The 1960s are often described as a golden age for U.S. car design, but they still suffered from a stultifying level of conformity. To give you a sense of what I mean, let’s take a look at the three rules Detroit largely followed with the front-end design of passenger cars.
Before proceeding, I should note that one can point to occasional exceptions to these rules — but there are remarkably few of them among domestic automakers. In addition, those exceptions tended to be with niche cars where it was more acceptable to deviate from the norm.
Foreign automakers displayed more diversity in their approaches, but that is a subject for another time.
Rule No. 1: There had to be a grille
Car buffs have been well trained to distinguish between the many varieties of grilles. However, we also tend to forget that one of the most sacrosanct rules in Detroit during the 1960s was that a car had to have a grille above what was typically considered bumper height.
The knowledgeable reader can point to exceptions, such as the Studebaker Avanti and Chevrolet Corvette. Even so, those were low-volume models. Aside from them, every other American car during the 1960s had a grille of meaningful size. That even included fairly sporty coupes such as the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.
It’s true that automakers began to experiment with grilles inserted into donut-shaped bumpers. One of the first examples was the 1964 Ford Thunderbird. Within a few years this trend would spread to a handful of models at General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. However, no one significantly hid their grille to the degree of the Avanti, which only had a small opening tucked way under the bumper.
Rule No. 2: The fascia had to be relatively upright
A second rule was that fascia had to be relatively upright. It could tilt a bit forward like on a 1963-65 Buick Riviera, but tilting backwards was largely a no-no — with the exception of the Avanti and 1968 Corvette.
Requiring an upright fascia strikes me as a perplexing rule because it was not very aerodynamic. That leads me to assume that Detroit simply didn’t care about wind resistance in those days. Even high-performance cars tended to have fairly upright front ends.
Consider the 1968 Dodge Charger. It’s snout was a bit longer and more tapered than the more sedate mid-sized Coronet, but its overall shape was still pretty boxy.
The Charger’s shape was aerodynamically problematic for racing, so Chrysler came out with a limited-production version that had a much more swept-back beak tacked on. Imagine how much better the car would have looked if a sharply sloping front had been integrated into the design from the beginning.
Rule No. 3: The bumper had be relatively flat
A corollary to the above rule is that the front bumper had to be fairly flat. Of course, during the second half of the 1960s there was an explosion in the number of bumpers with somewhat more complex shapes.
As a case in point, the full-sized 1965-66 Buick had a W-shaped bumper. Mercury would increasingly adopt a broughamtastic powerdome grille center and butter-knife fender edges. And many late-60s Chevrolets had a modest V-shape in the center of the fascia. However, if you looked at these cars from the side they would still be relatively flat.
Perhaps the biggest exception to this rule was the 1968 Corvette, with a dramatic V-shape that harkened back to the legenday 1953 Studebaker Loewy coupe. Another notable exception was the 1965-69 Ford Mustang, where the corners of the front were shaved off.
Why wasn’t there more design diversity in the 1960s?
I suspect that the biggest reason why was a lack of competition among domestic automakers. The Big Three largely copied each other. Among the remaining independents, only Studebaker took the risk of deviating from the norm.
Imagine if an automaker had thrown away the rule book on the design of a family car. Picture a 1968 Ford Torino with a swept-back and grilleless fascia similar to a 1985 Ford Mustang or 1987 Taurus. Aside from using round headlights and a chrome bumper, such a design would have been doable. Yet that approach was considered too radical. Even a proposed Avanti-based sedan had a thrust-forward fascia, and most of the prototypes had grilles (Torchinsky, 2024).
Let’s do one more thought experiment. Might we have seen more design diversity in the 1960s if the U.S. still had a half-dozen independent automakers like it did after World War II? For example, might Hudson have continued to pioneer wind-cheating shapes because of the racing legacy of its step-down models?
That’s wild speculation, but I bring it up to suggest that Detroit’s design conformity was not preordained. How cars looked was a result of the industry’s increasingly insular structure and culture. During the 1960s the powers that be emphasized boxy, gingerbread styling instead of functional attributes such as aerodynamics. It would take a series of energy crises, a rising tide of fuel-efficient imports, and government regulations to change Detroit’s ways.
NOTES:
Specifications were from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (1993, 2006), Flory (2004, 2013) 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.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Flory, J. “Kelly” Jr.; 2004. American Cars, 1960-1972. McFarland & Co., Inc.
- ——; 2013. American Cars, 1973-1980. McFarland & Co., Inc.
- Torchinsky, Jason; 2024. “The Best Stuff In The Studebaker Museum Is In The Basement, Like This Avanti Family Car Prototype.” The Autopian. Posted Sept. 27.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- fordheritagevault.com: Ford Torino (1968)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Buick LeSabre (1965); Chevrolet Corvette (1968): Dodge Charger (1970); Ford Mustang (1985); Ford Taurus (1987)
Be the first to comment