Styling Commentary in the July, 1955 Road & Track

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Time for another change of pace.  In my possession is the July 1955 issue of Road & Track magazine -- cover below:


Note that one of the featured items is a "Styling Critique."  It occupied nine pages: an introduction; two pages devoted to "Classic Styling" (1928-1941); two pages to "Modern Styling" (1935-1951); and the rest to "Contemporary Styling (1951-1955).

The styling evaluators were Strother MacMinn (a well-respected instructor at the [then] Los Angeles Art Center School and former General Motors stylist), and Bob Gurr, who worked at Ford before becoming a designer for Disney.  He wrote the classic, early styling book "Automobile Design."  Some additional comments were by John Bond, the magazine's editor.

Below are three scanned pages that might provide some flavor of the critique.  Click on them to enlarge.

Gallery

Gurr thought "Frankly, the Continental is an over-rated piece of Styling."  Fortunately, both like Cord's design, but were ambivalent regarding the Silver Arrow (though MacMinn recognized that 1933 technology hampered its appearance).

As for "Modern Styling," they liked the Jaguar XK120 and the Bugatti 57SC Atlantique, as well they should.  Not so well-liked were General Motors' 1951 LeSabre dream car, the '51 Bentley Continental and the Porsche 356 coupe.

MacMinn thought the LaSalle II's "most significant feature in the entire design assembly is the body side being carried directly into the top form without a hard belt-line break."  Gurr also though the design was "significant."  They split regarding the Futura, MacMinn mostly liking it, and Gurr correctly (in my opinion) stating: "It's a pity that the thousands of dollars spent on cars for 'show jazz' couldn't have been used for real design improvement."

Both were impressed by the Alfa B.A.T, but were not enthused regarding the Lancia-Farina.  Some other "likes" (not shown here) were the 1955 Pontiac Strato-Star concept car, the 1952 Alfa coupé by Touring and the 1952 Mercedes-Benz 300S Coupé.

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