Some Coachbuilder Bodies for Pegaso

Spain's 80 or so Pegaso sports cars built 1951-1958 were mostly clad by coachbuiling firms, as mentioned in Pegaso's Wikipedia entry.  Early Pegasos were given factory bodies.

Those coachbuilt bodies were mostly furnished by Touring in Italy and Saoutchik in France.  A few were by Serra of Pegaso's home town, Barcelona.

Touring and Serra bodies stayed close to basic styles of each firm, whereas Saoutchik bodies were more varied.

Gallery

1952 Pegaso Z-102 Spider "Tibidabo" by Touring
Early on, Touring established its theme of chopped out hood segments.  The same was applied on rear ends of coupes.  Note the lack of a front bumper.  This was fairly typical of Pegasos, though some had sketchy bumper segments up front.

1953 Pegaso Z-102 "Thrill" showcar by Touring
The front end is typical Touring-Pegaso, but the rest is showcar jazz.  Some later American Motors designs had a similar feeling.

1954 Pegaso Z-102 Berlinetta by Touring - RM Sotheby's auction photo
This is a typical Touring body.

1954 Pegaso Z-102 Berlinetta by Touring - unknown photo source
The greenhouse is high, the hood long: another fine Touring design.

Another Sotheby's photo.  Note the chopped-out bits at the rear.  The window design is logical, but the chrome links aren't really needed.

1952 Pegaso Z-102 Berlinetta by Soutchik
Saoutchik made a few coupés and cabriolets with this fender design.  Unusually, there is a substantial front bumper that some later Saoutchik Pegasos lacked.

1954 Pegaso Z-102 Berlinetta by Saoutchik - auction photos
This seems to be a more common Saoutchik design for Pegaso.  Note the nearly invisible bumper.

The fenderline is thrusting and the greenhouse is small.

A more squared-off trunk lid blended with the fenders might have been more practical and better looking.

1954 Pegaso Z102 Cabriolet by Saoutchik - RM Sotheby's photos
The lower body design is the same as that of the car in the previous images.

Rear bumpers offer no serious protection.  This car should never be parked on a Paris street.

1955 Pegaso Z-103 Spider by Serra - unknown source
A nice, clean design.  Unlike most Pegasos, this car and the one below had panoramic (wraparound) windshields: very mid-1950s.

1956 Pegaso Z-102 Spider by Serra - unknown source 
This car has a fairly serious rear bumper.  I like this rear design better than Saoutchhik's.  It's bold, but logical.  Note the vent on the front fender that's absent in the car in the previous photo.

1961 General Motors Two-Door Hardtops

From the late 1940s through most of the 1950s General Motors segregated its sets of basic platforms/bodies by price/prestige hierarchy rank.  For example, in 1950 the A-body was shared by Chevrolet and Pontiac, the B-body by Oldsmobile and Buick, and the C-body by Cadillac and top-of-the-line Oldsmobiles and Buicks.

But in the great GM panic reaction to the redesigned 1957 Chrysler Corporation line, the firm's 1959 brands shared body variations based on a common cowl/windshield structure.  That continued for the 1961 redesign (that seems to have retained some elements of the 1959-vintage bodies).

Today's post presents side views of 1961 hardtop coupes from each General Motors brand.  With one minor exception, passenger compartment greenhouses are identical.  So what interests me here is variations in body styling.  Front and rear ends are ignored because they are more explicitly brand-identification oriented than side decor -- a larger topic for perhaps a later discussion.

Images below are by brand hierarchy rank from low to high.  Most cars are at the middle of each brand's own hierarchy.

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1961 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe - Mecum Auction photo
Impala was Chevy's top model in '61.  Hence the wide two-tone swath on the side, a residue of 1950s American car industry two-tone flamboyance.

1961 Pontaic Ventura Sport Coupe - Mecum
Pontiac's mid-range Ventura model had a more sculpted side treatment along with a whiff of two-toning.  Note the flowing fender line that changes the car's character slightly from the horizontal belt line seen here and more clearly on the Chevrolet photo above.

1961 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 Holiday Coupe - for sale
Olds got a spear shaped rear fender and side sculpting that emphasized it.  The fussiness seen abaft of the rear wheel opening pulls the eye there, distracting from the rest of the design composition.

