Mistake of '58: The GM Chromemobiles and Far Out '59s

I think this movie, far better than any words of mine, will give you a better understanding of the important roles played by stylists and styling in motors in general In the 1950s, American automakers were caught in a war total of designers that started in the early '50s, smooth, rounded cars with a responsible amount of chrome slowly turned into an overloaded jet-like spaceship with rocket motifs and tail fins all over it, but what if Do you take things too far? That's what we'll find out in the episode. 40 of the automotive history series welcome everyone to the '58

mistake

. five four three two one with the launch of the explorer one satellite in 1958 the space race was in full swing and the general public became increasingly interested in everything related to the space age. and airplane and automobile designers were well aware of this in the early 1950s, you could buy a Studebaker Champion a car that looked a lot like an airplane that lost its propeller or a Cadillac Might Deville that featured little fins on the rear end and many other cars had a plethora of options and features with high-tech sounding names windshield pan orama eye automatic headlight dimmer automatic transmission teletouch and speed alert warning system that allows the chime to ring as soon as go over 60 miles per hour, that's a 1950s safety tactic for you One of the driving forces behind the design of the quintessential 1950s cars we all know and love was Harley Earl, the head of the General Motors design.

He is the father of many automobile design techniques that are still common practice even today, such as freeform. drawing hand-sculpted clay models and the first concept car to captivate the public buick white's work in 1938 turned car styling from an afterthought into a marketing tool by the mid-1950s harley had some prominence and power About the design department in general motors their will is law since it made card design so popular in the first place, a card designer could create something completely new, refreshing or unique, but if Harley didn't like it then it is likely that it will not make it to final production. knew what was good for you, this was not a problem, however, as General Motors continued to push the limits in the mid-1950s in terms of sales and style, the crisis at that time was considered absolutely unfashionable and The Ford Motor Company designed cars that were pretty but a little bland, but GM Cadillac featured pointed bumpers and rear fins Buick in the sweeping spear in the portholes Pontiac had a stylized rocket on the side and Chevrolet was an absolute success sales many people still talk about chevy tri-5s even today gm was invincible when it came to style and harley earl was the undisputed king.

Now I must add some nuance to this. Harley Earl was the head of the design department and usually gets credit for all the great designs, but don't forget that between 20 and 30 men worked in the office and not everything attributed to Harley actually came from him, but of one of the employees, now one of those employees was the designer Chuck Jordan and on a nice day in 1956, remember that year, he decided to leave the office and check if he could catch a glimpse of the competitor's cars. Call it leisurely industrial espionage. At this time, almost the entire American auto industry was centered in and around Detroit and Chuck chose the Chrysler factory that was just a couple of miles away. company that was the laughingstock of the automotive industry, got a lot of laughs.

He arrived at the factory and took a look through the chain link fence to an outside parking lot and what he saw was very interesting, to say the least. He looked at the fresco. and new 1957 Plymouth cars that were completely redesigned from the ground up to the whims of competing designer Virgil Exner. Now chuck had heard of exner and sure enough the newer chrysler models looked a little better but the cars he saw on the other side of the chain link fence were out of this world space age all the greenhouses bold bumpers dual headlights and huge fins where did that come from?

I have told you the story of these late 50's Chrysler cars on numerous occasions and I won't repeat myself, but let's just say that Chuck was extremely surprised and deeply impressed with what the Chrysler Plymouth division had done with their cars, they seemed much nicer. Expensive than they initially were, Chuck rushed back to GM's design department because this was not good news for the Chrysler. It looks like it could surpass the general in terms of styling. Chuck immediately told what he saw to his colleagues and second-in-command, boss Bill Mitchell, and they immediately returned to the Chrysler factory to see it with their own eyes, but where was the big boss in this story?

