(first posted 10/23/2012) Since we’re keeping the 1959-1960 GM theme going with today’s ’60 Buick CC, let’s take in this design concept that made it pretty far into the serious consideration stage during the difficult gestation of the new 1959 models. This shot (at mrjynx) is of a clay, but Buick took the idea even further with the fiberglass mock-up pictured below. Obviously, this took place during the second phase of the ’59 body development, as the finalization of the production cars’ eventual shape is already well under way. We’ve joked in the past about management putting LSD in the water cooler of the Design Center, but according to historian Michael Lamm, that’s almost true.
image: hemmingsblog.com
His write up on the whole 1959 design revolution at GM is documented in a two-part 1991 Special Interest Automobile (SIA) series (Part 1 here) (Part 2 here) entitled “When Imagination Ran Rampant”. And indeed it did:
Several interesting highlights of the 1959 body program are worth noting here. Dave Hollis makes the point that this was the period when no idea or concept was too weird, or bizarre, to be considered. In fact, any designer who couldn’t or didn’t come up with wilder and farther-out ideas risked losing his job. The rush to be different and unusual became almost competitive and led, as you can see in the photographs, to such trial balloons as headlamps planted in foreheads of hoods, trunk-mounted tailfins, and gas-turbine exhausts.
Lamm goes on to say that many of the more extreme ideas obviously were winnowed out, but the extreme ’59 Chevy and Buick gullwings first proposed by Bob Cadaret did make it to production (sans the third fin, thankfully).
image: hemmingsblog.com
I heartily recommend a read of Lamm’s account, as it is more comprehensive than any other I’ve read. He notes that there is disagreement as to whether the “revolution” that discarded the earlier, Earl-led designs started before or after Earl went to Europe. He even suggests that GM Prez Harlow Curtice, unhappy about the way the 59s were taking shape, might just have sent Earl to Europe so that the revolution could take place.
No wonder the 61 Lincoln Continental was such a breath of fresh air back then…
+1
Ford had already had their questionable design with the ’58 Edsel. Nothing else could come close.
It took a while for GM and Chrysler to catch up to the break-through styling direction that the ’61 Lincoln took.
I have always thought that, other than the front, the 58 Edsel was a pretty conservatively styled car for the era. The smaller Ranger/Pacer series on the Ford Fairlane body shell was actually pretty attractive.
If you want bizarre styling from FoMoCo, I gotta go with the 59 Mercury.
As per the link below, some of the Edsel artists proposals were much better than the final product.
http://internetdebris.blogspot.ca/2012/03/case-of-murderous-vice-president.html
I just checked out the ’59 Mercury. You are right!
Thank you for the link about the Edsel artists proposals. They were really interesting to look at.
Cool. Some of the Edsel drawings remind me of Pontiacs, Buicks, Imperials (one had freestanding headlight pods), and the Packard Predictor concept car.
I have an illustrated paperback in perfect-bound magazine format from 1952, Restyle Your Car (“By the editors of Motor Trend”), that was my dad’s, although he never customized a car in his life – he was in dental school when he picked this up. In it there’s a photo of an even earlier design than any of the ones shown at the link: a Continental-like convertible coupe with a narrow vertical grille in which can be seen the letters CAVALIER.
Here is a portion of the photo:
If by “bizarre” you mean “awesome”.
OOOOO! I just love giant rectangles!! Most over rated lack of style EVER!!
The Buick is certainly wild, but one of the proposals for the 1959 Chevrolet featured two headlights stacked in the CENTER of the grille!
Chrysler considered a single fin for the 1961 Plymouth…which looks even stranger than the Buick, as it did not have two “regular” fins.
Too many fins just look silly, but headlights are more powerful since we inevitably see the front of a car as a face. Imagine if you had never seen dual headlights before. Single headlights correspond directly to eyes in the car’s face. Double-irised eyes on a human face would look horrifying, yet duals are OK on a car.
Two high beams up high and centered make functional sense, that’s common on diesel locomotives, so naturally they tried it. If you focus your attention on the cental duals, then those vent features across the top look right too. But inevitably we come back to the whole face and it’s all wrong. Some really interesting aspect of human perception is at work here.
Are you referring to this? (From Glen H):
http://www.flickriver.com/photos/glenhsparky/3741547693/
That’s it. Probably inspired by Exner’s 1960 Plymouth XNR concept car.
Jaguar’s single fin D type was actually in production which no doubt inspired Exner.
That is the car, but the photo caption is incorrect. That car is not the original 1962 Plymouth, as envisioned by Exner before William Newberg forced him to downsize it.
That is the 1961 Plymouth sporting the single fin that was originally planned for that year.
I’m still trying to figure out how you’d get the trunk open.
