A kind reader recently informed me about Ed’s Auto Reviews. These are relatively short videos on YouTube that cover a broad range of auto history topics.
For example, a recently posted episode called “Mistake of ’58: The GM Chromemobiles and Far Out ’59s” provides a pretty good overview about the dying days of Harley Earl’s reign as head of General Motors’ styling department. Those who have read extensively about this time period likely won’t learn anything new from Ed’s video, but he has dug up some interesting footage and injects a sense of humor in his storytelling.
Ed is based in the Netherlands, but a fair number of his videos are devoted to the American automobile. His topics are quirkier than those covered at Joe Ligo’s AutoMoments YouTube channel. For example, one episode explores the “Strange, Weird and Obscure Car Meet.” Another episode asks, “Which Tailfin is Best Tailfin?”
Also see ‘Joe Ligo is overly kind in Nash/AMC Ambassador film’
Ed describes what he does as “auto history entertainment.” Or, to be more specific, he tries to present “funny, interesting and juicy stories.” Viewed through that lens, it is easier to look past some of the factual casualness of “The Compact Cars of the Early 1960’s.” As a case in point, he lists Chrysler’s downsizing of its big cars as happening before coming out with compacts. He also argues that “Studebaker was the first car manufacturer to come up with a compact car” rather than American Motors. Indeed, the early-60s Rambler is ignored altogether even though it vastly outsold the Studebaker Lark.
Yes, but this is entertainment — and from the perspective of a European who is trying to make sense of us crazy Americans and our automobiles. So all in all, Ed’s Auto Reviews can be a worthwhile way to spend a few minutes.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Ed; 2022. “Mistake of ’58: The GM Chromemobiles and Far Out ’59s.” Ed’s Auto Reviews. Posted Sept.
The video does have a sort of misrepresentation on the 1958’s use of chrome. Harley Earl knew he could not compete with the Forward Look cars on basic design, so he decided to dazzle the buyer’s eye with the gleaming chrome as the alternative. It was essentially all he could do since the tooling was already underway.
Ed hams it up but does get one essential element of Earl: He liked big, bold “Hollywood” styling. My understanding is that the 1958 models were designed before GM knew what the 1957 Forward Look Chryslers were going to look like. If that’s correct, all of Earl’s chrome wasn’t a reaction to Exner’s handiwork but a reflection of where he thought the market was going.
Even if Earl did have time to respond to the Forward Look on the 1958 models, I question the idea that adding chrome was the only option. The less extreme 1958 GM designs tended to see smaller sales declines.
Michael Lamm and Dave Holls wrote about Earl: “With GM’s 1957 models, though, Harley Earl seemed to be groping, and by 1958 he’d lost his way. Good as he’d always been, he couldn’t make that transition from chromium and ornamentation and the body shapes he’d come to favor—the rounder, fatter forms—and go on to the sharper creases, the more angular, pointed shapes, the thinner, more delicate roofs, the flatter hoods and decks that characterized the 1960s. Lots of designers get stuck in an era, and at this point Earl was one of them” (1996, p. 118).
By the time the late 50s rolled up on us the Big Three styling could only move in the direction it did. The early 50s broke the status quo that arrived in the 30s. New manufacturering technology allowed for the use of new materials and the way they were used. The mid 50s utilizes these new styling and new manufacturing capabilities, but still sticking to the conservative looks the public seemed comfortable with. But with the the growing space race focus was now the most popular trend showing up in every consumer products. From clothes to appliances and furniture, and of course it was headed to automotive styling and finally took hold from 1957 to 1959. By the early 60s it was still present but toned down significantly. The 57 through 59 cars The Big Three released were as close to rock ships cars could be and still be cars. Creative designs and the last for power are the top sellers. No one knew at the time how far it would go or how long it would last. Cars were no different than anything else when it comes to exploiting new concepts. Cars were the perfect product for the space age looks to become excessive to the point of overkill and the late 50s became the time for it to come and burn itself out and that’s what it did. I would submit The Big Three designers could only run with it. They didn’t know where it was headed or what it would allow before the public had had enough of it. It was Chrysler’s Forward look and GM’s exploitation of size and use of chrome that lead the industry while Ford Motor Company for the most part remained pretty conservative, relatively speaking, save for their Lincolns and Mercury.So, based on the way America’s approach to whatever is new, the cars had to look the way they did in the late 50s It was no one designer,it was the time in America. There are other examples and there always will be. That’s just the way it is and always will be.
The timeline was that Chuck Jordan during a lunch break found a spot where looking through a fence he could see the early 1957 Forward look Chryslers. Harley Earl was in Europe when this happened.
Earl’s response for the 1958s was to trowel on the chrome trim since the body tooling was done. Applied trim was relatively easy to deal with at this late development stage.
The design of the 1959s made a complete shift in direction during Earl’s absence. Mitchell was #2 and on the verge of being elevated as Earl’s successor so this became the start of the transfer of power. Although Earl could have objected, he instead let his protégé proceed with the new direction. Although the 1959s were over styled they do represent a different aesthetic sense from Earl’s big bulbous cross sections and power dome hoods.
Another item Ed misunderstands is a common one: That all 5 GM car lines were redesigned for 1958. As we know, the 1958 Buick, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac were all heavy facelifts of the 1957 redesigns. As Ed himself says elsewhere in the video, “Look at the greenhouses.”
I would like to see more study on the rise of the Europeans against the decline of the Cadillac & Lincoln in the luxury segment.
My feeling is that this ramping up of the Europeans started with the Mercedes 6.3 V8 powered S class and the 3.5 Cabriolet and coupe. Later on one gets the BMW senior series.
I would break the coupes into a separate analysis. Here I believe that the Americans tried to remain price controlled while the BMW CS and the MB S coupes had no such restraint. To me, that made them more of a show of perceived affluence.
To what extent is there available data on the buyer demographics? Were the MB and BMWs the aspirational cars of the younger group as they wished to show themselves to be different from their parents and grandparents?
Is there information available on the dealer networks? This had been a major advantage of the American brands for a long time as they had dealerships everywhere. That is no longer true but when did that change as the Euros got more geographic coverage?
I also believe that there were some additional factors that played into the rise of the MB and BMW success. As Ford and GM played the CAFE game, they refused to have cars subject to the “gas guzzler” penalty. This did not matter for the Euros. One might even see it as a badge of honor – lets the peasants worry about such issues. Not worrying about the penalty did allow for better performance and drivability feel (not trying to get into the highest gear in the shortest distance).
The other factor would be GMs commitment to fwd. Was this a mistake for the luxury brands and the perception of what is luxury? I believe it was.
What is the possibility that the US sales numbers for the Euros senior series were actually less than for Cadillac and Lincoln yet we think of them as being better than they were? The Americans had less than miniscule export while the Euros had a notable worldwide market.
Toronado and Eldorado had long been FWD, and Riviera moved to FWD in 1979, so GM may not have seen a problem with moving C body to FWD. GM executives thought FWD was the only way to maintain interior roominess and meet CAFE. In hindsight, too bad GM didn’t have something like Sigma platform ready for 1986 (instead of 2002) when it was time to downsize the E/K cars.
I disagree that the move to fwd was all about interior room and CAFE. Yes, that was part of it but it also was part of a larger general belief that fwd was the industry’s technical future and GM was going to be in the domestic maker forefront on that. For much of the product line this may have been correct but it would turn out to not be accurate for the top luxury cars (perception). Too bad they did not see the 4 wheel drive possibilities for the fwd as would be developed by Audi. Luckily the F body sport coupes did not go down the fwd path.