Our friends at Collectible Automobile have just recycled another Frank Peiler (2018) “what if” post on their Twitter feed. This particular article answers the question: What if other U.S. automakers had grafted the design elements of the 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser onto one of their cars? Seven illustrations are presented that speculate about what the iconic Mercury could have looked like if it had been adapted to the body of a 1957 Oldsmobile, Dodge, Nash and Studebaker Hawk.
As is usually the case with Peiler’s “what if” articles, this one doesn’t help us better understand automotive history. Nor does it offer any social commentary. In addition, the quality of the designs do not come anywhere close to the works of Steven Erler (2022) or Casey Shain (2022). Indeed, the reader could easily assume that the illustrations were drawn by some bored retiree with more enthusiasm than talent.
Peiler is actually the publisher of Collectible Automobile (2022) magazine. Let that sink in for a minute. He presumably has at his fingertips more information about U.S. automotive history than pretty much anyone around. By all rights, that should result in top-notch counterfactuals. Instead, his “what if” pieces represent some of the most vapid automotive history on the Intertubes.
Wouldn’t you like to see a Cord 810 on an Airflow body?
I grant you that once in a while Peiler (2021) comes up with a decent theme, such as early-50s wagons that never were. But why should we care about what a 1936-37 Cord 810 might have looked like if it had been placed on a Chrysler Airflow body (Peiler, 2018)? Or a 1956-57 Continental Mark II on a Nash (Peiler, 2019). Or a 1963 Buick Riviera on a Rambler two-door sedan (Peiler, 2022a)?
Have you ever wondered what a Citroen DS19 would have looked like if it had been sold in the U.S. as a 1955 Hudson with an “OHV V-8 engine and automatic transmission coupled to rear drive gears” (Peiler, 2018)? I haven’t — the idea sounds absurd even when viewed as purely entertainment.
Also see ‘Collectible Automobile puffs up the 1971-74 AMC Javelin’
Let’s consider one other point: Peiler heads a company that presumably has the funding to hire the best in the auto history field to produce “what if” features. Instead of dishing out second-rate drawings with little, if any, meaningful analytical content, he could be helping more gifted counterfactual artists find an audience.
Yet year after year Peiler keeps on pumping out the auto history equivalent of a tired, old joke that the guy at the end of the bar won’t stop retelling. Peiler’s basic concept may have been vaguely interesting the first or second time, but now it’s hopelessly stale — and a classic example of the dumbing down of U.S. automotive history.
NOTES:
In fairness to Peiler (2022b), the quality of the artwork on his own website, Frank Peiler’s Auto Portraits, tends to be substantially higher than in his “what if” features posted on The Daily Drive. The latter website is published by Consumer Guide Automotive and shares content with Collectible Automobile’s social media.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Collectible Automobile; 2022. “Our Staff.” Accessed July 30.
- Erler, Steven; 2022. Auto-Visuals. Accessed July 30.
- Peiler, Frank; 2018. “What If…1955 Hudson (5 Alternate-Universe Possibilities).” The Daily Drive. Reposted Jan. 30.
- ——; 2018. “What if S-P, GM, Chrysler, or AMC Had Designed the 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser?” The Daily Drive. Reposted March 31.
- ——; 2018. “What if GM, Hudson, Chrysler, and Others Had Designed the Cord 810?” The Daily Drive. Reposted May 31.
- ——; 2019. “What If…1956-1957 Continental Mark II.” The Daily Drive. Reposted Jan. 4.
- ——; 2021. “What if: A Gallery of Early 1950s Station Wagons That Never Were.” Posted Nov. 2.
- ——; 2022a. “What If: A Gallery of Alternate-Universe 1963 Buick Riviera Designs.” The Daily Drive. Posted Sept. 11 (unknown year); accessed July 30, 2022.
- ——; 2022b. “Original Artwork.” Frank Peiler’s Auto Portraits. Accessed July 30.
- Shain, Casey; 2022. Casey / Art and Colour: My Fake Cars Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Accessed July 30.
I haven’t checked out the other sites yet, but= In another article bemoaning the 1954 Packard Clipper as the ruin of the company, there was a discussion of the difficulty adopting Packard’s classoic tombstone radiator grille to the 50w horizontal look. Take a look at what Peller did with the Pikehawk. I think he hit on something. Go with an anodyne horizontal grille, and do the tombstone as a hood scoop.
I still buy Collectible Automobile. It’s obviously a high-quality publication, with beautiful photos and high-quality paper stock.
Part of the challenge is that Mr. Peiler relies on free-lance writers who have an intimate knowledge of the particular marque or vehicle. Relying on these buffs means that he has keep a tight rein on them.
They tend to fall into two traps.
The first is making every excuse for their favorite car or marque (the fellow who posted here defending the Chevrolet Vega is Exhibit A in that regard).
