All Cylinders:Cars of the 1950sJames Trager

(Prime)

Copyright

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Many of the designations used to distinguish products and services are claimed as trademarks or services marks. Any trademarks, services marks, product names, or named features that appear in this title are assumed to be the property of their respective owners. All product names and services are used in an editorial fashion only, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is meant to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this title.

Although James Trager, Oliver Trager and Apocalypso Media LLC have made a reasonable effort to ensure the accuracy of the information herein, they assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. The information in this eBook is distributed “As Is,” without warranty of any kind. Neither James Trager (the author), Oliver Trager (the publisher and editor), or Apocalypso Media LLC shall be liable to any person or entity for any special, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, including without limitation lost revenues or lost profits, that may result (or that are alleged to result) from the use of these materials.

We have, when possible, given individual accreditation to every photograph and image utilized in this eBook. The bulk of photographs comes from established organizations including the GM Media Archive, the Chrysler Group LLC, other automobile companies, various libraries, organizations, automobile companies, and the author’s collection. Photographs from Wikipedia are in the public domain unless otherwise identified. Every effort has been made to ensure proper accreditation.

All Cylinders: Cars of the 1950s (Prime)Copyright © James Trager, Oliver Trager/Apocalypso Media LLC, 2015. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission from Oliver Trager/Apocalypso Media LLC according to copyright law.

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Forward

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“History occurs chronologically, not alphabetically.” —James Trager

These words were my dad’s mantra and could well serve as his epitaph.

A lover and expert practitioner of all things reference-oriented, he was the author of ten non-fiction books covering a range of topics—from food, New York City and Japan to the history of all (or, at least, many) things.

But if the world is familiar with him it is through The People’s Chronology: A Year-By-Year Record of Human Events from Prehistory to the Present. This massive tome first published in 1979 has enjoyed a long life with a couple of revised and updated editions including one as part of Microsoft’s Bookshelf CD-ROM and, more recently, as part of Gale Publishing’s digital catalogue.

All Cylinders: Cars of the 1950s is drawn from a much longer and, until now, unpublished 1100-page automobile chronology stretching from Leonardo to the Tesla. We offer this 1950s-focused eBook as the premier release of what we hope to be a series of such products built around my dad’s published and unpublished canon. And, as the 1950s represented both the sweet spot of U.S. manufacturing and compelling pre-Mad Men era graphic sensibility as well as the germination of globalization, we thought it as fine a decade to commence our vision as any.

Writers of reference books (he and I both made long careers in the field) might well be thought of as know-it-alls. And while I might plead as guilty as my dad did to such a charge, we were always open to new knowledge and, of course, suggestions. Please feel free to touch base with thought and ideas so that future editions of these works might be all they can be and then some.

Until then, may I invite all ladies and gentlemen to start your engines!

Oliver Trager/Publisher, Apocalypso Media LLC

Chapter 1

1950

Nash Rambler introduced, Rocket 88 takes off, Harley Earl unveils the Buick LeSabre, two-speed Ford-O-Matic transmission, Allard K2 hits the road, Lancia Aurelia launched, SEAT created, Shake-up at Toyota, first Porsche sports car comes off the assembly line, Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel opens

● The Nash Rambler introduced in March by Nash-Kelvinator is the first U.S.-built compact car. A two-door "convertible landau" built on a 100-inch wheelbase, it has fixed roof rails and a retractable canvas top (two-door hardtop and station wagon

models will later be added). Priced slightly higher than the basic cars offered by Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors, the five-passenger Rambler weighs 2,430 pounds and has a rounded

monocoque body/chassis, its fuel-efficient 173-cubic-inch L-head six-cylinder engine has quick acceleration, it can produce 82 horsepower at 3,800 revolutions per minute, and Nash-Kelvinator will build 134,431 Ramblers through the 1953 model year.

● The Henry J automobile introduced for 1951 by Henry J. Kaiser and his son Edgar is a 2,293-pound two-door sedan mounted on a 100-inch wheelbase. It measures 174.5 inches in length, its 134.2-cubic-inch four-cylinder engine can produce 68 horsepower, and it gets 25 miles per gallon. The list price is $1,363 and Kaiser will build 38,500 Henry J Standards.

1950

United States

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● General Motors ends production of its Oldsmobile Dynamic 76 six-cylinder side-valve model line as buyers opt instead for the more powerful 88 overhead-valve V-8 introduced late in 1948.

