(first posted 2/1/2012) Although I’m too young to have been around for the LaSalle’s heyday, I’ve always had warm feelings for the marque, and I think I know why:
And you knew who you were then,
Girls were girls and men were men,
Mister we could use a man
Like Herbert Hoover again.
Didn’t need no welfare state,
Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee our old LaSalle ran great.
Those were the days.
Boy the way Glen Miller played
Songs that made the hit parade.
Guys like us we had it made,
Those were the days.
Yes, I realize those lyrics are two old throwbacks reminiscing about other old throwbacks, and this doesn’t need to get political. But I think most CC readers can certainly identify with memories of what seemed like a comparatively simpler time, and we can certainly all identify with cars we miss from our past. Archie Bunker was a lot of things, but deep down inside, I think he was a pretty sentimental guy. Let’s look at a couple more shots of what his car might have looked like:
I can see why he misses his old ride! I can also see why the tail light contained the fuel filler on Cadillacs from just a few years later, with it sticking up there on the left fender all by itself.
I’ve always liked that tall, skinny grille on Cadillacs and LaSalles of this era, and I also prefer the headlights being faired into the catwalk as opposed to being attached to the radiator surround on earlier LaSalles.
As best I can tell, this headlight position was a one year only ordeal for 1940, which also was the LaSalle’s last, despite being a good seller.
They don’t make ’em like this any more, as I’m sure Archie would be the first to tell you. I wish I had more time to devote to this car, but I’m pressed for time and need a haircut.
(Thanks to Cohort member Davo for the great shots of this fine LaSalle!)
There’s a 1938 LaSalle professional car in a famous movie-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO88NI16g84
BTW- I saw this movie when it was new & thought the tire (tyre) screeching on a dirt road was wrong. Years later, I was on some Jamaican bauxite roads and found that they were hard & solid enough that tires did make screeching noises on them.
There has been a lot of talk in the last few years about GM having too many brands. Go back to the 1930s when it was Chevrolet, Oakland, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Viking, Buick, Marquette, LaSalle and Cadillac. Plus the trucks.
This was before my time too, but I have always loved these cars from the immediate prewar era. There was a gracefulness to their designs that kind of went away after the war.
The GM sedans of this time were among the very few that were not using suicide doors. Although I like suicide doors (quite a lot, actually) this styling really works well. I would ditch the fender skirts, though. A great find of a great car.
The 1935 Oldsmobiles did have “reverse” suicide doors.
http://www.fantasyrides.com/www.fantasyrides.com/photos/35old_4.jpg
Vauxhalls used suicide doors all the way untill 1952 I had a 51 LIP Velox so equipped
I think a big thing back then was the massive market share GM held at the time, I’d argue too many brands back then too but they winnowed them out by 1940. LaSalle was the last to go.
And as proof that LaSalle was not only gone but forgotten by 1971 when “All In The Family” debuted…CBS received complaints from viewers unable to make out that last lyric…obviously people who’d forgotten the marque ever existed.
So next year…or maybe it was a couple seasons later, Carroll O’ Connor and Jean Stapleton slowed that lyric down a little.
No dice, People still didn’t know what Archie and Edith were singing. So it was slowed down a little more.
And a little more.
By 1977-78 it was coming out…”gee our old L.A. S.A.L.L.E!!!!!!! RAN GREAT!!!!! Or something like that. By this point it was painful to watch them try to make the lyric obvious to Joe and Joann average viewer.
“Too many brands” was a way of saying “too many dealer channels”; the companion cars didn’t have their own dealerships which was what made them “companion” makes.
True, but even then, it was too much micro-segmentation for the market. The related problem was the companions tended to dilute the parent brand: If the companion was cheaper, which most of them were, it reduced the incentive for price-conscious buyers to choose the parent, and if it was more expensive (which I think the Viking was), it threatened to reduce the parent’s prestige.
