At the risk of disrupting an active comment thread, I would like to elevate to the front page a response by Peter Wilding to our story, “U.S. cars often suffered from weak styling continuity and boxy shapes in 1970-80s.” Note that the original story addresses all U.S. automakers rather than just GM:
The idea of styling continuity, while certainly a worthwhile aim, presupposes that you have styling worth continuing!
GM’s big cars certainly needed a bulk-ectomy. Overhang reduction for a start, thin down those doors, flatten the gratuitous side contours to lose some bulk, and maybe a bit of narrowing; how much space do six people really need? Sit them a bit more upright for comfort while you’re about it. Mission accomplished.
Then there were those colonnade intermediates with their odd fender bulges and overdone side contours – they were something of a styling dead end. Likewise, they needed a top and tail, flatten those flabby sides and – oops! Someone slapped a goofy roof on the prestige models.
I think GM’s downsizing of the intermediates overdid things. Not in the sense of size, but style. I can understand them going for the sheer look to emphasize the efficiency of the new designs, but in doing so they threw away or minimised some ‘brand cues’ they would have done better to retain. Not only did all the brands look too similar, but they wound up with cars that I always thought looked like they were shaped with a cheese cutter – just too square to look ‘right’. And often they looked depressingly similar.
Then there were the X-cars, the A-cars. Ultrabox. The downsized big cars lost their distinctive coupe rooflines in favour of a one-size-suits-none generic box.
From being something of an industry style leader, GM seemed to lose direction during this period, and become mired in a morass of boxiness. Boxy cars in your choice of size.
Seems an increasing number of people didn’t want boxes. . . .
— Peter Wilding
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcarbrochures.org: AMC Concord (1980); Buick Electra (1981); Chrysler Cordoba (1980); Chrysler LeBaron (1984); Mercury Marquis (1979); Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and Omega (1980)
- oldcaradvertising.com: Chevrolet Citation (1980)
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Looking at those pictures, Jeez, put all the brand names in a hat and slap them on the cars at random, and it would make no difference. This was the time when the corporations just gave up trying to distinguish between brands. The bean counters finally took over. Why do we need different wheelbases when the cabins are the same? Why do we need different engines within a few cubic inches of each other? Do we need different exterior sheetmetal when cladding can do some differentiation? And finally, why do we need all these brands competing with each other?
In all fairness, GM weren’t doing too badly at the start. I think the beancounters likely panicked when they saw the size of the potential tooling bill to downsize everything, and pushed to commonize more than was good for brand identity. A change design leadership didn’t help either, but the impetus for size and style change was economically motivated; GM was reacting rather than leading. They were asking hard questions (which you’ve noted), some of which should have been asked earlier.
The sheer look was the overall design trend of the time. Everyone knew it and saw it coming and was not going to be left behind. These style changes happen periodically and this was one of them.
The real issue of going to the sheer/folded paper look is that some were very badly done and lacked finesse. Chrysler K cars really suffered. Some of the Fords did too. Lack of plan view hurt some of these cars.
As for GM, the 1977 downsized line up was great. Lots of distinction between the brands. But after that with Bill Mitchell gone that goes away. Irv Ribycki was selected as VP because he would not fight like Mitchell (or Jordan, Mitchell’s choice).
One of the GM techniques on roofs was to have more than one solution across the models. It was then a mix and match to maintain brand variation. As a continuation of “brand differentiation” look more closely at Ford and Chrysler. What they mostly only did were nose and tail caps along with some trim moldings. Ford very occasionally did a double strike to sheetmetal.
If continuity is so wonderful then look at the Chrysler full size line of 1979. The Design studio knew it was a turd during development and it failed in the marketplace. It was already old when brand new. But it did keep continuity.
I disagree with lumping the AMC Concord/Hornet with these others. Its body cross section is far rounder than the others. This tooling as the original Hornet dates to the start of the 1970s which predates the sheer look.
Some comments on the 2nd generation Cordoba. As directed by Hal Sperlich (boss of VP Design Dick Macadam) this was to be Chrysler’s version of the Continental Mark V. Again by Sperlich, plan view was eliminated. There was a nose design (by Carl Cameron) that was modeled that kept the separate parking lights of the first generation as separate elements inboard of the headlights. Although interesting it just couldn’t get the right look in the available real estate.
