The Toyota Automobile Museum contains an excellent selection of ’30s cars – pretty much every important model of the decade can be found there. This includes a Bugatti 57, a Delage D8, a Mercedes-Benz 500K, a Rolls Phantom III and the like, but also more downmarket (but equally historically important) fare such as the Citroën Traction Avant, the KdF-Wagen, the Fiat Topolino or the Datsun roadster. And there is a Tatra 87 as a finned cherry on top.
But there are also a few highly significant US models of course, including a ’32 Ford V8, a Cord 812 (which will have its day on CC) and, as we can see in the background there, a gorgeous 1937 Lincoln Zephyr, which we saw in some detail quite recently. It was a very important car in the history of automotive streamlining, and it influenced many late ‘30s designs. But the 1938 Cadillac 60 Special went a little further than that – it showed the way forward to the ‘40s and ‘50s.
A bit of context will help prove the point. The 1937 Cadillacs, as can be ascertained by this Series 70 Fleetwood 5-passenger sedan, were handsome cars. But they were also rather old-fashioned (style-wise) compared to Cord, Lincoln or Chrysler.
The Series 60 Special, a new junior Cadillac situated between the Series 70 and the lower-priced Series 60, was created for 1938 to specifically address this issue and take the style leader baton back into GM’s hands.
The Sixty Special’s shape was a major step forward for the conglomerate, as it instituted a lot of innovations all at once. Not that these innovations were world firsts, but the combination of them into a single cohesive design was this Caddy’s crowning achievement. Take the rear end, for starters. Most forward-looking ‘30s cars went for a fastback design. Cadillac bucked that trend and stuck with a separate trunk, but it was fully integrated within the body. The third box of the three-box shape was now firmly attached to the other two.
That’s not to say that fastback designs would not populate GM’s roster in the ‘40s and into the ‘50s, of course. But the classic “car” shape was kind of definitively invented with this model. Bill Mitchell, who is credited as the Sixty Special’s main author, was also very particular about the greenhouse. The roofline was much flatter; the doors had thin chromed window frames, like some convertible sedans, coupled with an exposed (and thus body-coloured) B-pillar. And both windows had vents – something that would soon be emulated widely. Last but certainly not least, the running boards were ditched, plainly and simply.
It wasn’t as modern as it could have been, of course. The headlights, though now no longer perched up near the top of the radiator like a pince-nez as on the ‘37s, just reposed on the fenders – but were certainly anything but integrated in them. Side-mounted spares were pretty backwards-looking, too. And silly trinkets like that hood ornament… I mean, they were fun and quirky usually, but this one was a bit much.
The innovative spirit even manifested itself inside. Just compare the Cadillac’s cabin to the ’37 Zephyr’s above: the Lincoln’s Art-Deco feel, tall floor-mounted gear stick, central circular gauges and flat windshield are all firmly rooted in the first half of the ‘30s.
The Caddy’s dash is all squares and rectangles, pointing to the juke-box designs of the coming decade. Furthermore, the cabin is lighter thanks to much bigger windows, and the column shifter was among the very first of its kind. Other carmakers had tried out other shifter locations – quite a few French cars made them stick out of the dash, for instance. And several semi-automatic systems (Cotal, Wilson, Bendix/Cord) were located on the column before 1938. But by 1940, regular manual transmissions had left the floor in nearly all American cars – and a few foreign ones, as well.
The same could be said for those distinctly-shaped windows: Panhard were making something remarkably similar since about 1929 on their cars, albeit without the vents. And the lack of running boards was not entirely unheard of in 1938 either, as the aforementioned Cord, Citroën and Tatra can attest. But compiling all these advanced features together within a svelte three-box shape was the Cadillac’s tour de force.
The funny thing is that it took several years for Cadillac’s more conservative models to catch up with the 1938 Sixty Special. The Fleetwood 75 still had big old running boards ten years later…
The Series 60 Special was lower than other 1938 Cadillacs by about three inches and younger by at least three years. It is said that Bill Mitchell always kept a particularly fond memory of it. For one thing, he was in his twenties at the time and this was his first big job for GM. For another, it was Cadillac’s best-seller that year. The public liked what they saw – a lower, leaner and more cohesive design, a foretaste of the ‘40s. With nigh on 90 years of hindsight, one cannot fail not to disagree with them on that score.
At least the sidemounts were an option – they’re not on the car in the ad.
Your closeup of the taillights shows clearly who copied them. Dodge copied them exactly in ’49, and Chevy took the lower part in ’50-52.
Oddly the license is still on the Caddy’s left taillight. Most others, even Chrysler, had switched to central trunk-mounted licenses in ’38. It’s better for streamlining and safer for people walking around the car.
Car bodies got wider after the mid 1930s, and manufacturers began calling them 6-seat cars. But the front-center seat was an awkward place to be, what with the shift lever on the floor.
I’m not sure which manufacturer was first to put the manual shifter on the steering column, but they don’t get enough credit for creating a viable 6-seat car. Although column shifters are some of the most Rube Goldberg-ian automotive devices I’ve ever worked on, they deserve credit for creating the viability of a 6-passenger car, a vehicle that was the de facto standard for American cars well into the 1990s.
The very first column shifter might have been on a Packard around 1902, but it disappeared soon. A few cars around 1906 had Edsel-style pushbuttons for a preselector. Preselectors and remote controls on column or dash were common around ’35.
GM clearly started the permanent trend of a mechanical column shift in ’38.
Great essay on a beautiful automobile. By 1940, with the headlights integral with the fenders, the Cadillac Sixty Special became and still remains a fine piece of art.
So beautiful .
I wish there was a coupe to compare it with .
-Nate
Thanks, T87. One of my favorites, and a very succinct summary of what set it apart.
This is such a striking car and looks particularly outstanding in light blue with a tan interior.
And even the rear vent windows are crank-operated!
Thank you Tatra87 for perfectly describing why the 1938 Cadillac 60 Special is one of the seminal designs of the 1930’s. The 3-box sedan body architecture had been developed by custom coachbuilders in the early 1930’s but typically were only available on the longest wheelbase luxury chassis .i.e 140-148″ wb. The additional brilliance of the Mitchell design is he proportioned it to be an owner-drive five-passenger sedan on the 127″wb. The 60 Special influenced not only the 1940 GM/Fisher Torpedo C-Bodies but myriad sedans from virtually all carmakers into the 1950’s when the 3-box sedan became the industry standard.
Always wondered how often those “billboard, mount”, license plates fell off. Quite an awesome preservation.