More-Distinctive Late 1920s Grille Designs

Recently I wrote about 1927-vintage grille designs that can make it difficult for me and others to easily identify a car's brand.  By "grille" I'm largely referring to the chrome or nickel frame around what was usually an open radiator front.

Although each brand featured in that post had a distinctive grille ensemble, the areas in question were never large (often just the upper part of the frame), rendering differences subtle in most cases.

The present post presents some designs that offered more distinction than usual, making brand identification somewhat easier for the casual viewer.  Also, I've expanded the time frame to a few years on either side of 1927 so as to include some interesting examples.

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1927 Marmon - Hyman, Ltd. consignment photo
Marmon was a luxury automobile maker, but late-1920s grilles lacked distinction.  Here we find a rather heavy frame rounded at the top with a touch of sculpting and a brand medallion.  This is typical of the times for American cars.

1928 Packard - Bonhams auction photo
Packard was America's leading upscale brand in those days.  The shaping of the upper part of the frame is more sculptural than Marmon's, but in itself nothing very special.  Yet Packards were easy identify.  Why?  Because that grille frame design (with detail variations) was used on Packards for almost all of the firm's existence.  Consistency was a virtue.

1928 Buick - for sale photo
Buick's upper frame was superficially similar to Packard's, but not used as consistently as Packard.  Most grilles had horizontal lower framing, but Buick's is more shapely.

1926 Oldsmobile - Mecum auction photo
Even more shapely was Oldsmobile's grille frame.

1927 Chandler - Auctions America photo
Chandler, on the other hand, made its grilles distinctive by adding chrome vertical bars.

1928 Durant - for sale photo
Durant picked up on Chandler's idea and added a horizontal bar for good measure.  Chandlers and Durants were easy to identify.

The Unic Decline and Fall

Unic was a French automobile manufacturer founded in 1905 that abandoned car production during the 1938 model year.  Its English-language Wikipedia entry is here, and from there you can link to the more detailed French version.

There seem to be very few images of Unics on the Internet, so below are mostly pages I scanned from various issues of the former "Automobilia" magazine's special (hors-serie) publications by René Ballu dealing with French cars by year (Toutes les voitures françaises 1935, 1936, 1938).  These are from large files and might load slowly.  Images can be clicked on to enlarge if you computer allows it.

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Automobilia Hors-serie No. 9, Toutes les voitures Françaises 1935, Salon 1934 - page 90
Unics for 1935 were pleasingly styled and sported "shovel-nose" grilles (curved forward near the base) as seen on cars such as the 1932 Packard Light Eight.

Automobilia Hors-serie No. 9, Toutes les voitures Françaises 1935, Salon 1934 - page 91
The U6 had a six-cylinder motor, the U4 had four cylinders.

Automobilia Hors-serie No. 1, Toutes les voitures Françaises 1936, Salon 1935 - page 88
Bellu's headline indicates that Unic's obsolete production methods led to pricing the cars relatively high for battling the luxury competition, so sales increasingly suffered.

1936 Unic U6 Sport Coupé
This might be by Letourneur et Marchand, a major body supplier to Unic.  Note the typical 1930s French belt line.

1937c Unic 4-door - Wikimedia Commons image
By 1937 the basic sedan body style was definitely dated by American standards.  However, the absence of running boards gives this car a sporting sense.

Automobilia Hors-serie No. 6, Toutes les voitures Françaises 1938, Salon 1937 - page 92
Letourneur et Marchand were brought in to create a facelift grille design.  Unfortunately the bulged-out "fencer's mask" style that I wrote about here was already passé in America.

Automobilia Hors-serie No. 6, Toutes les voitures Françaises 1938, Salon 1937 - page 93
Worse, its design was unattractive and Unic stopped automobile production mid-1938.

Two More Lookalikes

Back in 2015 in a post titled "Styling by Wind Tunnel" I presented side views of nine sedans, all from different makers, that had similar profiles.  My thesis (that I often repeat) was that designers are forced by government fuel efficiency regulations to use shapes determined by wind tunnel tests.  Not surprisingly, the "best" shapes emerging from wind tunnels around the world are essentially the same.

Today's post is a brief follow-up.  I was in Hawaii in January and noticed two rental cars parked down the street from where we were staying.  One was a Chevrolet Malibu, the other a Kia Optima.  Both were painted white, and they looked surprisingly similar.

My photos are below.

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First a side view.  The Kia is in the foreground, the Chevy at the rear.

This is the view that prompted me to take these photos.  Rear spoilers and taillights are practically the same shapes.  And the remaining details are not very different.

Colorful Ruxton Sedans

Ruxton was a short-lived (1929-1930), low-production American brand -- brief Wikipedia entry here.  Ruxtons were unusual, having front wheel drive, and therefore were much lower than most contemporary cars.  Other noteworthy features were the slitlike WoodLite headlamps and the lack of running boards (justified by their low height).  And some were given bold, unusual paint schemes, the subject of this post.

Ruxton bodies were designed by engineer Joseph Ledwinka. Those paint schemes were devised by master designer Joseph Urban.

There is little information regarding Ruxton on the Internet if a quick Google search is any guide.  Amazon is selling a book about Ruxton for more than $800 -- far above my reference library price-point.  For those reasons, some of the photo captions below are conjectural.

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Blackhawk Museum Ruxton photographed in 2010 and 2013 by me.

This mentions that multicolor Ruxtons either had this blue-violet scheme or one based on brown-orange.

Another view.  Lighting conditions at Blackhawk make for difficult photography.

Bonhams photo of perhaps the Blackhawk Ruxton or another with the same paint scheme.

Rear quarter view.