The sheer look was gaining momentum when I was in high school. I must admit that one reason why I decided not to pursue a career in car design was because I wasn’t fond of the prevailing trends. Boxy and anonymous-looking cars like the Ford Granada left me cold.
I included the AMC Concord because its landau roof treatment on the two-door sedans tried to evoke the more angular look of the Big Three luxury coupes. That strikes me as trying to square a circle.
If the Concord hadn’t carried over the Hornet’s pronounced wheel arch bulges, it would have looked more convincing as a late seventies design.
I also had wanted to be a car designer, but felt the door of creativity was closing, even in my country. The American industry seemed to go into panic mode during this period, what with all the new legislation coming out, and no creative art can flourish under those conditions. So many of Detroit’s designs during this period give the impression of being second-best, having been rushed, probably for this reason.
Yeah, the Concord could have held up much better if the side and rear sheetmetal had been given an update. However, trying to do the the landau look didn’t work very well with the relatively short doors.
The sheer look trend could be seen for several years before Detroit finally got on board with GM as the first. The 1977 full size showed how it could be done well. Ford and Chrysler not so much; in some cases just flat poorly done.
But, if one looked closer it was possible to see where “next” was going to be. See Guigaro’s Medusa show car. It took a while to get there because each idiom has to run its course. And, each idiom is a response to its predecessor. GM’s 1977s were the break from the fat cross sections as best exemplified by the 1973 intermediate line up.
The designers on the boards knew where the future was. Unfortunately not all the executives in design, and especially in other higher levels, could see it.
One business decision that I do not understand is why General Motors did not ride one more year (1978) with the 1973-1977 intermediates…or…simply keep the station wagons and the coupes (Monte Carlo, Grand Prix, Regal and Cutlass) and drop the rest. I recently acquired a 1979 full-line Pontiac sales brochure. The overlap in car sizes and models (pre-X-cars) is astounding. G.M. already had too many cars: B-and-C-body full-size cars, the A-body intermediates, the Nova-platform compacts, the Camaro / Firebird F-bodies, the C3 Corvette, the Vega-Monza-Skyhawk-Sunbird-Firenza platform and then the Brazilian Chevette.
The man who succeeded Ed Cole as G.M. President, Richard C. Gerstenberg, served on G.M.’s board from 1967 to 1980, retiring a chairman. Gerstenberg was not a car-guy. but rather a disciple of Frederic G. Donner from the financial side based in New York. As such, the centralization of the G.M.A.D. and the usurpation of division power was largely completed by Gerstenberg. As a result, more and more platform-sharing and badge engineering became commonplace with G.M. The automotive divisions were largely marketing and sales arms with little divisional input into styling.
On thing about Chrysler in 1979: My aunt owned a grey-on-grey Chrysler New Yorker Fifth Avenue and I drove a 1979 Chrysler Cordoba. These cars were great, but we must have been the exceptions to others’ experiences. I thought they were very comfortable and stylish, although the gas mileage was abysmal ! Considering that Chrysler had no cash to spare, it is amazing they produced cars at all, other than trucks and Omnirizons !
GM did have too much overlap during that era, and I am glad to see I am not the only one to think that the 78 intermediates may have been a mistake (except for the specialty coupes). In addition to poor quality, I think one thing that hurt the 1980 X bodies was the debut for 1982 model year of the slightly larger A bodies and slightly smaller J bodies – too much overlap. However, GM executives probably thought the company was invincible and needed to replace each model in its lineup with another downsized model. Ford was guilty of the same thing – I remember the 1975 Granada killed sales of the Torino (the 1977 LTD II had only a minor increase in sales over the Torino), then the 1978 Fairmont killed sales of the Granada, and the Fairmont itself was almost as roomy as the LTD II. At least Ford sorted things out by the mid 80’s, but GM didn’t sort things out until the early to mid 90’s, with lots of overlap still in the lineup.
It makes perfect sense for the cadence of platform downsizing. Pick where one starts then sequence through the rest of the platforms. As each platform becomes new there would be no reason to continue any model in production using the prior platform.