Sloan conceived the Pontiac, Viking, Marquette and LaSalle as “companion” nameplates to fill price gaps between the established makes. Pontiac displaced Oakland, Olds and Buick nixed Viking and Marquette shortly at the Depression’s onset. Cadillac made better use of LaSalle to exploited the entry-level prestige/luxury market, allowing it act as a lead-in to full Cadillac ownership once the customer experienced a degree of Cadillac quality and prestige through LaSalle.
LaSalle was on the chopping block in 1933, saved only by the progressive ’34 styling proposal championed by Misterl and the wholesale sharing of the ’34 Olds’ Eight chassis. Most importantly, it was the first step acclimating the luxury buyer to smaller, more modest luxury cars priced $800-$1,100 lower than before. Next LaSalle moved down a price slot to $1,250 to make way for the ’36 Series 60 at $1,695, the start of Cadillac’s ascendancy to the top luxury seller, vanquishing Packard once and for all.
By 1940, with Cadillac 62 and 60 Special securely ensconced as top luxury sellers and re-invigorated Buick with its Roadmaster posed to handily cover LaSalle’s segment, Cadillac unceremoniously kissed LaSalle goodbye. The ’41 Cadillac 61 carried on in its stead, as a B-body Cadillac ‘hotrod’ until the 62 and 60 Special was the absolute first choice of the aspiration postwar buyers who had made it. Then the Cadillac 61 bowed out at the end of the 1951 models.
The first LaSalle was specifically targeted at the very successful Packard Six, which was one of the first of what we today would call “near luxury” cars. The LaSalle had an eight-cylinder engine, which forced Packard to upgrade the engine in its less-expensive offering to an eight (although the Packard used a straight eight).
I knew it was Dr.No without even looking at the clip.
LaSalle, what are yah, too classy for a Buick? 😉
All those GM brands had one basic body style. No mid/compact/CUV, etc. So it worked back then, but the model proliforation casued all the badge job boxes in the 80s/90s.
But then why didn’t all of them last into the 50’s?
The Depression hit just as Viking and Marquette came on the market. Oakland had kind of a conservative image and Pontiac had a much younger image (wide-track ’59’s weren’t the first time Pontiac appealed to relatively young buyers) which influenced sales, so Oakland was the one to go by the wayside.
LaSalle was the first of the ‘mid-step’ cars, starting in 1927. It was a junior, better styled (first job by Harley Earl) Cadillac. It, too, was scheduled to be history after the 1933 model year, but a dramatic style job by Earl (probably the most beautiful car GM made in the ’30’s) save it. They justified it’s continuation by dropping the flathead V-8 and installing a modified (upgraded) Oldsmobile straight eight.
LaSalle finally ‘died’ (actually, it became the low end Cadillac) because it was being hurt in sales by the Lincoln Zephyr and Packard 120 – both of which had the big car’s name. LaSalle, not being a Cadillac, even though it was sold by Cadillac dealers, was coming off third best.
By the way, most people don’t realize that all those ‘companion cars’ as they were called back then were not badge engineered. Every one of them had a different engine from every other car in the GM lineup. The Viking had a flathead V-8 (only LaSalle and Cadillac used the same configuration), Marquette was also rather unique from it’s brethren, although I can’t remember exactly why at the moment.
The Marquette, sold by Buick, used an Oldsmobile-based engine. The “1941 LaSalle” was the Cadillac series 61. Moved down a notch to fill in the gap left by the departed LaSalle. Cadillac pulled a Packard 120 for 1941. Although the “61” remained the value Caddy for some time to come it’s “lower price” heralding (see 1941 Cadillac advertising) was not emphasized (smartly so) after the war, in fact, you rarely saw 61’s advertised at all after the war. Cadillac marketing and advertising was brilliant then, as was the LaSalle in it’s heyday and it’s successor, the series 61.
Having LaSalle around in the ’30s likely kept Cadillac dealers alive,and at the same time not diluting Cadillac itself. As the economy improved the Series 61 was less needed, For the price one was better off buying a Roadmaster if one couldn’t afford a “real” Cadillac.
Having LaSalle around in the ’30s likely kept Cadillac dealers alive,and at the same time not diluting Cadillac itself. As the economy improved the Series 61 was less needed, For the price one was better off buying a Roadmaster if one couldn’t afford a “real” Cadillac.
