The General Motors B body provided the basis for some of the most popular cars the company ever built. Its long and proud history spans many model names, car Divisions and decades. But there was a brief period in the early postwar years where the B body went AWOL. Let us see if we can figure out where it went.
Have you ever had two pieces of conflicting information running on two parallel tracks in your mind so that they never meet? Exhibit A: the all-new postwar 1948-49 GM cars. We know that in 1948 and 1949 the Mighty GM let loose with a hugely successful lineup of new postwar designs that cemented the company’s market dominance. We also know that GM had, from the days of the great depression, used a system of three primary bodies to supply the various divisions with unique offerings. The A body was for Chevrolet and Pontiac, the B body was for Oldsmobile and Buick while the C body was for the Cadillac, big Buick and sometimes the big Oldsmobile. We also know that the 1948 Cadillac and “Futuramic” 98 used a brand new C body and that the original 1949 Olds 88 was on the Chevy A body. Which is why, with 303 cubic inches of V8 stuffed between its front fenders, the first 88 was a hot rodder’s dream.
So what’s the problem, you ask? I see two: First, where in all of these well-worn ruts of history is the 1949 GM B body? Second, by 1951 there was a clear B body, which makes me wonder just what was that thing that GM kind of called a B body in 1950? This second question will have to wait until tomorrow for an answer because, as we will discover, things at GM were not running as smoothly as might be assumed.
The General offered several different body styles in those years, so the simplest way to keep track of the bread-and-butter models (or our A-B-C’s, perhaps) is to restrict our examination to the basic four door sedans. So no coupes, no convertibles, no station wagons and no fastbacks, at least where fastbacks augmented the “regular” sedans, because these would just serve to messy our scorecards. For our purposes today we are also going to restrict ourselves to the more plebeian models and thus ignore the “C Special” (the lengthened C body that generally served the Cadillac Series 60 Fleetwood) as well as the D body, which was generally used only by the Cadillac Fleetwood 75 sedan and limousine.
1946-47 As Easy As A-B-C
The 1946-47 A body cars from top to bottom: 1947 Chevrolet Fleetmaster, 1947 Pontiac Torpedo, 1947 Oldsmobile 66 Special
In 1946-47 General Motors and Fisher Body kept everything easy. First there was the A body which, as we know, was mainly for Chevrolet. Although the Chevrolet Fleetline got a blind rear quarter version of this body, it was still an A body which dated from 1941 in its basic form and from 1942 with those long front fenders which shared real estate with the front doors. This workhorse A body was also the basis for the lower level Pontiac Torpedo and even the Oldsmobile 66. Their wheelbases were different (116 inches for Chevy, 119 for both the Pontiac and Oldsmobile) but they were all the same GM A body.
The 1946-47 B body cars, from top to bottom: 1947 Pontiac Streamliner, 1947 Oldsmobile 78 Dynamic Cruiser, 1947 Buick Special, 1946 Cadillac 61
The 1946-47 pure fastback B body, which dated from 1941, was shared even more widely. From Pontiac’s high-level Streamliner (122 inch wheelbase) through the Olds 76/78 (125 inches), Buick Series 40 Special (121 inches) and even the Cadillac 61 (126 inches), it did the heavy lifting for the heart of the GM lineup as buyers tried their best to cajole new cars out of salesmen holding long, long waiting lists.
The 1946-47 C body cars, top to bottom: 1947 Oldsmobile 98 Custom Cruiser, 1947 Buick Super and Roadmaster (shown), 1946 Cadillac 62
Finally there was the C body which, as we all know, was used for the Oldsmobile 98 (127 inch wheelbase), the Buick Super 50 (124 inches)/Roadmaster 70 (129 inches) and the Cadillac 62 (also 129 inches). This was the Big Dog in the GM body pecking order that had been newly introduced for 1942. Wait, do dogs have a pecking order? Or is that just chickens? Never mind, you get the idea that this body was reserved for the expensive end of the company’s model selection. So now we have shown the classic GM A-B-C body system in all its commonality and in all its variety, a system that endured for a long time. At least until things took a severe turn for 1959. Except . . . no.
