Hudson Grilles 1948-1954

The great Depression of the 1930s affected the Hudson Motor Car Company to the extent that, aside from its ill-fated 1953-54 Jet compact car, only two basic body series were used between 1936 and 1954.  That was when the company merged with Nash to form American Motors and the final Hudsons were based on Nash bodies. I wrote about 1936-1947 Hudsons and their facelifts here.

The present post presents Hudson grille designs during 1948-1954 model year production of the second of those basic body series.  That was a period of seven model years during an era when General Motors, Ford and Chrysler tended to offer redesigned bodies every three or four years on average.  But Hudson did not have their financial resources and relied on facelifts longer than it should have for corporate longevity.

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

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1948 Hudson
This was the debut grille design for the radically redesigned postwar Hudson line.

1949 Hudson - Mecum auction photo
There was essentially no change for the following model year.

1950 Hudson
Grille styling was tweaked for 1950.  The air opening for the radiator was retained, surrounding sheet metal was given minor adjustments, and the grille bars were redesigned while preserving the previous horizontal theme.  The most striking change was the addition of angled bars forming an inverted-V that was intended to be interpreted as a variation on Hudson's triangle logotype theme.

1951 Hudson
The following year the grille opening and related sheet metal were restyled in a rounded manner.  Grille bars were fashionably bolder and the triangle feature was integrated with the license plate area frame.

1952 Hudson
A very minor adjustment followed for 1952.   I think this was the best of this series of grille designs.  The '51 design was good, but for '52 the turn signal lights at the edges are now rounded, fitting the overall theme better than the rectangular lights of 1951.  However, the '51s had a better, smaller, hood ornament.

1953 Hudson
For 1953 the triangle was pushed back behind the grille bars, rendering it essentially invisible.  Some readers might prefer this design due to its simplicity and thematic consistency.  I agree that this version is aesthetically better, but nevertheless like the triangle's role in brand identification -- an important marketing consideration.

1954 Hudson
The 1948-vintage body was given a major facelift for its final year.  The grille design is simple, but undistinguished.  No real Hudson character here.

Daimler (England) Ribbed Grille Frames

I have written many times about visual automobile brand identification on this blog, not to mention my e-book "How Cars Faced the Market: Grille Design Continuity."  In general, luxury and other up-market marques tend to maintain identification continuity more than do brands farther down the price/prestige scale.  A common means of doing this involves continuity of grille design themes.  My usual examples of this are Rolls-Royce and Packard.

Another strong example is England's Daimler, a now-dormant luxury brand that for many years was favored by British royalty.  Daimler grilles' distinctive feature was tube-like ribbing across the top part of the grille frame.  Its origin is explained in the link above.

This ornamentation feature is truly distinctive.  Also unattractive, which might explain why no other important brand's stylists bothered to design variations on that theme.  (For example, Ford's Lincoln brand sometimes featured grilles reminiscent of Rolls-Royce's, but never Daimler's.)

Below are images of some Daimlers that illustrate how the grille theme evolved to accommodate changing body designs.

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1911 Daimler Phaeton - for sale photo
A fairly early example of the Daimler grille ensemble.

1928 Daimler 2 litre saloon - Barrett-Jackson auction photo
Even by the late 1920s the grille area on some Daimlers was the radiator.  However, the two-segment grille (see below) had also appeared on other models.

1935 Daimler Light Fifteen Saloon - Mecum auction photo
Shown here is a grille with nearly all the standard Daimler elements.  A two-segment frame with a central chromed divider, and the rounded-off upper frame element with those ribs.  Yet to come are vertical chromed grille bars.

1939 Daimler DB18 2.5 Litre Sports Saloon - Bonhams auction photo
This grille ensemble works fairly well with the other frontal elements.

1949 Daimler DB18 2.5 Litre Foursome Drophead Coupé by Barker & Co. - Bonhams auction photo
A postwar version of the same model.  From this angle the grille seems more V'd than that of the 1939 car.

