1955 Ford Thunderbirds With "Checkmark" Side Trim

The 1955 Ford Thunderbird was the first of that name.  In a way, it was Ford's answer to Chevrolet's Corvette sports car, though Ford marketed it as being simply a sporty-looking two seater.  Which it was.

Those T-Birds appeared around the same time as Ford's heavily facelifted 1955 models bearing the newly fashionable panoramic (wraparound) windshields.  Line-topping Ford Fairlanes featured a rather odd "checkmark" shaped side chrome strip that served as a color divider for two-tone paint schemes.

Production Thunderbirds lacked that detail.  But a few pre-production cars had it.  Moreover, early T-Bird advertisements showed it.  Why was it eliminated for production?  I don't know.  One guess is that it had been decided that there would be no two-toned Thunderbirds.  Another is that the cars looked better without that trim.

Below are largely Ford images illustrating T-Bird checkmark side trim.  Click on most of them to enlarge.

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A production 1955 Thunderbird, Mecum auction photo.

Advertisement showing that side trim.  Clearly, the decision to not use the trim came too late to affect early advertising.

A publicity photo of a T-Bird with side trim.

Probably the same car with its hard top removed and canvas top raised.  Same lady, same house in the background.

Taken near the same time as the color photo above, judging by the shadows.

Same house, but a different day (after a rain shower), different models, and a different car -- a production job.

Some Customized Fiat 1400s: Allemano to Ghia

Probably the best-known and highly-regarded Italian 1950s carrozzeria-designed bodies were on the likes of Ferrari, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo.  However, many custom bodies by Italian coachbuilders were on more affordable Fiats.

This post, and a later one, deal with custom-bodied Fiat 1400s.  As the link mentions, the 1400 and related 1900 were Fiat's first post- World War 2 design, also the first unibody Fiat.  Wheelbase was 104.3 inches (2650 mm), giving the stylists semi-adequate length to work with.

Below are examples from six carrozzieri (in alphabetical order): Allemano, Balbo, Bertone, Canta, Castagnia and Ghia.

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1951c Fiat 1400 Berlina
This was the standard production 1400.

1950 Fiat 1400 Berlina structure
Here is its unit-body structure.  The framing on the passenger compartment greenhouse would impede customization.  So what did the carrozzieri do?

1950 Fiat 1400 Cabriolet, factory body
They almost certainly used the cabriolet body.  It seems to have retained the sedan's windshield framing, and lower body structural elements were probably reinforced to provide needed rigidity.

1951 Fiat 1400 Coupe by Allemano
A rather bland design.

1952 Fiat 1400 Coupe by Balbo
The stylist (perhaps Giovanni Michelotti) tried to pack too much into this design.  The aft-leaning B window pillar adds a touch of tension and raciness.  The two-tone side paint scheme attempts to add more raciness, but mostly adds visual clutter.  Fore and aft elements of the fenderline create some additional length.  The dished-in grille seems cramped from this camera angle.

1951 Fiat 1400 Limousine by Balbo (Giovanni Michelotti was the stylist)
This is interesting because it might have been based on the sedan's body structure.  But I can't rule out that  it was cabriolet-based with two doors added.

1950 Fiat 1400 Coupe by Bertone
Bertone also made convertibles using this design.  The passenger greenhouse is rather tall, making the car seem stubby.

1953 Fiat 1400 Coupe by Bertone
This Bertone design is more sleek.  Note that the carrozzieri used their own -- not Fiat's -- grille design.

1951 Fiat 1400 Berlinetta by Canta
Another bland design.  Heavy-looking too.

1950 Fiat 1400 Berlina by Castagna
Another four-door car.  I'm pretty sure it was cabriolet-based because the rear side door hinging is different from that of production sedans.

1951c Fiat 1400 Coupe by Ghia (Michelotti stylist)
Like the sleeker Bertone design, this is another nice example of classical postwar Italian styling.

1952 Fiat 1400 Prototipo by Ghia (Gian Paolo Boano stylist)
The greenhouse is nice.  Otherwise, well, not all custom Italian bodies were successful designs.

A Pontiac Fastback Hardtop?

The 2005 book "Designing America's Cars - The 50s" (Amazon link here) presented a series of styling proposals compared to production cars for various makes and model years.

Below are images of a styling proposal I scanned from a page dealing with 1951-52 Pontiacs, along with two context images.

I find the proposal very interesting.  As will be shown, its body is not the General Motors A-body used by Chevrolet and Pontiac over model years 1949-1952, but GM's B-body used by some Oldsmobile and Buick models.  In addition, the proposal is a fastback type that GM phased out after 1952 -- those production fastbacks having A-bodies.

