The fascinating history of American cars . . .one story at a time.
Author: Deb Tracy
I am a reformed attorney who has returned to my first loves, American history and classic cars. Raised in a family of automobile fanatics, my Dad is one of those guys who can look at a set of tail lights and tell you what car they belong to and follow that with a story about one he owned. Forget the “new car” smell, I love the smell of old cars and old garages. My husband (retired law enforcement and former U.S. Marine) and I turned our hobby into a business a few years ago and now happily deal in classic cars and their various parts. We live in rural Nebraska with our amazing teenage daughter and a houseful of border collies.
I ran across this old article about the Ford Edsel the other day, dateline September 7, 1957:
Ford Motor Company Chalks Up Another First
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Ford Motor Co. can chalk up a first for its new Edsel line.
At a North Philadelphia dealer’s place, a new Edsel was parked on the pavement and left unguarded for a moment. When an employee went back for it, it hadbeen stolen.
The dealer reported the car valued at $3,800, stolen at 3:20 p.m. to police. As far as was known it was the first stolen car case involving an Edsel.
So do you think the thief brought it back once he realized what he was driving? Just kidding, I actually like the Edsel. Also, it is at the top of my daughter’s list of all-time favorite automobiles, so I must show the proper respect to this American classic:
1958 Edsel vertical “horse collar” grille1958 Edsel1959 Edsel1959 Edsel (notice the smaller vertical grille)1960 Edsel (no more vertical grille)
I found this wonderful old survivor at a garage sale a couple of months ago:
It measures 14 x 11″, is made of cardboard and is in great condition for being 85 years old!
Chevrolet began sponsoring radio programs in the 1930s. This was a smart marketing move as the number of homes with radios was exploding. According to Census Bureau data, 2.75 million households had a radio in 1925. By 1930, that number was 13.75 million and by 1940, 28.5 million (or 82% of) households had a radio.
Chevrolet sponsored the radio shows of entertainers like Al Jolson and Jack Benny. Some of these shows have survived, including one of Jack Benny’s shows from April 21, 1933. During that show, they discuss extensively the “National Drive A Chevrolet Radio Contest.” Chevrolet was indeed giving away 30 new cars during the month of April, and anyone could enter by filling out an entry blank at their local Chevy dealer.
You can listen to the radio program by clicking here, but I will warn you that it is only mildly amusing with constant references to Chevrolets. During the “news” segment one item concerns a new record set by an Italian aviator flying seven miles in one minute. How was he timed? By a man following in a Chevrolet, of course! Another segment features a skit about a young woman who doesn’t want to leave home. She turns down one suitor after another until one shows up . . . in a Chevrolet! Still, America was in the midst of the Great Depression and these radio programs likely provided welcome respite. And can you imagine the excitement of the lucky 30 winners of this stunning machine:
1933 Chevrolet Master Eagle Coupe
The 1933 Chevrolet featured what the sales brochure called “Aer-Stream Styling”. It was produced as a Master Eagle (series CA) and a cheaper Standard Mercury (series CC). The Master Eagle was powered by a 65-hp inline-6 cast iron block engine. It had a 110″ wheel base and wire wheels were standard equipment. The cheaper Standard Mercury was essentially just a smaller version with a 107″ wheel base and a 60-hp engine. Prices ranged from $445 to $565.
1933 Chevrolet Master Eagle Sport Coupe
Radio was a big part of Chevrolet’s 1933 marketing strategy and this, combined with a beautiful product, resulted in a very successful year. According to Ad Age, Chevrolet’s market share was a massive 33.5%. Just think, one of every three cars sold that year was a Chevrolet. This market share was a record for Chevrolet, and one not duplicated since.
The brochure for this unique machine boasts that it was designed by “Darrin of Paris,” also known as Howard “Dutch” Darrin. Darrin was an interesting character who flew combat missions over France as a member of the U.S. Air Service during World War I. He designed luxury automobiles for movie stars like Clark Gable and Errol Flynn, and his gravestone in Santa Monica simply reads “AUTOMOTIVE ARCHITECT.” A thoroughly interesting 3-part article about his life was written by Richard Langworth and can be read here. Although Darrin had some successes designing automobiles, the Kaiser Darrin wasn’t one of them and only 435 were produced.
The Darrin was a product of the struggling Kaiser Motors Corporation, and it just beat the Corvette to be the first car with a fiberglass body. It also featured sliding doors that retracted into the front fenders when opened as seen in this picture from the sales brochure:
The grille has been said to look like pursed lips, but I think it looks more like Tweety Bird. Think about it.
