Suddenly It's 1960—In a Good Way!

Twelve Page Full Color Insert for Chrysler's '57 Finned Wonders Appeared in the Nov. 3, 1956 Issue of The Saturday Evening Post

The 1957 Plymouth's front end came in for a mid-year "correction" as complaints came flooding in regarding those original open vertical cooling slots in the bumper seen above. Apparently birds, small animals and tiny babies were being sucked into them, lol, and by mid-year, slim chrome vertical bars had been added to the previously open slots. Ink "bleed-through" appears on all of the pages in this 63 year old magazine. I've noticed this quite often in the Post's pages, and rarely in Life or Look. I'd say the paper choice is the culprit, but at a  cover price of fifteen cents for a 148 page weekly magazine filled with quality original writing, money had to be saved somewhere.

M Y   C O L L E C T I O N — Chrysler Corporation's entire 1957 lineup was redesigned from tires to roof. Virgil Exner pulled out all the stops and shocked the entire automotive industry with his low and svelte and breathtaking automobiles. It would take the industry leader, GM, a couple of very busy years, working overtime, to field competitively designed cars. Chrysler's ad campaign, "Suddenly It's 1960," a further extension of his Forward Look begun in '55, has gone down in history as one of the most effective car ads ever. Had Chrysler actually waited a year however, and gotten its production capabilities in order to build these cars, perhaps Chrysler would have fared better in the late '50s and early '60s. Production quality took a huge hit producing these cars as quickly as management wanted them to.

"Swept-Wing" Dodges, with their seemingly separate cut-back fins, offered great two-tone possibilities. "Jet tube" taillights complemented the fins beautifully. 

Though DeSoto would exit stage right just after the 1961 models were introduced, this '57 Fireflite with "Flight Sweep Styling" had seemingly nothing but blue skies ahead of it. Those slim roof pillars and shockingly thin roof seemed as optimistically futuristic as space flight itself.

Chrysler's place in the world was clear by the artwork accompanying this red-and-white New Yorker hardtop sedan: mink stoles, tuxedos, chandelier earrings and elegant evenings under the moon and stars.

 "Imperial—the finest expression of The Forward Look" according to the ad copy, and who could possibly disagree with it? Curved sideglass made its first appearance on a production car with this Imperial. The newly-lowered roof, which made that large expanse of metal visible to most buyers for the first time, was detailed with an arching and "V-eed" piece of chrome trim, available in body color, an accenting hue, brushed stainless steel or a new matte and grained finish, giving the look of a fabric roof years before the vinyl roof became a ubiquitous option.

The five double-page spreads were preceded by this black-and-white introductory page touting the "Newest New Cars in 20 Years!" not exactly hyperbole.

Closing out of this 12 page ad insert was this single, full color page describing Chrysler's state-of-the-art Torsion-bar suspension. Chryslers of this time not only rode very well, but had exhibited roadability unmatched by the "Big Three." 

Boomers' Study Hall Fantasy, 1970 Style

1970 Holden Torana GTR-X concept car. This car is everything a young man coming of age in the 1960s doodled in his notebooks during home room and study halls. It's low, it's lithe, it's sleek and swanky and looks like it's going a million miles an hour sitting still. Somehow it escaped me for all of these years. I was blown away when I found these photos tonight online.

Headlights in closed position.

The taillight graphic wraps into the rocker panel trim.

Super sleek and sexy, this Holden was even hotter looking than the contemporary Opel GT.

• There is a little bit of info for the GTR-X at this Wiki, almost last entry.

• You can see a photo of this car today, here, apparently it still exists.

• Slightly more in-depth article here.

• It reminds me of this slightly later GM concept for the US, the XP-something or another. It, too, had a really long snout and a tiny cabin. I haven't found it googling this evening.

Road & Track, Fifties Style

September, 1954—From the Contents page cover blurb: With these heady ingredients—a German Porsche Super, a Swedish Hasselblad camera, and a bright California wall—Photographer Rolofson has created a masterful "piece-de-resistance" for our September cover.

November, 1956—From the Contents page cover blurb: Through the bright flowered parks of Turin, home of Italy's great "carozzerias," drive some of the world's most advanced automobiles. Pictured on our November cover is Pinin Farina's "Super-Flow" Alfa Romeo (page 31) with transparent front fenders of plastic.

June, 1958—From the Contents page cover blurb: The French Citroen ID-19 is posed in a Riviera-like setting in California's Pacific Palisades. Adding her charms to the scene is lovely Mme. Colette Garnier, also of Paris. The Ektachrome cover is by Raph Poole.

M Y   C O L L E C T I O N — Perusing a few cartons of old car magazines I've had packed away, I found several years of Road & Track published in the 1950s. Scanned for your viewing pleasure, lol, you'll find issues posted here from 1954, '56 and '58. The covers are so elegantly stark compared with today's over-designed travesties, it's really an eye opener. 