1948 The Beginnings Of Change
The 1948 A body cars, top to bottom: Chevrolet Fleetmaster, Pontiac DeLuxe Torpedo, Oldsmobile 66
1948 saw nothing new with the A body cars, each of which retained its interesting design which was halfway between a fastback and a bustle-butt. Aside from some minor trim changes each of them remained mostly the same, whether from Chevrolet, Pontiac or Oldsmobile.
The 1948 B body cars, from top to bottom: Pontiac DeLuxe Streamliner, Oldsmobile 76/78, Buick Special
The sleek 1948 B body lineup lost one member, though, as the Cadillac 61 rolled over and fell out of the B body bed. Or got promoted to the C body, actually. The Pontiac Streamliner, Olds 76/78 and Buick Special surely, however, provided more than enough variety on this structure. It is interesting to look at each Division’s car on the same body and note the different flavor that each of their styling studios was able to impart purely by using trim. It is also apparent from the long hoods that each of the three Divisions to use the B body needed to accommodate a lengthy straight eight engine.
The 1948 C body cars, top to bottom: Oldsmobile 98, Cadillac 61 (shown)/62
The big news for 1948 was GM’s first all-new postwar cars. It should be no surprise that the high-end C body cars were the first in showrooms with a new look. Well almost all of them. The “Futuramic” Oldsmobile 98 (on its 125 inch wheelbase) and all Cadillacs (the Series 61 is shown here, which shared its 126 inch wheelbase with the Series 62) wowed well-heeled buyers with their modern good looks. Each of these cars lost two inches (Olds) and three inches (Cadillac) from their respective wheelbases on their new bodies. But wait – what about Buick?
1948 Buick Roadmaster (on the obsolete 1942-47 C body)
Well, Buick was late in turning in its homework because the 1948 Super and Roadmaster had to wear last year’s suit for one more season, giving us the anomaly of two different C bodies being in production concurrently. According to David Temple in his book The Cars Of Harley Earl, Harlow Curtice decided that the first proposal for the new 1948 Buick was not “Buick” enough. The delay caused by going back to the drafting tables for a second try at a new front end resulted in no new C body Buick until 1949. Are you confused yet? Don’t worry, you will be.
1949 Where Is The B Body?
The 1949 A body cars, top to bottom: Chevrolet Styleline DeLuxe, Pontiac Chieftain DeLuxe, Oldsmobile 76/88
1949 was The Year. The year that GM was finally there with a new postwar lineup. Well, kind of. The A body was certainly new. Chevrolet and Pontiac were all in with the new body. Then there was Oldsmobile – instead of just the cheapest model (the 66 was gone and the 76 now anchored Olds lineup) using the A body, the new mid-level 88 used it as well. Wheelbases for the A body cars ranged from the Chevy’s 116 inches through the Pontiac’s 120 inches and back down to the Oldsmobile’s 119.5 inches.
It is interesting that the new A body styling looked very much like the C body that had come out the prior year. “Very much like” is actually something of an understatement as the new A body was a virtual “Mini Me” to the corporation’s senior cars . . .
The 1949 C body cars, top to bottom: Oldsmobile 98, Buick Super (shown)/Roadmaster and Cadillac 61 (shown)/62
. . . which looked like this. The Olds 98 and all Cadillac models were without many visual changes (although both contained brand new engines that would dominate their respective Divisions for decades). And Buick joined the C body crowd with its new 1949 Series 50 Super and Series 70 Roadmaster. Again, wheelbases varied fairly widely from Oldsmobile’s 125 inches through Buick’s 124 (Super) and 129 inches (Roadmaster) and to Cadillac’s 126 inches. Only the Fleetwood’s 133 inch wheelbase would stretch beyond that of the Roadmaster, but then the Fleetwood was technically a “C Special” body and not really part of this discussion.