Design preferences aside, the Darrin was not cheap. It was priced at $3,668 (compared to $2,774 for a Corvette) and, although it cost more, its 90-hp engine was completely out-classed by the Vette’s 150 horses.
Another problem may have been the sales pitch for the Darrin. This is an excerpt from an article dated February 13, 1954, that featured an interview with a model, Pat Matteson, who had been hired to demonstrate the Darrin at the International Sports Show in New York City:
Cars with plastic bodies are still a mystery to most motorists. They want to know if the plastic will dent if people lean on it, whether snow will melt the plastic, whether hot water will make a hole in it, or whether insects will become permanently embedded in it.
“No. . .No. . .No. . .No,” says Pat. “But a motorist can repair a fender dent in the same way he’d patch a tire. And he can fix it so it doesn’t show.
“If a lady wants to change the color of the plastic body to match her hat, gloves or a new dress, she can do so by spraying on a new paint with a vacuum cleaner. But it would take her three hours.”
Advertising for the 1936 Buick described it as “styled for a party but powered for a thrill.” The aesthetics were impressive, led by this high grille flanked by torpedo lights on the fenders.
1936 marked the first appearance of well-known Buick names such as Century and Roadmaster. The Buick was available in the following models: Special (series 40), Century (series 60), Roadmaster (series 80) and Limited (series 90).
The “thrill” for all except the series 40 was provided by a valve-in-head straight-eight 120-hp engine. Buick bragged that it would go ten to sixty miles an hour in less than 20 seconds.
The 1936 Buick was an unqualified success. When the new cars began arriving at dealers in 1935, Buick was aiming at a sales volume of 135,000 for the 1936 program. According to the Standard Catalog of American Cars, Buick far exceeded that goal with calendar year sales of 164,861.
I found this radiator emblem when I was out junking the other day:
It’s not in the best condition, one end is broken off, but I brought it home anyway because it belongs on a 1929 Buick and you just don’t see them for sale very often. It would have been on the front of a car like this gorgeous example:
The ’29 Buick was the Silver Anniversary Buick and, according to the Standard Catalog of American Cars, was the first completely styled by the GM Art and Colour Department. Incredibly, it was offered in more than 40 color combinations! The paint colors available had exotic names such as Venetian Blue, Boulevard Maroon and Chermonte Cream. Fifteen different shades of green were included in the mix with monikers like Scaraba, Pinehurst, Boise and Asheville.
Apparently, GM took this color selection very seriously. A newspaper article from 1929 stated that, “The choice of colors is not a hit or miss proposition. When a selection is made it is the result of a careful research that embraces the fashion salons of Europe . . . . . The pleasing harmonies on canvas by famous painters are another source of color ideas. Even the wings of butterflies, the scintillating hues of rubies, emeralds, sapphires and other precious stones furnish the General Motors artists and the Buick engineers ideas on color tones and combinations that are finally transferred to Buick and Marquette cars.”
This article appeared on October 19, 1929, just days before the stock market crash that contributed to the Great Depression. Sales soon plummeted, and Buick went from focusing on the “fashion salons of Europe” and “the wings of butterflies” to mere survival.
You know how you sometimes have to buy a whole box of stuff to get that one thing you want at an auction? That often happens to me, and the result is a whole lot of research to figure out what I have. Several years ago, I bought one of those boxes, and this light was at the bottom of it:
I had no idea what it was, but it was marked with a part number so at least I had a starting point. Thanks to an ebay seller in Great Britain, I was finally able to confirm that this light was original to . . . . . a B-24 Liberator bomber! How it ended up in a box of old car parts, I have no idea.
My British purchase was a B-24 parts manual. According to that manual, each part begins with “32” followed by a letter such as “W” for “Wing”. My light is marked with “32E-1242-2”, and I found it in the Electrical section where it is identified as “lamp assy”. I also found this picture on the internet:
The B-24 was a heavy bomber that measured 110 feet from wingtip to wingtip and 67 feet 4 inches from nose to tail. It had four 1200 hp air-cooled engines and could fly 300 mph and 3000 miles non-stop. Why is all this being included on an American car history blog? It actually fits right in because there is a good possibility that my light was manufactured by none other than Henry Ford. The famed Ford Motor Company assembly line rolled out B-24s from 1942 to 1945. There is a short film that can be watched here called “The Story of Willow Run” and it goes into detail about this Ford Motor Company contribution to the war effort.
