Face it, Cars Are Ugly!

Are you old enough to remember when cars were beautiful?  No?

When they were works of art?  Remodeled from stem to stern every single year?  As in, unrecognizable one year to the next?  Can you remember that?

If not, you're the poorer for it.  There was a time, several decades ago, when automobiles were designed to be lovely to look at, as well as to drive.  And early every September they unmasked a new edition.  And each year was advertised as being lower, and wider, and longer, and more powerful.  And quicker and slicker and neater and cuter!  

I can recall peeking through a tear in the butcher paper covering the floor-to-ceiling windows at my local Chevy dealer's for an early view of the new 1957's.  Because how cars looked back then made a big difference as to how they sold.  We were just coming off a Big War and hungry for newer and bigger and better.  And the car makers were providing it.

I ask you to think back to the 1957 Chrysler 300C, if you can.  And the '60 300F and '61 300G.   Created by the famed designer Virgil Exner.  All stunning!  Think the '57 Plymouth Sport Fury (Christine!).  And the 1960 DeSoto Adventurer.  A rolling work of art.  And the '64 Imperial Le Baron.  Plus the '67 Dodge Charger.  Unique!    

And how about the "Tri-Fives," the '55, '56, and '57 Chevy Bel Airs so coveted today?  And the freakily gorgeous '59 Impala?  I'd love to own one now.  And there are the cars designed by the famous Harley Earle back in the '60's.  How about the famous '61 Impala "bubbletop?"  Just beautiful!  Or GM's '64 Oldsmobile Starfire?  And the 1960 and '61 Pontiac Venturas and Bonnevilles?  Stopped traffic.  And the gorgeous '72 Buick (boattail) Riviera?  How did this make it past accounting?  And the '68 and especially '69 Chevelles, perhaps the most iconic auto design ever (think Bumblebee)?  

And Ford's beautiful '60 and '61 Starliners?  And the Ford (Shelby) Cobras?  And the '55 - '57 Thunderbird?  And it's '55/'56 Lincoln Continental?  And the iconic '70 - '71 429 cu. in. Mustangs?  And the weird but wonderful '58 Mercury Park Lane?  (I'm not a Ford fan so I've already stretched to say something complementary).*

These are but a very few of the gorgeous cars I grew up coveting.  I wanted them all!  And wound up owning 127 of them, BTW.  In both the U.S. and Europe.  Turns out shooting pool for big money in dirty dark dens of iniquity paid well enough to finance my love of cars.  And women, too, but that's another story.

When my love of cars began a 2-door hardtop was cool.  A convertible was even cooler.  A station wagon could possibly be cool, depending upon who was driving it.  A pickup was not cool, 'cause they were for work.  And a four-door sedan was the absolute un-coolest thing you could possibly drive.  And you hid your face when you did.  

Which is what we've got now. 

And to convince you that style was important, Ford's "Edsel" ('58 - '60) proves it.  The Edsel was ugly.  And it failed.  Ford released it in '58 and it went down in flames.  It was laughed off the market and cost Ford more than $One Billion Dollars.  Back when a $Billion was real money.

And then Detroit looked to Europe and discovered that they didn't actually need to change the way cars looked every single year.  So they started stretching out redesigns to 4 - 5 years, and even as much as a decade to save money.  Even more in some cases.  Chrysler's "300" series was unveiled in 2004.  They just killed in 2023.  

(Some say Chrysler was so tardy because they didn't have any money for such niceties as "looks.")

Go outside.  Take a look around.  With the exception of Porsches and Corvettes, I'll bet you dollars to donuts you cannot tell one make from another from 50 feet away.  Especially from a side view.  Most of them are now "SUV's," which stands for "Sport Utility Vehicle," BTW.  That means they're pickup trucks with a different suit of clothes.  They poll-tested various combinations of words until they found something that made trucks sound good.  

You take a $25,000 Chevy pickup, you see, you remove the bed, and then you add a "station wagon," six- or nine-seat body.  And then you market it as something else entirely.  

Example:  The Cadillac Escalade is the $60,000 Chevrolet Suburban with a bit nicer leather seating and carpeting.  For an extra $40,000.  But people buy them.  Proving the truth in P. T. Barnum's admonition, "A sucker is born every minute."  

I would offer that cars ceased being beautiful and started being ugly just about 1980.  They were "three-box" square, and ugly as sin.  That's when the Gubmint stuck its gigantic maw into the car bizz and started mandating all sorts of safety measures.  5 mph bumpers and 18 air bags and crush-resistant bodies.  And in doing so all the designers were sent packing.  While our cars went from an average weight of 2,800 pounds in the '60's to 4,200 pounds today.  And as much as 6,000 pounds for (ugly) SUV's!  And another 2,000 pounds if one chooses a battery-electric!  

We Americans have been conditioned to believe that cars don't have to look good.  They just have to cart the family to and from grandma's, and the soccer team to and from the games.  All while their price went from a few $Thousand to $One Hundred Thousand!  We used to park under a shade tree, pile under the hood and install a bigger carburetor.  Now, there's a big metal shield under the hood preventing you from even seeing the engine upon which you're making Big Payments.  

And you only have to wash it along with the change in seasons.  Because there's no more pride of ownership!

Pffftttooooeeee!

I have owned a glorious '60 Chrysler Saratoga hardtop.  And a '60 Chevy Impala convertible.  And a bubble-top '61 Impala.  And a '62 409-409 while the song was on the charts ($3,802.76).  And a '66 427 Corvette, with all four off-road options ($6,674.20), worth $500k today.  And a '66 Porsche 911.  And a '53 Rolls-Royce.  And a '64 Porsche 356 (bathtub).  And a '61 Pontiac Ventura, 348 hp, 4-sp.  And a Mercedes-Benz 300d Cabriolet (gangster wagon).  And a '57 Bel-Air Sedan Delivery (one of 55).  And more than 100 other cars.  

           AND NONE OF THEM WERE UGLY!

I've lost sleep over not being able to keep a few of these treasures.  After all, it would take a warehouse to keep them, and a full-time mechanic to look after them.  None of which I happen to have.  So like everyone else, I bought them, and used them up, and traded them in for the next ride.  They were disposable as well as beautiful.  Like toasters back then.  Cars were traded in every 2 and 1/2 years back then.  Unlike now, which is 10 or more.  Seldom did they make it to 80,000 miles.  Their build quality was uniformly terrible so we traded them often.  Or just left them by the side of the road.  Buy 'em, trash 'em, send 'em right to the junk yard.  

Dayyummm, would I like to have a few of them back!

But those days are gone.  I'll exult in the memories of laying down 200 yards of rubber in front of City Hall back in my rebellious days (they never left).  While driving with a light right foot now to try and defend against $6.00 gas.

BTW, I'd advise anyone too young to recall the joy of living in this by-gone era, please Google these cars and others of their time, and bask in their beauty.  Then go to your local bar and try and drown your sorrow for having been born too late...

*   I'll add to this list the mid-'60's Ferrari 330 GTC's and 250 GTO's and 365 GTC Daytonas, and the '61 - '74 Jaguar E-Type, and the '68 - '70 Lamborghini Miura P400's, and the 1955 - '58 M-B 300 SL's.  But they were from Europe, cost a $Bundle even then, were almost unobtainable, and were - and are - moving works of art.  Plus, they're now worth $Millions.