The most significant postwar trend among independent automakers was a rush to compact cars. Between 1950 and 1953 four automakers came out with new entries. This would prove to be a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, this illustrated the value of the U.S. auto industry having a large amount of competition. Research conducted in the 1940s suggested that there was an emerging need for more efficient cars. (Foster, 2017). When the Big Three pulled the plug on their proposed entries, smaller automakers stepped in to fill the void.
On the other hand, the inability of three out of four compacts to survive beyond 1955 hinted at the dangers that independent automakers would face if they joined a product-proliferation arms race which would gain speed over the next few decades.
Nash was the first out of the gate with the 1950 Rambler. The next year Kaiser-Frazer introduced the Henry J. Then in 1952 Willys returned to passenger-car production with the Aero. Hudson was last to enter this field in 1953 with the Jet.
These cars reflected a much greater diversity of approaches than the U.S. auto industry would display two decades later, but the big question was whether the fledgling compact field could support so many entries. To add to the tenuousness of the enterprise, none of the cars shared a platform with a high-volume corporate sibling, so they would have to achieve adequate economies of scale on their own. That could be a tall task for an untested market niche.
Why did compacts die off like flies in the mid-50s?
The first two compacts — the Rambler and Henry J — got off to a fairly good start in 1951, together tallying almost 152,000 units. Alas, it was mostly downhill from there until 1958, when a recession began to shift buyer sentiment against bigger, glitzier and more powerful cars.
At a surface level, it would be reasonable to suggest that through the first half of the 1950s the compact market was not big enough to support four entries. However, that argument can obscure as much as it illuminates.
One reason why is that the size of the compact market may have been significantly impacted by a brutal price war between Ford and Chevrolet during 1953 and 1954. This occurred just as the postwar “seller’s market” was ending and a sharp recession shrank overall automobile sales (go here for further discussion).
From its peak in 1951, compact production dropped 62 percent to roughly 56,000 units in 1954. The more “normal” sales level was in 1952-53, when output hovered around 109,000 units. However, when split four ways that was only about 27,000 units for each entry, which was likely too low to generate a profit.
I suspect that at least one additional compact entry could have survived if one or more of the above-mentioned factors had not been present. The reason why is that the price war, the end of the seller’s market and a recession functioned as a triple whammy so powerful that the very survival of each independent was threatened. Only Nash was strong enough to keep its Rambler in production.
In other words, under more “normal” conditions additional automakers may have been able to gradually grow a market for their compact even if it did not initially meet sales expectations.
As a case in point, there wasn’t nearly enough time to establish the Jet, which sold poorly enough that it is commonly viewed by historians as the final nail in the coffin of Hudson. Meanwhile, both the Henry J and the Willys Aero were discontinued in the U.S. after Kaiser-Frazer merged with Willys in 1953 and got out of passenger-car production by the end of 1955.
Each compact entry had meaningful weaknesses
Another factor that appears to have worked against the compacts is that they each had weaknesses that arguably undercut their viability. For example, the Nash Rambler may have benefitted from the strongest dealer network of the four, but the car’s inverted bathtub styling didn’t age nearly as well as the Willys Aero’s trim and pleasing proportions.
The Aero, in turn, was arguably the best-designed and engineered compact, but Willys would appear to have had the weakest dealer network. This was partly a function of being the smallest of the independents, but also because after World War II Willys was the slowest to get back into producing passenger cars.
It’s too bad that Hudson didn’t come out with a compact similar to the Aero because the Jet was arguably the least viable of the four entries. Richard M. Langworth called the Jet the “single greatest mistake the company ever made” (1993, p. 126). The car has been criticized for its overly tall and dumpy styling, excessive weight and high price.
Despite the Henry J’s strong initial sales, it saw the most dramatic fall as others entered the market. The most common criticism has been that Kaiser made the mistake of initially emphasizing stripped-down models, in contrast with Nash’s approach of only offering high-end models. Odd styling also didn’t help.
The Henry J was a decidedly basic car, but if it could have survived until the late-50s, it may have been the strongest competitor against a rising tide of imports because of its smaller size, lighter weight and standard four-cylinder engine. I also suspect that Kaiser’s increasingly shaky reputation may have tarnished the Henry J as much as any of the problems with the car itself.
No one fully tested the potential of compacts
A popular assumption about the early-50s compacts is that the public simply wasn’t ready for them yet. For example, a 1953 study by the Ford Motor Company concluded, “To the average American our present car and its size represent an outward symbol of prestige and well-being” (Nevins and Hill 1962; p. 379).
That may have been true to a degree, but the Rambler showed that even in the depths of the big-car craze in 1955, a compact wagon could be popular.