Where was Harley Earl? Back to Earl, as I mentioned before, he ruled the design department with an iron fist. The designers had some freedom to design cars but not unlimited freedom as it had to be approved by harley and harley had a different idea of ​​future car design. Harley believed in heavy, bulky designs that displayed ruggedness and power and she was convinced that the price of a car should be literally reflected in the amount of chrome it had. she resulted in cars that looked like heavy battle tanks with lots of intricate chrome details and ornamentation, a historical contrast to the long, sleek and fast-looking Chrysler cars. often worked three years in advance when it came to styling and development, so in this case, in 1956, there is that year again, General Motors had already started production for the 1957 model year, by 1958 the designs were already blocked, except for some very last ones. minimal design changes and designers were currently working on designs for the 1959 model year, so if you see a competitor's model before production in 1956 and think this car could become a big hit, that will rob you sales.

Imagine that you are really screwed since the designs for the next two years of your cars can no longer be changed, you just have to deal with it and if your designs are not well perceived, oh boy, the brightest stars in Hollywood bring them to you Chrysler Corporation. manufacturer of the five great cars of the future and we all know what happened in 1958, the stage was set, the so-called models of the future, of incalculable value, despite quality problems, were well perceived in the GM cars of 1958 , a little less, they were hardly Earl's dream mobiles, but in reality chrome-plated, heavy and bulky Latin cars, let's go through the ranks.

Can? 1958 Chevrolet offered a car that was the least decorated of the group, in line with Earl's philosophy. The front features dual headlights inserted in oval pots and just below. There is an open mouth with an egg-crate grille, the side features bright work depending on the model chosen and the rear does not feature fins, but rather a curved line that swoops around the small round taillights, all of quite a bit. good taste. Going up a step on the ladder, we arrive at Pontiac. Pontiac features roughly the same design, although the turn signals are now part of the bumper and cut into the grille on the side we find a huge stylized rocket which I think is pretty cool, the rear mimics the front with four round taillights that they look like jet after burners but from here it starts to get worse, much worse, I always like to refer to 1958 Wallsmobile as Crewmobile, the front end is fine, the bumper has a similar design to the Pontiac and the headlights are squeezed between chrome moldings , but they are on the side. where you really start to see Earl's fever dreams, I can understand the front half, but the back half seems like a case of just applying some chrome for the sake of applying chrome, three chrome stripes with no real connection to theme or body line, the rear end is simply unique to say the least, the vertical tail lights surrounded by thick bright work travel from a huge chrome bumper below to round roads with some very small fins above and the trunk It features the Oldsmobile name along with two chrome stars that I think serve no purpose. purpose other than blinding other drivers on a sunny day and now we come to the worst offender for the Buick 58, especially its top-of-the-line model, the Limited Anniversary, the front features angry headlights with chrome automation on both front fenders and under a chrome art piece.

A huge Dynastar Fashionista grille made of about 160 small chrome squares had to make sure to attract customers to Buick dealerships. the site is a mix of various buick themes. 15 Chrome Marks The big, solid rear bumpers start just below and wrap around to the rear, where two fins stick out with taillights that you can't even see because they're hidden behind layers and layers of chrome bars, we're done with you and Cadillac. At this point, you'd suspect the car would be made entirely of chrome, but the kittens are a bit more discreet than the Buick siblings and it's usually the other way around.

Cadillac features classic styles like Deckmar bumper guards and a relatively normal grille. pattern, the side doesn't even have much chrome, although I have a problem with the belt line, it starts to sink in the middle but comes back up and then you think it goes straight but oh no it goes back up. ending with a rear fin for many the cars were too much, they look more like flying saucers than spaceships and not in a good way, they seemed too heavy and bulky, especially compared to Chrysler later in the 1970s , the cars were once again ridiculed by national satir magazine artist bruce mccall drew the so-called bulge mobiles of 1958 as a parody of what was going on at the time and that's where I got the miniature of each car it's an exaggeration of the cars from the late 1950s, including their Advertising people are extra small.

The inside of the card features quantum technology and Macao in all the design tricks of those days, but especially this car, the Bose mobile fire explosion looks a lot like the 1958 Oldsmobile, but in 1958 and GM was in the middle of having . a mental breakdown oh for the love of god why is this happening to me why now because not only was the design process in which future designs were already blocked was a problem, there was also another one that the car companies made use of the three-year body cycle What this means is that each division uses the same body for three years and then updates, but within these three years the exterior styling changes annually.

