Friday, January 21, 2011

Photos from a 1980 Car Show, Part 1

My '64 Thunderbird, lower right, in a lineup of Tbirds, at a Connecticut auto show in 1980.

Side trim and "fuel injection" script of the first year Pontiac Bonneville, the 1957 special edition.

The "flowing" hood and fender lines of the mid 1930s Chrysler Airflow.

Smooth and sleek, the rear trunklid and fins of the 1960 Cadillac Eldorado. 

1951 Packard sedan, with optional Cormorant hood ornament, a Packard tradition dating back to the classic period.

1932 Packard. The way the grille shell curves out at the bottom is finely executed art, pure and simple.

1942 Buick. The chrome speedlines and fender extensions on the doors are beautiful examples of prewar styling. 

8 comments:

  1. These are terrific! It's cool to see YOUR Thunderbird. I remember whent he Bonneville was introduced, my dad and I went to the local Pontiac dealer in town (we had only Ford and Pontiac in town so the police cars were always one Ford and one Pontiac!) to see it but I was much more interested in the Vauxhall Victor that Pontiac dealers had just started to sell. I say sell, but I can't recall ever seeing one on the road. That Packard with the grill that curves out at the bottom is, I believe, the Light Eight of 1932, an early attempt at a medium price car for Packard -- even though it was way more expensive than Buick, Chrysler, Nash, Hudson, etc. I think 1932 was the only year they made them. Of course, they had great success in 1935 with the 120, truly a medium priced car. I loved the trim details on the 1960 Eldorado and Fleetwood -- so very elegant, but then the 50 Cadillac was an extremely elegant take on the basic themes of the 59. Those chrome strips on the 1942 Buick were continued on the post-war Special through 1949 -- one of the oddities of the Buick line up in the years right after the war, along with not adopting the new C body that Olds and Cadillac used in 1948. i always wondered why they waiting until 1949 to use it. A lot of the traditional body IDs were in flux at GM until the early 50s so I guess it was just one of those things -- of course, Buick was pretty powerful within GM at that time so they could pretty much do what they wanted!

    Paul, NYC

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  2. Thanks, Paul. I remember reading in CA that Harlow Curtice didn't like the '48 C body Buick, and decided to keep building the '42-'48 versions until the designers "fixed" the grille and a few other things. I think the Roadmaster/Super finally got the body in '49 and then the Special got it in '50. I'd have to look it up to be sure.

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  3. Now matter how much you pay a designer today, they can never match the beautiful flowing lines of these classics. They simply were the most creative people of their time even up today. Today we mainly rely on computers to whip something decent up, why not throw them away and rely on the big round organ with squiggly lines called our brain?

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  4. You're asking WAY too much of today's youth, Woody, who are the designers of today's cars, lol.

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  5. Roadmaster and Super got the 48 C body for 49. In 50, the Special got the new B body, along with Oldsmobile 98. The Roadmaster and Super got the new B body, as did Cadillac for the series 61. There was also a new C body that was really just a stretched B body to make 6-window sedans.

    It got kind of complicated until 54 when both B and C bodies were new and all Oldsmobiles and Buick Special and Century got the B body and Cadillac and Buick Super and Roadmaster got the C body. I think CA had pictures of clay models of Oldsmobiles using the C body for some of those years but they never went into production.

    Why do I know these things???

    Paul, NYC

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  6. I'm glad you do, Paul! I've read everything you've said before, so I know you're right. I'm really working on trying to KEEP it in my head. That's why I read about old cars everyday. But I still have gaps, many gaps. I can remember a long time ago when cars of the '50s looked alike to me, then the cars of the '40s and then the 30s. Now I'm pretty good at even the '20s but the "Teens tend to look alike to me, and so do the earliest cars, the Veterans I think they call them. But it's a never-ending history lesson for me. It's such a privilege for me to have such knowledgeable readers/friends here. I really don't know anyone in "real life" that I can converse with on this level!

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  7. I think I just wrote a whole long post and closed it without sending it. Oh well.

    I don't know anyone in day to day life that cares anything about cars -- they all say, oh, when I moved to New York I sold my _______ (fill in name of whatever loser car they bought because they knew or cared nothing about them) and it was the happiest day of my life! Your blog has been a real outlet for me to rant and rave and I'm happy that you enjoy my musings.

    I'm not really too conversant with the cars of the 20s. I can identify Chryslers and Packards by their grills and various others (I know that Nash used a lot of disc wheels in the 20s, and Franklins of course, given my family history. And the cars of the teens are quite a mystery to me. My favorite decades are the 40s and 50s, with the 60s and the 30s next in line.

    One interest I have that I think is vastly overlooked by even the old car press is the electric car of the first two decades of the last century. I was thrilled a couple of years ago when My Classic Car on Speed Channel made one of their periodic visits to Jay Leno's establishment and Jay took Dennis Gage for a ride in a Baker Electric. They were so elegant and refined -- very expensive and marketed to women who didn't want to crank-start the gas cars of the day. Public garages had electric charging stations and they had a range of about 100 miles. Sound familiar? That's the range of the Nissan Leaf on a good day. Of course their top speed was about 35 but they were generally used in town and given the state of roads in those days...well, 35 was plenty!
    CA has never done anything about them as far as I remmeber.

    Thank you for providing this forum for letting me go on like this!

    Paul, NYC

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  8. I remember reading about the Baker electrics when I was a kid! I must have been a barrel of fun as a child, always reading about cars! I remember a center door coupe, I think they're affectionately called telephone booths too. The Model T had a bodystyle like that too. With a 100 mile range back then, you can certainly see the lack of development over the last 100 years!

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