Also see ‘1933-42 Willys: A better template for an import beater than later compacts’
By the same token, I suspect that compacts didn’t sell as well as they could have because they mostly didn’t benefit from enough of a price advantage over the standard Ford, Chevrolet and Plymouth. The Henry J initially showed some promise, but it was produced by the wrong automaker. Nash might have had greater capacity to successfully sell at the bottom of the market.
Another factor to consider is that as the 1950s wore on, the Big Three effectively created more of a market for compacts by making its cars ever bigger. You can see that in market share data, where in 1955 compacts and imports together only comprised 1.9 percent of U.S. passenger-car registrations. By 1957 they had grown to 5 percent and then in 1959 soared to 20.3 percent (Edwards, 1965).
The tragedy is that updated versions of these four compacts could have plausibly helped to hold back a rising tide of imports in the late-50s. This is why I think it was a big mistake that the federal government did not clamp down on the Ford-Chevy price war, which arguably violated antitrust laws.
In the absence of government intervention, one of the more promising ideas was considered but rejected by Kaiser. That was for its compact to be a shortened version of its standard-sized car (Langworth, 1993). This could have given the automaker better economies of scale than other independents with a stand-alone compact. Imagine: Affordable product proliferation.
NOTES:
Production figures, market share and body specifications for individual nameplates were calculated from base data provided by the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006), Edwards (1965), Flory (2009) and Gunnell (2002).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, Ill.
- Edwards, Charles E.; 1965. Dynamics of the United States Automobile Industry. University of South Carolina Press.
- Flory, J. “Kelly” Jr.; 2009. American Cars, 1946-1959: Every Model, Year by Year. McFarland & Co.
- Foster, Patrick R.; 2017. George Romney: An American Life. Waldorf Publishing, Grapevine, TX.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Langworth, Richard M.; 1993. Hudson 1946-1957: The Classic Postwar Years. Motorbooks International, Osceola, WI.
- Nevins, Allan and Frank Ernest Hill; 1962. Ford: Decline and Rebirth 1933-1962. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, NY.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcaradvertising.com: Hudson Jet (1953); Henry J (1951); Nash Rambler (1950); Willys Aero (1952)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Nash Rambler (1955)
I love the tiny little people in the car ads. Anyway, articles like this are what I love most about Indie Auto, with the indies playing musical chairs on the Titanic. That second generation Rambler wagon is sharp, and has the promise of roominess. Notice no dogleg on the rear doors? Nash and Hudson understood that you take out size and amenities much faster than you lower price, so just don’t try. Sell a nice looking well appointed smaller car that gives pride of ownership, which was a much greater factor than it is today. To me, the Willys Aero seemed the best one, followed by the Rambler. The Jet had real potential, but by that time Hudson was circling the drain. Kaiser was puttering around with a smallish front drive compact before the KF sedans. I don’t know KFs finances, but they could have had the American Volkswagen. Instead, we have an aspirational vehicle for Crosley owners.
The fundamental problem was that by virtue of their modern factories and equipment and economies of scale, Chevrolet and Ford could produce standard size cars for less unit cost than the independents could produce compacts yet the market expected a smaller car should sell for a lower price as this had been the industry norm since the days of the Model T. This was not a problem faced by imports, particularly VW, who had their own modern factories and equipment and benefited by structurally lower costs due to the Bretton Woods system.
Until it sold Willow Run, the only modern factory run by an independent, Kaiser could perhaps have hoped to compete on cost, but it would have needed a lot more investment to build the volume than the organization was able to devote. Mason’s solution of positioning the Rambler as an aspirational second car was about as good a solution as was available to the independents given these realities.
I would agree that the independents were at a cost disadvantage compared to the Big Three. Scale disadvantages played out in a variety of ways that went well beyond whether their factories were as modern, e.g., Charles Edwards wrote a book in the mid-60s that analyzed other factors such as distribution and marketing.
However, there were ways to at least somewhat reduce scale disadvantages. For example, American Motors under Romney tended to squeeze more years out of his platforms and field fewer variants than the Big Three. Meanwhile, Kaiser-Willys focused on a niche — four-wheel-drive vehicles — that 1) didn’t have much direct competition and 2) had an unusual amount of potential for overseas sales compared to most U.S.-made vehicles.
Regarding factories, Kaiser-Frazer’s Willow Run may have been the most advanced of the independents, but it was entirely too big for its production levels. That undercut the automaker’s ability to break even. This was the scale of factory that an established firm moves up to rather than starts off with.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that Nash was smart to essentially sell the early Rambler as a high-end halo car of sorts rather than as an econobox like the Henry J. I’m not going to argue that this was a bad strategy. However, the Rambler didn’t really solidify its hold on the compact market until it gained lower-priced and four-door models. Nor could the Rambler have maintained its standing as a halo car without more rapid redesigns than Nash and then American Motors gave it. Of course, it also helped that the rest of the Rambler’s compact competition imploded.