I've designed magazines in the past, fashion magazines for Fairchild Publications in NYC, yachting publications for Embassy publications, and books of all sorts for GPP, Lyons and Falcon, so I feel I'm qualified to call the font-heavy, graphics-heavy, photoshop-filter-heavy covers of today a total mess. They are mostly a tribute to poorly understood software and a need to "one-up" the recent graphics grad sitting next to you, rather than any sort of aesthetic understanding of the subject matter. No matter what publication I worked for in my almost 30 year career, I almost always found that the majority of people in the art department were always working towards the next job, never really understanding their current publication and it's requirements. 

The back pages are just as interesting to me as the front covers. Jaguar frequently bought the back cover of R&T and you'll find two of their full page ads here, a full color studio shot, complete with haute couture and a live feline, and a black-and-white exterior shot using examples of the "typical" Jaguar owner; a handsome airline pilot, a doctor, and various stereotypical well-to-do people, with a chauffeur bringing up the rear. You'll also see an illustrated two-color ad for the then-new Triumph TR-2, an example of an almost simplistically enlarged newspaper ad for the venerable British marque.

For a bit more information on the beyond-fabulous Alfa "Super-Flow" click here. It doesn't seem to have survived to the present day, but there were others in the series that did.

Appreciating the Flip Side

A "TEAR-SHEET" I SAVED IN MY YOUNGER DAYS — Sometimes, instead of saving an entire magazine or newspaper, I ripped out specific pages. Since we owned a new 1966 Fairlane 500XL in bright red, I'm sure that I saved this sheet for the ad of a red '67 Fairlane as it reminded me so much of ours. On the flip side is the cover for the March 25, 1967 issue of The Saturday Evening Post featuring the Mamas and the Papas. In hindsight, the ad for the car is really nothing special, but I adore the photo of the singing group. The colors used on the cover, and the pose and their clothes are so evocative of the sixties, I think I'd frame it on that side now if I was the framing type. (And yes, I'm pretty much ignoring the Vietnam War reference on the cover, although its "10 More Years" prediction would prove to be pretty damn close to coming true. The war wasn't technically over until 1975, fully eight years after this Post cover. 

NOTE  ON TYPOGRAPHY — One interesting aspect of the car ad though, is the typography of the tag line, "Show your stripes." Notice the very swinging-sixties font, and the use of capital and lower case letters in a non-traditional way: Randomly. The "y" and "r" in "your" are lower case, but the "R" in "Stripes" is capitalized, but the "i" is lower case as well. I can't really think of another use of random cases like this off the top of my head, but I'm digging it, as the kids would have said back then.

DEEP BACKGROUND, LOL — Even though I was only 10-12 years old when the Mamas and Papas were popular, I was really influenced by their clothes and songs. I would walk around our yard, which had lots of wooded acres, and sing songs like Monday, Monday and California Dreamin' at the top of my lungs, lol. My dad worked in Manhattan three days a week and I managed to have him buy me plenty of paisley and polka dot shirts, love beads, medallions and bell-bottoms from the city. They weren't the clothes the other kids in my small Connecticut town were wearing—jeans, flannel shirts and Keds—and only served to make me odder than I already was in their eyes. I was always encouraged at home to be who I was, and not who someone thought I should be. The other kids had already "pegged" me as being gay as early as kindergarten, although it's not a term anyone used then and I certainly wouldn't have understood what it meant, but it wasn't as if I tried to hide who I was. But being one of the three "smart" kids in my class, (the other two were girls), and wearing purple satin elephant sleeve 20 button shirts, headbands, wildly flared pants, Beatle boots and lavender granny sunglasses wasn't exactly the way to fit in! Other M & P songs included Creeque Alley, Dedicated to the One I Love, Words of Love, and at least a million other #1 hits, lol. All links are YouTube vids of the songs listed. 

Gosh, we could use their melodic singing voices and songs of peace and tranquility today! Make Love Not War should have been my generation's mantra, not Make Lottsa Money and Give Me All Of Yours Too, as it has worked out.

Chopping Vintage Ads-The 4-door Sedan Coupe Fifty Years Ahead of its Time

I enjoy reworking older cars as much as I do creating new cars. There is something about trying to get into the heads of those fantastic designers, in this case, Raymond Loewy, and creating something new. As gorgeous as this generation of Studebaker's coupe was, the sedan was shorter, taller and frumpier from every angle. In these two renderings, I've based the sedan on the longer, lower coupe body, and I think it's all the better for it!

C H O P — I like photo-editing, or chopping, vintage cars as much as I enjoy creating future cars. These two new examples show what could have been one of the first 'four door coupes' on the market, a mythical 1954 Studebaker Sedan Coupe. I've illustrated both pillared and pillarless styles, the Starlight and Starliner respectively. I made the Commander Starlight an ohv V8 model, and the Champion Starliner a flathead 6 cylinder. 