Imagine an “Oakland GTO” or Firebird, 😉
Just interviewed a guy for an article today who was 92. If I had read this before the interview I would have run it by him. He was in the Navy in WW2 and I am sure he remembers. All I remember is that the floor shift transmission was a hot deal for hot rods for years. Supposed to be indestructible but I bet they are not today. Lots of difference between flathead fords and new sbc’s than the crate motors available now. Still – they were probably considerably engineered.
I know nothing about the car itself. It was gone three years before I was here.
The Cad-LaSalle transmission was put behind big block and small block alike with the same long lasting results. The only reason it was supplanted was that it only came with three forward speeds. A retro rod built to 1959 standards would probably have three Strombergs on a nailhead with this tranny betwen the rails of a “T”. I do not recall what made them so tough, but the LaSalle itself came with a large V8 in the late 1930’s.
The LaSalle, GM tried to bring back it multiple times. First there was the LaSalle roadster and a 4-door sedan for the 1955 Motorama http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1940s-and-1950s-cadillac-lasalle-concept-cars1.htm
Then a proposed coupe for Cadillac who’ll become the Buick Riviera.
And first prototypes and clays models of the smaller Cadillac who’ll finally be called Seville for 1975.
http://amateurdebeauxchars.forumactif.com/t810-vieux-concept-car-annees-70#6438
Does the LaSalle name had some sort of curse?
Edit: There was also some plans for a 1941 LaSalle, http://www.motorera.com/lasalle/1941.htm like the later 1962 DeSoto it didn’t go as far as clay models.
I knew of three different LaSalles when I was a kid. The first was the 1934 4-window 4-door sedan that my father had for a while. After he traded it on a new 1950 Packard I saw it once…and since then I have never seen another one with that body style.
The second was the maroon 1937 coupe my uncle owned. I rode the jump seat on a trip from western Washington to southern California in about 1949.
The third was a custom-bodied 1940 sedan – a town car of some sort – that lived not far from us when I was just starting to get interested in cars. I had never thought of the 1934 or 37 cars as being particularly impressive – I was just 10 or so – but just a couple of years later that shiny black 1940 LaSalle with its tall, narrow grille and sleek styling really made an impression on me, even though it was not in the best of condition.
In 1955 one of our neighbors put up his black Lasalle coupe up for sale for $400. It was a 1939 or ’40. I walked by that car every day. Even though I was not old enough to drive I knew I wanted that car. By the time I got my license, it had been sold. If I recall correctly, it had a straight 8 motor.
A ’39 and ’40 LaSalle had the Cadillac flathead V8.
Edith: “Sixty-five percent of the people murdered in the last ten years were killed by handguns!”
Archie: “Would it make you feel any better, little goil, if dey was pushed outta winders?”
Great car. Takes a MAN to drive that!
I really got into All in the Family when they started showing it on TV Land in the late ’90s. Great show!
Seems like the more controversial (and funny) episodes don’t get aired. I was among the what is the last line of the song crowd, I remember it being explained in TV guide magazine back in the day. They did redo the last line and it could finally be understood, I wasn’t aware they redid it more than once. I knew back then it was a car but had no idea what a LaSalle looked like. Back then we used to ask other kids if your Dad was an “Archie Bunker”. Many of them were.
I could never quite get the image of Archie and Edith driving/riding in a LaSalle, though. They seemed to definitely be on the poorer side throughout their lives and would not have been able to afford one. Even a used one would have seemed out of the question.
In this day of owning an automobile being an absolute necessity for life, it’s hard to imagine a time in the USA when this wasn’t the case, and many people used alternate means of transportation to get around (which, except for the LaSalle reference, would seem to be the time Archie and Edith sing about at the beginning of each show).
BTW, the song’s paragraphs are in the wrong order (the last one is actually the first one sung, with the next to last line having the word LaSalle). It’s a minor issue, but has meaning, particularly since, for a long time, no one could figure out what that they were saying ‘LaSalle’.
