“What is that big old car?”
A passerby asked that question as I was taking the above photo… timely, since I was transfixed by seeing a 1940s-era car in a modern setting. We’ve discussed this topic before here at Curbside Classic – that modern cars are dimensionally similar to those of the 1940s – but viewing such a comparison in a random parking lot drove this point home for me. This 1947 Chevrolet, and the Toyota that’s six decades newer, share a mighty similar size, though the journey from there to here took a long, low and wide detour.
The overall shape of 1940s cars wound up being somewhat of an interim phase in car design… between the old-fashioned tall-and-narrow look, and the longer-lower-wider trend that took hold for decades following. In short, what was new became old, and now it’s new again.
Before we take a look at the size comparison between this old-timer Chevrolet and its parking lot neighbor, let’s journey back to the 1940s.
General Motors’ Chevrolet Division was on a roll entering the 1940s, having been America’s best-selling nameplate for most of the previous decade. Chevrolet succeeded during the bleak Depression years by providing a useful combination of good value, up-to-date features, and a reasonably stylish appearance.
Given its high sales volume, an all-new Chevy for 1941 was highly anticipated. To modern eyes, the styling changes for ’41 may not appear dramatic, but this car illustrated the budding design trends that were to become much more noticeable in subsequent decades. Chevrolet’s press release summed up the styling intent:
In general proportions, the new Chevrolet is longer, wider, and lower. In keeping with its more generous dimensions, the car’s styling of low sweeping lines, with accent on the horizontal, intensifies the swift massiveness and safe stability which are designed into the car.
Dimensions themselves changed only modestly with this 1941 styling refresh – wheelbase and overall length each edged up by about 3″, width by about 1.5″ and height shrank by a fraction of an inch. But design characteristics augmented these changes.
The above list, from GM’s comprehensive guide to the car’s engineering features (full pdf available here), highlights the “new features” for ’41 Chevrolets, likely to be used as talking points by sales staff. Features such as a “more massive lower-appearing front end,” “wider, more massive body,” and “greater accent on horizontal lines” show what Chevrolet’s design staff was aiming for. The term massive (used repeatedly) is interesting here, because is shows that GM’s designers, led by Harley Earl, ensured their new streamlined design appeared sufficiently formidable.
Some of the significant design features included eliminating the valleys between the fenders and the (now wider) hood; flush-mounting the headlights and parking lights into those fenders; concealing the door hinges; and providing a more steeply sloped windshield. Those looking for mechanical changes might have been a bit less impressed, since the 216-cid. 6-cyl. engine, the 3-speed transmission and Tiptoematic clutch were largely carried over, as Chevrolet did not synchronize mechanical upgrades with new designs.
Perhaps the most important single design change was the omission of exterior running boards. Instead of traditional running boards (which, according to the ad above could double as a seat for winos, a perch for miscreant youths, and were the cause of numerous other ills), the car’s contoured door panels concealed an inner rubber-covered step. With these types of changes, Chevrolet hoped to shed the “old-timer” look of the automobile’s early age.
1941’s changes wound up being popular. Over a million 1941 Chevrolet passenger cars were produced overall, including 100,000 in just the first five weeks of production.
1941 (top) and 1942 (bottom) Chevrolets
The brief 1942 model year brought about a restyled front end, featuring a grille with larger bars, a broader hood, longer front fenders, and headlights spaced further apart. Cumulatively, these minor changes accentuated the car’s bulk, suggesting that the 1941 redesign may not have appeared “massive” enough. But of course, problems such as headlight spacing withdrew from most people’s minds as world events took a much different course for the next several years.
On February 1, 1942, the US government ceased all civilian car production due to the country’s involvement in World War II. Like other manufacturers, Chevrolet quickly pivoted to producing war materiel, including military vehicles, aircraft engines, armor-piercing shells, and other items for the war effort. It would be 4½ years until auto production resumed, in October 1946.
1946 Chevrolets were – like cars worldwide – largely clones of prewar models. Consumers, though, barely minded. Orders for ’46 Chevrolets far outpaced production capacity. The most significant change to the cars themselves was in their nomenclature, updated with more grandiose names – hence the prewar Master DeLuxe and Special DeLuxe became the Stylemaster and Fleetmaster.
Mechanically and dimensionally identical, these two models differed only by trim levels. The minimal differences included details such as additional chrome trim, a different steering wheel design, interior lighting, and other minor features. For buyers seeking something a bit different, a distinctive torpedo-shaped Fleetline range was offered as well, sitting atop of Chevrolet’s model line.
