1941 Graham Hollywood Walkaround

I recently discussed the Graham Hollywood, a 1940-41 sedan based on 1936-37 Cord bodies.  A while back I posted "Hupmobles and Grahams with Cord Bodies."  The first-mentioned post contained multiple views of one of those Grahams, but today's post is a more traditional walkaroud.

As mentioned, both Graham and Hupmobile were badly damaged by the Great Depression on the 1930s.  In efforts to survive, they made use of (inefficient) Cord body tooling to produce stylish cars in hopes of survival.  The resulting design was Cord-like aside from the hood, grille, headlights, front fenders, and a few other details.

Whereas the Cord design was advanced for 1936, by 1941 American car styling fashions had changed in the direction of fenders integrated (or nearly so) into the main car body.  Also, grilles were generally in horizontal layouts on comparatively flat front ends.  Graham Hollywoods, on the other hand, had separated, teardrop-shaped front fenders and sculpted hood and catwalk fronts with part of the grille in the hood front.

The early 1940s context was that the Hollywood definitely had a distinctive appearance that was a touch old-fashioned.  (The same might be said for pre-Clipper Packards.  But the Packard brand was far stronger than Graham's.)

Photors below are via Mecum Auctions.

Gallery

This illustrates the features mentioned above.  Another archaic feature is the headlight housing; by 1941, most American cars had headlights blended into fenders or the grille zone.

Standard 1936-37 Cords had a 125-inch (3175 mm) wheelbase.  The Hollywood's wheelbase was 115 inches (2921 mm), the shorter length manifested forward of the firewall/A-pillar.  For that reason, the front fender profile has less of a teardrop profile than Cord's.

The Hollywood is essentially Cord-like from this perspective.  The main difference is the bumper design.

Another difference from Cord is the fixed quarter window pane on the rear door.

Unlike the famous Cord "coffin nose," the Graham has a boat-like hood form.  Aside from the clutter of headlights and the supplemental fog lights, the appearance is pleasant.