1946-First Series 1949 Chrysler New Yorker (top), Second Series 1949 Chrysler New Yorker (bottom).
Now, back to the 1949 B body. What 1949 B body you might ask? An excellent question, that. We (or at least I) have spent decades secure in the knowledge that Chrysler Corporation had been the last company to completely revamp its vehicle lineup following the war. Not only did Chrysler wait until 1949, its ’49 models were late so that there was a “First Series 1949” and a “Second Series” (true) 1949 line which came along in January of that year (which we compared here).
1949 Buick Special (on the obsolete 1941-48 B body)
It turns out that I have been quite wrong because there was one major brand that was later to market with an all-new postwar line than Chrysler: Buick! The 1949 Buick Special, as it turns out, was the one and only vehicle which GM offered on a B body for 1949. But it was the old B body that dated back to 1941, and had been last used by everyone else in 1948. I could not use a brochure picture because the Special’s existence was not even acknowledged in the ’49 Buick brochure. “Buick Looks Fine For ’49” apparently only applied to Supers and Roadmasters. The pictured car was chosen because it is documented extensively online, including photos of the data plate which conclusively establish it as a ’49.
The cover of the 1949 Buick brochure. It covered the Super and Roadmaster models only, making no mention whatsoever of the Special.
The ’49 Special was rarely seen, too. According to the Standard Catalog of Buick, the Series 40 Special was offered in only two body styles that year. The sedan (pictured) was the most popular of the two with 5,777 built, while only 4,631 copies of the two-door Sedanette made it out of the plant. This is apparently due to production of the ’49 Special ceasing late in December of 1948. For comparison’s sake Buick built around 25,000 1948 Specials.
The Terre Haute Auto Company would not tell readers if this Buick Special was a 1949 or a 1950 model, only that it was “The New Buick Special.”
The new “1949” Special came quite late in the model year (August 8th of 1949) and, according to the Standard Catalog of Buick, it was really an early 1950 model in all but name. One of the few differences is that the early version used an exterior hood release mechanism which used a key inserted into one of the portholes instead of the inside release used in the regular 1950 cars. Even then the new Special was only released in “Jetback” (fastback) form. The Special “Tourback” (notchback) Sedans would not appear until the rest of the 1950 line made its debut a few months later.
So now it can be said unequivocally that there really was no legitimate 1949 B body car from General Motors at all. We can see that Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick each made a different decision about how it would deal with the lack of a 1949 B body. Pontiac became an A Body-only car, simply choosing to drop its larger model. Olds moved its mid-range models down to the new A body while keeping its flagship on the big C body. Buick would not lower itself to be seen on an A body and instead soldiered on with the leftover ’48 body, and even then just barely by building very few of them in the last few months of calendar year 1948. Buick would then choose to go without its highest volume model (for eight months!) until a new body would be ready – which turned out to be late summer of 1949. And that replacement would be, in all actuality, a 1950 model.
But was that 1950 Buick Special actually built on a new B body? The second part of this mystery will be the subject for our next installment, and may not be quite so easily answered as this one was.
All brochure pictures are from the fabulous collection at OldCarBrochures.org
Further reading:
The Mystery Of The Missing B Body – Part 2 (1950-52) (J P Cavanaugh)
1941 Buick Super/1947 Buick Roadmaster – The Look Of Successs (J P Cavanaugh)
1948 Buick Series 40 Special Sedanet – Just A Few Inches Short Of A GM Greatest Hit (Paul Niedermeyer)
1946 Chevrolet Stylemaster – Marinated And Seasoned Leftovers (Jason Shafer)
1949 Chevrolet Fleetline Special – Your Choice Of Fastback Or Notchback (Paul Niedermeyer)
1949 Oldsmobile 88 – Ghost Of The Future, Legend Of The Past (Bellinghamster)
1948 Pontiac Deluxe Streamliner Station Wagon – At The Dawn Of The Jet Age, A Varnishing Breed (J P Cavanaugh)
Wow, J P. Really just wow. The 1950 Buick is perfection to me and it’s great to read about its progression here. This is a bookmark article, so lucid with great images. Wow.
