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.

British Car Show, Part 2

 Mid fifties Austin-Healey 100M in bright red. For a little more on this hot British sportscar, click over to this site.

MGA coupe, of undetermined vintage, lol. At first I thought it was a Twin-Cam coupe, but on second and third viewing, they weren't equipped with wire wheels. I think this is a 1600 coupe, a slightly more powerful version of the original 1500. For more on the MGA click here.

 

The engine of the black car above. Between the inexpensive digital camera, the very bright sun and who knows what else, the photo has a very blue sheen. I "fixed" if in Photoshop, dulling it back to a black, but as far as a photo goes, it was better blue, so I went back to the original. The alloy cylinder head says "JUDSON" which I believe is an aftermarket supercharger, but I'm not sure. Maybe Nigel can help with these cars! What I CAN say is that I absolutely adore these MGA coupes. The bodystyle is very appealing to me, the very close-coupled roof and roll-up windows making it more "my" type of car than the roadster.

The sole example of the then-popular "Spridget" series, the small convertible marketed as both an Austin Sprite and an MG Midget. This is one of the last of the Midgets before the raised-suspension rubber bumper versions, probably a '71 or '72 model.

The '69 Triumph TR6 wasn't in the show, but rather parked just outside the green. I've always loved this final iteration of the Michelotti TR4/5/250/6 sportscars. The lines were the cleanest to date, and while the US version was very detuned compared with the Euro versions, all of those parts are readily available today to make up for it. For more on the TR6, click here.

An early '60s Triumph TR3A. For more on these classic Brit sportscars click here. I couldn't find it by Googling recently, but I remember a photo of Walter Cronkite in his TR3 appearing in Road & Track I believe. TR3A info here.

These two TR3s were next to each other in the show. Their engines differed in details, but I couldn't exactly say why, lol. I'm hopelessly un-mechanical. I'll say this, you could eat your dinner off either one of them, they were polished and clean beyond belief.

Part 3 next, from an original Mini Clubman to a Zsa-Zsa Corniche.