@rudiger: the lyric “made sense” to me, because I had a couple relatives *exactly* the age of Archie/Edith (and the stars as well). As postwar young marrieds, they were happy to have early-30s cars that were then just “big old cars, though expensive to maintain.” One was a Lincoln, the other a GM I can’t remember (possibly LaSalle). By the early 1970s, 25+ years married, I can see them singing of their first car (as a married couple) with a certain nostalgia.
But, admittedly, those were cars they–as Depression-era kids–could only have dreamed of their families owning in the mid-30s.
That’s how I took it myself; they wouldn’t have had a LaSalle *new* of course.
Coming from a family in which the cars were almost always bought new, the idea of a used LaSalle hadn’t occurred to me, so I wondered about that reference too.
Also, the reference to Herbert Hoover never made sense to me, because the blue-collar voters who voted for Nixon mostly still considered themselves to be good Democrats, idolized FDR, and generally detested Hoover. A fair number had pictures of FDR and JFK on the wall well into the late 60s or early 70s.
Actually, the Hoover reference makes a lot more sense than LaSalle. There’s at least one instance of Archie’s dislike of FDR on the show. I think the rationale was it showed how ignorant a working-class, blue-collar guy like Archie could be, even regarding The Great Depression.
Coolidge said this of Hoover: “That man has given me unsolicited advice for 6 years, all of it bad.”
There was a precise scale to those brands. LaSalle (and later Buick) formed the top end of ‘normal aspiration’. You had to be seriously rich, or laughably brazen, to buy Caddy.
My grandpa had worked up from dirt-poor mules and busted Ts to the Pontiac class. He was an extremely married man, doing everything for wife and kids … EXCEPT that he always bought used Roadmasters. He had a ’41 that looked a lot like the pictured car. It seemed out of character, but it was still at the edge of socially permissible. A Caddy would have been unthinkable.
His kids moved up a step in income, but moved BACK in automotive class to Dodge, Pontiac and Mercury, where Grandpa should have been. My Dad was a lifetime Dodge man. I think it may have been an unconscious compensation.
The lyrics specifically said, “Gee our old LaSalle ran great.”
The ages of the characters on the show were roughly consistent with the ages of the actors who played them. Carroll O’Connor was born in 1924; Jean Stapleton was born in 1923. Sally Struthers, who played their daughter, was born in 1947. If I recall correctly, Archie did serve in World War II, so it’s plausible that he returned home and got married to Edith after the war, and immediately began a family.
It’s entirely conceivable that a young married couple would have purchased an old, used LaSalle after World War II. Particularly since many people were dumping their tired prewar cars as quickly as possible when the first postwar cars began rolling off the assembly lines. Cadillacs and LaSalles were among the highest quality cars of the late 1930s and early 1940s, so getting a good used one would have been quite an achievement.
As for Archie’s dislike of FDR – Roosevelt’s support wasn’t universal among the working class, particularly as unemployment remained stubbornly high through the late 1930s.
I thought Jean Stapleton was born 1923. According to Wikipaedia, Jean Stapleton was born Jeanne Murray on January 19, 1923, a year before John Carroll O’Connor, who was born August 2, 1924.
Six months after I took these photos, this car rove past my house. I couldn’t believe it. The owner wasn’t babying it either. He uses it as daily driver it seems, and likes to use his right foot. It was loud too. The owner wants to be noticed I think. The car also has a passenger side window mounted cylinder – perhaps one of those “olden days” air conditioners I’ve read about.
Yep, looks like a “swamp cooler”.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-capsule-firestone-thermador-car-cooler-swamp-cooler/
(Singing)
“Didn’t need no welfare state
Ev’rybody pulled his weight
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great
Those were the days!”
I remember watching re-runs of All In the Family when I was a boy. It always began with Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) and Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton) singing this very song. Although I didn’t know anything about cars, so I didn’t know what a LaSalle was, I still enjoyed the show. I miss the show.
Carroll O’Connor despised that show and the character he was pretending to be.
What did he despise about the show?
Carroll O’Connor was well known in Hollywood for being a liberal, somewhat to the left of most Hollywood liberals. Archie Bunker would have been a founder of the Tea Party if the character existed today, and then would have split from the group claiming they’d become too liberal.