The second is that they often look at the past with rose-colored glasses. This line of thought results in people blaming the downfall of the domestic auto industry in general (and GM, in particular) on the abandonment of rear-wheel-drive and body-on-frame vehicles. Which results in diatribes against CAFE/Ralph Nader/the Japanese/Republicans who allowed free trade/Democrats who supported regulations/UAW/management/Consumer Reports/etc., etc.
I doubt that Mr. Peiler wants to deal with that.
Geeber, where do you get the idea that any of the illustrations I linked to were drawn by freelancers? For example, the 1957 Mercury story specifically states that the car designs were “imagined by Frank Peiler.” The quality of the article’s concept and execution rests entirely with him.
I would also invite you to provide evidence that Peiler and his editorial staff let freelancers run wild. As a case in point, Patrick Foster’s Collectible Automobile story on the 1971-74 AMC Javelin lacks the critical analysis of his first AMC book (go here).
As I have discussed here, Collectible Automobile has a variety of positive attributes, such as the quality of its graphic presentation. If you are a collector, this is as good of a place as any to get all kinds of relevant information about your favored cars. However, this magazine does not always do a very good job of advancing substantive automotive history.
This wouldn’t be a problem if the scholarly side of the auto history field had more capacity. But as we’ve discussed here, it’s pretty small and balkanized. Indeed, I fear that U.S. auto history is dying a slow death.
I was referring to the articles, not the drawings. I never said that those renderings were done by a free-lance artist. I specifically referred to freelance “writers.”
I also never said that Mr. Peiler has let the freelancer writers “run wild” in the articles.
I said that he has prevented that from happening by keeping a tight rein on them. That, in turn, has tended to lessen the substantive content of the articles.
I’m not arguing with your main point here. I’ve thought this many times. But, as someone who has posted on automotive forums for over 20 years, and been a reader of Collectible Automobile since the first issue (and also has a background in journalism), I understand why Mr. Peiler has taken the approach that he has with the magazine.
Thank you for clarifying. My sense of the magazine realm is that some publications are more writer oriented and others are dominated by editors. Collectible Automobile strikes me as fitting into the latter category. It is pretty formulaic. It also seems to target more casual readers who want entertainment more than substantive history (which makes some sense from a financial sustainability standpoint).
It would be interesting to see what Collectible Automobile’s editors would do with a submission from an expressive writer like Paul Niedermeyer. I could see them editing the piece so heavily that it doesn’t have much of his voice left. In a way that Vega guy would have more of a chance of getting published because he likes to dwell on product details. However, I could also see his submission being rewritten from top to bottom because he amps up the advocacy too high.
There is potential for Collectible Automobile to be a more substantive publication. Apparently the current formula works – at least until the current readers grow bored or die off – so there isn’t much incentive to change it.
(I’d be very curious to see the demographics of the magazine’s readers. Most likely they skew heavily toward those 50 and older, which could spell trouble down the road.)
Automobile Quarterly and Special Interest Autos offered more a in-depth look at the history of a particular vehicle or marque. I’m guessing that, in the 21st century, it’s up to sites such as this to take their place.
I don’t have a fully formed idea about what could be done. Instead, my focus has been to highlight challenges in the auto history media in order to cultivate more robust debates about its future direction. I don’t see a whole lot of this going on (at least in public venues). A while back Carpubinsider.com offered some helpful analysis, but that website ultimately shut down. In general, the field seems to have a lot of mutual back slapping, such as through the Automotive Hall of Fame. Acknowledging good work is important, but so is assessing how we can do better.
That’s not just true for publications — in our field it may be even more important for books. Unfortunately, to the degree that they get any attention at all with the major auto media, their reviews tend to be quite ginger in offering substantive critiques. While I think it is great to encourage more people to buy auto history books, the relative lack of robust debate about them can retard the advancement of the field. Questionable theories and factual errors can be perpetuated for decades — even by some of the field’s top writers.
One could argue that this doesn’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. That may be true if we focus on the minutiae of auto history. However, the automobile — and the auto industry — represent such an important part of American society that getting its history right should have value to more people than just aging car buffs.
This is a long way of saying that Collectible Automobile strikes me as being a symptom of a larger problem within the auto history field. However, they currently happen to be one of the biggest players, so it seems appropriate to focus a meaningful amount of attention on them. I don’t do so with the expectation that they will change so much as it might spur others to try filling in the gaps that they have left.
I own every “Collectible Automobile” magazine published since 1984. I am a subscriber. I think the magazine has beautiful photography and celebrates the ownership of cars from the early years of the transition from motorized carriages to the brass-era into now the 1980s. While the magazine discusses the good and the bad about, the vehicles featured and covered, there is much that has been rehashed (in different ways, always) since the first issue in 1984. My only gripe, and I several years ago spoke with both the editor and publisher by telephone on this, is that they very rarely display chassis or other technical details that are a part of the evolution of the automobile as well as the innovations that were presented to the public over the years by the multitude of vehicle manufacturers. (My example was an article on the importance of the 1939 Studebaker Champion and how engineer Barney Roos introduced the planar suspension. I asked both men why there was not a photograph of this revolutionary suspension. John Biel responded that he believes his readers really don’t care about the technical details, and that styling is the focus of the vast majority of his readers and subscribers.)