Would Kaiser have been more successful in the compact field if it had followed Nash’s lead? Possibly — particularly if the Henry J had been been a shortened big car. A nicely styled hardtop could have anticipated Studebaker’s Loewy coupe. That said, I suspect that Nash had enough capacity to make the Henry J’s approach work reasonably well. Indeed, to a large degree Romney ended up doing just that.
In addition to the advantages enjoyed by the Big Three due to their scale, there is also the fact that, during the early 1950s the Low-Price Three were not viewed as egregiously oversized or cumbersome to drive and park.
A Rambler, Jet, Willys-Aero and Henry J may have been easier to park and used less gas, but the difference between those cars and a Chevrolet was not so great that large numbers of buyers were willing to consider the smaller car. Particularly since there wasn’t a great price differential between the small cars and the Low-Price Three. Then, as now, people expected smaller cars to be less expensive.
The differences in interior room were also meaningful, as families were larger then. Between the parents and the children, it wasn’t uncommon for five or six people to ride in the car. It wasn’t a fluke that the Rambler was the one to gain a serious foothold after it added the 108-inch wheelbase version with four doors. The wagon version, in particular, was extremely popular with families.
Plymouth began the size escalation in 1955, followed by Ford in 1957. Chevrolet didn’t join in until 1958. Quality issues with the 1957 Plymouths and Fords also alienated a lot of buyers and made them open to other choices.
But through 1957, a Chevrolet – particularly the six-cylinder version – was still a viable choice for many families looking for low-cost operation and economy. (People today tend to forget that, even with the debut of the V-8 in 1955, Chevrolet still sold lots of six cylinder cars.) And it offered some meaningful advantages over domestic small cars.
One thing I forgot was that the first generation post war Plymouth made the Concord which was on a 111 inch wheelbase. The figures I saw weren’t too clear but it looks like they made over 200 k in its two year production run. They had a three seat coupe and convertible, an all steel wagon that had “Government Motor Pool” written all over it, and a sedan that resembled a contemporary Volvo. Since the senior Plymouth line had its wheelbased reduced from 118 to 114 inches, the Concord was dropped. It was selling well, with numbers the indies could only dream of. The market WAS there. Not a huge market, but a stable and profitable one. Once Nash absorbed Hudson and became AMC, their right-sized compacts and consumer confidence they wouldn’t be stuck with an orphan gave them a fair shot at the market.
If I recall correctly, the best-selling body style of the small Plymouths was the all-steel Suburban wagon. It sold well because it was the first all-steel station wagon.
Yeah, and looking at the sales figures it seemed to sell about 2/3 of the Concords. It was the perfect second car for the new homeowner. It just puzzles me that the transition to all steel wagons took so long.
Studebaker perspective on this:
They did spend some money on a smaller car project – which was a “parting gift” project given to out-going VP of engineering Roy Cole as he retired. Info on it is very rare but l recall a picture of a vehicle that reminded me of a shrunken ’49 Ford. The project was not pursued. Maybe Studebaker made a good decision there.
A good argument could be made that Studebaker didn’t need a smaller car. The brisk-selling “first-by-far” post-war Champion (’47-’49 model years) had a 112 inch wheelbase (just one more than the Wayfarers cited by Kim above) and were just UNDER 70 inches wide. They sold about 290,000 JUST CHAMPIONS in those 3 years.
By 1951, all Studes except the Land Cruiser had a 115 inch wheelbase and by ’53 that increased to 116.5. Just the direction that America seemed to really want to go. The ’53s should have sold better. I mostly blame the Henry Ford II “blitz” (besides Stude’s problems of labour cost, costly factory buildings, tired older management, etc).
Stewdi, you make an important point that the Studebaker body was as narrow as the compacts. This gave it a crucial difference over the rest of the independents: Studebaker had the greatest capability to come out with a compact that was a shortened version of its existing body. That could have given their entry considerably better economies of scale even if it didn’t sell very well. Indeed, coming out with a compact could have penciled out much better than the low-slung “Loewy coupes” because more major body parts could have been shared, such as a cowl and front doors.
Another factor to consider is that by 1953 the Champion had grown enough in length that it no longer had as much of a smaller size advantage over the Big Three. So adding a compact to the lineup might have allowed Studebaker to both appeal to people who wanted a longer car while not losing those who preferred the shorter Champions of the early postwar years.
Do any images exist of this small post-war sub-Champion Studebaker project?