Maybe so, but the show did capture the zeitgeist of its time. A lot of viewers were laughing with Archie, not at him. I always laughed at him because he was a buffoon. The only sympathetic character was his wife Edith.
c
All in the Family was intended to be a parody of the “Silent Majority” (those of you under 40, look it up). It was one hell of a shock to Norman Lear to discover that most of the viewership was sympathetic to Archie, instead of laughing at him like it was intended.
Indeed, when AITF premiered in 1971, Nixon was still popular with much of the country. I don’t think those viewers got the irony of the show. There was even an early episode centered around Archie’s anger at Mike when the latter donated a chance windfall of cash all to the McGovern presidential campaign.
Then there was Watergate, bumbling Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter’s subsequent election in 1976. I suspect most of the audience that had sympathized with Archie abandoned the show at that point, not to mention that the show had gotten substantially more maudlin with the writers starting to run out of ideas by then.
Still, it was a ground-breaking show in how then-current issues were woven into the story lines in a serious, thoughtful manner. When the most popular shows of the time were crap like Laugh-In and The Carol Burnett Show, AITF was certainly the first of its kind. The only thing close was The Smothers Brothers Show, and they kept getting cancelled for their views.
The Carol Burnett Show was crap? Sorry, but I can’t buy that. It was the last successful prime time variety show, and a very good showcase for a multi-talented performer, Carol Burnett.
Agreed, some of the stuff I’ve seen on the Carol Burnett Show was as good as anything the original SNL did. There’s much much MUCH worse 70s variety shows to pick from
Lorne Michaels actually tried to make SNL the opposite of The Carol Burnett Show as was possible. Ironically, when SNL then received an Emmy nomination, it was up against none other than The Carol Burnett Show.
Everyone has different tastes but, for me, SNL was clearly much better than anything on Carol Burnett. In fact, one of the staples of The Carol Burnett Show was when the singularly unfunny Tim Conway would cause the other cast members to ‘break’, laugh, and snicker during sketches he was in. Lorne Michaels strictly forbid such amateurish, improvisational shenanigans and his edict was actually highlighted on the recent SNL 40th Anniversary Special.
Of course, for a truly ground-breaking comedic television show (with no hidden agenda, political or otherwise), one need look no further than Ernie Kovacs.
I never heard of Carroll O’Connor saying he despised All in the Family. That’s somewhat hard to believe, considering that he stuck with the show for a decade, and, after Jean Stapleton left, even tried to continue the series as the reformatted Archie Bunker’s Place.
I also remember reading an interview where he said he understood the Archie Bunkers of the world, even if he didn’t agree with them.
“Gee that old Lexus ran great, those were the days. I agree that Archie and Edith probably bought a used Lasalle just like some people will buy that used Lexus to find out how the “other half lives” Though I think the Bunkers would have been Plymouth people.
They struck me more as Plymouth people than as Cadillac or LeSalle people. Working class people either drove Chevrolets, Ford, or Plymouth. The middle class usually drove Oldsmobile, Dodge, Mercury. The further up you went, the fancier the car you drove. Some drove Buicks, Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Lincoln, or Chrysler, or even Imperial if you’re wealthy enough to afford such a car. 🙂
Nice find. I saw a ’37 LaSalle at a car show back in the late ’90’s, and my family lived in a town called LaSalle (just outside of Windsor, Ontario) when I was a young boy. I’ve always been a big fan of All In The Family as well. I watched it regularly as a kid, and it’s still a favorite.
A gorgeous car. I have a weakness for fender skirts.
The audience for “All in the Family” was interesting. Half tuned in because they liked to see Archie come up the fool. The other half watched because they agreed with him. Strange times in America. Norman Lear will always be THE MAN for catching an era so perfectly.
A friend of mine’s dad couldn’t figure out AITF at all. He agreed with Archie close to 100% of the time, and the laughs from the audience when Archie said something really stupid or ignorant really confused him. It was more fun to watch him rant about the show than the show itself. About the time the show morphed into “Archie Bunker’s Place”, his family explained everything to him. He didn’t watch it any more after that, he didn’t want to “Give his kids any ammunition to make fun of him”.
