American Car Spotters Guide - 1951

In spite of government restrictions, the US automotive industry in 1951 sold 5,338,435 new cars, including the 1000 millionth. Most models were 'carry-overs' from 1950 with the customary annual facelifts. Only Kaiser-Frazer's and Packard's 1951 models were entirely new. Ford and Plymouth introduced their first hardtops, the Victoria and Belvedere respectively. Hardtops, which became very fashionable, resembled convertible coupes except that the tops were made of metal and could not be folded down.

Cadillac began producing Walker Bulldog tanks in their Cleveland, Ohio, Ordnance plant and Ford started design work on a new field car, the ¼ Ton 4 x 4 military Utility Truck, XM151. At the other extreme, a new 'dream car' campaign, which was to continue throughout the 1950s, commenced with Chrysler displaying their K370 experimental car and General Motors their LeSabre and Buick XP300. The latter had a super-charged 300-bhp V8 power plant. Although most of these dream cars were genuine test beds for new ideas and developments and were exhibited to gauge the public's reaction to advanced styling concepts, others were probably made chiefly to impress and 'get in on the act'.

Success of the Rambler prompted Kaiser's small-car introduction, the 'Henry J' in 1951 and Hudson's Jet early during 1953. Clearly, Americans - at least some - began to think small. However, despite the ever increasing boom in even smaller-sized imports the 'Fifties' trend to lower, wider, longer cars couldn't be stopped. It was this decade which gave birth to the so-called 'full-sized car'. Previously, lower-priced marques had produced smaller-sized cars, while the higher a marque's price and the greater its prestige, the longer its wheelbase had been. It had all been logical. Not so anymore, for even the low-priced makes such as Chevrolet, Ford and Plymouth offered grown-up models with long wheelbases at the tops of their lines: 'full-sized cars'.
 
The "Full Size Cars" were too large and heavy to be comfortably parked without the benefits of power-steering, or to be stopped easily without the use of servo-assisted brakes. Large expanses of sheet steel stretched before the driver's eyes, covering the engine compartment, and even greater was the rear overhang, providing huge luggage compartments, which invariably failed to keep their suggested promise of cavernous stowage space. Low build, badly conceived location of the spare wheel and intrusion of the fuel tank all combined to keep luggage space much more limited than optically implied.

Yes, the American car had grown up during the Nineteen Fifties - for better or for worse. Life was easy, money plentiful, jobs provided security for all and the thought of fuel shortages was just a wild figment of a science-fiction writer's imagination. It was all mirrored in the coachwork of the 'Fifties cars. Three-colour paint combinations in black, cream and raspberry red; wrap-around windshields which bumped knees and distorted vision; tail fins which grew to gigantic dimensions; lashings of chrome-plated trim at the sides and on toothy grilles and outrageously long tail ends; fake air scoops; fake louvers; fake spare wheel covers; fake wire-spoke hub caps.

Some thought that cars didn't really look like cars any more in the America of the 'Fifties. They were big, broad, multi-hued barges which attempted more to look like rockets and jet planes than mundane automobiles. America, growing ever closer to the ideal of personal transportation the automobile embodied, drifted ever farther away from the ideals of good automotive design.