Don't believe me, look closely. This is a 1953 and 1954 Chevrolet and you can see what it is. Quite round and similar design with extended rear fenders. This is Chevrolet for 1955 56 and 57 and as you can see everything is a little straighter, the car lost its extended rear fenders for a more wrapped body and yes these three cars are the same. body, the design of the greenhouse is usually the indication of why I say all this well in 1958 GM just launched new bodies for almost all of its divisions and had to continue like this until 1960. But this, along with the designs that were not very popular.

For starters, it would lead to a pretty unfortunate situation: it would cost a ton of money to simply switch to a completely new body after a year, not to mention the added hassle of development, and that's at a time when car companies already spend huge amounts of money on anus. Renewals year after year and, on top of all this, competing car manufacturers surpass it left and right in terms of advanced design. How was the general going to solve this problem? That takes us back to 1956, Chuck Jordan and the boys once came back. back to GM's design department after visiting the Chrysler factory a second time and discussing what they should do.

You can save the 58 designs that are already locked, but all 59 can be changed. They are still working on them and let's take a look. in the original designs for 1959, so before Chuck saw what Chrysler was doing, if you thought the 58s were horrible or totally awesome, that's also possible, then you have another thing in common: this is the design proposal for Buick for 1959 and, as you can see, things have now gotten even heavier and bulkier, a judgmental look with a frowning brow with hooded headlights, lots of chrome arrows pointing in all directions, pointless pods on the rear fenders and no tail fins. in appearance the design proposal for what I think is cadillac may be even worse than the front The end is largely inspiredon the 1951 gm lesabre concept car with a huge scallop in the middle of the car and below, the contemporary cadillac grille along with more inwardly placed dagmar bumpers that almost completely surround the dual headlights.

These design proposals were the exact opposite of Chrysler cars, thin and mean, they instantly looked outdated, but fortunately there was still time to change them, except there was one small detail: the changes had to be approved by the big boss Harley and that never happened. was going to happen now, how lucky would Harley be? was out of town at the time and it was second in command bill mitchell who suggested that the designer should come up with an alternative design proposal for the 1959 cars based on what they saw at the chrysler factory, what would hollywood think of when he would return.

It was none of their worries, they decided to take a silent coup and finally the designers were given complete and utter freedom to design cars that would eclipse the Chrysler cars and all the designers went to work with unprecedented excitement and enthusiasm and you can see this in the first. Design sketches drew the most radical front design configurations just to explore what was possible with the dual headlights, such as bringing them together, extending them or moving them further away from each other. The Pontiac division began toying with the split grille design theme and quickly came up with the White Track Drive advertising slogan, Buick went crazy without two with three rear fins called delta wings, but would eventually remove the center fin.

Oldsmobile played with strange front ends and triple taillight configurations and Chevrolet took a more Cadillac-like design and even explored an edsel-like stacked headlight design in the middle of the front end and cadillac gm's cadillac prestige division was intended to show once again to the world that they were serious and tried their hardest if people want fins then they will get what started as a sketch from one of the designers and became a style mark that the designers had. The most fun is letting your imagination fly, but who's calling? Oh shit, he's the big boss. Earl was back.

The door opened. Harley walked in. Everyone was silent. He looked at all the sketches and clay models and said, "Go ahead." and he left the room. Well, it wasn't exactly like that, but seeing that his guys were going crazy and that his advanced design ideas were actually true, he reluctantly agreed and we all know what happened from now on in record time. . GM managed to solve the bulky 58 designs and The 59 models became the most recognizable American cars of the 1950s in the definitive chapter of the space age. Chevrolet automobile design became known for sharp air intakes above the grille and batwing fins with a cat-eye taillight.

Pontiac introduced the split grille and wide track driving that would lead to a 20-year performance image that would also show the world what stylish headlights integrated into the grille could look like. Buick looked like a plane about to take off with an angry looking front end and simple but elegant round taillights and diagonal fins. and finally cadillac, should it even be mentioned, the tallest tail fins ever fitted to a production car, topped with twin bullet shaped taillights, the general was back in the game.