My grandmother, who was pretty socially progressive in most respects, and was out on the road as a traveling corset saleswoman in the 20’s, HATED FDR, and would go on rants about him almost daily until she died in 1965. I think she would have had a meltdown if she had lived to see AITF. “Franklin Delanooo Rooosevelt” (That’s how Archie always said it) indeed.
A favorite all in the family situation has the bunkers needing a doctor. Archie demands that Dr. Shapiro be called and not Dr. Shwartz. Meathead informs archie that Dr. Shwartz is a very fine doctor. Archie very agitated, declares Dr. Shapiro drives a Lincoln, Shwartz drives a Plymouth.
Strange times in America
Have they really changed that much?
Well they have, inasmuch as though many of the basic issues, or more current versions of them, still exist, but I doubt you’d get both side of them to sit down and watch the same tv show. It seems to me folks (and their positions) are even more deeply entrenched, but there’s less middle ground.
Would a current “Archie Bunker” be successful, and watched by both sides of the gap? I rather doubt it. Everyone is watching shows that reflect their own POV.
And yes, Lear was a genius.
I’d put “The Simpsons” on both sides of today’s gap, which is probably why it’s lasted so incredibly long.
South Park too, probably even more so.
The Simpsons lost me around season 9 or 10, it became too much of a flavor of the month guest cameo show, with Lisa consistently being portrayed as the rational one when they tackle hot button issues between, and her character isn’t exactly in the political middle.
i’ve been watching AITF recently on one of the rerun stations. Meathead went on a rant about the problems of the day, polution, race relations, the economy.
No times have not changed much at all.
Nice .
-Nate
I was a kid growing up in the 70’s when All in the Family aired and I never figured out what that last line of the song was either….Wasn’t until years later when I saw the lyrics in print that I finally learned that it was Lasalle…….They had slowed down singing the line so much to try to make it understandable…but now it sounded like they were singing about abbreviations…..’G-R-O-L salad’s great’ is all I could understand the line to be as a kid.
Nice car. In our area car shows for some time (I haven’t been to one recently) there was a ’39 LaSalle in a pretty wine-red color. It was usually one of the best-looking cars at the show.
I just can`t picture an uneducated, bigoted,working class, blue collar guy like Archie Bunker driving one. I see him in a strippo `63 Biscayne or a strippo `66 Ford custom. 4 doors of course. Meathead and Gloria? A Volvo station wagon.
At some point it came up that Meathead and Gloria drive a Toyota hatchback. Edith asks what that is, and Archie says a line about Japanese cars with “slanty headlights” that could have come from a WWII propaganda film.
That Japanese car reference on All in the Family was from an episode where Archie and Edith and their niece flew out to California to visit the Stivics for Christmas……When they were in in the Airport terminal, Gloria told the others to wait while she got the car to pull it around…She had just gotten her drivers license and that car…..Apparently she did not drive when the Stivics lived n NY.
Well, technically he wouldn’t be wrong 30 years later…
The song reference to “gee our old …” was mainly saying “…they don’t build good running new cars anymore”. Not necessarily praising the LaSalle brand.
Even at end of muscle car era, new cars were criticised for poor quality and recalls. There is an old Carol Burnett sketch, where she is a housewife dealing with current events invading her home, fake radio report says ‘owners of new Gazelle cars will have steering wheels fall off’. She goes to garage and comes back with steering wheel around her neck.
To add, the Bunkers didn’t have a car in Queens. Arch drove ‘Mudson’s cabs’ on the side, though.
The nitpicker (and swing music aficionado) in me wants to remind you that it’s Glenn Miller.
Fine piece. Carry on.
1940 La Salle ad (top half):
Same ad (bottom text):
For some reason, the order of the stanzas in the song are inverted at the beginning of this article.
The third stanza was sung first, “Boy the way Glenn Miller played, ..:”, then the first two were sung, with the reference to the LaSalle closing out the tune.