Given Rambler’s image as something of a cheapskate brand in the 60s, it’s easy to forget that it was rather the opposite in the early-mid ’50s. Rambler targeted women, with a series of ads featuring successful women in a wide range of professions, such as this one with Margaret Sullavan, a star of the American theater.
As to my headline:
I don’t like to single out commenters, but when I steered John C. to my 1955 Rambler CC, which goes into greater detail about Rambler’s success in targeting more affluent and better educated buyers, especially women, he responded with:
In defense of men though, many of those 50s women buyers were spending lavishly their husbands and father’s money.
Um, really? Married women were doing this on the sly, coming home with a new Rambler? Hi honey; look what I picked up today while I was out shopping.
And even in the profoundly unlikely event they were, it assumes it wasn’t her money too, if they were married? She was just an unpaid domestic servant, then?
The reality is that the exact opposite was much more likely, and not just in the ’50s: women being saddled with cars that their husbands bought, with little or no input from them. I witnessed that first hand, when my father drove off with my mom’s beloved Civic one day, and returned with a Saturn Ion. She was furious, but what was she going to do?
Contrary to popular assumption, there was a growing number of women in the ’50s that had careers, and didn’t have to resort to “spending lavishly their husband’s money”. That was the brilliance of Rambler’s targeting this demographic: it was actually the key essential thing that allowed them to survive the early-mid 50s, at a time when all the other domestic compacts were bombing out. Women saved Rambler, and it didn’t take lavishly spending their husband’s money to make it happen.
Which reminds me, my grade school violin teacher drove a Porsche 356; she lived with another woman who was also a music teacher, and they were obviously lesbians; nobody ever said anything and didn’t care. And they could each afford nice cars.
Noted Gotham reporter Lois Lane had one.
I see you used the same photo in the linked (and very lengthy and complete) previous post.
Now, what is that car in front of this photo of the Rambler?
Clark was also loyal to the brand.
Clark’s car is worth a lot of money these days!
The car in front of the Rambler is a Frazer from 1949 or 50.
Loving husband says, Wifey this year we can finally add a second car. Don’t worry no skimping either, I think we can swing a Buick!
Wifey, “Or a Rambler?”
Loving but confused husband, “Whatever you say, but sometimes you say the funniest things”.
I can tell you that if any of the loving husbands in my extended family had referred to his Mrs. by the term “wifey” (other than in obvious and rarely invoked jest) that guy would have been fending for his own meals and sleeping on the couch.
Common term in 1954, the time period in question.
Well John ;
Different strokes for different times .
One bloke I know is fairly ‘woke’ and one time a bunch of us were sitting around talking about the settled life (this was before he got married) and I made some comment that included ” my old lady” who was sitting next to me ~ he instantly became all fake outraged and said loudly ” ?! WHY DO YOU CALL HER YOUR ‘OLD LADY’ ?!” .
She looked a him and said “because I am ” .
-Nate
I checked with Mrs. John C. wifey was okay sparingly, but she drew the line at my old lady. I think I will stick with her Christian name.
And, there you go John .
Remember : ‘if Mama isn’t happy, aint’ no one going to be happy’.
However you do it keep those home fires burning brightly .
-Nate
The story about the violin teacher reminds me of the high-school gym teacher who lived in our neighborhood with her female friend.
That didn’t attract much comment that I could remember. What did attract comment was each of them regularly buying brand-new Mercurys every few years. (The rumor was that one of them was the daughter of a Lincoln-Mercury dealer.)
The gym teacher drove a dark green 1968 Cougar for a few years. She was obviously proud of it. Every year, the official yearbook featured a photo gallery of one teacher. In the 1978 yearbook, she was the featured teacher. Even though she had traded it by then, there was a photo of her standing beside that Cougar in our yearbook.
Two incomes, shared expenses and no children has always been the easy way to material prosperity, no matter what their sexual orientation may be. Others of us who have gone the route of multiple children and a single income have found that prosperity much harder to come by. Although with everyone on their own and the last one getting married in less than two weeks, I have been enjoying lots of non-financial dividends.
What also sticks in my mind about those two ladies is that their cars often “matched.” For example, when the gym teacher had the dark green Cougar, her housemate had a dark green 1970 Montego hardtop coupe.
As you say, there are also non-financial dividends to consider when making life choices. Particularly when you watch children successfully transition to adulthood.
These were good little cars IMO .
I wonder if Clark Kent only drove that Healy – Nash because it was sponsored ? .
-Nate
Kellogg’s was the sponsor, not Nash. The show, however, apparently had a deal with Nash to use its cars. Later, the show switched to Chrysler products — Lois had a Plymouth convertible and the villains usually drove an Imperial. There was also a Daily Planet Imperial “company car” in one episode.
The Nash-Healey in the series supposedly was the one owned by Dick Powell and seen in the movie, “Susan Slept Here” (1954).
I think generalizations in this area are bound to be wrong as often as they are right because there are as many variations on the dynamics of a marriage as there are married couples.
The experience in my extended family was that women had a strong influence on the cars they were expected to drive. But then both sides of my family were populated by women who were not easily pushed around. I knew other couples where the husbands made all of the car-buying decisions – sometimes because the wives just didn’t care and sometimes because they were exercising control. I think the experience went all over the map based on a whole bunch of reasons.