Our featured Stylemaster hails from 1947, a year for which, once again, Chevrolet made few changes. In reality, they didn’t need to make any changes at all, given the postwar surge in new car demand. According to General Manager T.H. Keating, Chevrolet had orders for more than one million cars and trucks at the beginning of 1947 (though undoubtedly many of those customers placed duplicate orders for Fords, Plymouths or others as well). That staggering demand dictated that model year changes be modest, if for no other reason than executives wished to avoid the typical one- to three-week factory shutdowns to retool for new designs. Or, as Keating said, a quick model-year changeover avoided “causing the car-needy public to face further inconvenience and disappointment.”
The modest types of changes for 1947 mostly involved ornamentation. In place of the ’46 model’s chromed side spear, less brightwork was used on the ’47, with the goal of accentuating the car’s smooth contours. Streamlined-looking badges on the sides of the hood substituted for the side spear.
At the very front, parking lights now flanked a grille that was modestly redesigned, with chunkier and wider crossbars, in a way to emphasize the car’s width and bulk (going for a still more massive look). In another change that took up less acreage, Chevrolet redesigned the front emblem.
Updates were somewhat more noticeable inside, with a modernized dashboard and upholstery. This interior appears as if it has been reupholstered, but is otherwise mighty original. The front seat is wide enough to hold three people, as is the rear seat, though somehow I neglected to photograph this one.
While sparse by modern standards, the Chevrolet’s dash was a well-laid out command center for the day – “handsomely finished in bright metal and plastics” in GM parlance. In addition to the large speedometer and clock, the driver also had four small gauges on the dashboard’s left-hand side – for fuel, water temperature, oil pressure and an ammeter. Incidentally, the white lever above the speedometer is the windshield wiper control. Vital controls are all within the driver’s sightline.
The item to the left of the steering column is a rubber-bladed fan, for either ventilation or defrosting. While not a factory option, these types of fans were popular at the time, with this one painted to match the interior color.
Taking a tour around this Stylemaster, we can see some of the details that were significant at the time. For example, the rear window is curved both horizontally and vertically in order to match the car’s contours.
Here we can see the more modern look provided by the lack of running boards, and how the lower door panel’s flare conceals the interior “safety step.”
Underneath its skin, the time-proven six-cylinder engine developed 90 hp, and was the only engine available on these cars through this generation. In an era when car design changed quickly, engines were more likely than other major components to achieve veteran status, and such became the case with Chevrolet’s Blue Flame six, which debuted in 1937 and stuck around minimally-altered through 1963.
Chevrolets during the 1940s came in numerous body styles, including four different types of 2-doors – a business coupe, a five-passenger sport coupe, the Fleetline Aerosedan, and our featured car’s body style, which was called the “Town Sedan.” During the 1941-48 model years, 2-doors accounted for over two-thirds of total Chevrolet car sales, and the town sedan, with its streamlined looks and copious passenger room, was the most popular of these body styles. Around 950,000 Town Sedans were produced during this generation. However, as the decade progressed, fewer customers opted for Town Sedans, as the fastback Aerosedan began to capture more customers’ hearts.
For 1947, roughly 88,000 Sytlemaster Town Sedans like this one were produced, accounting for just 13% of the 670,000 total Chevrolet cars produced for that year. By comparison, its 1941 equivalent, the Master DeLuxe Town Sedan, sold 221,000 units… 22% of Chevrolet production that year.
In fact, the entire Stylemaster lineup struggled somewhat in these immediate postwar years, as it was handily outsold by the costlier Fleetmasters and Fleetlines. Postwar prosperity and optimism dictated that even value-oriented Chevrolet buyers would part with some extra money for a few added nicities or styling touches. In this case, our featured Stylemaster carried a base price of $1,219 – for $67 (or 5%) more, a customer could order a Fleetmaster instead, or for $94 (or 8%) extra, could spring for a Fleetline Aerosedan.
At every price point, 1947 was most certainly a seller’s market in the US auto industry, since throughout most of the late 1940s, new orders outpaced retail deliveries. Drivers were anxious to replace their worn-out prewar cars; in 1947, the average age for a Chevrolet on the road was 8 years – well past the best-by date for cars in this era. And many cars were well above that average.
