1952 Kaiser Manhattan Club Coupe - Brief Walkaround

Kaisers (Wikipedia entry here) were redesigned only once, for the 1951 model year.  I wrote about the 1951 Kaiser redesign here.

Previous Kaisers were all 4-door models.  But the redesign included 2-door models, a sedan and two coupes.  These accounted for about 17 percent of 1951 standard-size Kaiser sales and around 10 percent of 1952 Kaiser sales.  So they are pretty rare cars.

Images below of a 1952 Kaiser Manhattan Club Coupe (263 built) are via Bring a Trailer Auctions.

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Kaiser's 1952 facelift included an improved grille design and larger taillight assemblies.

The passenger compartment greenhouse is shorter that that for 4-door sedans.

Four-door sedan greenhouses extended to the trunk hinges.

A fine early 1950s design.  Feminine.

Greenhouses were proportionately tall for that era.

1952 Kaiser Overhead Views

Sometimes it can be interesting to view a fine design from unusual perspectives.  Today's post presents some high and near-overhead views of a 1952 Kaiser four-door sedan.  I wrote about the 1951 Kaiser redesign here.

The Kaiser brand had only one complete redesign -- for the 1951 model year, which accounts for the previous link.  A moderate facelift appeared for 1952 in the forms of a cleaner grille design and larger tail lights.  1953 Kaisers were nearly identical to '52s.

Below are images of a 1952 Kaiser as seen from high or near-overhead positions.  Such views are seldom seen in everyday settings.  But they provide some insight into the attention stylists had to pay in order to produce complete, production-ready exterior designs.

Images below are of '52 Kaiser Manhattan sedans listed for sale.

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Establishment shot of a two-door Kaiser -- how one might normally view it.  Compared to contemporary American sedans, Kaisers featured low basic bodies and tall passenger compartment "greenhouses."

Now for our subject car.  The hood is sculpted, of course, but flowing, not with hard folds and creases.  The most salient feature is the upper framing of the windshield, something basically unique to Kaiser.

Large (for the time) backlight window, again with the "heart" dip on the upper frame.

Beltline "shoulders" exist, but are not strongly defined.  The chrome strip enhances the fenderline flow.  The greenhouse has a curved planview perimeter, something not seen so much nowadays in the era of the SUV.

Showing the tapered raised part of the hood.  Something of an old-fashioned touch at a time when hoods were becoming wider and flatter (think 1952 Nash).

High side view of a very attractive design.

Kaiser and Wolseley 6/90 Compared

A while ago I wrote about Gerald Palmer's Riley Pathfinder / Wolseley 6/90 design, noting a similarity to the postwar Kaiser design.  In today's post, I explicitly compare the 1954-59 Wolseley 6/90 to a 1948 Kaiser Special.

The Kaiser was a larger car, having a wheelbase of 123.5 inches (3137 mm) versus the 6/90's 113.5 inches (2883 mm).  It was designed around 1945, being the first American production car with flow-through slab-sided fenders.  Palmer's design was developed about five years later, so he had been able to evaluate many flow-through American production designs and Italian coachbuilt styles.

In essence, the Kaiser was heavy-looking and its lines were unrefined, whereas the Wolseley was more sleek, more attractive.  Its smaller size was greatly helpful, too.

That said, there were similarities, as can be seen in the images in the Gallery below

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1948 Kaiser Special - Mecum auction photos
The overall design can be characterized as "rounded," in spite of the flat fender sides.

Wolseley 6/90, Hertforshire Police vehicle
The Wolseley's radiator grille is tall, traditional, unlike the Kaiser's horizontal grille and rounded hood prow.

Kaiser's passenger compartment greenhouse seems massive, especially from this viewpoint.  That is due to its roofline that's fairly high above the window frame tops.  Even more important is the bulky C-pillar that's emphasized by the comparatively small backlight window.

Wolseley 6/90 - factory image
The Wolseley's greenhouse is noticeably lower than the Kaiser's, its roofline is flatter, and the C-pillar is much thinner.

The Kaiser's looks would have been greatly improved if the after part of the roofline curved downwards more gracefully.  The fenderline is set below the beltline, which reduces visual bulk slightly, the open rear wheel opening also helping.  There is no side ornamentation.

Wolseley 6/90 - car for sale
Here the fenderline and beltline coincide, but being a lower car than the Kaiser, the sides don't seem as bulky.  The chrome strip on the front side and another on the beltline add to visual length.

