Opel Kapitän 1951 Publicity Photos

World War 2 was a disaster for Germany, but by the early 1950s things in the newly formed (in 1949) Federal Republic were rapidly improving, including automobile sales.

Opel, wholly owned by General Motors by 1931, introduced its Kapitän line in 1939, just before the war started.  (Kapitän, in German, refers to the naval rank equivalent to a colonel in the army or a ship's captain.  An army captain in Germany is called a hauptmann.  For many years Opel favored naming its lines after ranks, including Kadett, Admiral, Diplomat, Commodore, this to indicate the line's degree of assigned prestige.)  Information regarding the Kapitän line can be found here.

The postwar Kapitän was introduced for 1947, and was almost identical to the 1939 model, the visible change being that the '47 had sealed-beam headlights.  A facelift was added for 1951-1953 models.  The most noticeable difference was a new grille with large, chromed bars in the contemporary American fashion.

Below, for your viewing enjoyment are some Opel publicity photos featuring 1951-vintage Kapitäns.

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I don't recognize the setting, so comments from sharp-eyed readers are welcome.

Apparently Opel's proving ground was populated with attractive young ladies whose sole interest was tracking lap speeds.

Picnics and similar outdoor scenes have long been the subject of automobile publicity.

Girls having fun in Nice, France along the Promenade des Anglais, with the Hotel Negresco in the background.  Nowadays, the street is a lot busier.

Henry J: Cute, But Few Sold

Kaiser-Frazer's Henry J (1951-1954) was named after Henry J. Kaiser, founder of the company.  This was one of several marketing errors associated with the brand; an odd name without meaning to many people.

Another, according to this Wikipedia entry, was that conditions for getting a government loan forced the company to cut manufacturing costs to the bone, resulting in a cheap looking car.  For example, early Henry Js had no trunk opening; one had to open the side door, fold down the rear seat back and then try to maneuver a heavy, cumbersome piece of luggage into place.  For not a lot more money, a potential buyer could get a new entry-level Chevrolet, Ford or Plymouth with a trunk lid as standard equipment, more passenger room and other goodies not found on a Henry J.

Henry J styling was what I call cute, and more pleasing than that on many other small cars in the USA and elsewhere at the time.  A nice gesture was the small up-kick or micro-tailfin at the rear of the fender line.  It served as a counterpoise to the fastback roof line, giving the design some needed balance.  Unfortunately, that fastback roof line was going out of style in 1951.  Worse, it yielded an inconveniently sized trunk -- the trunk that was difficult to access due to its lack of a lid.

The grille was an oddity -- large, chromed shapes perhaps inspired by squiggly graphics and table tops that were so strangely popular around 1950.  Even so, it wasn't really bad.  Maybe that's because Kaiser-Frazer had a team of first-rate stylists for a few years, including Buzz Grissinger.

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An advertising image showing a Henry with seriously small people.

This publicity photo offers a better sense of scale, though the boy with his hand on the door is pretty small.

More probably small-ish people stuffed into an already small car.  In those days, cars of any size were often pictured with small people or people crammed into the passenger compartment to give the illusion that the car was larger than it really was.  Note how the flowing fender line adds a touch of grace to what might have become just another slab-sided design.

This was one of the few photos I found on the Internet showing a Henry J with no trunk opening.  A trunk lid was quickly added once it became clear that the original configuration was hurting sales.  The double-curve at the top of the backlight window echoes window shapes on the new, redesigned Kaisers.

Fat Cars: AMC Pacer and Ford Edge

I can't say whether it's the way human brains are constructed or whether it's simply a matter of familiarity from repeated observations, but to me, at least, some automobile proportions seem more satisfying than others.  And "others" include cars that strike me as being too fat.  This does not mean I think fat cars have to be ugly, it's that they at best are a little less attractive than the best designs using certain other proportions.

Automobile tubbiness does not necessarily deny market success, though it is helpful for sales if many contemporaneous cars are tubby rather than svelte, that being the existing styling fashion (think early post-World War 2 cars).  In the present post, I present one market failure along with a success.  Shown below are the 1975 American Motors Pacer and the Ford Edge, introduced for the 2007 model year.

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1975 AMC Pacer
I actually think the Pacer is kind of cute (but whadda I know).  Its sales problem had to do with the fact that it was heavy for a car of its length; buyers must have expected it to be more economical to operate than it proved to be.  Once word of that got out, sales began to suffer.

2008 Ford Edge
The Edge, on the other hand, has sold well.  When I'm in the Palm Springs area of California, I see lots and lots of Edges.  The Edge is a crossover SUV based on a Mazda 6 sedan platform, and features a moderate wheelbase and little front and rear overhang, perhaps for reasons of handling.  So in order the have carrying space expected for a SUV of its price class, the body was made comparatively wide.  I know this because my wife owns a 2008 Edge and I am its driver when we travel to California.

