It truly was the year that changed the world
The Land Rover was far from the only stand-out in a watershed year. Giles Chapman picks his highlights from around the globe
In 1948, the British Motor Show finally returned to Earl’s Court in West London after a gap of ten glum years. Here was an automotive cavalcade the like of which would rarely be witnessed again, and a bumper 562,954 visitors queued in the chilly October air to get in.
The headline acts, of course, were the impossibly rapid and beautiful Jaguar XK120 and the highly significant, almost-all-new Morris Minor. But virtually every manufacturer’s stand space framed brand new cars. In the dull-but-important category, a veritable galaxy of newcomers for everyday motoring included the Austin A70 Hampshire, Hillman Minx, Morris Oxford, Singer SM1500 and Vauxhall Velox/Wyvern. Many also had their first glimpse of the
Jowett Javelin and Standard Vanguard. Jaguar’s MkV and the Lagonda 2.6 represented the latest in British luxury, while the Daimler DB18 Sports Special Sports and Lea-Francis, Alvis TB14 and Triumph 2000 roadsters catered to fresh-air fantasies.
The US-influenced Austin A90 Atlantic convertible was like nothing else around but, as with much of the other tempting new metal, it was almost exclusively for export. The car industry was focused on selling abroad to suck foreign currency into the beleaguered British economy, although in one crucial foreign market, Australia, the locally conceived Holden would provide stiff opposition. You could admire the gleaming Earl’s Court line-up, but getting your chequebook out was largely futile…
Morris Minor
If he’d been allowed to by the abacus-swipers of Morris Motors, Alec Issigonis would have installed an eager flat-four motor in the Minor. Denied that, he still ensured this was the first British economy car with proper driving appeal. The combination of rack-and-pinion steering, a snappy floormounted gearchange, supple torsion-bar front suspension and a wide track made it precise and stable. The lovable character came from the car’s curvy proportions and roomy cabin. The Minor was one of five inter-related Morrises and Wolseleys arriving in ’48, the other significant one being the rapid Wolseley 6/80 that was embraced by Britain’s crime-fighters.
Citroën 2CV
This was an ‘umbrella on wheels’, according to Maurice Broglie, its chief engineer, and much as it astonished and intrigued the throng at the 1948 Paris motor show, it wasn’t just the 9bhp 375cc flat-twin engine that slowed it down. It was the Nazis, too. The 2CV had been scheduled for unveiling in 1941; gritted-teeth Citroën management did an excellent job of hiding prototypes in a rural hayloft. Then, they found the austere post-war environment was just ideal for a superbasic car costing a third of the Traction Avant’s price. The flimsy bodywork, tubular seat frames and all-round minimalism did the trick, while front-wheel drive and longtravel interconnected suspension made it intrepid and capable in the most isolated corners of the Massif Central. And yet it still became the first Citroën ever with a four-speed gearbox.
PANHARD DYNAVIA
Never heard of it? Don’t beat yourself up. If you didn’t happen to visit the Paris and London motor shows in 1948 to gawp at it, then you’d have been lucky to see the only roadgoer, a replica for a Grenoble dealer that had a short and glorious life before being written off. Why is it here? Well, obscure or not, the Dynavia is the grandfather of all European concept cars – an aerodynamic teardrop intended to soften-up buyers for the car of the future. A one-fifth scale model achieved an incredible drag factor of 0.17 in 1945; the full-size car was almost as impressive at 0.26, and it paved the way for the radical Dyna Z of 1954.
Land rover
There was indeed a Land Rover at Earl’s Court in 1948, carrying a stylish, sevenseater, coachbuilt station wagon body – the standard version was a purely commercial vehicle, so it wouldn’t have been allowed to rub shoulders with Rover’s cars at the event. Meanwhile, all over the country, the farming community was wide-eyed with excitement at Britain’s revolutionary hybrid pick-up/ tractor with its selectable four-wheel drive, as it tore across muddy fields and bounced up and down hillsides. It was, at the time, an ingenious sideline to Rover’s conventional cars, and yet just two years later it was outselling them.
BRISTOL 401
Aeroplane manufacturers don’t cave in to penny-pinching because it can be, literally, a matter of life and death. This mindset prevailed with Bristol’s ambitious stablemate for the BMW-esque 400. As a result, the £3112 price of the four-seater 401, swelled by purchase tax, was three times that for the just-launched Jaguar MkV of ’48. Even then it barely covered the cost of making it. Still, it was a beautifully balanced machine, the wind tunnel-tested, handmade body using Italian superleggera-style construction. It was sumptuous inside and could break 100mph when a Bentley MkVI needed twice the engine capacity to match its performance.
Jaguar XK120
Well, 120mph turned out to be rather an under-estimate for the star of 1948’s new car crop – the heavenly two-seater hit 132mph at Jabbeke in 1949, upped to an astounding 172mph in 1953. By then, the XK120 was one of the world’s most desirable sports cars. It was a long way from William Lyons’ original plan – a limited-run two-seater to showcase the twin-cam XK engine that, really, was intended for his MkVII saloon. The sports car took on a life of its own the moment the wraps were off, with its 160bhp power, crushing performance and that timelessly sleek and glamorous profile. A 2-litre four-cylinder option never went ahead, and even the aluminium bodywork had to be changed to steel to meet demand.
Porsche 356
Project No 356 was completed on 8 June 1948 in Austria, and revealed the following month to the public at the Swiss Grand Prix. It was designed by Ferdinand ‘Ferry’ Porsche, and not his father Ferdinand, who was responsible for the Beetle. Although the old man approved of his son’s vision for a simple weekend roadster, this was rather more than a sporty VW. The tubular chassis and alloy body were bespoke affairs just for the mid/rear-engined 356, while only the torsion-bar suspension and very basic hardware from the VW’s flat-four engine were carried over. The definitive 356 arrived in 1951, the year Ferdinand passed away.
SUNBEAM-TALBOT 90
It wasn’t looking too promising for this fourdoor when it appeared in mid-’48. Aside from handsome bodywork and the 64bhp 2-litre Humber Hawk engine converted from side- to overhead-valves, the chassis was entirely separate and it had antique leaf springs front and back. The column ’change clashed with the individual front seats. The transformation to decent compact sports saloon came in 1950 with independent front suspension and a bigger 70bhp 2.2-litre engine, while better brakes arrived on the 77bhp MKIIA in ’52. Finns Per Malling and Gunnar Fadum won the 1955 Monte Carlo Rally in one… with a broken fanbelt.
cadillac 62
These beefy, confident Caddies were the first cars from General Motors to sport all-new bodywork since the end of WW2. And what a highly influential piece of work the design was. Overseen by Harley Earl, this was the first car from Cadillac with tailfins, copied from the Lockheed P-38 plane; it was the start of the marque’s journey into the joyous automotive excesses of the 1950s. Detroit truly was setting the pace, and the fastback coupe model provided plenty of inspiration for the Bentley R-Type Continental. Just a year after launch, the cars received an overhead-valve V8 for a more responsive driving experience.
hudson commodore
Plucky Hudson shocked the Detroit big guns with its radical range of ‘Step Down’ cars, where driver and passengers stepped down into their seats rather than clambering up to them. Hudson named its construction method – the floorpan was suspended from the chassis instead of being bolted on top – ‘Monobilt’. The chassis extended around the outside of the rear wheels, which allowed stylists to create a ground-hugging look. The Commodore came with an elderly 4.2-litre straight-eight or a new ‘Super Six’; the latter, in 145bhp form, made the similar Hudson Hornet a champ in NASCAR’s first Daytona Beach race for stock cars, held in ’48.