I think they missed a bet there: just fix the lid & its fin in place, and have the trunk slide out like a drawer. Futuristic!
May of been a little too much!
some of those designs would make for great custom projects, they would certainly be the most unique car at the show.
The second image was undoubtedly the model for the Japanese science fiction film “Giant Mutant Insects That Ate Tokyo”.
A bit of trivia: In the film “The French Connection”, the car used to smuggle drugs into New York was a ’71 Lincoln Mark III; in the real “French Connection”, the car used was a ’60 Buick Invicta. Heroin was stashed in the rocker panels and front fender wells.
Thank goodness, the 3rd wing didn’t go further. Interesting to compare with the Buick Lido show car then Pininfarina did. http://forums.aaca.org/f169/buick-pinin-farina-concept-car-1957-a-262411.html
Here another pic of the Lido, I saw on Ebay.
I absolutely LOVE the menacing look of the back end of that prototype! Imagine that in today’s traffic – just a tap on the brakes bringing the monster’s glowing red eyes to life would put some fear into the most hardened of tailgaters. And that third fin pointing right back at the offender tells you that it means business.
BREATHTAKING!
At least they took my breath away. But I don’t think in the way the creator envisioned.
If three fins are good, seven fins are best of all! 1959 GM Firebird III.
Pretty cool, but y’know, I think they coulda squeezed a couple more on.
Amazing! Designs that Bruce McCall couldn’t parody!
These all seem like the work of an angry and overworked designer.
They want what?
More Fins?!
OH, I’LL GIVE THEM MORE FINS! rabblerabble HMPH!
Are we sure they didn’t have Red Bull back then? Or was it all fueled by Johnny Walker and Chesterfields?
My bride and I watched the 1937 film “Topper”, which prominently featured a ’30s-era roadster with a garish middle fin. I couldn’t figure out what it was.
Any ideas?
It was a modified Buick. Here is a great article all about it:
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2011/02/20/sia-flashback-the-topper-buicks-many-metamorphoses/
That proposed design for the ’59 Buick is simply hideous! I don’t know what the designers of that era were smoking, but it must have been some pretty heady stuff. Looking back at that era, it was styling run amok–no wonder Rambler sales took off. In my opinion, the period from 1958-1960 was one of bizarre styling over everything else. I think that even before the ’59’s went on sale, everybody in Detroit realized they had gone too far and began backing off. Don’t believe me? For a example, just compare the styling of the ’59 Chevy with the ’61. I rest my case.
Yep, the 1961 GM and Lincoln car designs were ‘locked in’ during the crazy fin era of ’59. Fall 1960 saw these new clean designs, so they knew to dial back just in time.
Yet once you get rid of the lousy design elements (which they did) what was left in the ’59 Buick was a rather attractive car for the day, and probably the last time Buick came up with a design that wasn’t senior-citizen friendly until a few years ago. See my note further down about the “put it on, then remove it” school of automotive design.
But Rambler’s styling was just as bizarre (or more bizarre in most examples) as any contemporary car.
If the three finned Buick had actually made production, one can only imagine what Tom McCahill would have said about it in Mechanix Illustrated….
One other thing, imagine the body shop repair bills for rear finned quarter panels. Must have been steep for the late 50’s. Compared to a plain sided car, had to be more labor intensive.
If you stop and think about it for a minute, those wild and crazy designs make a certain amount of sense. Car design at the time (pre-computers) meant first drawing on paper, then transferring it to a scale model clay, then a full sized clay. Details that look really good on a relatively small drawing, and still hold up as being OK on a, say 3/8ths scale model, very possibly don’t show how absolutely wrong they are until you have to look at it full sized.
Also, has anyone else ever noticed that very few first and second generation clays of what later became a production model have very little design cohesiveness? It’s like they’d put down the general shape and possibly the desired roof line, but everything else was individual ideas stuck on to see how they’d look.
Given this thought then, the design process would have been a process of elimination of each design element that either: a. Didn’t work, b. Was too costly to produce, or, c. The guy in charge did like, for whatever reason. Once all the unacceptable elements were eliminated (and sometimes the elimination process didn’t go far enough, aka 1957 Mercury) what was left was tidied up to work with all the other elements and, voila, there’s next year’s model!
Regarding the Edsel front end: I always felt the Edsel wasn’t a bad looking car by the standards of the day (any ’58 GM other than Chevy and Cadillac, ’57 Plymouth, especially the ’57-58 Dodge). That grille was supposed to be vertical, intended so from day one, because everybody else at the time was using horizontal grilles. It certainly looks no worse than the ’56 Packard Request, which is always treated as one of the final wonderful attempts by Packard.
The Tatras of the 1930s had dorsal fins, but that was OK, because Tatra.
