Electel Blogspot

First called the Asymmetrica, Chrysler Corporation's 1960 Plymouth sports car concept was renamed the Plymouth XNR after Virgil Exner , the Corporations's styling vice president.  Some authoritative XNR background by Ken Gross can be linked here . The Asymmetrica label was appropriate, thanks to some body shaping only on the driver's side of the car.  I have no objection to this in principle: it depends on how it is done. For example, above is a 1963 Studebaker Avanti that I photographed in Baltimore many years ago.   Note the raised part of the hood positioned in front of the steering wheel.  This asymmetrical solution works well. And what about the XNR's asymmetry?  Let's take a look at some factory photos. Gallery Seen from behind, the asymmetry is emphasized by the cross-shaped rear bumper.  This was a show car feature not likely to have survived had the XNR ever entered production.  That is, the upper vertical element has little realistic protecti...

It was built by Ghia in Italy, but didn't have the Italian-influenced styling of many Chrysler concept cars of the early to mid 1950s.  Rather, it had the look of a potential American production car. I'm referring to the 1956 Chrysler Norseman that was lost when the Italian liner Andrea Doria sank following a collision. According to some accounts I've read, it was intended to test the concept of a roof cantilevered from a robust C-pillar -- there was only a "hardtop" type stub B-pillar and no structural A-pillar.  This was probably not a realistic idea even in 1956 and something that would strike today's safety-conscious bureaucrats, engineers and car buyers with horror. That said, the Norseman -- why was it given that name? -- was a very attractive mid-1950s work of styling. Due to its brief lifespan, few images of the Norseman exist. Gallery Styling staff rendering. Front quarter view.  The bumper-grille ensemble is more show jazz than practical.  Semi-ditt...

General Motors' essentially top-of-the line C-Body was redesigned for the 1940 model year.  Body types offered were a four-door sedan, a coupe, and convertible versions of those. The line was expanded for 1942 as part of GM's push to add fastback styles to its portfolio.  This was in the form of a two-door fastback that marketers variously referred to as small sedans or coupes. These were attractive cars, as the images below might suggest.  They were found on the Cadillac 62 Series, Oldsmobile's top-of-the-line Ninety-Eight Series, and on the Buick Super and Roadmaster series.  Image sources are of cars for sale unless noted. Gallery 1942 Buick Century Sedanet This is a B-Body two-door fastback, a type GM introduced for 1941.  Rear seating was fairly cramped, and the aft side windows were smaller than on the '42 C-Body equivalent.  Another car-spotter's tell is that the B-pillar leans forward here, but is vertical on the C-Body cars. 1942 Cadillac 62 Club ...

A popular body style in America from the late 1940s through the 1970s was the "hardtop convertible" -- at first a coupé without a B-pillar.  That is, no pillar was visible when the side windows were rolled down.  The result was a sporty-looking car without most of the advantages and defects of a true convertible. I wrote about General Motors' pathbreaking hardtops here , and hardtops from competing manufacturers here .  Read those posts for some background information if you aren't familiar with that body type which was phased out for reasons of rollover protection. This post deals with a Chrysler Corporation hardtop, the 1951 DeSoto Sportsman. Chrysler was a successful firm from the mid-1920s until the very early 1950s when it began to falter. In my opinion that decline was due to a mistaken styling theme for its first post- World War 2 redesign, its 1949 models.  The entire line from Plymouth to Chrysler Imperial was rather tall, stubby, and boxy compared to compe...

Automobile museums are seemingly everywhere.  One that I encountered in March 2020 was in the Riverside resort-casino in Laughlin, Nevada.  Since I don't gamble, I decided to view the main part of Don Laughlin's car museum at the facility.  Some cars were Laughlin's, others on view had different owners. Perhaps the most interesting car on view was a 1937 Cord 812 with a boat-tail body that was labeled as being a Cord Speedster. There was never such a production Cord, as best I can tell, so this was a custom job.  But when and were was it made?  I have no idea.  And the sign by it at the museum did not say.  Let us know in a comment if you have solid information regarding this fascinating car. Let's take a look. Gallery My iPhone photo showing a front quarter view.  The blending of frontal Cord styling with the boat-tail cockpit and rear is very nicely done -- an interesting design. Here is the information plaque that says nothing about the car on...

A common automobile industry practice is to have exterior trim variations for brand models that share the same basic body.  This is to allow viewers to distinguish entry-level, top-level and any intermediate level models from one another.  (A glance at interiors usually makes these distinctions obvious -- cloth-covered versus leather-covered seats, for instance.) Exterior differentiations have ranged from subtle to glaringly obvious.  For a subtle example, aside from the types of wheels, Toyota RAV4 SUVs of the 2013-2018 generation had just small chrome lettering on their rear doors: LE, LXE and Limited -- in increasing price rank. Towards the other extreme, the 1956 Ford line had distinct trim differences that I wrote about here . The current post deals with 1958 exterior rank variations for General Motors' Chevrolet brand, America's largest seller that model year.  Chevrolets were given redesigned bodies for 1958.  In addition, the two lowest ranking models w...

Once upon a time, say 50 or more years ago, the automobile industry was much less international than now.  Car manufacturing countries often had tariffs to protect domestic firms and each country had its own currency and exchange rates relative to others.  And there might have been cultural factors that led to cars having distinctive national visual tendencies.  American cars looked American, English cars English, and so on. One distinctive design quirk for many French cars from 1934 to the early 1950s was beltines (that run along the lower edges of side windows) that drooped or fell off downwards towards cars' aft ends. Most French brands did not have this characteristic.  But the country's "big three" car makers -- Citroën, Renault and Peugeot -- had models with just that touch.  So many French cars' beltlines drooped. Most of the images below are factory sourced or are of cars for sale. Gallery 1934 Citroën 7 A A very early Citroën Traction Avant .  This...

The Lincoln-Zephyr, launched for the 1936 model year, was the best-selling mass-produced American car with advanced styling in the mid-1930s. Its Wikipedia entry is here , and the first installment of a much longer profile can be found here . The first Lincoln-Zephyrs came in two body types, a four-door sedan and a two-door sedan.  Three more types were added during the next two model years.  All are illustrated in the Gallery below. Unless otherwise noted, images are factory-source photos. Gallery Near-overhead view of a 1936 four-door Lincoln-Zephyr.  I include this image because it shows the boat-shaped (in plan view) body and the teardrop-shaped fenders.  Oh so very 1930s Streamline. A more conventional view of a '36 four-door. Here is the 1936 two-door sedan.  For 1936 and later this body type was called the Coupe Sedan.  This body style sold poorly. A coupe body was added for 1937.  It had the same wheelbase as the sedans, so its proportions seem...

Ford Motor Company's mid-range brand for many years was the Mercury (Wikipedia entry here ).  It, Ford and Lincoln -- the company's entire lineup -- were redesigned for the 1952 model year. Ford and Mercury used the same basic body, and Lincoln's was similar.  These cars were Ford's second-generation postwar cars, and stylists had had the time to consider such matters as: dealing with flow-through (not separate) fenders; trends regarding size (especially height); and technology (mostly improvements in shaping automobile glass). The result for Mercury was a tidy, rather squared-off shape of the kind later termed "three-box."  That is, the cars were bustle-back types.  Flat trunk lids echoed low, flat hoods up front.  One reason hoods appeared low was because fender lines were high -- at the passenger compartment, the fender line and the belt line were the same. I have always liked 1952 Mercury styling.  However, when they first appeared they were criticized ...