1955 Riley Pathfinder - for sale
Here is a Riley Pathfinder, sharing the Wolseley's body.  It has smaller backlight and wider C-pillar.  That, plus the lack of a fender chrome strip, makes it even more similar to the Kaiser.  I noted this similarity in a link above.

Similarity factors: Their fender shapes are simple and similar.  Plus the limited and absent (for Kaiser and Riley) side ornamentation and large wheel openings.  Finally, their side proportions (lengths of hood, greenhouse and trunk) are similar.

"Form Follows Function" -- For Automobile Styling?

For more than a century a secular religion strongly held by many architects and designers is the idea that "form follows function," as mentioned in this link to Wikipedia.

The dean of the University of Washington architecture school, Arthur Herrman, was my instructor for a class on architectural history.  He was seriously hard-core when it came to form and function along with being true to one's building materials.  The following year I took first-year Architectural Design, where one student was gently, but firmly, told that his non-modernist apartment design was verbotten territory so far as the School of Architecture was concerned.

At that time I had been reading early books by American industrial designers (I was an ID major then). The goal of making designs where form was shaped by function was mentioned along with the need to streamline and simplify products.

I'm sure that this carried over to early automobile stylists, a number of whom had architectural backgrounds or had read some of those industrial design books.  Nevertheless, I am pretty sure that most stylists then and later tended to not practice "form follows function" to the nth degree.

That said, not long ago a Fiat stylist proclained himself a follower of the religion. The above Wikipedia link includes the following quote:

"If the design of an automobile conforms to its function—for instance the Fiat Multipla's shape, which is partly due to the desire to sit six people in two rows—then its form is said to follow its function." -- Fiat Multipla designer Roberto Giolito, via Automotive News Europe 19 July 2019 (link here).

I posted about my dislike of the Fiat Multipla design here.  Even if Giolito was correct in his statement (which I dispute to some degree), the result was not attractive.

But enough theorizing: The present post presents examples of designs that are fairly pure followers of the dictum.

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Gestetner duplicating machine - c.1929
The redesign of this device was important in launching Raymond Loewy's career as an industrial designer.  This is what a pre-Loewy machine looked like.

Gestetner duplicating machine - c.1930
And this is Loewy's version.  The functional parts are hidden by cladding that simplifies the appearance.  The main purely "functional" benefits are: (1) the machine is easier to operate, and (2) less dust will collect on the mechanisms, making it easier to maintain.

1926 Essex Coach
Now for automobile design.  Essex began making closed-body sedans of this style for the 1922 model year.  The car shown has a functional exterior design in that the main components are clearly seen: passenger compartment, doors and windows, radiator, headlights, bumper, fenders, running board.  However, the design seems awkward in terms of proportions -- especially the short hood that functionally houses a short, inline four cylinder motor.

1930 Packard Standard Eight Sedan
A luxury car of similar vintage.  Its functionality is of the same ilk as the Essex's.

1930 Packard Standard Eight Sedan
Note the separate trunk.  Thee are some decorative moldings below the windows that are non-functional in mechanical or layout terms.

1930c Audi Type T "Dresden"
The same can be said for this European design from the country that hosted the avant-garde Bauhaus design school.

1933 Tatra 77 prototype
Another function is aerodynamic streamlining which is related to fuel consumption efficiency.  For this function to dominate, components such as were mentioned with regard to the Essex are now merged  into a wind tunnel tested envelope shape.  Here the front fenders are not well integrated and the hood seems too stubby.  But the car is fairly attractive.

1939 Horch 930 S Stromlinie
The front fenders of this Horch are better integrated than those on the Tatra above.  However, the passenger compartment seems out of place.  That might be because it is functional in terms of passenger access, headroom and outside visibility -- not so functional in terms of streamlining.

1949 Nash
An American example of streamlining in the early post- World War 2 years.  The simple, slab sides cover what would have been wheel openings.  This streamlining contradicted the functional needs of easily accessing the tires and of a better turning radius.  The overall design seems too heavy looking.

1952 Saab 92
Saabs at the time were made by an aircraft company, so the body was wind tunnel tested.  This early Saab is attractive seen from this angle, though the back window seems to be placed too low.  Also, there is no trunk lid, making access quite inconvenient.  Two functional demerits there.

1951 Gutbrod Superior
Now for some designs that emphasize simplicity such as Loewy promoted.  The Gutbrod was a very small, inexpensive car.  Small cars can't carry much decoration, and the only decorative elements seen here are the simple grille bars and the nose crest.  All told, a fairly attractive design.