Tampa Bay Automobile Museum's Ruxton, my photos. This is the alternative color scheme mentioned above.

Rear quarter view.  Again, interior lighting made it difficult to capture colors accurately.

Nethercutt Collection Ruxton.  It's possible that the Blackhawk information card was incorrect and this color scheme is original.

Driehaus Collection's Ruxton.  The same caveat applies here as well.

A less elaborate scheme, photo via Bonham's auctions.

Period photo showing what seems to be a two-tone pattern with white or cream accents around the side window.

DeSoto Grilles 1940-1961

Chrysler Corporation's DeSoto brand was marketed model years 1929-1961.  From 1941 through 1955 DeSotos had a consistent grille design theme of vertical chrome bars.  After that, consistency was discarded while the brand -- never a strong one -- faded to the point that production ended in late 1960, not long after the '61s were introduced.

This post presents DeSoto grilles beginning 1940, when Chrysler Corporation brands were given a new body design that sloughed off 1930s awkwardness, positioning styling one notch away from the end of 1930-1949 evolution from discrete elements to smooth, "envelope" body designs.

Unless noted, images are via factory or of cars for sale.

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1940
Here we have a split grille featuring horizontal bars.

1941 - Auctions America photo
The next year saw the first vertical-bar design.  Front fenders were flattened (shallow catwalks filled in), creating a more solid frontal appearance.

1942
Probably the most distinctive DeSoto frontal design.  Unmistakable, actually.  The strong, horizontal line running across the top of the grille and extending over the fenders made a strong visual statement that was enhanced by the hidden headlights.  Too bad all this was dropped after the war.

1946-1948
Postwar DeSotos got front fenders that flowed over the front doors.  Exposed headlights returned, and the grille format (not the opening) was widened, resulting in an even more toothy look.

1949
Chrysler Corporation cars got new, boxy bodies for 1949.  DeSoto's vertical bars now varied in width.

1950
But the next year bars had identical widths in line with the current American fashion for heavy chrome grille elements.

1951-1952
Chrysler Corporation cars got rounded-off hood fronts for 1951.  DeSotos had fewer vertical bars.  The grille design was unchanged for 1952.

1953 - Mecum auction photo
Chrysler brands were rebodied for 1953.  DeSoto's grille bars were similar to those of the previous two years, but more were added,

1954
The '54 facelift featured "floating" vertical bars.

1955
That bar theme was reprised in 1955 when another body redesign was launched.  I very much like 1955 DeSoto styling.  These and the 1942 models were the best of the breed.

1956 - Mecum photo
1956 DeSotos were facelifted, the most obvious change being tail fins on the rear fenders.  Vertical grille bars were replaced by a nondescript mesh, thereby ending the brand's established identification feature.  My father bought a four-door hardtop Firedome like this, but with the color scheme reversed.

1957 - Mecum photo
Yet another redesigned body, a flashy one that sold about as well as the '55s.  But the grille theme is not interesting or distinctive.  That mesh did not help, though perhaps stylists and marketers were thinking the mesh could now serve as DeSoto's visual identification.

1958
The grille bars are less bland for the 1958 facelift, though the mesh continues.

1959 - Barrett-Jackson photo
Finally the mesh is gone and the theme is a variation on the flat, slits-defined-by-bold chrome found beginning in 1957.

1960 - Mecum photo
Then even that theme was abandoned in 1960.  Retained was the delicate, rectangular grid of thin bars that now cover a grossly large area compared to '59.

1961
The final DeSoto design retained the rectangular thin bar theme with details changed.  The flattened oval shape at the front of the hood is strange, very strange, marking the finale of the brand's post-1957 death spiral.

Chrysler Pacifica Minivan

Chrysler Corporation introduced the minivan body type to the American market in 1984 (Wikipedia entry here).  The current iteration is the Pacifica, a 2017 redesigned van the was called the Town and Country, a name used by Chrysler for "woodie" convertibles and other body styles since the 1940s.  The name Pacifica itself was previously used for an early crossover SUV-like design.

This post features the Pacifica's side-window profile design for reasons to be made more clear in captions for the images below.

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This is a 2011 Chrysler Town and Country minivan.  Its purpose is to haul people in three rows of seats or stuff when seatbacks are lowered.  That is, it is shaped to maximize carrying capacity rather than to look attractive.

The vehicle was redesigned for the 2017 model year and renamed Pacifica.  Its windshield is raked back at a greater angle and the roofline is more curved in order to improve aerodynamic efficiency.  Note the "dogleg" shape of the aft side window, a major visual change from the Town and Country.

In recent decades that shape has been associated with BMW sedans, but was previously found on various production cars including 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air hardtops.  An early example is the 1936 Delage D6-70 Coach Panoramique by Letourneur et Marchand pictured here.

Rear quarter view.  What might seem to be a wraparound/panoramic backlight window actually isn't.  The triangular area bordered by the hatch cutline, taillight and C-pillar sheet metal is actually some molded black material placed over more of the C-pillar sheet metal.  In other words, the wraparound backlight is phony.

Side view.  Another design problem with the C-pillar as defined by gray painted sheet metal in this photo is that it strikes me as being too narrow.  I prefer that it be twice as wide (or thereabouts) than it is now.  That would make that part of the body seem less delicate.

A 2021 Pacifica -- a facelifted 2017.  The major change is frontal styling, though the upper side character line was slightly altered as well.

No change for the window treatment.  Probably the facelift budget was tight, but I would have pushed for widening the C-pillar or even have the aft window element lean forward rather than backwards as it is here.  And the fake wraparound might have been changed too.

Rear quarter view with the hatch opened.  This offers a better understanding of the body structure at the car's rear, something the facelifters could have used as the basis for some improved styling.