Finally, while it's almost certainly the case that the proposal is for two-door and four-door sedans, one of the photos makes the two-door seem like a hardtop (pillarless) fastback coupe.

Unless noted, photos below are factory-sourced.

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1949 Pontiac Streamliner Six Sedan Coupe, auction photo
The fastback A-body Pontiac.  Note the side window's dogleg profile.  The rear fender is distinct.

1951 Oldsmobile Super 88 Sedan
An example of GM's B-body.  The rear fenderline blends into the front fenderline: no separate rear fender as seen on the A-body.

Pontiac prototype - front quarter views
The upper photo shows the right side's four-door configuration, the lower image showing the left side of a two-door model.  Note the B-body fenderline.  The windshield is also B-body, though two-piece as were all '49-52 Pontiacs.  The side window profiles retain the fastback dogleg.  Side trim is similar to that of 1953 Pontiacs that might have had some B-body components.  That detail makes me wonder if this proposal was for 1953, and not 1951 or '52.  Or do these photos date from 1949 or so, and GM was considering basing 1951 Pontiacs and perhaps Chevrolets on B-bodies?

Pontiac prototype - rear quarter views
The rear fender sports a round Pontiac Indian-head medallion as found on 1951-54 Pontiacs.  Yes, the two-door does have a B-pillar.  But it's hard to see, making it easy to imagine that the design is of a "hardtop" fastback.  What a concept!

Giugiaro's Mid-1970s Production Cars' Theme

Master stylist Giorgetto Giugiaro (Wikipedia entry here) designed concept and production cars in a variety of styles over his career.  During the early-mid 1970s and thereabouts his theme for production cars emphasized a near-universal shape for rear side windows along with tall, airy passenger compartment greenhouses.

These similarities likely had to do with maintaining brand identification because those production automobiles were almost entirely from only three carmakers: Volkswagen, Alfa Romeo and Hyundai.  However, to some degree his designs were for competitive models, so brand image consistency was a casualty to fashion at times.

These are discussed below.  Most images are from the manufacturers.

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1971 Alfa Romeo Alfasud
The Alfasud ("South Alfa") had to do with a government project to stimulate economic growth in Italy's south.  Alfa Romeo built a factory in the Naples area to produce the new design.  Note the tall passenger greenhouse.

Rear quarter view.  The aft side window features a small frame reversal ("dogleg') on its rear edge.  In this case, it was related to the functionally necessary shaping of the rear side door.

1973 Alfa Romeo Alfasud Ti
But the dogleg was retained when a two-door Alfasud appeared.

1973 Volkwagen Passat
Giugiaro used that shape again when he styled the aft end of the Volkswagen Passat.  (The front half of the car was existing styling from an Audi model.)

Rear quarter.  This design is angular, a Giugiaro sub-theme seen on some of the designs pictured here.

1975 Volkswagen Golf
The Golf marked VW's departure from rear mounted, air-cooled motors.  Golfs and later Volkswagens had front-located fluid-cooled motors and front-wheel drive.  The Golf's shape is "thicker" than the more airy Passat, but the greenhouse is tall and there's that window dogleg in softened form.

1974 Volkswagen Sciroccos
Giugiaro continued his Passat theme of crisp surfaces.  As usual, the greenhouse is tall, but the dogleg profile is missing for once.

1974 Alfa Romeo Alfetta GTs
The sporty Alfetta has a softer lower body, but Giugiaro's greenhouse theme remains.

1975 Hyundai Pony
This car can be considered a "thinner" Golf thanks to its flatter side sculpting.

1976c. Alfa Romeo Alfasud Sprint
This sporty Alfasud  comes off as a smaller, more angular Alfetta.

1981 DeLorean - BaT auction photo
A somewhat later design in the mould of Giugiaro's 1970 Posrche-based Tapiro concept, it retains the theme elements discussed above.

The 1942 Oldsmobile's Complicated Grille

I've read here and there that General Motors' Oldsmobile Division was once the corporation's "experimental" outfit, the place where new concepts were tested in the marketplace.  That was probably the case in the late 1939 when Olds introduced GM's Hydramatic automatic transmission.  Another example is the "Rocket" V-8 motor introduced for 1949.

Another, lesser instance just might be the elaborate grille-bumper that appeared on 1942 B-44 Oldsmobiles.  It was around only for that model year, and when production resumed postwar, Oldsmobile grilles featured a simple design.

Let's take a look.

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1942 Oldsmobile 98 Custom Cruiser - unknown source
Fog lights obscure part of the grille, but this photo serves as an establishment shot showing the grille design in its context.