1952 Škoda 1200
This Škoda is larger than the Gutbrod, yet also has minimal decoration.  Although the exterior shapes are simple, they strike me as being awkwardly proportioned.

1947 Kaiser Special - Mecum Auction photo
A post- World War 2 design from an essentially new carmaker.

1947 Kaiser Special - Mecum Auction photo
Again, simplicity of forms is stressed, but like the later Škoda, the overall effect appears awkward.  Simplicity itself does not seem to guarantee aesthetic success.

1957 Imperial Southampton Coupe
Another function of an automobile's design is being salable.  That usually means that a car's looks are in tune with current design fashions and the functions discussed above are sublimated to marketing prowess.  The 1957 Imperial is shown here because this design let to the brand's greatest production volume year in its history.

1957 Imperial Southampton Coupe
Another view of this successful in marketing terms design.

Cross-posted at Art Contrarian

John Reinhart's Complaint

John M. Reinhart (1916-1986) led Packard styling 1947-51 and later worked at Ford where he is credited with the design of the 1956 Continental Mk. II.  While at Packard he was responsible for its redesigned 1951 line.

Regarding that design, he has been quoted in the Packard Cormorant (No. 129, Winter 2007, page 30) and elsewhere as stating that the car looked "...bottom heavy.  I wasn't particularly happy with it, but then I hated every design I ever made anyway.  You never get what you really want because you have to compromise; the thing could have been a lot better looking had we the option of altering the glass along with the sheet metal."  It seems he would have liked to lower the main body to provide another 1 1/2 inches (35 mm) of glass, but Packard engineers supposedly wanted to limit the amount of glass for price reasons.

The situation might have been more complex than that.  Packard built luxury cars (along with lower-priced models using the same basic body).  If I had been in charge of Packard marketing or product planning an important consideration would have been the design's "image" as a luxury car.  To a degree, that would trump the aesthetic considerations Reinhart favored.

Therefore, let's examine luxury car design circa-1950 to see where the 1951 Packard fits.

Unless noted, images below are of car listed for sale.  All are of four-door sedans for comparative purposes.

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1951 Packard Patrician 400 - Bonhams auction photo
Patricians were the top of Packard's line.  Side window height is less than one-half the height of the lower body.

1951 Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn
Silver Dawns had factory bodies and were meant to be owner-driven.  English luxury cars tended to have large-appearing side windows, though these are proportionally only marginally taller than Packard's.

1950 Daimler DE36 Touring Limousine by Freestone & Webb - auction photo
The same can be said for Rolls' rival.

Jaguar Mark VII
This Jaguar, a semi-luxury car, has windows about half the distance from rocker panel to beltline.

1951 Mercedes-Benz 300 W186
Yet again, similar.

1952 Lincoln
The redesigned '52 Lincoln has windows about the same proportion as Packard..

1950 Cadillac Sixty Special
The redesigned for 1950 Caddy's windows are noticeably narrower than Packard's.

1951 Packard 300
Long-wheelbase '51 Packards such as this 300 had three-piece wraparound backlight windows.  These give the car an airy feeling that complements the solid-looking lower body.

1951 Packard 200
But entry-level 1951 Packards had smaller backlights.  As seen here, Reinhart's complaint has some validity.

1951 Kaiser Golden Dragon - RM Sotheby's auction photo
Kaiser's attractive 1951 design has tall side windows, perhaps a bit more height than Reinhart mentioned.  Their ratio to lower body height was about 58 percent as opposed to Packard's 42 and Cadillac's 35.  But Kaiser was not a luxury brand.  In the early 1950s a Packard with Kaiser proportions would not have seemed big, solid, important.  Perhaps not worth spending luxury car dollars for.

Last-Ditch Styling

Sometimes there's a last spurt of flame before the candle dies, or so I recall hearing it said.

True or not, something similar sometimes happens with automobile companies that are about to flat-line.  In this instance it's a final roll of the dice, betting what money the company has left on a flashy model that is either brand new or (more likely, given the cost factor) a major styling facelift.

Where money is totally lacking, little gets changed and the brand dies with nothing but a whimper.  Badge-engineered British makes that died in the 1960s might be a case in point.