I still subscribe to “Collectible Automobile” because of the overall quality of the publication in spite of its limitations. The magazine celebrates the world of automobiles (and trucks). I also subscribe to “Hemmings’ Classic Car” magazine, which is the successor to “Special Interest Autos”. The Hemmings publication does feature more of the mechanicals, and there is always one or two restoration articles, as well as wonderful columnists; however, with the departure of Editor Richard Lentinello and several other contributors to “Classic Car”, the Hemmings publication has suffered in both size and overall content. Lentinello’s first four “Crankshaft” magazines are excellent, and are all about the love of vehicles, old and new. Lentinello’s first two books about the Corvair and Cadillac style are a gearhead’s delight, focusing on the details one only encounters when detailing a beloved vehicle. I hope there is room in the marketplace for all of these publications. I also subscribe to “Car & Driver”, “MotorSport” and “Vintage Motorsport”. I was a loyal “Road & Track” subscriber from the John R. Bond to the Tony Hogg era, but the ownership changes made the publication irrelevant, and the current Hearst direction is more a supercar version of “Car & Driver” than the Bond-era “R & T”.
James, I think that Collectible Automobile does a decent job of publishing “descriptive” automotive history. That is, presenting in a polished way names, dates and specifications of old cars. What it does less well is providing an “analysis” of why things turned out the way that they did.
For example, Collectible Automobile articles tend to dance gingerly around the question of why did the U.S. automakers experience one of the most spectacular industrial collapses of the last century. I would argue that this is not a question that only pointy-headed academics would be interested in — better understanding why things went wrong in the past could help the U.S. automakers — and policymakers — avoid similar mistakes in the future. The role of historians can be doubly important because automotive journalists tend to have a pretty superficial understanding of the past.
In other words, I’m not coming at automotive history primarily from the standpoint of the “gearhead.” There are already plenty of other publications that do so. Life is short; why not make a unique contribution rather than copying others?
Part of the challenge here is the format of Collectible Automobile. The magazine’s articles focus on a particular model, to the point that the articles now drill down to a particular generation of a model. (In the early days, some articles focused on one model, and the article covered all of the generations – for example, the Buick Century from 1936 through 1958.)
With that format, a more in-depth analysis of how the model fared compared to the competition, and why it was compromised by various decisions makers, is certainly plausible. A perfect example is your critique of the magazine’s article on the 1971-78 Cadillac Eldorado. The points you suggested make perfect sense, would make the articles more interesting and would be easy to incorporate in the magazine’s present format.
The magazine, in its present format, is not equipped to explore why the U.S. auto industry was on the ropes by the early 21st century. That requires a detailed look at labor-management relations; the location of Big Three headquarters in one region; the response of the industry to regulatory mandates; and the capture of the executive suite by those with a finance background, as opposed to an engineering or manufacturing background.
Some vehicles stand out as particularly awful and are symptoms of those issues – the Chevrolet Vega and GM X-cars, for example – but those subjects require articles specifically devoted to that particular topic. Incorporating that type of article into the magazine would greatly change its character, so I can understand why the editors would be reluctant to do so.
That type of article would be a better fit for a revived Automobile Quarterly or a magazine that tackles each issue with the thoroughness of David Halberstam’s The Reckoning. Those articles don’t require lots of high-quality photos of beautifully restored old cars, however, which is one of the big attractions of Collectible Automobile.
Given how often certain design trends get copied, such as the bustle-back of the 2nd gen Cadillac Seville, the “Sinatra” Imperial and the downsized Continental sedan, it’s interesting and speculative fun to see how some of those trends might have been applied at different times to different car brands.
Each to his own. I don’t see the point of, say, applying the styling cues of a Cord 810 to an Airflow when what makes that design work is an unusually low-slung, front-wheel-drive body. Or putting a V8 in a Citroen; that’s like attaching the head of a horse to the body of a fox. That doesn’t strike me as quality automotive history. If that sounds too pointy-headed, I plead guilty.
Lol, not at all Steve. I think your examples of those styling applications are inappropriate, especially when the 2 cars you mention are already iconic. Some of Peiler’s imagined designs, as commenters have noted, lend themselves well to his styling adaptations, others not so much. But then again there are plenty of examples of uninspired designs which still come out of Detroit that might have benefitted from a few more “what if” sketches.
I should clarify that I agree with you that applying the styling characteristics of the Cord 810 to a Chrysler Airflow are inappropriate.