True enough! “everyone” thinks fins are a 50s thing, But, they had a long run: 1930s-1970s
Outrageous. But among all the comments above, the Edsel seems to be the marker for outrageousness, yet the 58-60 Lincolns get a pass. The 59 Mercury looks elegantly subdued in comparison.
It’s good that the designers didn’t go with the third fin, though it does have some sci-fi quality to it.
And then we come to today: another period of excess.
Thanks for the link to the articles, Paul. Michael Lamm has been one of my favorites since his used car reporting for MT in the 60s.
I don’t have a problem with either Edsel’s styling or the Big Lincolns. I have always thought that making “fun” of the Edsel styling became a “thing” after Edsel itself was killed, (never actually had a chance… ) The 58 was no better or worse than any other mid market 58 – and a damn sight better than what “they” did to Packard at the time!
From the same school of thought that brought you 21 chrome hashes on each rear fender of the ’58 Limited.
And, yet, I like it. Not the gaping turbine maw, but the three fins? Yeah. Let’s *really* be over the top.
Was LSD available for “general” use in the 50s?
I remember in the 60s that one of the companies that sold model car kits to kids like me produced a series of models that were depictions of possible new cars built by car companies that had died. A model of a 1960s Stutz Bearcat, for example, took up the design cues of the models built in the 20s and tried, (usually unsuccessfully) to update them.
This proposal for a possible Buick reminds me of those models in that it looks just a bit too over-styled.
I also realize designers had to “stretch the envelope” quite often, but I can almost imagine the engineers laughing at the extravagant possible designs for many of the Edsel proposals.
We tend to underestimate the faroutness of the Greatest Generation. It was mostly martinis and Pall Malls, but pot was quietly common in musical and artsy circles. Tim Leary belonged to that generation. We hippies were followers, not leaders.
I had an older friend who was a cop from the 1930s to the 1950s and he told me in no uncertain terms that marijuana was “everywhere” (in the Mon Valley near Pittsburgh, PA) in the 1930s (gaining smokers during Prohibition 1919-1933), Use receded during WWII, Picking up again in the ’50s, Daddyo!
The three-finned Buick would have made a worthy Batmobile.
The back end of the car seems to be a deliberate attempt to make a front end type of grille look, but on the back of the car, as well. It may have worked better, had they dropped the third fin, and then made a more streamlined front with almost no grille (still needed some airflow), but maybe more of a wedge shape that would give the back end the streamlined aircraft look that it was after. It would have given a reverse look to the front and back “faces”.
The look of the back “face” though, reminds me of an angry catfish……a mutant one, at that, that sported a fin on top of its head.
Collectible Automobile had pics of prototype 1959 Buick using the taller ’58 bodyshell with a new front end, and it did look ‘humungous’. Can see why there was a ‘rebellion’ to the lower looks.
For those who haven’t seen it: plenty of Buick in the 1959 “Up From Clay” GM promo film, from sketches and clays to the eventual assembly line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACWMbeXd31s
Yes! Great film (I have it as an Mp4 in my collection.) Perhaps the last where a body program was done “in pencil” (Not that I’m certain). Both GM and MoPar began using computers for body design by the early ’60s (Yes kids!) in fact, the 1960 MoPar “unibody” cars may have been among the earliest. Also this is the “birth” of the “B/C/D” GM cars sharing the majority of the “full-sized) shell,going foward untill 1984, a significant part of the landscape untill the end of the “full sized” car as “standard”. in the US. Must See TV, Indeed!
I theorize that in the 1950s, an era of crushing conformity and societal ostracization for those who differ from the “norm” these dream rockets were a reaction to that stifling oppression that was ’50s social life. Life itself was very rigid and these cars can be seen as an act of rebellion against the era.
” An era of crushing conformity and societal ostracization for those who differ from the “norm””
I defy anyone who can name me an era where these lines could NOT be said about.
PS I grew up in the Post LBJ utopia of the 1970s!
I think there might be something to the LSD talk. I’m sure psychedelics were easily obtainable in Detroit in the 1950s and it wouldn’t surprise me if these guys dropped ‘cid and had car designing parties. That’s a better explanation than any others I’ve heard. This bizarre design fetish also spilled over into the highways across the country, resulting in some interchanges that cause one to think “Did anybody actually think this was a good idea at one time?”
Attached is the downtown freeway loop of Tulsa, OK. Note the strange design of the highways, especially the interchanges. The northeastern interchange is wonderfully outlandish and to get from I-244 in either direction to US 75 in any either direction involves left exits. I-244 is believed to have the most left exits and entrances per square mile in the country at 22 in a mere 15 miles. The left exit is a major no-no in highway design, yet these day trippers built them just like a normal DOT would build diamond interchanges. Check it out:
MAYBE NOT ENOUGH!
der de derpa de der da de da der!