1961 Buick Invicta - factory image
Buick's spear shape is on the front fender ("the old switcheroo" as practiced by GM Design?).  Vestigial Buick "portholes" are found on the front fender as well.  The rear fender sculpting has fussy touches, but works better than what Oldsmobile did.

1961 Cadillac DeVille - for sale
Cadillac's greenhouse received special shaping of the C-pillar area in order to set these cars apart from GM's lesser hardtop coupes.  Caddy tail fins, a brand fixture since 1948, are retained.  Side sculpting emphasizes the car's length.

1961 Chevrolet Bel Air Sport Coupe - Mecum
I think this clean Chevrolet side styling is the best of the lot.

Cadillac Aerodynamic Coupe, 1933 and Beyond

Cadillac's Aerodynamic Coupe was displayed at Chicago's 1933 Century of Progress fair, along with two other experimental or "dream" cars by other makers.  It was the least radical, and the most attractive.  Moreover, it showed the near-future direction of General Motors styling.  I think it looked better than most 1934-1940 GM production designs.

Michael Lamm and Dave Holls in their book "A Century of Automobile Style: 100 Years of American Car Design" reported:

"...Harley Earl provided his first publicly shown dreamcar: the 1933 Cadillac Aerodynamic Coupe.... This long, lithe gloss-black fastback caprtured the attention of everyone entering the GM pavillion."

"After 1933, Fleetwood offered a very similar Aerodynamic Coupe as a limited-production model. Twenty were built, if we include the Century of Progress showcar, and Bill Knudsen took delivery on the first production coupe when the fair closed for the season in Nov. 1933. The fair reopened in May 1934, but by that time the Aerodynamic Coupe was genearlly regarded as just another custom Fleetwood body style and not a dreamcar."

Images below are factory-sourced unless noted.

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1933 Briggs-Tjaarda experimental car - Ford image
The most radical of the three, having a rear-mounted motor.  Its body from the cowl aft was the basis for the 1936 Lincoln-Zephyr.

1933 Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow
This Phil Wright design predicted fender lines for GM's 1948-1949 cars.

1933 Century of Progress Cadillac
GM Art & Colour clay modelers at work on the Aerodynamic Coupe design.

The completed car.  The front bumper is comprised of four horizontal bars: '34 production Caddies and LaSalles had two.  Its grille is stock 1933 Cadillac, but the rest of the design is unique.

The V16 motor justified that long hood.  The V'd windshield is strongly slanted for its time. Teardrop-shaped fenders soon became an American styling fashion.

The Aerodynamic Coupe had a trunk lid on its fastback.  A spare tire should have occupied much of the trunk.  The chrome trim around the side and back windows was absent from later, limited-production versions.

1934 Cadillac Fleetwood V16 Aerodynamic Coupe - Mecum auction photo
This supposedly is a 1934 Fleetwood Aerodynamic Coupe.  But it lacks the twin-blade production bumper.  Fenders and catwalks are 1934-standard, however, as are the grille and the headlight assemblies.

Otherwise, aside from the chrome window trim and some ornamental detailing, the design is the same as the show car.

Dashboard design.

1936 Fleetwood V16 Aerodynamic Coupe - via Heacock Classic Insurance
It seems unchanged from the 1934 version (assuming the dates reported on the Internet are correct).

Imaginative 2022 Hyundai Tucson

In this post's title I used the word "Imaginative" in reference to the redesigned 2022 Hyundai Tucson.  But that's not the same as saying the design was "beautiful" or "superb" or some other positive term.  I might have used the word "interesting," because that's another aspect I found.

Stepping back for a moment, let me say that nowadays stylists are largely unable to create new body shapes, unlike things were in, say, 1950s USA.  That's because of arbitrary government fuel economy numbers that resulted in body shapes being dictated by wind tunnel testing -- the most efficient shapes prevail.  So stylists have been reduced to becoming decorators of those aerodynamically-efficient bodies.

What interests me about the new Tucson design is that it incorporates some front-end touches that are far removed from the usual cliché details we see on streets and roads these days.  Perhaps they will become the next clichés.

Let's take a look.

