustangs that I had read about months before.

What were Ford's marketing people thinking?  My guess is that since the Mach-E and its GT variant were performance-oriented electric cars, why not slap Ford's performance-oriented Mustang brand name on it to make things clear to potential buyers.

Regardless, I believe a price was paid.  Brand-extensions (putting a brand name on increasingly diverse products) eventually cheapen the value of a brand.  An electric SUV, despite its capabilities, is not a sporty gasoline-powered coupe or convertible.  Short of being a pickup truck, it's about as far from the traditional Mustang image as a marketer could get.

Below are some Ford publicity images of the 2021 Mustang Mach-E GT.

Gallery

Lacking a conventional motor, the hood is low.

The profile is curved towards the rear in the manner of upscale SUVs from the likes of Jaguar and Alfa Romeo rather than a more conventional SUV station wagon- like aft area.

Most of the design contains the usual over-done, rather themeless metal sculpting.  The three vertical elements on each taillight assembly do harken the traditional Mustang taillight theme.  Which is about as Mustang-like as the Mach-E gets.