Well thanks, Don. This is high praise indeed coming from a guy who has written his share of top quality pieces here.
But I will part company with you on the 49 v 50 Buick question. I always found the 48-49 new C body cars the most beautiful of all the new postwar designs, and have always been mystified as to why GM walked away from that design language so quickly on their large cars.
I want to wait for Part 2 before delving into it, but I’m in the space that things went downhill from the 50, which had a grille working at maximum effect to match the rest of those sensational curves.
This has been a fantastic re-read. Looking much forward to the next one. hehehe.
and have always been mystified as to why GM walked away from that design language so quickly on their large cars.
Without giving away too much from Part 2, we have to remember that it was a last minute decision by Earl to not go with a much more advanced design, the Interceptor CO, for the ’48 C bodies. The resulting ’48 Cs, as handsome as they are, are also rather conservative, and are really a direct stylistic evolution of the ’42-47 C bodies.
It appears that Earl had a change of heart pretty soon….
This is a fascinating subject. While I have not read ahead, it makes me wonder what kind of strife or missed deadlines took place in Flint.
And, of all divisions, Buick isn’t the one a person would think of keeping leftovers. Pontiac, yes, but not Buick.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s installment.
Key in a porthole??? Strange! Buick always had gimmicks to fool unfamiliar drivers and gas station attendants, but that one must have gone too far.
I can’t think of any other key-locked hood on American cars.
I could have been more clear on this. My understanding is that the hood key was to be a special universal key that service stations and garages could keep on hand so that they didn’t have to get in the car to open the hood. Sort of like those special wrenches for unlocking those wire wheelcovers from the 80s, but a one size fits all.
It must have been as big of a PITA as it sounds because that feature was gone after 3 months or so.
Not hard to imagine what might happen in rural Potato Falls, Idaho, when a tourist in one of these newfangled Buicks pulls into the gas station…
Wild guess; In the era when postwar austerity was expected, only the expensive C body was meant to retain its’ size. The B body would shrink down a bracket and gain very C-like styling to make up the difference, and the Cadet project or its’ less radical successor would take the place of the A.
When that turned out to not be the case and the economy roared, the C was unaffected hence its’ (mostly) 1948 appearance, the would-be B became the A and the less-radical-post-Cadet was packed off to Australia to become the Holden 48/215 FX.
More or less exactly the same thing happened at Ford around that time FWIU.
Excellent write up JP!!!! i can see why GM ruled the roost in those years. i can also see that Oldsmobile always looked distinctive in all it’s years, you can always tell it’s an Olds!! of course would have picked the Caddy! thanks for this interesting bit of GM history. looking forward to the second half
On a side note does anybody know who copied who in regards to the 49 GM fastback coupes? was it GM to Rolls/Bentley or the other way around?
eddie, the Bentley Continental was first built in 1952. Does that answer your question?
And the Cadillac was there with it in 1948.
Thank you both!!
48/49 Caddy Sedanette is the best looking car of all time IMO, excluding sports cars.
This is the first time I have really seen what a change the ’48 Cadillac represented over the previous model. The ’46 you have pictured just looks, “Big GM” to me, while the ’48 shouts, “Look at me, I’m a CADILLAC. You won’t find me anywhere else!” No wonder it made such a big splash.
A very nice job of sorting out the shifting sands of postwar Fisher body.
I’m guessing that perhaps some of part 2 will cover the odd 88 vs Super 88 split of the early ’50s.
I particularly like the comparison pictures of each group. While these cars are not nonexistent at shows, it’s not likely to see a matched set like that in person. Looking at the brochure art it is interesting to see how much was really shared between the brakes and how much effort was made to separate them.
