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. Its snout was a bit longer and more tapered than the more sedate mid-sized Coronet, but the overall shape was still pretty boxy.
The Charger 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)
The primary aero problems with the 1968 Charger were the recessed grille and the tunneled rear window. They were addressed with the 1969 Charger 500, which had a 68 Coronet grille flushed with the front fenders and the rear window flushed with the body lines like the Charger Daytona.
The Charger Daytona was the next step.
Right. What I think is unfortunate is that during the 1960s Detroit never warmed to more aerodynamic approaches used elsewhere, such as the Citroen DS’s heavily tapered front and minimalist grille.
Since most of the 1970 models debuted in the fall of 1969. the big styling change was the federal government’s prodding for the manufacturers to “flatten” the front bumpers and protruding fenders for the sake of safety of pedestrians. The “loop” bumpers followed.
Although this statement sounds logical, it’s suspect given that they mandated massive protruding bumpers for 1973. But given the capriciousness of the federal government, it’s not inconceivable.
“Loop” bumpers began to appear way back in the 1950s, such as on the first four-place Thunderbird (note I have tended to call these “donut” bumpers). Pontiac began to use dual-loop bumpers on its 1967 big cars, and they spread to other GM offerings over the next few years such as the 1968-69 Buick Riviera and 1968-70 Oldsmobile Toronado. Meanwhile, Chrysler gave a few of its 1969 big cars loop bumpers and its mid-sized Dodge Coronet and Charger followed suit in 1970.
The emergence of loop bumpers didn’t stop Detroit from exploring heavily pointed front ends, such as the 1970-71 Thunderbird’s “Bunkie’s beak.” Indeed, the 1969-70 Pontiac Grand Prix had a twin-loop center bumper that stuck out well in front of the headlight area.
I vaguely recall reading in a car-buff magazine that automakers began to shift away from loop bumpers because they were more expensive to facelift than traditional bumpers.
One piece loop bumpers have significant scrap from the stamping process. They were reserved for special models that needed a lift above a less glamorous product. The only absolutely base models I can think of were 1969 full size Chevy, 1970-72 Fury, and 1971-73 Matador. The 1971 Satellite Sebring had a loop bumper, but the b-body marketing plan was that the sedans would be frumpier than the coupes. In other cases, the loop bumper was on a more prestigious product from the manufacturer. (We think of Dodge as equal to Plymouth, but the corporation hadn’t intended that when the Plymouth based Dart went into production in 1960 and started pulling down the brànd image. Eventually the corporation gave up and made Chrysler the only step up brand. Trucks became the unique Dodge product.
Tha federal bumper regs that limited bumper design were “5mph” bumpers phased in from 1973 to 1975. The bumper regs were a federally imposed arms treaty so manufacturers would stop building cars with fancy, expensive, ineffective bumpers that were the most costly repair item in low speed accidents.
Good points. Note that I didn’t mention the 1971-73 AMC Matador because it arguably had a faux loop bumper. In other words, it was made in two pieces (I assume to reduce costs).
Yep I blew that. Damn you. Dick Teague!
The public wants grilles. Even decades later Ford had to re-learn that lesson with the restyled “grill-less” 1992 Crown Vic that unlike the 1st gen Taurus, wasn’t at all popular with full-size drivers, and was hastily revised in 1993 with a vestigial grille. When first saw the ’92 I commented to a car buddy that look wouldn’t last as it was, and it didn’t.
The Crown Vic just wasn’t popular, period, and hadn’t been. Ford sprinkled some Taurus on the Crown Vic and hoped to boost sales. Didn’t work out. The new style boosted sales for the first year (probably because dealers ordered them and hoped they’d sell) then dropped back to the same level as the boxy model.
If the phrase “Imitation is the sincerest form if flattery” didn’t originate in a Detroit-based car company, I’d be surprised 😉
The need for fuel efficiency spawned a slew of aerodynamically better American cars but also gave birth to the jellybean and fish mouth looks. The challenge then and now is how to design a car with a front end that stands out. With their big trucks, however, Ford, GM and Ram can be seen as revisiting the “glory days” of the 1960’s, with their massive bumpers, hood scoops and big, bigger, biggest grilles. Suddenly it’s 1967
60 years ago, Harry Bradley did a new GM truck with a sloping hood. After two years, GM raised and flattered the hood.
Insisting on sealed beams in only two possible configurations restricted front end designs though.
>> restricted front end designs though.
Thankfully, yes. Cars didn’t look like insects as they do now.
You could replace a headlamp for about four bucks instead of a couple hundred today.
Since they were standardized, your local garage could re-aim them so that they didn’t blind oncoming drivers.
Because they weren’t mainly a styling feature, they lit the road properly and didn’t blind oncoming drivers. Consumer Reports says that most headlights today provide worse lighting than sealed beams.
We need to come up with a new, slim, standardized replacement for the old sealed beam. Congress has said that they will be looking into complaints about modern headlights. I don’t expect much progress but one can hope.
And bring back hidden headlights. It can’t be impossible to make them break-away for pedestrian safety. Aren’t truck’s tall blunt fascias an equal danger?