Plymouth's 1949 Fastback

During the late 1930s and early 1940s American car stylists tended to assume that future automobile designs would emphasize streamlining.  One aspect of streamlining as it was then understood was that it required the "fastback" style, where the roofline curved downward to the level of the rear bumper.

Chrysler Corporation and Ford Motor Company 1940 models featured fastback designs on sedans.  General Motors introduced especially sleek fastback bodies for 1941, but hedged its bet by retaining some mild bustle-back designs as well.

But by the time new post-World War 2 designs were planned, fastback styling was falling out of favor.  One likely reason was because bustle-back designs offered more trunk space, making them more practical.

Nearly all redesigned 1949 Chrysler Corporation cars had rectangular, bustle-back styling.  But there were two exceptions: entry-level Plymouth and Dodge 2-door sedans were fastbacks.

The Plymouth fastback is featured below.  All the photos are of cars listed for sale.

Gallery

This is a 1949 Plymouth Special DeLuxe 4-Door Sedan.  Most Plymouth sedans and coupes looked something like this.

Her is a 1949 Plymouth DeLuxe P-17 fastback.

1950 Plymouths were given a simplified grille, but otherwise little-changed.

One small change at the rear was different tail lights.

P-17 Plymouths had a 111-inch wheelbase, whereas other Plymouth sedans had wheelbases of 117 and 118.5 inches: this resulted in a stubbier look.  For what it's worth, this Plymouth did look sleeker than their 1940-48 fastbacks did.

Here is a 1949 Chevrolet Fleetline 2-door sedan.  It is far more stylish than the Plymouths shown above.  However, General Motors phased out fastback designs such as this after the 1952 model year due to slow sales.

Plymouth's Fins Final Fling: 1960 Fury

Chrysler Corporation's standard size cars mostly switched from body-on-frame to unitized construction for 1960.  Retained features included wraparound windshields with back-slanting A-pillars (first appearing in 1955) and tail fins (that began to sprout for the 1956 model year).

Virgil Exner was nominally in charge of Chrysler styling when the 1960 redesign was underway.  But he had suffered a major heart attack in 1956 that required open-heart surgery and a long recovery period.  Because of this, Exner was not deeply involved with the design of cars under development during the late 1950s, nor was he always pleased with the results of the work done by others.

The subject of this post is the 1960 Plymouth Fury, a car with odd design features.  Peter Grist, in his biography of Exner, has Cliff Voss responsible for its styling.  Voss was an experienced designer who had held leadership positions for years, so I find it a bit strange that Plymouths appeared the way they did.

As it happened, Plymouth sales were not good during the 1960 model year.  The 1961 facelift cleaned up the front end design somewhat, and tail fins were eliminated.

Gallery

Hyman Ltd. photo of a 1960 Plymouth Fury hardtop coupe.  The tail fins are unnecessary, the '61 facelift doing a neat job of replacing them with a sort of horizontal blade motif.  Otherwise, the design aft of the cowling is reasonably pleasing.

The major styling defect is the mess forward of the cowling, as seen in the previous photo as well as this Mecum Auctions image.  The worst detail is the curved chrome slash that whips around the front wheel opening while serving here as a paint tone separator.  The accent color forward of the opening serves to exaggerate the awkward, somewhat static zone in a design that otherwise flows tautly from front to rear (fins aside).  Quad headlights occupy too much space.  The "eyebrow" above the grille zone is too heavy-handed.  The shallow V at the lower edge of the grille clashes with the horizontal middle section of the eyebrow.  The nearly-horizontal connector bar between bumper side elements adds yet another shape that does not relate to its neighbors.

Side view of the same car.  From this perspective, the tail fins are clearly too large, and unbalance the design.

High angle view of the rear of a Fury convertible from Barrett-Jackson.  The fake spare tire cover is an affectation found on several 1950s vintage Imperials and then appeared on Furys for 1959.   This photo helps confirm that the fins are unhelpful from a design standpoint.

American Business Coupes

Wikipedia deals at some length here with the coupé (in America: coupe) body type.  A few lines of the link deal with the business coupe: "A coupé with no rear seat or a removable rear seat intended for traveling salespeople and other vendors who would be carrying their wares with them."

The American business coupe was part of the product mix for many brands from the late 1920s into the early 1950s.  Most were advertised as business coupes, but some coupes had more general names, yet could be used for business purposes.

The logic of using a coupe for traveling salesmen, consulting engineers and many other business activities requiring road travel was that coupes were: (1) usually inexpensive to buy; (2) had a usefully minimal seating capacity; and (3) had small cabins but also the long wheelbases of large-cabin cars so that there was room for a larger than normal trunk for carrying stuff.

Below are examples of this long-departed type of automobile body in chronological order.

Gallery

1929 Buick Master-Six Business Coupe
An early example.  The trunk is fairly small, so this body might also have had a rumble seat version.

1934 Hupmobile Aerodynamic Coupe
This is probably a rumble seat coupe.  I show it because of its very small cabin that seats two (or perhaps three in a pinch) and its long trunk area.  The rear-mounted spare tire would have made this an inconvenient business coupe because it would have interfered with loading.  A business coupe version would have been possible if the spare tire was repositioned.

1936 Oldsmobile Eight Business Coupe

1936 Buick Special Business Coupe
Two General Motors business coupes from mid-range marques.  I suppose these were offered for salesmen or business representatives requiring a more substantial image than that offered by entry-level brands.  The cars shown here used the same basic body.

1936 Packard One-Twenty Business Coupe
Another example of a mid-range business coupe.  Surprising, given that it was from the maker of luxury cars, but Packard had to enter a lesser market range in order to survive the Great Depression.

1937 Graham Cavalier Series 95 Business Coupe
A business coupe from a minor brand.  Note the illustration showing how the spare tire was stored, providing more convenient trunk space.

1939 Plymouth Business Coupe
A business coupe from Chrysler Corporation.  Like the Graham, it is a four-window coupe, something becoming common for business coupes by the late 1930s.

1939 Chevrolet Master Deluxe Business Coupe
This publicity photo shows a business coupe being loaded.

1939 Graham Combination Coupe
The text (click on the image to enlarge) mentions that a business version of this coupe was available.

1940 Chevrolet Master 85 Business Coupe
I include this brochure page image because it shows storage variations.

1941 Dodge Luxury Liner Deluxe Business Coupe
A nice example of a small cabin on a long-wheelbase car with the resulting large trunk.

1941 Oldsmobile Special Business Coupe
Yet another view of business coupe storage.

1949 Dodge Wayfarer Business Coupe
Business coupe production continued post- World War 2.  This one has Chrysler Corporation's redesigned postwar body style.

1951 Studebaker Champion Business Coupe - Mecum Auctions photo
Perhaps the flashiest business coupe of the lot, though that 1939 Graham comes close.  These small-cabin Studebakers have always fascinated me.

1950 Chevrolet Styline Business Coupe
Even General Motors continued business coupes into the early 1950s.

UPDATE: Further research shows that Chrysler Corporation's Plymouth brand offered business coupes as late as 1957.