Electel Blogspot

A body type fashion that began in America for the 1955 model year was the four-door hardtop sedan which lacked a visible B-pillar when windows were rolled town.  This was an extension of the hardtop coupé concept that General Motors first mass-produced for the 1949 model year.  The idea was to market a design with a fixed metal roof having the grace of a convertible coupe/sedan. It took European manufacturers slightly longer than GM's major American competitors to produce four-door hardtops (Ford and Chrysler marketed theirs for 1956).  Today's subject is the Mercedes-Benz 300d ( werknummer W189) launched in August, 1957. The W189's Wikipedia entry is here . I wrote about the closely-related W186 large Mercedes 300s here . About 3,100 W189s were produced 1957-1962.  Their styling was close to that of the W186s, aside from the "pillarless" feature.  Unless noted, the images below are factory-sourced photos. Gallery A 1960 W189 with windows rolled up.  Asid...

An American sports car that probably few people are aware of was the 1950-vintage Crosley Hotshot (Wikipedia entry here ). The car was tiny, having a wheelbase of 85 inches (2160 mm). Its engine was a 44 cubic inch (724 cc) 26.5 horsepower straight four.  It performed well in competitions for cars with motors in the 750 cc class.  Hotshots were derived from Crosley sedans and station wagons that I wrote about here . Below are some Hotshot images. Gallery Publicity photo of a Crosley Hotshot. The people provide a sense of its scale. 1949 Hotshot -- Mecum auction photo of the very first one off the assembly line. Its wheels are tiny, making the car seem more toy-like than it actually was. Rear quarter view of a for sale 1949 Hotshot.  The car has no trunk lid, so the spare tire is mounted atop the trunk. Front view.  This and the following images are Mecum photos of a 1949 Hotshot.  The air intake is below the bumper. Overhead view. Seen from the side, but from a...

The BMW 7 Series , the company's line-topping model, first entered production in 1977.  In theory, upscale sedans tend to be more conservatively styled than lesser models.  Even so, the most recent 7 Series cars have features grille designs that strike me as being excessively large. Let's take a look.  So far as I can tell, all the images below are sourced from BMW or client agencies. Gallery 1933 BMW 303 This is a very early example of BMW's iconic "twin nostril" grille design.  It is large, but in those days grilles were sized to cover the radiators behind them. 1939 BMW 335 By the later 1930s BMW grilles had become narrower, sized to the width of the hood. 1968 BMW 2002 An example of the classic 1960s grille design.  The "nostrils" are small and flanked by essentially rectangular openings. 1995 BMW 7 Series The main radiator air intake for this 7 Series BMW is below the bumper.  The grille elements are now horizontal in keeping with the still-boxy bod...

1963 Pontiac Grand Prix at Monaco's Hotel de Paris Arthur "Art" M. Fitzpatrick (1919-2015) is famed in illustration circles for his classic 1959-1972 series of illustrations for Pontiac made in collaboration with Van Kaufman.  Fitzpatrick rendered the cars and Kaufman furnished the settings and people.  There was some overlap in that settings and people might be reflected on the cars. I previously wrote about him and the Pontiac illustrations  here .  Also, I met him about 15 years ago at the Pebble Beach Concours and still have his business card. Fitzpatrick's Wikipedia entry is here .  An interview of him is here , and includes the following regarding his way of working on Pontiac ads such as that shown above: "I photographed a car [for General Motors testimony at a congressional hearing] … same position/view with 3 different lenses, 35, 50, and 120mm. Photographers, for reasons that continue to escape me, were using long lenses, which shorten a car, making th...

A while ago I touched on the growth of Honda's Civic model as found here in America.  Now I want to add more detail regarding that growth as expressed in wheelbase length.  Perhaps that's because for many years I was professionally a "numbers guy." The second link above is Wikipedia's Honda Civic entry that, with sub-links, offers information on what the writer(s) contend are ten generations of Civics.  According to the data panels in the generation sub-links, some generations either did not vary in wheelbase length or such variation was trivial (one-tenth of an inch, three millimeters).  In one instance (2012 model year in the USA), wheelbase actually declined, but I will not treat that deviation here. Below are images of Honda Civics for each generation showing a noteworthy length increase.  Ideally, I would present the cars facing the same direction and sized for comparative scale.  But that was not possible, given the images I could find via Google. G...

From time to time I do a post categorized as "Streetscapes," showing old views of cities or towns with cars. This post differs a little because the photos (scanned slides) are mine, and not sourced from here and there on the Internet.  I took them in June of 1965 when I was in the city for a few days.  Another difference is that the cars are incidental to the scenes I was shooting.  However, you might find interesting the (mostly) American-make vehicles seen in those days.  Click on images to enlarge. Gallery Looking west along 42nd Street from Tudor City.  The Daily News building is the one with the vertical stripes to the left, and near the center is the Chrysler Building. Farther along 42nd Street, across from Grand Central Terminal.  The taxi seems to be a 1964 Dodge. Central Park South from 5th Avenue.  That's a Mercury in the foreground. Also Central Park South.  The Plaza Hotel is at the left.  In the foreground are a Rambler and a Pon...