1953 Daimler Empress Saloon - Barrett-Jackson auction photo
By the late 1940s Daimler grilles featured stronger grille bars and the ensemble shape was now curved backwards, as seen in this 1953 example.

1960c. Daimler Majestic
A Daimler from around the time Jaguar took over the company.  This is one of the final pure-Daimler designs.  The grille is well-integrated with the rest of the car, yet those ribs are a distraction.

1964 Daimler Majestic Major Saloon - Hyman photo
Later example of the same model providing a better view of the grille.

1984 Daimler Sovereign - for sale photo
Finally, a Daimler based on a Jaguar body.  The grille ensemble is necessarily smaller, shorter and flatter.  But even those ribs atop the frame do little to distinguish this Daimler from contemporary Jaguars.

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.

Kaiser Grille Designs

America's Kaiser brand lasted less than ten model years (though production continued in South American a while longer).  During that time only two basic body designs were used, the original one plus a complete redesign launched for the 1951 model year.  To freshen the designs, grilles were restyled on occasion, the subject of this post.  I wrote about 1954 Kaiser styling here.

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

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1947 Kaiser
Here is an early Kaiser.  The grille opening is the rectangular element immediately above the bumper.  The raised ornamentation between it and the Kaiser name simply covers some hood sheet metal.

1949 Kaiser, RM Sotheby's auction photo
The original grille was carried through the 1949 model year.  The 1950 redesign shown here is much more bold, featuring the kind of large, fat chrome bars that were fashionable on postwar American cars.  This design is much cleaner and more attractive than the rather fussy earlier one.

1950 Kaiser Virginian, Mecum auction photo
The grille seems unchanged (those fog lights are add-ons).  Frontal design finally received a hood ornament -- something found on other American brands for years, but not on Kaisers until now.

1951 Kaiser
The redesigned '51 Kaiser was an attractive car.  Its grille design is a slimmed, simplified variation on the 1949 theme.

1952 Kaiser
Apparently is was decided that the 1951 grille was too delicate, so a bolder version was introduced for the '52 facelift.  Note how the upper bar follows the sheet metal sculpting of the '51 design.  The previous interior horizontal bar is replaced by a bold bumper guard link theme.  That "V" on the front of the hood suggest the presence of a V-8 motor, yet all Kaisers were powered by inline six cylinder engines.

1953 Kaiser
I am not sure of the photo source here.  Perhaps the main change in frontal styling is the addition of the tiny "wings" on each side of the headlight bezels.  What appears to be an air scoop atop the hood is the redesigned hood ornament casing a shadow.

1954 Kaiser
I discussed the design of the facelift 1954 Kaiser in the post linked above.  Basically the frontal design was copied from the 1951 Buick XP-300 dream car.  This was the final American Kaiser design.

Pontiac's 1940-Vintage Grille Theme Search

Grille design themes can be an important marketing tool for car brands, though many brands have ignored this idea, apparently without suffering permanent harm.  (By the way, I wrote an e-book on this subject: a link to it is on the side bar of this Web page.)

General Motors' Pontiac was different from most other marques during 1935-1956 due its use of what were called Silver Streaks (parallel chromed ridges) along hood centerlines always and trunk lid centerlines for some model years.  For five years around the early 1950s, however, Pontiacs did maintain a consistent grille theme that I discussed here.  And of course by the 1960s the brand had abandoned Silver Streaks and began using a consistant two-segment grille theme.

Around 1940 Pontiac, along with the rest of GM's brands, got new body designs.  But the grilles placed on its bodies differed greatly from model year to model year.  Let's take a look.

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1939 Pontiac "for sale" photo
This Pontiac is in the last year of its late 1930s body design.  Its grille is a common type for those days, being a transition from vertical to horizontal orientation.  It's a little hard to see, but on either side for the nose Silver Streaks are un-chromed horizontal openings.  Flanking these in the catwalk area are vertical bars over the main air intake segments.