For 1948, Chevrolet received yet another grille, interior design upgrades and even some minor engine improvements, but once again high demand dictated that the Division make only the most minor of changes. 1948 wound up being this body style’s last year. Cars such as this from the immediate post-World War II period managed to be both new and old simultaneously – even though they represented the newest cars available, customers were eagerly awaiting completely different designs that would point to a brighter future. And that future was even longer, lower and wider.
1949 Chevrolets were the first genuinely new Chevys in quite a while – and timely too, since Ford had introduced their first new postwar model six months earlier. The design was exactly what the carbuying public was seeking… an intensification of the 1940s design trends of longer, lower and wider – both in dimensions and in styling features that accentuated those dimensions.
Those design trends would accelerate quickly. By the end of the following decade, the longer, lower and wider mantra began producing cars of exaggerated proportions. Our 1947 featured car probably looked downright ancient 11 years later when these models rolled into Chevrolet dealers.
Like many design trends, longer, lower, wider was taken to excess industrywide, reaching its crescendo in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then, with energy crises demanding more compact cars, and with the growing popularity of vehicles such as pickups and minivans, trends changed. As put by Chuck Jordan, GM’s vice president of design, in 1989, “We were longer, lower, wider… then all of a sudden we were shorter, higher, narrower.”
Which brings us back to this picture of our featured 1947 Chevrolet parked next to a 2010 Toyota RAV4. Toyota sold over 170,000 RAV4s to US consumers in 2010, making it one of America’s best-selling cars. But more importantly, the compact utility vehicle class to which the RAV4 belonged would swell in popularity over the next decade. Just seven years later, US RAV4 sales would surpass 400,000 – with dimensions largely similar to this 2010 model.
It’s not just an optical illusion that makes these two popular vehicles – separated by more than six decades – appear to be similarly sized. In both height and width, the Stylemaster and RAV4 measure almost identically to each other (though the Chevrolet is more than a foot longer).
And while the Stylemaster’s features, designed in the 1940s to ensure a more massive appearance, do in fact seem to make this old-timer appear solid and hefty…
…it looks downright petite next to one of today’s larger cars, in this case a fellow Chevy.
But that this car’s dimensions fit neatly into a parking lot with cars 60 years newer is somewhat startling, even for those of us aware of this trend having taken place. I wonder if a car enthusiast time traveler from the 1960s or ’70s would be shocked or amused at seeing the dimensions of everyday cars stretched upwards, 1940s style? Or would such an enthusiast be pleased not to squeeze into low-roofed cars any longer?
Maybe this is the optimal size for a vehicle — not too big, small, high or low.
If located at a car show, I might have only given this fine Chevrolet a quick glance. But here in a modern parking lot, Chevrolet’s 1940s-era styling strategy and that decade’s overall transitional trends shone through. This car’s dimensions were once heralded as the newest trend in automotive design… then it became quickly outmoded. Now it’s new again.
Photographed in Fairfax, Virginia in May 2017.
Awhile back I was looking through online brochures for cars from the immediate prewar and postwar years; I wanted to see if there was any sense of impending doom in the 1941-42 advertising (there was), and whether the 1946 model brochures referenced the war years hiatus or ignored it and just looked like another typical new car pamphlet. To my surprise, the Chevy brochures emphasized that the new 1946 models had no significant changes and were just like the Chevrolets made before the war. Were many buyers concerned that the postwar cars had been cheapened or used substandard parts? Or was Chevy just trying to put their best face on trying to make old design seem like a positive attribute?
Yes, there seem to have been rumors about cheapening even before the war, as shortages of critical materials meant that some parts were redesigned on the short-lived 1942 models.
For instance Buick switched to cast iron pistons from aluminum on its volume 248 cu. in. engine for 1942, prompting Pontiac, which had used cast iron all along, to advertise there had been no changes in it’s proven design. Apparently there was no honor among GM divisions when it came to one upmanship.
Postwar there were massive shortages of all kinds of materials due to strikes and the changeover from war production. Copper shortages held up a lot of production at Packard, for instance, since radiators were all-copper back then. There also seem to have been rumors that new cars were being made with thinner sheet metal, an accusation that dogged Kaiser particularly.
Similar in British car brochures around that time, speaking of ‘Pre-War Luxury’ but also apologising for the fact you probably would have to wait to buy a new car as most were being exported to earn foreign exchange…
The immediate postwar years are often glossed over, and with good reason, since the cars were largely regurgitations of prewar models. But there’s a lot of interesting history hiding in these forgotten years.