Gallery

Recent Hyundai designs are featuring sharply angled sculpting.

That expanding chrome strip on the passenger compartment greenhouse, along with the black backlight window framing creates a more logical separator for roof two-toning as compared to that of Toyota's RAV4.  Though the details are fussy, not meshing well.

This image accentuates the side sculpting.  In theory, I like the idea of having faux- front and rear fenders à la 1940.  Right now, I'm withholding judgment on the Tucson's version.  That's because a variation might be better.

Those tail light shapes are unusual, though the rest of the design composition is fussy and disconnected.  As usual, nowadays.

Now for those front end details.  Note how low the headlight assemblies are placed -- must be legal.

And here's what the running lights look like: covering swaths of the grille zone.  Imaginative.  Interesting.

Albecht, Graf Goertz's Other BMW Design

Albrech von Goertz (1914-2006), Wikipedia entry here, is probably best known in automobile styling circles as the designer of the BMW 507 (produced 1956-1960).

According to the link, USA importer Max Hoffman encouraged BMW to produce a sports version of its 502 series V8 powered sedan.  BMW liked the concept enough to commission Goertz (on Hoffman's wishes) to submit two designs.  Interestingly, both were accepted for production.  The not-507 car was the BMW 503 (built 1956-1959) that was and is comparatively little-known.

According to Wikipedia, only 252 507s were built and 503 production was 413. All 507s were cabriolets and the majority of 503s were coupés.  Overall, the split between open and closed models was likely close to being even.  Also, 507s could be provided with detachable hard tops.   Once production was underway, both cars were similarly priced at around 30,000 DM, so price does not really explain the 503's better sales.

It turned out that the 507 and 503 were money-losers for BMW because it was hoped and planned that about 5,000 would be sold.

Gallery

1958 BMW 507 Cabriolet - Bonhams auction photo
The lean, yet voluptuous, 507 featured a new, horizontal variation on BMW's traditional two-segment grille theme: previous grilles had a vertical format.

1956 BMW 503 Cabriolet - BMW publicity photo
On the other hand, the 503's grille was similar to that on the 502 sedan.  The fenderline is a single, subtle curve.

1956 BMW 503 Coupé Series I - for sale photo
To reduce potential visual bulk, Goertz gave the 503 a strong character line on the fender.  This car had the same front fender air vent as seen on 507s.  Most 503s lacked that detail.  The large auxiliary lights  by the horizontal air intakes complicate the frontal design in part because they are too near the headlights.  Otherwise, the front is attractive and understandable from a brand-identification standpoint.  Though I'm ambivalent regarding the forward thrust of the central grill element.

Same car.  The rear design lacks some coherence.  I don't like the uptick of the character line.  And there's something unsatisfactory about the taillights.  Would rotating them 90 degrees help?  Or would a different design have been better?

1958 BMW 503 Coupé - Aguttes auction photo
This car lacks the fender air vent.  Overall, an attractive design from this viewpoint, yet lacking the 507's "lean, yet voluptuous" emotional impact.

Ford Mustang and Continental Mark II Four-Door Proposals

Ford Motor Company's 1956-57 Continental Mark II and the Ford Mustang that was announced April 1964 had coupé bodies (Mustangs also came as convertible coupés).

That didn't prevent Ford product planners from considering four-door versions.  In fact, the next-generation Continentals, the Mark IIIs launched for the 1958 model year, included four-door models.  There never were any four-door Mustangs, however.

Below are some images -- most of marginal quality -- of proposed four-door Continental Mark IIs and Mustangs.

Gallery

Continental

This is a 1956 Continental Mk. II, photo via Barrett-Jackson auctions.

Drawing showing a proposed four-door hardtop Mark II.

Clay buck for full-scale four-door alternatives.  Note the scoring for door cuts.

Overhead view of a four-door Mark II clay.

Now for views of a later (fiberglass?) model.

Front.

Rear quarter.

Side view.  Door handles are next to each other, so the rear door is hinged on the C-pillar.  The classic 1961 Lincoln Continentals had this feature.

Mustang

1964 1/2 Mustang hardtop coupe, for-sale photo.

Styling model of a proposed four-door Mustang from 7 January 1963.

A production version could not have been launched before the 1966 model year.