The Rambler follows the trajectory of many cars that started out with some cachet or snob appeal and then gradually lost it. Let’s see – The Packard 120 and Six traded on Packard’s reputation until the lesser models became the norm. Studebaker had a high-class name which gave the 1939 Champion some significant tailwinds. The company’s upper-middle price aura was certainly gone by the late 50s, if not well before. Rambler began as an up-market compact when George Mason was in control, but George Romney pimped it out for volume starting around 1958-59 and the prestige slowly leaked out of the Rambler name. Nobody considered it prestigious by, say, 1967. And then there is Cadillac/Lincoln . . .
Interesting part is that Ford, with the first Mustang, and Honda, with the Accord, would follow Nash’s playbook with considerable success.
1949-1954 Ramblers; the great American bathtub.
Interesting topic that calls for some real insight into the dynamics of ones parents’ relationship. Frankly, I don’t entirely know.
What I will say is that I think that my parents made major decisions about things like vehicle purchases together. Not that my mom had access to funds outside of the family, but even if she had, I cannot imagine a situation where she would have made more or less unilateral decisions about how to spend that money. So the whole notion of spending my dad’s or anyone else’s money “lavishly” would have been nonsensical in my family. There wasn’t much to go around, but what there was was held jointly and neither my mom or my dad had the ability (within their relationship) to make decisions about how to spend it without the other. I think.
That said, there were always in my memory two cars in my household. Big car and little car. I know very much that one parent always felt that one of those cars was his/her preferred car (it varied over time as to which one was the preferred car by which parent)…and I can only imagine that various cars were bought influenced by individual preferences. But the idea that one parent would have made the choice to buy something that the other did not generally approve of? Nope. Not in my childhood home.
It’s interesting that this discussion of marital relations and automotive purchases would come up during an article about a Nash. My own parents had a 1952 Nash Statesman, bought used and gave them exception service. Cars aged quickly back then and the old Nash was getting needy. Dad decided to surprise my mother with a 1955 Nash that was barely used. It did not go over well. Ma informed Dad of all of the plans that they had that were now on hold for the foreseeable future because of his impulsive purchase. Worse, the 55 turned out to be a steaming turd. In other words, a problem with the car, and there were many, wasn’t just a problem, it was another dose of salt in a wound that would never heal as long as that car was around. On a happier note, once that Nash was gone life got better and they spent 63 years together when Ma passed.
The majority of mothers during my childhood (1950-1962) were definitely ‘wifeys’ and actually at least trying to live the Donna Reed life. But there was a growing number of exceptions to that generality. Women who, in a limited fashion compared to the late 60’s and 70’s, were striking out on their own, following a path that wasn’t well-codified in any number of 50’s television shows.
No, bloody few of them showed up in my hometown of Johnstown, PA, and there certainly weren’t any of them in my neighborhood, all middle class, white, and family oriented. But they were out there. I’d see a few, women like my mother who had about as much of a female professional career as you got in our town, but was still expected to bend under the norm, marry and reproduce, and did. And lived a quietly, resentful life because of it.
Those Ramblers, appealing to a certain kind of women, were just the beginning . . . .
March 1950, 2206 Valentine Avenue, The Bronx. Dad settles down to his favorite meal of Small cut green beans, bits of beef cooked in a tomato sauce, thin sauce. After Dad is sated, Mom tells Dad that she ordered a new Dodge. He was too comfortable to express anything. O note, Dad NEVER drove an automobile. Despite his objections in the ensuing months before delivery of the Dodge Wayfarer, guess who wanted to be shuttled here, there and everywhere! My Mom was at that time a stay at home Mom but certainlynot one to take a back seat. Miss her.
The whole subject of the husband surprising his wife with a new car reminds me of this Saturday Night Live skit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcEylCwkSxE
Even today, Gertrude Stein and Alice
Toklas are probably the most famous lesbian couple in history. They drove an ambulance for the Red Cross in WWI France. Stein fixed the ambulance when it broke down.
That’s because they were two women and not two men.
Sad but True Sir .
-Nate
A lot of the commentary has single women in the day as homosexual or singing Dylan’s “It ain’t me Babe” as a protest song against being tied down to a marriage and children. I am not saying for a minute the both stereotypes did not exist.
However there was another type that was very real, buying their own cars and I want to pay tribute to. The older maiden aunt. Coming in to help with kids after a death, looking after the down on his luck substance abuser in the family. Being a storehouse of family lore because they have been around and kept in touch with everyone. The family’s that had them were very Blessed. Our family had one, RIP Tante Irmie. She didn’t drive as she lived in a big city, so I am not sure if a Beetle, a Rambler, or a Buick would have been her choice.
My mom was a career woman in the ‘50’s (a nurse) but she was more of a Mopar fan. I’ve seen a picture of her next to an early Fifties Plymouth, and she talked of a ‘38 Plymouth that she owned until 1961, shortly before my older sister was born. She said the ‘38 was still a good car when she sold it. I remember her having fun driving our ‘61 VW when I was a small boy. I can’t really imagine either of my parents driving a Rambler, though they were quite common when I was a kid.