This 1951 Dodge Wayfarer 3 Passenger – Three Window Coupe and its Plymouth Concord stablemate were the last holdouts on a body design that was once quite common. 1952 would be their final outing, to be replaced by Club Coupes/Business Coupes. Its proportions are a bit unusual, looking like it should have a little pickup bed in the back. But its trunk was huge; just the ticket for a salesman with a lot of product or hit men needing to haul some stiffs.
Dude does look like a hitman. Shades, zoot suit, white wingtips.
A hit man might be packing a violin case instead of a briefcase. 😉
Nobody who dressed like that bought a brown Dodge business coupe. 🙂
The coat and shoes match the whitewalls.
I just looked this up: “wingtip” refers to the wing shaped perforations on a brogue shoe. The brogue is a men’s dress shoe that has pinking and perforations as design elements on the upper – not necessarily in a wing shape. The perforations originally went all the way through in order to drain a shoe full of water, but then became just decorative. For your further shoe research needs: https://bespokeunit.com/shoes/styles/
There isn’t enough detail to show any pattern on this guy’s shoes, but they do have thick brown soles which indicates a casual shoe, probably not a variation available in a wingtip in those days. I’m guessing white bucks. More research, involving Pat Boone:
http://www.thehistorialist.com/2011/06/oxford-white-bucks-american-classic.html
To further annoy everyone: not a zoot suit. Don’t make me post a photo. I may already be banned here for the shoes.
Absolutely he’s wearing white bucks. White bucks and a white sport coat were a look then and for years after. Bill Haley sometimes affected that look around 1955. Marty Robbins recorded “White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation” in 1957 although I can’t be sure he wore the white bucks.
Definitely, casual but, I’ve owned several pair over the summers and, didn’t hesitate wearing them with a sport jacket and, dress slacks.
Looks like a ’50s version of Quagmire (Giggity)
It amazes me that these stuck around as long as they did. The 3 window/2-3 passenger coupe was often a good looking body style before the war, but that did not carry over to any of the postwar offerings, IMHO.
I was going to add the Studebaker business coupe as another around this long – it used a 3 passenger roof/body with a passthrough behind the single seat – but that one did not make it past 1951. Which was odd given that 1952 was still on the same basic body. Its sales must have been dreadful as they are very seldom seen.
We need to understand the times to understand the automobile. Indeed, the business coupe of the ilk of the Wayfarer was coming to an end. Let us think of those times when salespeople traveled distances and brought with them samples of their products and promotional items. In 195, salespeople were still actively engaged in this practice. Typically, the salespeople stayed in decent hotels within a city, not at cabins on the road. The hotel offered better services for the salesperson including telephones, a concierge and more. A company might have bought the business coupe for its salesforce because it did the job and was, frankly, cheaper than a two-door or four-door sedan. At that time, a salesperson was happy if the car was equipped with “R&H.” That’s radio and heater for you young folk. However, Dodge also offered a sporty model of this coupe, the convertible. I doubt that a company would foot the bill for a Briggs-bodied convertible but the salesperson who paid for his own might consider it. I have attached a photo of a 1951 model. Indeed, by 1953, this body style had gone. Companies and individual buyers preferred one car to do double duty, to wit, field sales and family transportation. A dear friend, long passed, had the income to buy in 1950 a 1950 Ford business coupe for his work and a 1950 Cadillac Series 62 Coupe de Ville, blue and white, for his wife to use. My great-uncle Paul was on the road in Texas in 1918 as a field salesperson. Some of the roads were plank roads. Unfortunately, I never asked him what he drove back then. Before I was born, his company did reward him for his excellent sales records with a 1931 Graham-Paige sedan.
I wonder what changes in postwar sales spelled the end of the traveling salesman job, previously common enough for carmakers to offer a dedicated body style? Something about the changes brought by WWII, or was it a longer term trend the war no doubt impacted, and what exactly? I have some guesses.
Postwar (and prewar style also) Fords and Chevys both offered a “coupe” model with a shorter roof but still with (shorter) rear side windows, and versions with a back seat as well as the no back seat salesman (not woman and certainly not salesperson!) model. I guess the six passenger coupes were for single guys (or maybe even women!) being single, like later Mustang buyers. It seems like only Studebaker and Chrysler went with a whole different dedicated model, based on what I found in oldcarbrochures. The brochures always do reflect their time periods in interesting ways beyond the car nerdy documenting of changes in the actual cars.
There’s some hint of what was happening but not really the reasons why except as part of general postwar changes in American society in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” from just this time period, 1949.
Their jobs were largely converted into vendor merchandisers who covered (and still do) a fixed local route consisting of fewer and larger stores. The company car, still an essential tool, was left with enough life in it at turnover time to make resale value a consideration, so 6-passenger sedans (likely 2-doors at first) replaced them, progressing to smaller station wagons and largish hatchbacks when they became available to make room for larger displays, and eventually the ubiquitous compact CUV.
Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated. The traveling salesman still lives. There just aren’t many so many of us anymore. Most traveling salesman that I know sell specialized parts & equipment to other industries where personal factory visits are still required. Others – like me – sell our company’s ability to make things rather than selling any particular thing. We still lug stuff around, but it is usually much more limited stuff intended to show proof of concept or quality of work rather than be actual merchandise for sale. The vehicles we now drive are whatever our fleet managers happened to buy rather than something purpose designed for our trade.
By the way, as Arthur Miller wrote in “Death of a Salesman”, Willie Loman drove a Studebaker.
Fluid Drive was standard unlike the Plymouth version. Mine was a Dominion Blue sedan. Well trimmed inside and out. Black painted window dividers were about the only thing that gave away the fact that this was the “cheap” model. Owned it in the 1960’s. Wouldn’t mind having it back in the condition I left it in..
The only traveling salesman I ever knew drove this, no backseat, relatively big trunk. He sold Minolta cameras to dealers from Los Angeles to Phoenix.
It appears he made a good living doing so.
This is a simply lovely car .
Dominion Blue is nice too : https://encycolorpedia.com/1e2b4a
Make mine sky blue please .
-Nate
Have some photos from the mid 60’s when my brother and I owned it. Paint still shiny. Sorry, I don’t have a scanner though. Had very tall bumper guards with overrider bars, like we used to see on taxicabs.
It appears he made a good living doing so.
That dark Dominion Blue seems to have made a comeback in recent years among the German luxury marques. I’ve seen a number of models in similar colors, which reminds me of the shade found on many WWII US warbirds.
The 1949-’52 three window Mopar business coupes and roadster/convertible coupes are the most popular, sought-after model body style of those years by collectors currently. For that matter, so are their 1941-’42 & 1946-’48 predecessors.
Too bad this shape couldn’t be reinvigorated as a folding hardtop. Seems to have the proper proportions.
It may come as a surprise to many of you car nuts here on CC, to find out Packard offered a business coupe [no back seat, only a cargo area floor] all the way thru 1951!
This came as no surprise to me, as a Packard history guy I knew the company had an executive staff that was still mired in the 1930s. But once Jim Vance came in, the lower level models were on the out!