> What 1949 B body you might ask? An excellent question, that. We (or at least I) have spent decades secure in the knowledge that Chrysler Corporation had been the last company to completely revamp its vehicle lineup following the war.
Wouldn’t that be Packard in 1951?
You make a reasonable point, but I am willing to give Packard credit for the 48, which I would argue was changed enough to count as new. At least new enough.
I wouldn’t agree. It was a heavy facelift of the ’41 Clipper, with the emphasis on “heavy”. Still pretty obviously a prewar design IMO.
Excellent post — the brochure pics, the clear timeline, the fabulous ’40s styling… My favourite decade for American cars. It’s so helpful for those of us who didn’t grow up with GM nomenclature to have articles like this. Eagerly awaiting part two!
Wow, cool, never knew about the ‘left over’ 1949 Buick Special.
So, my grandparent’s first Buick, a ’50 Special, was ‘all new’, 😉
I’ve seen a couple of pics of the ’48 Buick styling proposal and it’s nice-too bad Harlow Curtis had his “bad dream” and rejected it. In some ways I prefer the styling details of the ’48 Cadillac and Olds 98 to the ’49, but new V-8s in the ’49s are a huge plus.
Imagine being a Packard, Lincoln or Chrysler salesman and trying to sell your product over the GM cars, although it was still a sellers market and I guess people had to settle fon what they could get.
Imagine being a Packard, Lincoln or Chrysler salesman and trying to sell your product over the GM cars
True enough, but given the choice in 1948 or 49, Studebaker and Hudson would also have been high on my list, as well as Nash and K-F, alongside GM. And the ’49 Mercury is quite a looker, too, IMHO.
That’s why the ’40s was such a great decade: the variety of choice was still huge.
Fascinating history!
Very interesting tidbit of history!
What a great read!
If I spotted one of those ’49 early Specials, I would have assumed it was a ’42-’48.
Love this kind of esoteric stuff. A great read. Interesting how GM was criticized in the 1980s for offering such lookalike models when you didn’t have to look back too far to see them doing exactly the same thing.
Also, as somebody with scant knowledge of 1940s cars, I have to say that I would really struggle to match the car to the brand. They all look so similar. I guess now I understand why people say that about modern domestic cars… If you don’t have that knowledge base, everything kind of blurs together.
What a great trove of information! I’ve looked through my brochure collection many times trying to sort out the body commonality. What are the chances of a follow up study on GM bodies from 1933 0r4 through 1942?
Thanks, Dave. You have a great idea, and it would force me to dive into an area of GM history where I am particularly weak. Now to find the time . . .
Thank you too, JP.
I hope you can squeeze in some time here and there, because it would be a great source for all us GM devotees.dave carlson
While I was growing up in the 1940’s I was aware of the evolution of car bodies since the there was a noticeable difference between the “narrow square shaped” early 1930’s cars and the wider and more streamlined looking 1940’s cars. I also recognizied the similarity of car bodies made by the same manufacturer’s (like GM or “Chrysler Products) long before I could even read the nameplates.
Those new 1950 Buick Specials “fastbacks” that appeared after the summer 1949 were obviously wider than the new “B Body” 1951 Buick Specials (and 1951 Oldsmobile Super 88″s) and were the same size as the “C” Body 1951 Buick Super Sedanet so I conclude that all 1950 Buick Specials were “C” Body.
Informative thread!
Interesting that Pontiac, just the second rung in the Chevy-Pontiac-Olds-Buick-Cadillac lineup, actually offered an A, B and C body in ’40 and ’41. Comparing the Pontiac Torpedo Coupe to the Cadillac 62 Series Coupe, you were getting basically a similar platform. True, the Pontiac was not as powerful, didn’t have the plush Cadillac interior, etc. But a clever value for the money for some smart shoppers.