Among the interesting items is the economics of postwar production. Demand was incredibly high, and supply was limited by production capacity, materials shortages and labor troubles. This all had interesting effects on the overall car market. One aspect is that it appears that the percentage of the US market captured by the Big Three slipped from about 90% in 1941 to about 80% in 1947-48, as makes such as Studebaker, Nash and others grew in popularity. Looking at the long waiting list for Chevrolets, I wonder if a lot of buyers ditched their prewar brand loyalty just in the urge to by anything new at that time. I don’t know the answer for sure, but it’s an interesting topic… one of many from this period.
Excellent points. Another factor was converting factories back to automobile production. Everything had been reconfigured for armament production and car factories had to be restored to how they had been in 1941.
Interestingly, the Chevrolet pickup factory only had little more to do than change colors in the paint booth as what they were selling the Army was identical to retail units.
The Suburban was also produced during the war (albeit not for civilian sale), allowing Chevrolet to correctly claim it today as being in continuous production since 1935 with no asterisk to denote except during WW2 as with all American passenger cars.
When you consider how many Crosleys and Kaisers were sold postwar, and how badly their sales fell off once supply and demand got back to normal, I’d say you’re correct. Nothing against Crosley or Kaiser, but I wonder how many of their sales were based on mere desperation to get rid of the old heap.
Also, it was for the 1947 model year then Studebaker showed its new post-war car with its rear window and one-year later Hudson showed its step-down design.
Interesting to note then Chevrolet updated and redesigned its truck line before the cars when they introduced the Advance-design gen in June 1947.
Dear Old Dad discovered first-hand that folks who were on “waiting lists” for new cars, could bribe their way up the list.
As Dad wasn’t one to pay extra…he settled for a Studebaker “Business Coupe”, which Mom hated. It had no rear seat.
Dad wanted to drive from his home in the Midwest, to visit his parents in California. As he hated to pay for gasoline, he accepted a rider to share expenses. That meant that Mom had to ride “in the middle” for two thousand miles each way. So again, she HATED that car.
I’ll bet the one big difference between the old and new cars is weight. The old ones look heavier than they are, while with new cars its the opposite.
These were very good looking cars. And this is a really sweet example.
Another fine, logical, well researched and photographed article by Paul.
I’ve come to expect no less from him.
My apologies for my not-quite-awake posting; meant to say “Eric” and not “Paul”.
So sorry to both gentlemen.
No problem at all… glad you enjoyed the article!
Quoting the Broadway lyricist Peter Allen: “Everything Old Is New Again!”
Chevy’s frame looks a little willowy with no X-member and few cross members. Almost like the later perimeter frame.
IIRC moving up the ‘Sloan ladder’ got you a more rigid chassis.
I was a bit disappointed that GM didn’t modernize their engines during this era. Instead, they kept putting more “massive” on their drive trains instead. That Blue Flame was produced for over two decades. In our lifetimes we saw Ford produce a Falcon, a Maverick, a Granada, a Monarch, a Comet and a Versailles on the same mechanical components. We rightly dismiss Ford’s attempt to turn pig’s ears into silk purses, yet this is similar, isn’t it?
While we can admire the simple beauty and style of this wonderful vehicle, we should probably acknowledge that beneath it all is an old thing from the bowels of the Great Depression?
I think new engines were quite infrequent in this era, and not just for GM. The Ford V8 ran for 20 years and the Buick 8 that debuted in 1931 also ran for over twenty. The Chrysler flatheads ran even longer. I think there were a number of new engines by the early 30s and for the most part the engines from that generation ran until the blast of new tech that came along after the war.
I am trying to think of any new engine from the late pre-war period – I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but the Studebaker Champion 6 of 1939 was one of a small crop.
The Chevy six was new in 1937. It was not the same six as had been built in 1929-1936. New block with more bearings, new head, all new internals, not a single part interchanged. It weighed less and was more powerful and efficient.
Significantly new than the old flatheads at Ford and Chrysler.
But with the low oil pressure “Splash System” of new-for-1937 to the early 1950’s this engine and it’s lack of lubrication would spin bearings and fry the engine if you tried sustained highway cruising above about 50 mph.