1942 Oldsmobile 98 Custom Cruiser - factory image
The front of the car has been worked over by GM's photo retouchers to provide more detail clarity.

1942 Oldsmobile 98 Custom Cruiser Convertible - Bonhams auction photo
The upper and lower openings have the same detailing, but in differing scale.  What seems odd, out of place, is the bold horizontal bar at mid-level.  Its form changes from plain to a central segment with vertical grooves.  Elsewhere, headlights are inboard from the sides of the fenders.

1942 Oldsmobile 98 Custom Cruiser Convertible - Bonhams
Close-up view.  Those tall bumper guards are not accessories, but an integral feature.  Note that they touch and help support the central horizontal bar that might conceptually be an auxiliary bumpetette.

Grille details - unknown source
Another close-up view.

Front bumper structure - unknown soure
This shows that the frame's front crossbar includes the main air intake.  The relationship of the bumper guards and horizontal grille bar is clearly indicated.

1942 Oldsmobile 98 Custom Cruiser Convertible - for sale car
This shows how far ahead of the lower air intake the bumper guards are and how deep the horizontal bar is.  All told, an odd design that might have been expensive to repair if damaged.

1952 Ford Motor Company Design Theme

By the 1949 model year American automobile design had essentially completed its evolution from circa-1930 boxy designs with separate functional components such as headlights, fenders and running boards to "envelope" styles that were more streamlined and where such features were entirely or mostly incorporated into the overall shape of the car.

As I wrote here, one last important step remained: lowering the hood. Ford Motor Company was the first of Detroit's "Big Three" carmakers to take this step across its entire brand portfolio.  (Studebakers's redesigned 1947 line had fairly low hoods, but not as low as Ford's designs.  The redesigned 1952 Nash's hoods were lower than the nearby fenders, but Nash was not a major carmaker.  See the first link above for more examples.)

Ford stylists and consulting stylists created the redesigned 1952 line with all the key post-evolution features in place.  Fenderlines were high and simple.   Hoods were not much higher than the fenders.  The overall design was what was later called "three-box," with a somewhat angular passenger compartment greenhouse and a bustleback trunk echoing the hood up front.  In this post, I presented a walkaround of a 1952 Mercury.

The present post compares four-door sedans for the Ford, Mercury and Lincoln brands.  Ford and Mercury shared the same basic body, though Mercury's wheelbase was three inches (76 mm) longer.  Higher-priced, lower production Lincolns used a different body.  This lack of body-sharing with another brand was not an economical practice.  General Motors' high price Cadillac brand shared bodies with some Buick and even Oldsmobile models in those days.

Unless noted, images below are of cars listed for sale.

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1949 Ford - factory image
To me, the '49 Ford epitomizes the end of the evolutionary period.  The next-generation Ford Motor Company line's styling was a refinement of this.

1949 Chevrolet Styleline DeLuxe
A major competitor with a tall hood and lower fenders.

1949 Lincoln Sport Sedan
Ford's 1949 Mercury and Lincoln designs also had tall hoods because their design themes were set before the 1949 Ford was created.

1952 Ford Customline - factory image
This model was Ford's best-seller for 1952.  Details included "frenched" headlight assemblies, a one-piece curved windshield, and side sculpting suggestive of an air intake (to provide visual relief from what otherwise would be plain sides).

1952 Mercury Custom - factory image
Mercurys used the same side sculpting, but the fake air intake is more believable.  Plus, the hood also sports a fake air scoop.  Like Ford, headlight assembles are "frenched" to create a little more fender length.

1953 Lincoln Capri
I couldn't find some suitable views of 1952 Lincoln four-door sedans.  But 1953 models were almost identical.  Even though the body is different from Ford and Mercury, the basic theme is the same.  Including the fake fender air intake feature.  Headlights are not frenched, however.

1952 Ford Customline - Mecum Auction photo
Rear fenders terminate in round taillight housings that further lengthen the fenderline.  The backlight window is panoramic, and one-piece.  Rear license plates covered a central fuel door, a convenience feature stressed in Ford advertising.

1952 Mercury Custom
Mercury tail light assemblies leaned forwards, not contributing to an extended fenderline.

1952 Lincoln Capri
For some reason Lincoln's backlight was three-piece.

1952 Ford Customline - Mecum photo
Now for side views that are best for showing structural comparisons.

1952 Mercury Custom
Mercury's greater length was created forward of the cowling and front door leading edge cutline.  Aside from chrome trim, front wheel openings, and different tail light assemblies, the Ford and Mercury sedans are structurally the same.

1953 Lincoln Cosmopolitan
Lower-body door cut lines are similar to Ford's and Mercury's, so it's possible that the Lincoln body shared some of their structure.