How US motor companies spurred a global love of cars
Lashings of chrome, fins forever and new safety and speed standards won over a world desperate for dreams
The Encyclopedia of American
Cars 1946 to 1959 by James H Maloney covers a long-ago era of American automobiles. According to the Golden Age
of American Cars it was the era of American Graffiti cars, of the hot rod and custom cars.
“An era that was devoid pollution controls, devoid of Ralph Nader, and devoid of petrol shortages when petrol cost one dollar a gallon.” Or as Maloney says, “it was an era which a carloving nation can look back on with fond memories”.
The post World War 2 cars were promised to be “virtual rockets on wheels” and frontwheel drives.
Plymouth and Ford promised “to revolutionise the working man’s car”, and General Motors promised “a whole line of futuramic vehicles”.
But when they came out, there was little revolutionary about them. Instead, they were nothing but “warmed-up” 1942 models “in black, grey, and dark blue with slightly changed grilles stuck on their noses”.
Nevertheless, Maloney says the public was thrilled. “It was exactly what they wanted after all”. And they wanted them so badly (even the Jeep modified for civilian use) that they were willing to accept the cars “minus hubcaps, bumpers and in some cases rear windows”.
When the revolutionary cars eventually appeared, Maloney says it was the Studebaker, Hudson, Nash and Packard that made major changes.
Hudson introduced the stepdown model, “Nash looked like it escaped from an Italian bathroom” and “Packard became pregnant”, he writes.
The Big Three waited until 1949 to introduce their new models. Of the Big Three, General Motors made the most changes. But Buick, which Maloney says was always a stylish car, was changed into “a total ugly-ugly” .F
ord came out with slab side. Incidentally, Henry Ford II described it as “the best-looking model produced by Ford until that time”.
At the time the overall length of cars increased, especially when the fins, which would grow to appalling heights, became fashionable. The total increase in length meant the cars took up a further 1,300km of road space.
The most discussed postwar car was the Tucker, designed by Preston Tucker and Alexis Tremulis, the designer of the famous Duesenberg and Cord.
The safety, speed and comfort of the Tucker could not be matched by any car at the time, a factor Maloney says made Preston Tucker many powerful enemies in Detroit.
The car offered a pop-out windshield, padded dashboard and disc brakes. The car could accelerate from zero to 128km/h in 15 seconds.
FACTORY CLOSURE
Records show only 51 Tuckers were built but some contend that 64 cars came off the assembly line before the government forced the closure of the factory, ostensibly because of financial irregularities in the company.
Tucker was found innocent, but it was too late by then to save the company.
Tucker died of cancer in 1955, and as Maloney says, “with his death went one of the finest dreams of a truly revolutionary car that would have made every other vehicle on the road obsolete. A good a reason as any for Detroit to spike Preston Tucker’s guns.”
It was in the 1950s that General Motors discovered chromium, and Maloney says “the public loved it”.
General Motors was “firmly committed to the Mexican Fiesta approach to styling”, a trend followed by other companies who Maloney says “tripled their chromium order”.
Studebaker went against this trend and introduced the Scotsman, but the company could not interest the public in “drab little dogs”.
The era saw the demise of former great names: Nash, Hudson, Packard, Studebaker (a close thing), Kaiser and Frazer, which Benson says were a mere flash in the pan, and of course the Edsel.
In 100 years of Automobiles editor Michael Benson examines how in a single century “an entire race of earthly beings fell deeply in love with a machine”.
Ford or Fantasy is the question he asked when the Thunderbird was introduced in 1955. Benson says that Ford took Chevrolet’s little sports car experiment and “blew it right off the road” with the introduction of the Thunderbird.
The Thunderbird was “power, wealth, and youth all wrapped up in one package”.
As Benson says, “There never has been an American car anything like it.”
Apparently, the name Thunderbird is a figure in Native American mythology symbolising power, speed and wealth
This was about a hot-looking car “with 292 cubic inch V-8 engine which mustered 200 horse power at 4,400 revolutions a minute”.
Top speed was 183km/h and it could accelerate from zero to 160km/h in 21 seconds.
The advertisement introducing the 1958 model, says: “You have driven this car many times in your dreams”.
Ford preferred to call this flashy little two-seater “a personal car”, which Maloney said more accurately categorised the vehicle. The borrowed head lamps were an immediate success, along with the Ferraristyle grille.
Maloney says the 1955 “car talk” was the new Continental MKII from the Lincoln Division of the Ford Motor Company. With a price tag of $10,000, it was the most expensive American car on the market.
“It was truly a personal car for those who wanted and could afford the best.”
Of special interest was the Corvette sports car, which General Motors introduced on the spur of the moment in 1953.
Maloney says originally it was an experimental car designed to travel with the 1953 General Motors Motorama. It attracted so much interest that Chevrolet management decided “it was time to enter the sports car field”.
According to 100 Years of
Automobiles, the Corvette was to become the great American sports car. But it was available in one colour only: Polo White.
It might not have started with “a heck of a lot of punch under the hood”, but the 1959 model set the record for the most chrome on the car’s “snout”.
Some critics, notably Fred Schnetler in A Century of Cars, said that the excessive use of chromium represented “yesterday’s design”.
He described the 1958 Oldsmobile as a typical example “of the exuberant-styled Detroit cars of the Elvis Presley era”.
In SA sales of Buicks dwindled to almost nothing. Some dealers still had stocks of brandnew 1959 Buicks as late as 1961. Chevrolet, once the top seller in SA, dropped to sixth position, and continued to fall.
And the era of the American car, which had influenced SA motoring for so long, had come to an end.
AN ERA THAT WAS DEVOID POLLUTION CONTROLS, DEVOID OF RALPH NADER, AND DEVOID OF PETROL SHORTAGES