Berliet and Licorne: Last-Ditch Body Transplants

Automobile production levels were low in Europe until the 1950s, at least when compared to the United States.  So I continually wonder how a country such as France could have supported so many car manufacturers.  (As late as model year 1938, 22 firms exhibited at the Paris Auto Show, and there were others in business that didn't exhibit.)  Part of the reason was because cars were mechanically much less elaborate than nowadays.  Also, bodies were usually composite, steel sheeting over wood framing until into the mid-1930s.  Therefore, less expensive tooling was required for body construction, though more hand-work was involved.

But industry consolidation was inevitable, and accelerated by the Great Depression of the 1930s.  During those years the French auto industry was dominated by three firms: Renault, Peugeot and Citroën -- the latter, having fallen on hard times, was taken over by Michelin, the tire maker.  Lesser firms were being squeezed out of the market and sometimes resorted to preservation strategies that might strike us today as being odd, yet were occasionally used in even the USA.

The strategy the present post deals with is where a smaller, weaker company sells cars built from components of cars from stronger makes.  Examples here are Berliet and Licorne.

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1939 Peugeot 402 BLE

1939 Berliet Dauphine
For the 1939 model year, Berliet turned to Peugeot to body its Dauphine line.  As can be seen above, from the cowling on back, the body is strictly Peugeot 402 B (the largest model in Peugeot's line at the time).  The front end borrows heavily from 1937-vintage American styling.

1938 Citroën 11

1938 Licorne Rivoli
Licorne's borrowing for 1938 was even more drastic.  Besides having a Citroën body, this Licorne model also had a Citroën motor and transmission -- necessary because the Citroën was front-wheel drive and therefore had no structural provision for a driveshaft and powered rear wheels.  This Licorne is essentially a Citroën with a different grille.
UPDATE: See Comments for a discussion of the Licorne's running gear and motors that runs counter to my speculations.

Studebaker's Mid-1950s Sedan Facelifts

Working as a stylist for a car company whose sales were falling and money was running out probably wasn't much fun.  On the other hand, those perilous conditions must have fueled a good deal of design creativity.  How, with an extremely limited tooling budget, can the next year's models be made to look fresh and competitive?  If you were a stylist worth your salt, you had to dig deeply into to your creative resources to succeed in this task.

This problem cropped up all too often in the history of the automobile as brand after brand fell by the wayside.  We deal with it fairly often on this blog, the subject of this post being the sedan line of Studebaker, a maker of wagons and then cars for more than 100 years as the mid-1950s approached.

The company had done well for the first years following the end of World War 2, and the 1953 model year featured a complete redesign of the Studebaker line.  The highlight was the Starliner coupe, considered one of the most outstanding car designs ever.  A number of critics assert that Studebaker was mistaken when it styled its sedans using cues from the low, rakish coupe.  I might get around to dealing with that in a future post, but for now will take the 1953 sedan design as given.

What happened was, Studebaker sales had peaked in the 1950 model year and began a decline that saw few interruptions until production ceased for good.  The 1953 redesign had no real effect at all.

Given that background, let's look at the company's sedan styling from 1953 through 1958 (the 1959 facelift, where the car was drastically shortened, is another story worthy of a separate discussion).


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1953 Studebaker Champion
This is how the 1953 restyling appeared on Studebaker's low-price line.

1955 Studebaker President (early version)
1954 Studebakers were almost identical to the '53s, but a noticeable facelift was required for 1955 because most other American cars were either restyled or were given major facelifts.  Studebakers were given a garish, awkward, heavily chromed grille as the main means of freshening appearance.  The rear wheel well cover is an accessory.  But there was a problem: Almost every other make had "modern" wraparound windshields, and Studebakers didn't, at least at the time the '55s were introduced.

1955 Studebaker President (later version)
Studebakers did get a wraparound windshield later in the model year.  Its version had a back-sloping A-pillar similar to that used by Chrysler Corporation.  Other makes with wraparound windshields had either vertical or forward-sloping A-pillars.

1956 Studebaker President
1956 saw a more extensive facelift.  The rear was filled out, lengthened a little, and squared off to increase trunk room.  The front was also filled out so as to offer a more conventional appearance.  But the passenger compartment was unaltered, and therefore seems perhaps a little too soft when compared to the rest of the car.  Studebaker sedans might have sold better in 1953 had they looked more like the 1956 models.

1958 Studebaker Commander
By 1958, styling fashion called for "quad" headlamps, thin roofs and tail fins, so Studebaker went along with the crowd.  The problem with this facelift is that the quad headlights were housed so that the front fenders had to be "blistered."  This tacked-on appearance degraded what otherwise was a relatively sensible design in those extravagant, baroque times.