This post deals with some American brands that went down fighting with regard to styling.  They are: Hupmobile, which was gone by 1940; Graham, that ceased production in the 1941 model year and had a curious afterlife (see the link for details); Kaiser, the only halfway successful post- World War 2 new brand; and Studebaker which built the Raymond Loewy designed Avanti for a few years before dying in the mid-1960s while trying to sell its Lark-based sedans with facelift after facelift after facelift.

Here are these companies' last (or nearly-so) gasps:

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1939 Graham "Sharknose" coupe
The "Sharknose" (a popular name, not the official company version) Graham was largely designed by Amos Northup as an attention-getting style in the pseudo-streamlined fashion of the 1930s.  For some reason I rather like it, though it was not a sales success and the company continued its slide out of the industry.

Surrealist Man Ray in his 1941 Graham Hollywood
Not a publicity shot: he actually bought one when he returned to the USA after France fell and was living in the Los Angeles area.  Aside from the hood and grille, the Hollywood used body panels from the Cord brand that failed after the 1937 model year.  The Cord 810 and 812 models of 1936-37 are not included here because they represented the revival of a brand that had been discontinued a few years earlier.

1939 Hupmobile Skylark
Hupp shared Cord bodies with Graham, though few of the Hupmobile versions were built.  The car depicted is a prototype with a front that looked Cord-like apart from the tacked-on headlights (the Cord had them hidden in the fenders).  Production versions looked almost identical to the Graham shown above.

1954 Kaiser
This is how the last American-built Kaisers looked.  It was a major facelift of the 1953 version. Changes included the Buick-like grille, wraparound rear window and elaborate tail light housings.  Production continued in South America for a few years with another facelift style.

1962 Studebaker Avanti
Studebaker announced the sensational Avanti almost 60 years ago, yet the styling could just as easily be for a current model aside from a few details such as the windshield angle (today's cars would have greater slope).

This post is an adaptation of a 2011 Art Contrarian post.

Some Awkward Convertible Top Designs

A fairly easy job for American automobile stylists around 1950 was the creation of a design for a convertible.  Mostly it required razing the top off a coupé or two-door sedan and replacing it with a retractible canvas top design.  And those designs were largely shaped by engineering requirements.

That task became more difficult to a greater or lesser degree when the shape of the source of the derivation interfered.  Below are images of some American convertibles from that era whose canvas top (and related sheet metal) designs were more or less awkward.  Unless noted, the photos are of cars listed for sale.

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First, a 1949 Chevrolet (Mecum auction photo).  General Motors stylists were at the top of their game, and the raised convertible top is attractive.  This was in spite of the rounded trunk lid and the body shape falling off towards the rear, two elements that might have led to a less satisfactory result.

This 1949 Hudson Commodore 8 convertible retained some coupé sheet metal above the windshield, an unusual touch.

This was probably done to simplify convertible top engineering.

Aside from that detail, the raised top shown in this Bonhams auction is a little too angular due to its ribbing placement.

Packard's postwar major facelift was a design failure, though convertibles looked better that the rest of the line.  That said, the top on this 1950 Packard (Mecum photo) is not nearly as cleanly designed as that of the Chevy in the top photo.

Side view of a 1948 Packard.  The car has a fine, long hood, but the back passenger seats are fairly close to the curved rear, affecting the top design.  A much more awkward setting than for that Chevy.

1949 Lincoln Cosmopilitan convertible.  I'm not sure if the double-backlight was standard design.

The distinguishing feature of Cosmo convertible tops is the wide "C-pillar" zone.  These cars were large and somewhat bulky looking, but the top's design fits the rest of the car well.

Lesser Lincolns such as the 1949 model in this and the following Mecum photos shared bodies with Mercury.

Like the Packard shown previously, the passenger compartment sits somewhat aft, and the trunk lid is short and curved downwards.  The result is a top design that looks bulky rather than graceful.

The 1950 Nash Rambler seen in these Mecum photos was the most successful sales-wise compact American car at the time.  It used a unit body structure which helps explain why the side windows have fixed structural framing.  The canvas top was simply pulled up or down along these "rails" rather than by a more elaborate mechanism.

However, the result was rather dumpy looking, and the slab-sided body with minimal wheel cutouts added to the problem.  Because the car was small, these defects were not as strong as they might have been on a standard-size car.

Kaiser and Frazer cars starting in the 1949 model year included convertible sedans having four doors.

The tops were large and not particularly attractive.  An unusual detail is the faux-B-pillar featuring a small, vertical window.  Again, the short, rounded trunk lid made the top design less attractive than it might have been otherwise.