1940 Pontiac "for sale" photo
The narrowing vertical prow-catwalk transition is preserved on the new-for-1940 body.  But the revised grille shape is mostly horizontal, as are its bars.

1941 Pontiac historic photo
The central vertical narrowing element is held over for 1941.  Otherwise, Pontiac's now totally horizontal frontal ensemble might be described as "architectural" in a similar vein to the '41 Cadillac's classic grille.

1942 Pontiac "for sale"
For the brief (due to World War 2) 1942 model year, Pontiac fenders flowed into front doors and headlights were moved to the car's outer edges.  The result was a more rounded appearance for these cars -- compare fender shapes with those in the '41 image.  Perhaps for this reason Pontiac stylists added curves to the grille framing and fatter horizontal grille bars.  That central vertical tapering element remains, but is clearly fading away.  The vertical openings at the grille flanks echo the Silver Streaks, but create fussiness to the overall frontal design.

1946 Pontiac - "for sale" photo
Postwar Pontiacs, along with most of the rest of U.S. auto industry offerings, were warmed-over prewar designs.  Here the grille framing is almost the same as for 1942, but major grille bars are now horizontal from side to side.  That taper element is now gone, replaced by a simple vertical bar at the center.

Rogues Gallery of Busy Grilles and Front Ends

I've been hammering away for a while now about the current fashion for overly decorated designs.  I think an important reason for this fad or fashion is government fuel efficiency regulations that have driven engineers and stylists to wind tunnels in the pursuit of high aerodynamic efficiency.  The result is car bodies with nearly identical basic shapes, and this has led to the use of excessive ornamentation and aerodynamically irrelevant body surface sculpting as means to establish brand and model identification.

Another -- probably lesser -- reason is the normal pendulum swing from one extreme to another that is common where fashion is concerned.

This post presents examples of overly-busy looking grilles and front end ensembles on American cars of the 1950s, an era noted for extravagant styling themes.  Then recent and current examples are shown, illustrating that we now seem to be in a period even more extreme than the '50s.

The 1950s images are of cars for sale.  The others are manufacturers' publicity photos.

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1950s American Examples

1950 Buick
Classic overstatement that was toned down for the next model year.

1952 Packard 400 Patrician
This is a modernized version of the traditional Packard grille intended to better blend with post- World War 2 styling trends.  The sculpting is rather Rococo, but the overly decorated part is the "teeth" that thankfully disappeared on the 1953 facelift.

1958 Buick
If the decorations on the face of the hood were eliminated, the design would be a lot more coherent.

1959 DeSoto
A three-level grille-bumper ensemble, each level having a separate theme.

1959 Dodge
This design approaches the confusion seen in some of the recent images below.


Current and Recent Examples

2015 Nissan Juke
A small car with intentionally funky styling.

2016 Nassan Maxima
The Nissan badge and its chrome nest serve as brand-wide identification.

2017 Lexus IS
Variously termed as "hourglass," "spindle," and (by me) "back-to-back Lexus Ls, this has been a Lexus theme for several years now.  And, as seen farther below, Toyota seems to be adding it to its mass-market brand.

2017 Renault Mégane sedan
That enduring, yet somewhat inexplicable Moebius-diamond symbol reinforces an already somewhat cluttered design.

2018 Audi A8
Audi pioneered the theme of draping the grille over the front bumper.

2018 Genesis
Count the textures on the face of this Genesis by Hyundai.

2018 Honda Accord
This car has some interesting sculpting, but it gets carried a little too far on the front end.  The sweeping element atop the grille and its details do not relate well to what is below.

2018 Hyundai Sonata
This design is cleaner than most shown here.  But the faddish fake air intakes flanking the grille add to the clutter.

2018 Infiniti Q50
An odd, droopy look to the front.

2018 Toyota Camry
As mentioned above, Toyota's mainline American sedan is now getting a Lexus-like frontal design.  The hood face, the faux air intakes flanking the actual grille and the dark, two-level apparent grille segment do not work well together.