Dreamy renderings were the hot thing for several decades, and peaked with the Art Fitzpatrick and Van Kaufman era of Pontiacs. So in comparison, these 1959 Imperial renderings are a bit cheesy and amateurish. Chrysler was cutting costs left and right starting in 1958, so their budget for artists may well have been impacted too.
But they’re worth a gander…
The last picture is definitely employing the tiny bodies and tiny heads trick to make the car seem bigger.
Cheesy? Maybe just a different style from Fitzpatrick & Kaufman. I kind of like it. The cars certainly look good. VERY traditional backgrounds: pillared antebellum mansions, the fox hunt (Do the elite still do this?), classical downtown parks and statuary.
What do you think of these backgrounds for the 1963 Chevy II? Plain brown straight lines. Slogan: “It’s Exciting!” How long did it take to think up that one?
I was about to say -they somehow remind me of the old Addams Family drawings in the New Yorker.
Also – were the cars actually that long? They look like ocean liners on wheels.
Where I live in Northern Baltimore County fox hunting and equestrian sports are still very much a thing for the well heeled.
If I recall there is a lot of drinking involved, too.
Afterward, of course. ….I think.
Maybe they were angling for irony. Wasn’t the whole point of the Chevy II is that it was unexciting?
Notice there is a female driving the car?
The comment “it’s exciting” was aimed at the females.
Back in the era most guys wouldn’t be caught dead driving something like THAT!
Let alone be seen in one, especially as a passenger.
Smaller American cars at this time were heavily promoted to women. In 1963 there were still lots of married-couple-with-kids households, many where there was only one car and Dad drove it to work. “Compacts” were pitched as inexpensive second family cars so Mom could go shopping during the day, or increasingly, drive to work.
I like the look, also. IMO, it does have a similar overall look of the ’59 Caddy.
There is a gothic horror vibe to the backgrounds that is interesting. They remind me
of early scenes in a movie that you know is going to go off the rails.
I was about to say – they remind me of the old Addams Family drawings in The New Yorker.
Also – were the cars acutally that long? They look like ocean liners on wheels.
It’s a distortion to catch your eye. The Pontiac ads made the cars extra-wide for the same reason.
Does the gentleman passenger in the black LeBaron have a llama in his lap? What is that?
I think it’s a newspaper.
A rolled-up newspaper with a mackerel?
I question the color choices in the first two. The cars don’t standout very well from the background, and when did Spanish Moss become lavender-colored?
That’s the Sherman monument in the Grand Army Plaza on Fifth Avenue at the SE corner Central Park. It’s gilded now.
I think that Spanish Moss is actually Wisteria. As for the newspaper/mackerel thing, I’m as clueless as anyone else.
Yes, definitely wisteria. We have it in central Virginia. When we travel south, Spanish moss doesn’t show up until we hit South Carolina.
Freakishly large wisteria. You could be right, but the general pink/red tone leans me to S moss. Note the maid’s apron in the background. A bygone era.
My grandparents’ lake cottage in southeastern NC had so much SM, you couldn’t see it from the road. To our horror, the next owner replaced all the trees with trailers.
The Sherman statue actually faces the Pulitzer fountain in real life, with the Plaza Hotel behind. They’ve put the fountain where the statue is.
Good thing Dick Tracy brought his white Imperial to the fox hunt. They can bring the horse home, standing up in the trunk. But why he is so angry at his wife?
Terrible. They feel like they smell of stale cigarettes, and torpor. VK AH, I hear brassy music and taste a good gin and tonic.
What’s missing here that the AF/VK dreamscapes so wonderfully conveyed was the sense that the car was just an incidental part of living the good life, one that you could have if you bought a Pontiac. The AF/VK drawings were always about the people; the car was portrayed as being just incidental to the scene, yet essential to it. Like in the ad below – the people inside and outside of the car are interacting with each other, not fawning over the car. The brilliance of the images is that while the car isn’t the center of attention for those being portrayed, it is for the viewer reading the ad.
But in the Imperial ads, the car is just plopped there, seemingly unrelated to the surrounding scene or whatever any people are doing. In the Pontiac adverts, Art Fitzpatrick drew the cars and Van Kaufman drew the people and surroundings, but had I not known that, I’d easily believe one person drew the whole thing. The Imperial ads though look very much like the cars were drawn separately.
I think it may have just been an older style of artwork. I can almost imagine a luxury car of the 20s, 30s or 40s sitting against the same backdrops.
The F&V Pontiac ads were strikingly modern.
The two birds above the black Le Baron..oh oh.