Besides basing my new sedan's body on the coupe, as opposed to the shorter, taller chassis Studebaker actually used for its sedans, I've rearranged, and added, some trim, including the chrome rocker panel spear. I used the coupe's 5 place interior, instead of the sedan's 6 seats, and I've made the door panels a bit 'ritzier' as well. I changed all the relevant 'small type' in the captions to suit my new bodystyle. I also added the chromed rocker panel spears and detail trim, with the 6 cylinder version different than the V8's side trim.

U p d  a t e :  I shortened the roof of the red Starliner hardtop coupe sedan. It had a bit of a dachshund look to it before. This corresponds with the Coupe a bit more accurately. Thursday 5pm

"A device for shrinking time and distance" original ad for 1964 Pontiac GTO

Cover of advertisement for the 1964 GTO, stapled into one of my old car magazines. Click to enlarge.

C O L L E C T I O N — Leafing through my old magazines the other day, I found an 8 page, full color advertisement for the original 1964 Pontiac GTO. It was stapled into the April '64 issue of Car and Driver. That first year, the GTO was an option package for the Tempest line, as GM's internal rules limited engine sizes per chassis size. The GTO option was John Z. DeLorean's idea, one of the bold decisions that helped make his rise in GM's ranks legendary. Absolutely no gratuitous stainless steel or cocaine jokes in this here blog, lol.

The first spread has the GTO Sports Coupe in Grenadier Red on the left, That was Pontiac's way of saying '2 door pillared sedan' or 2 door post sedan, as many of that era called them. The right-hand page showed the GTO convertible in Cameo Ivory. Click to read.

The second spread shows the pillarless hardtop GTO Hardtop in Nocturne Blue and what is described as a 'Black Fabric Top." This was so early in the vinyl roof fad, that a common name for the option wasn't nailed down yet. The right-hand page quotes some options/accessories and specs. Click to read.

The last spread illustrates features and options, including the venerated triple-carb 389, good for a listed 348hp. Interiors came in a choice of six colors! Think about that the next time you're sitting in your modern, most likely gray, interior. Click to read all the goodies.

The back cover shows more features, including dealer-installed 'splitter' exhausts. Now that was a dealer-accessory I would have agreed with! Click to read.

Sunday Supper: Diner Placemat Beats the Odds

Almost fifty years old, this paper placemat has yet to see a maple syrup stain. Tape, yes, food, no. Click pic to see in detail.

C O L L E C T I O N — A thin paper diner placemat from the sixties has survived the ravages of time relatively unscathed. I can remember seeing it for the first time, at some small diner my parents stopped at on a summer vacation. I can't imagine not spilling anything at all at the age of 7 or 8, so I can only assume my father got a couple fresh ones when we left, always ready to foster the love of cars in me even more, lol. I remember him quizzing me off of this placemat, since I was by that age, already pretty well-versed in old cars. I was stopped in my tracks by the red 1903 Ford. A) I didn't realize there was a Ford before the Model T, and, B) I didn't know there was a Model A before the '28 Model A. I remember thinking that automotive history wasn't going to be easy," lol.

The cars, clockwise from "1:00" (top right). Text from captions on placemat:

• Yellow 1913 Chevrolet. Second year of Chevrolet production. Produced 2,999 cars in initial year, all of same model. $2,150.00

• Red 1908 Stanley Steamer. A popular and powerful early car. One of 124 makes of steam cars made in the U.S. 20 hp. $1,500.00

• Green 1910 Cadillac. Won famous Dewer trophy in England for its precision manufacturing. 

• Blue 1911 Ford Model T. 15 million were produced over a 19 year period. Prices ranged from $850 in 1909, to a low of $290 in 1924.

• Green 1912 Woods Electric. Clean, odorless and silent. 100 miles to one charge. Top speed 100 m.p.h. $3,000.00.

NOTE: "Wow. These stats are fine 100 years later, if they're true. I can't imagine the boxy 'telephone booth' bodystyle as pictured, ever reaching 100mph. The brakes of the time would have had a hard time coping also, lol. The 100 mile range is also interesting for 1912—current electric cars are in the same ballpark."—casey

• Red 1903 Ford Model A. One of first assembly line cars, 2 cylinder. 8 hp. Cranked on side. 2 speeds forward, 1 reverse. $750.00

• Gold 1908 Locomobile. Won 4th Vanderbilt Cup race. First American car to outclass foreign entries. 120 hp.

• Green 1909 Thomas Town Car. Highly regarded luxury car. Winner of famed New York-to-Paris race, via Siberia.

• Red 1908 Buick "Model 10" Rumble. Featured mother-in-law seat in rear. 4 cylinder. $900.00


• Blue 1903 Oldsmobile Curved Dash. America's first mass-produced car. Used steering tiller. 700 lbs. $650.00