This wasn’t all that much of an issue on 1937 roads, true, but on the emerging expressways and thruways of the later 1940’s and 1950’s these otherwise comfortable, durable and well built cars were all-too-often seen dead & smoking on the side of the new roads. They just couldn’t “keep up” with a V8/Overdrive Ford/Mercury.
It was common to see the oil pressure gauge on the sixes barely twitching off the low peg with a hot engine.
One could tell a Chevy six cylinder engine by the hot low/no oil pressure “Klunk Klunk Klunk” at a prolonged stop light.
I don’t buy that. It’s just the typical Chevy-hate. Which spilled right over to the SBC.
There were lots of old worn out engines klunking and smoking back then. I remember them quite well as a kid. But I remember all different brands. If you chose to only remember the Chevys, that’s your selective recall. it’s a very common phenomena.
To you and all the Chevy engine haters: find me some objective sources of information to corroborate your version of history. If Chevy engines were so pathetic, how come they kept selling so well, decade after decade. Don’t you think their bad reputation would have gotten around?
Chevrolet was by far the largest selling brand in trucks too. All of them, up to the largest highway semis back then used the same Chevy six engine. And Chevy truck operators kept buying them, year after year, decade after decade. There no business more bottom line oriented than trucking. Doesn’t that suggest your memory is rather subjective? You think trucking companies were masochists, loved to throw their money away, were just so deeply in love with a specific brand to put up with disposable engines?
PS: I am not a “Chevy lover”. I just happen to prefer objectivity over subjectivity.
My family has lore about a 1959 Chevrolet wagon with a 6 that crapped out midway on a long road trip at 35,000 miles. (I was there but too small to remember the event.) Needed an overhaul which was done at a garage in the area of the breakdown. And I recall my used 1974 Buick Apollo with a Chevrolet 6 that I realized, soon after buying it, had an engine that was in poor condition despite fairly low miles. Nursed it along for two years, kept to 50-55 on the highway. None of these prove anything, but I for one sure haven’t been eager to own a Chevrolet straight 6.
I knew I would miss some. And I just remembered the 1941 Ford 6.
Those names hung on for a while afterwards too. My uncle called the 250 in my ’68 el Camino a Blue Flame six. It was reliable enough except for the dried out seals that leaked oil copiously. A friend’s father complained about it leaving oil all over his driveway.
Like my dad used to call any independent suspension ‘knee-action’.
Somehow I didn’t include any reference to Knee-Action in this article, so to compensate for that omission, here’s a good 1947 Knee-Action ad:
That 250ci six bore no resemblance to the early Chevy six except having six cylinders in line and overhead valves. Yours was a clean sheet design with seven main bearings, starting as a 194 for ’62. History here, https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/the-quickest-and-slowest-chevy-turbo-thrift-sixes/
All you say is true, but it is not so much a sin of GM, rather that the buying public is often more concerned with how something looks over what underpins it. As long as the performance was not degraded, the public probably couldn’t have cared whether the engine was a 20 or 40 year old design. And with gas prices what they were, economy was not a concern, nor emissions, so the onus to make changes was minimal at best. You have to remember that fuel injection, overhead valves and cams, superchargers, and many other innovations had come to market,mostly on high end or foreign cars, yet people did not clamor for those changes. They got what they wanted, style over substance. GM, for all of its issues, was just catering to the audience.
we should probably acknowledge that beneath it all is an old thing from the bowels of the Great Depression?
With the exception of the Corvair, there was never a radically new car built in large volume in the US, especially so by the Big 3 and the large independents. Why? It simply doesn’t lend itself to their business models. Which was of course to offer the public the maximum of truly desired features (size, performance, comfort, styling, durability, easy maintenance) for the lowest possible price. This required massive investment in the production facilities to build the cars and their mechanical components. To recoup that investment at the low price per unit charged, production runs had to be long, by necessity.
The American car almost always evolved slowly. And when it didn’t , as during the time of GM’s radical downsizing to FWD starting in 1980, one can see the horrific consequences.
So yes, these cars have elements and aspects that started in the Depression and eve in the 1920s. But there was constant evolution too, just not revolution. The Chevrolet’s frame grew longer, for a better ride. It got IFS; first the Dubonnett system in 1936, and then a few years later the more conventional type as these had. The bodies got steadily roomier, and better built, as any last vestiges of wood framing disappeared. There were more subtle changes too.
And in the case of the Chevy, its six cylinder engine was completely redesigned for 1937, and was steadily improved thereafter.