Willow Run was located in Michigan, west of Detroit near Ypsilanti. There, Ford built a massive aircraft plant that included an 11-acre warehouse with enough material to build 1,000 B-24s at any one time. The plant had a production force of as many as 42,000 employees and included a school with hundreds of instructors to teach them how to build the bombers. Fifty thousand workers graduated from this school and learned to manufacture and assemble the 1,225,000 parts that went into building each B-24. This specialized force was able to turn out a new bomber at the astonishing rate of one every 55 minutes! There were four other plants that built B-24s, but nearly half of the 18,493 produced were built at Willow Run.
President Roosevelt’s cavalcades, with his auto in lead, passes long line of powerful, 4-motored army bombers at the Ford Willow Run (Mich.) bomber assembly plant. Five of the ever-alert secret service men who guard the President are seen riding bumpers of his auto. (Official navy photo.) (NEA Telephoto.)
Maybe it isn’t surprising that this light was purchased at a rural Nebraska auction since my state was home to a total of 12 WWII army airfields that were used to train the pilots and crews of fighters and bombers. Nebraska was chosen for a number of reasons including reliable rail transportation, inexpensive land and excellent conditions for flying, year-round.
I haven’t yet decided how to display my light, but I am going to keep it. I think it is an excellent reminder of the Greatest Generation and what it was able to accomplish.
This gorgeous sea-green 1947 Chevrolet graced us with an appearance at a local car show this summer:
1947 Chevy
Chevrolet did not have a true post-war car until 1949, so this ’47 is very similar to those produced in 1942, 1946 and 1948. They all have good-looking grilles, and just look how this one shines:
1947 Chevy Grille
The grille used in 1948 was very similar to 1947’s with the main difference being a piece of center moulding. The following diagrams are taken from the 1953 edition of Motor’s Flat Rate & Parts Manual:
I always pick up these old manuals when I see them because they contain a wealth of helpful knowledge, but I also like looking at them for the nostalgia value. Just imagine, in 1953, you could purchase one of these very substantial grilles AND a bumper for around a hundred bucks!
When most people hear “Willys,” they understandably think of jeeps, but Willys first manufactured passenger cars. In fact, during the early 1900s, Willys was second only to Ford in production of automobiles. In the midst of the roaring twenties, Willys produced over 200,000 units in 1925 alone. Willys encountered financial problems during the depression but was saved by World War II’s demand for jeeps. After the war, the company, led by Ward Canaday, again wanted to try its hand at passenger cars and finally achieved this goal with the Aero in 1952.
The Willys Aero is a great-looking car with small fins and elements of airplane design like a cockpit-style dash and split windshield, aerodynamic lines and this airplane hood ornament:
Below the hood ornament there is a large “W” embedded in the grille:
The car featured a uni-body construction with a low center of gravity and a 108” wheel base. Considered a light car at 2562 pounds, it weighed hundreds of pounds less than a Ford or Chevy. It would also run 500 miles on one 18-gallon tank of gas! The car didn’t sacrifice power, however, with a 90 hp Hurricane 6 F-head engine under the hood. In January, 1952, Popular Science Monthly featured “The Story of the New Aero Willys,” and asserted that “Its six-cylinder engine develops more horsepower per cubic inch of piston displacement than that of any other U.S. car, regardless of price.” The magazine further extolled the virtues of the Aero by saying that it cruised beautifully at 75 mph and that both the engine and transmission demonstrated “excellent smoothness.”
In 1952, the Willys was available in the Aero-Lark, the Aero-Wing and the Aero-Ace. In 1953, the Aero-Wing was replaced by the Aero-Falcon and a hardtop coupe, the Aero-Eagle, was added to the line-up. When asked about the choice of the name “Aero,” Canaday replied that “it’s the nearest thing to flying you’ll find on the highway.”
The Aero was only manufactured for four years. Willys was purchased by Kaiser in 1953, and Henry Kaiser made the decision to focus on jeeps a couple of years later. It was another example of a car ahead of its time, and one more that’s being added to the list of cars I’d like to own!
If you are able to schedule a “junk vacation” (junk-ation?) this month, head to Nebraska for the 15th annual Junk Jaunt. The Junk Jaunt is 500 miles of garage sales and purveyors of all kinds of antiques and junk, over 700 vendors in all.
There are several must-shop hot-spots along the way, and one of the best is the village of Cairo, which is pronounced KAIR-oh, like the syrup. Most of Cairo is covered with vendors, including main street, the ball field, the Community Center and a large field next to the Lutheran Church. To find all things gas, oil and automotive, just look for this DT Vintage sign in the “Big Ass” Shed north of the ball field.
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