I can hear them saying “target acquired…on bomb run…2 seconds to release…”
Two birds above any car, let alone a black car as long as an aircraft carrier, well, it won’t be pretty.
I love those whitewalls.
Being an amateur art historian, I recognize this art design without needing to see the cars themselves. I know a lot of CC guys who love ephemera and able to recognize this art styling as Mid-20th century Madison Avenue. I don’t think it is bad at all!
Familiar with the BIG movies of the era? These backgrounds fit perfectly with the late 1950s Hollywood films that were set in Europe. We see a lot of this design during this era for many products targeting luxury. The Pontiac ads use vivid sporty colors, but that is a different market than Imperial. However, both car ads refer to similar settings and show a car too large to drive. Even Disney got into this style with “101 Dalmatians”, set as it was in London, and we see a beautiful unique version in Disney’s “Snow White”, and in the art used in the late 1950s Donald Duck shorts. There is a lot of art from this era that was considered popular that these ads capture quite well.
If I recall, you also dislike the photography used for the Imperials as well.
Yes, 101 Dalmatians! That’s what these ads reminded me of.
Although they aren’t as cool as the Pontiac ads, they show out the Imperials beautifully. I love them.
I know what the chauffeur is thinking about those seagulls, especially in a light rain.
By the way – that Pontiac art style is early 1960s and we’re beginning to see the effect of 1960s fine art in them. The Imperial ad uses an art style that predates it, perhaps because the car is being marketed to older buyers?
Today’s sampling of ’59 Imperial ads on eBay is more photos than paintings (none of Paul’s illustrations seen)–I’ll guess from Town & Country or perhaps Fortune magazine rather than LIFE/LOOK.
My friends in the “creative” fields (advertising and fashion) remind me that nobody **knows** anything for certain, and forecasting what will appeal to a target audience (especially with lead time) is a tricky business, as with auto design. Always much easier for us to second-guess it at many decades’ distance.
I don’t know (or never knew) anyone who would have been part of the moneyed target audience for these Imperials–maybe my grandfather *if* the corporation had tripled his salary or something like that.
As to today’s artwork: working from photographs, I’m pretty certain, but I’ve always admired any artist that can portray chrome/silver without using silver paint. Amazes me every time!
“As to today’s artwork: working from photographs, I’m pretty certain, but I’ve always admired any artist that can portray chrome/silver without using silver paint. Amazes me every time!”
Robert Williams work is something you should investigate if you don’t already know about him.
Holy cats, how have I not heard of this guy?
Thanks for this particular rabbit hole I’ll be going into.
The more you look at them, the more you realize the difference in style.
The AF/VK pictures are more ‘realistic’ to my eye. These seem almost semi-abstract, and the figures being so small adds almost a cartoonish element to them. I know small figures were an illustrator’s trick in those days, but these seem a bit too small to be believable. Slightly overdone.
And there’s something of a disparity, a disjointedness between the car and the background. You are very aware there are two components: the car and the background. The car is rendered in detail to focus attention on it, the background less so. With Fitz and Van’s work, the car is very much an integral part of the picture, here it is more like a car with a painted backdrop.
Not wrong, just a difference of style.
Not sure what’s up with the scale of the birds in that last picture. It seems that albatrosses are attacking New York.
Sort of Hitchcock meets LeBaron via the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
I have the original 1959 Imperial brochure these images came from, and they present much better seeing them on paper than on a computer screen in terms of color and atmospherics.
If you’re looking for “bad” in car brochures, check out these shots of the 1979 Lincoln Versailles brochure. I’d like to know who designed that dress. Also, why is he sniffing her shoulder?
“Why is he sniffing her shoulder”?
The Disco era. What else can I say?
Another unflattering outfit and pose. Now she’s–blowing through a tennis racket (??????)
I like these Imperial adverts .
-Nate
A gauche rendering of the coming model year styling on a third year body superimposed on a dreamy watercolor background scene had to be a good deal cheaper than the logistic of running prototypes out to locations, hiring professional photographers, awaiting the right light conditions, clearing way distractions, etc.
No one can beat the AF/VK duo for elegant, evocative automotive advertising art throughout the 1960’s. They were simply the best. What is surprising is that it was for Pontiac! One would think the best would have been reserved for Cadillac…
I think Bruce McCall’s satirical imagery from National Lampoon are far more evocative.
The Bulgemobiles ! Yes . . .
I love doing these visual comparisons between ad art and the real thing. Here’s a black ’59 from Orlando Classics, stacked with the pink subject car.