So no, nothing radically new. For that matter, the “all new” post war models mostly weren’t really all new either. There were carry-over drive trains and such, and the frames, chassis and bodies were just natural a evolution.
The end result is that the Ford panther cars you admire so much were just very natural slow and steady evolutions of cars from the Depression Era or earlier.
I thought you were such a fan of traditional things, like the traditional BOF American RWD car?
In any case, this ’47 Chevy wasn’t nearly as old a thing “beneath it all” as a 2003 Panther.
How truly new are most cars on the market today?
If twenty years were too long for an engine to be in production, one has to look at what we have on offer today.
The Honda J Series V-6: 1996- present. Twenty-four years.
Honda K series four cylinder: 2001-present.
Chevrolet LS: 1995, 25 years.
These are only the few I could think of off the top of my head. There was no reason for GM to update the engine then had developed in 1937. As for splash-oiler motors clunking and running rough, well, the Ford V-8 was far worse. The only really bulletproof design was the Chrysler Spitfire flathead which was, in my opinion, and having driven them all, the best by far.
Were there really that many advances in engine technology in those years? It seems to me that given a sound enough basic design there would be no need to make changes until the horsepower race kicked in. Plus you’d have the aftermath of the depression as an added incentive for maintaining the status quo.
Having said that, it’s interesting that the original Chevy six had such a relatively short life.
Happy birthday, Chevrolet!
Excellent essay, Eric.
(One could say that Louis-Joseph Chevrolet, born 12/25/1878, is one of the “patron saints” of my hometown of Flint, Michigan – birthplace of General Motors.)
Thanks Joe! I’ve heard of the car industry pioneer statues in Flint, and if I ever visit there, I absolutely will go and see them.
Nice-looking car and interesting backstory, thanks for this, I’m not particularly versed in this era of cars. Great photos too, it’s hard to get good shots with other cars on both sides, but you managed.
Thanks! I also wasn’t terribly well versed in this era of cars before researching this article, but I found there are lots of interesting nuggets of history residing in the often-overlooked 46-48 model years.
It seems like GM was the only division to bother with even minor pro forma styling changes for their prewar holdovers in the early postwar years. Not only were there changes analogous to a present-day midcycle facelift for 1947 but the ’48s got a chrome split piece added to the grille seemingly for no other reason than to tell them apart from ’47s.
Nobody else had the spare resources, they were all-in on building as many of them as they could while the sellers’ market lasted while their design resources and tooling budget went 100% to the all-new postwar models they knew would be needed eventually. Mopar and most of the independents (leaving aside K-F and the “First by far with a postwar car” Studebakers) made no style changes whatsoever to the holdovers after ’46 and Ford only went to wider-spaced round parking lights which could just as well have been due to supply constraints.
The similarity between these decades in even silhouettes (car to CUV) would sometimes make me idlily fantasize about taking my 2010 Highlander and slapping steelies with wide whites on it just to see how much it would ape the fastback styles of the 40s.
I feel sorry for anyone who had a 10 year or so old car who was just getting ready to trade it in when they stopped making new ones. Nice find.
It wasn’t unforeseeable that car production would be interrupted – the manufacturers were already diverting some production capacity to war materiel, and there would be up to three months of production in the US even after the Pearl Harbor bombing. I’m assuming these last cars sold at inflated prices but I haven’t investigated this yet.
Interesting comparison. Most of the Chevy is actually LOWER than most of the RAV4. The peak of the hood is taller, but all other parts are lower.
Eric, Your essay is excellent! As an old guy, I appreciate your details and history. How does this essay strike me? My Aunt Ann and Uncle Andy bought a 1947 Stylemaster in 1949. They used it until they could freely buy a car in 1953, a Plymouth sedan. Freely? yes! Until the 1950 model year, one bought a car by the lottery system. This eliminated people being favored for their favors paid to the dealers. Well, almost – in that many a dealer sold the cars for far and above M.S.R.P. There is a radio show that you might be able to find on the web from 1947 or 1948. It is the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. In it, they discuss how to buy a car and the need for the chit. So, with laughter, the problem of the day was addressed. My mother waited until 1950 before buying our 1950 Dodge. She refused to pay under the table. For example, even as late as 1946, meat supplies were rationed and we used ration coupons to buy the meat. I still have a book of coupons. Some butchers not only took the coupon but wanted something on the side in cash for decent meat. The result was that we ate commercial grade meat through 1946 and when rationing stopped, my mother never went to a butcher again, only to the supermarket. So, a little old history for you younger gents and ladies.
Thanks, Thomas! And thanks for the story about your aunt and uncle.
The topic of the waiting lists, lotteries, bribes, surcharges and other things that folks had to deal with in order to buy a car in the late 1940s is quite interesting. All of the dealers had waiting lists or lotteries, and I think it was common knowledge that preferential treatment was given to some customers over others.
There was a series of congressional hearings on this topic in 1948, during which a lot of this was brought out into the open (like how congressmen were able to buy new cars without waiting). Apparently some dealers who were rather egregious violators were disciplined by their manufacturers, but by and large, my impression is that the manufacturers and dealers pretended their waiting lists were egalitarian, but everyone knew they were not.
It’s interesting how perception of car dimensions changes over time. Back in the 1960s my father had a 55 Buick Special and I remember how unfashionably tall and ungainly it looked compared to the “lower wider longer” new cars at the time. This feeling persisted with me through the 1970s and 1980s. Today it’s reversed, cars from the 60s and 70s look like they’ve been flattened by a steamroller and cars from the 40s and 50s look more normal in height.
I was always intrigued by the high humpy hoodline on these cars. Okay, Hudsons seemed even taller, true, but I didn’t see so many of those.
Growing up I saw more Plymouths and Dodges from this era, so their lower hoodline more integrated with the body seemed more normative to me.
GM seemed to hang on to that humpy hood look for quite a while, even when the rest of the industry seemed to be moving to a flatter hoodline. Maybe they thought it gave the illusion of power?
And hasn’t advertising changed? That ‘Quality Quiz’ table looks mighty impressive at first glance, but is essentially meaningless when you read the fine print, as so many of the lauded features refer to GM’s name for things rather than the actual feature itself.
One good way of tracking car dimensions is to look at garage sizes. The home I grew up in, built in the 1920’s, had a side driveway to a backyard carport. The driveway width was limited by the house on one side and the property line fence on the other, and it was a tight squeeze even for my parents’ smallish cars; I don’t think my Mom ever took her Volvo 240 into the back and the last car I had in there was our Prius, and even that felt tight. A contractor once got his 1960’s pickup wedged in. The garage in the tract home we lived in before our current home, built in 1954, large and fancy for its time, had a two car two door garage with a center post. It barely fit our New Beetle, width-wise.
By contrast my first house, a small flat-roof in a very modest part of south San Jose, built in the early seventies, had a comparatively huge garage. And our current home, built in the twenties but with a 21st century detached garage, is wide but not very long, suitable for a RAV4 but not a ‘47 Chevy.
Very true… and I know I’ve heard people comment before about how surprised they are that the garage in their 1930s-era house is barely big enough for a car.
I’ll share a memory of the 1947 Chevrolet from the many files I inherited from my Dad. I have a check dated April 27, 1957 for $99.00. It was in payment for a well-used but running dark green 1947 Fleetmaster five-passenger coupe like the one in the ad above. My mother had just gotten her driver’s license and he needed a reliable beater to drive to work so she could have the “good” car. I think he got about one and one-half to two years use out of this one until it “threw a rod.” These old Chevies were ubiquitous when I was growing up in the Midwest. Tough cars that lasted a very long time – as they were built to do.
The 47 was the last Chevy (and one of only two) Dad owned as he really was partial to Fords. It was replaced with a 49 Ford coupe with a 53 Ford “souped-up” Flathead V8 that suited him much better.
IMO, Ford was the styling leader of the big three before the war. Headlights were fully integrated into the fenders by ’37 while it took Chevy until ’41, for example. Even Plymouth beat Chevy by two years. The ’40 with headlights partly “melted” into the fenders was a strange evolution.
Engineering wise, it was another story. Ford was last with hydraulic brakes and hypoid gears. Chevy was first with overhead valves and IFS.
This is the exact car and model that my parents were given by my Grandfather in either 1946 ir 1947. Being born in 1946; my earliest memories are those of riding, or rather standing behind the front seats holding onto the courtesy rope that was across the back of the two front seats. My brother and I would often take turns laying in the rear windshield shelf. (Yes, I know, this was years before passenger safety concerns). The car was red originally, but Dad had it repainted black as the red paint faded. My parents sold it in 1956, to purchase a low mileage 1953 Chevy 2 door post Belair.