● The Buick LeSabre introduced by General Motors for 1951 has been designed by Harley Earl with aircraft styling, a dual gasoline-alcohol fuel system, and a moisture sensor that automatically lifts the car's convertible top in the event of rain.

● Ford Motor Company gives its 1951 model Fords a new grille, and launches a two-door pillarless coupe as the Victoria, making its cars available for the first time with two-speed Ford-O-Matic automatic transmissions. Ford regains its No. 2 sales position from Chrysler.

● The Packard Patrician introduced August 21 for 1951 is a four-door sedan built on a 127-inch wheelbase with a 317- or 359-cubic-inch eight-cylinder engine that can produce up to 212 British horsepower. Packard will build 9,101 Patricians and keep it in production through the 1954 model year even as sales decline.

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● Chevrolet production for the year totals 1,498,590, Ford 1,208,912, Plymouth 610,954, Buick 588,439, Pontiac 446,429, Oldsmobile 408,060, Dodge 341,797, Studebaker 320,884, Mercury 293,658, Chrysler 179,299, Nash 171,782, DeSoto 136,203, Hudson 121,408, Cadillac 103,857, Packard 42,640, Lincoln 28,190, Kaiser 15,228, Crosley 6,792, Frazer 3,700. Chevrolets have 21.6 percent of the domestic market, Fords 16.4, Plymouths 11.2.

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375,000

750,000

1,125,000

1,500,000

1950 U.S. Production Totals

Chevrolet Ford PlymouthBuick Pontiac OldsmobileDodge Studebaker MercuryChrysler Nash KaiserDeSoto Hudson CadillacPackard Lincoln Kaiser/Henry JCrosley Frazer

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Great Britain & U.K.

● The Coventry-based auto maker Lea-Francis introduces a new car with torsion-bar front suspension and a 2½-litre four-cylinder engine that can produce 18 British horsepower, but the plant's output will soon decline, and it will end in 1953.

● Allard Motor Co. introduces a K2 Model sports car whose small luggage boot, large bumpers, and semaphore trafficators make it slightly more practical than its earlier models. It comes with a 3.6-litre (3.622-cubic-inch) Ford V-8 engine that gives it a top speed fo 86 miles per hour, but buyers can also order it with a Mercury, Chrysler, or even Cadillac V-8. Allard will build only 119 K2s.

1950

Global

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France

● The Renault Frégate introduced at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris November 30 is a two-door Italian-designed front-engined sports car with a 1,996-cubic-centimeter four-cylinder engine that can develop 112 British horsepower at 4,500 revolutions per minute, but the car is underpowered.

Italy

● The Lancia Aurelia launched at the Turin Motorshow replaces the pillarless prewar Aprilia introduced in 1937. Designed by Vittorio Jano and built on a 104.7-inch wheelbase, the sedan measures 174 inches in length overall, weighs 1,250 kilograms (2,759 pounds), and has the world's first production-line V-6 engine. By

the time it stops making various Aurelia models in 1953, Lancia will have offered them with six different engines that range in size from 1.8 to 2.5 liters and can produce from 56 British horsepower to 118 bhp.

Spain

● Spain's fascist government joins with Fiat to create SEAT (Sociedad Espanola de Automoviles de Turismo, or Spanish Corporation of Private Cars) as a Fiat subsidiary to produce the SEAT Panda, basically a Fiat Panda that will be renamed the Marbella. Generalissimo Francisco Franco, now 57, has considered automobile production, like communism, a symbol of

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industrial modernization that would lead his country of "peasants and conquistadors inspired by spirituality" into a materialistic society, and when he finally agreed to the joint venture with Fiat he insisted that the SEAT plant be anywhere but in Catalonia; Fiat has persuaded him that it should be in Barcelona, and SEAT will for decades be run along authoritarian lines, with middle and top management executives former military officers, dozens of informers on the payroll, and internal security guards carrying shotguns to watch over workers, many of them unskilled, whose jobs are highly compartmentalized. The company will later make a car based on the Fiat 600, but Spain has not recovered from the 4-year civil war that ended in 1939, having destroyed 80 percent of the impoverished nation's motorcars and left Spanish roads in abominable condition.

Japan

● Toyota Motor Co. founder Kiichiro Toyoda resigns along with his entire staff following government orders that the Toyoda Group reorganize to separate the family businesses. His cousin Eiji takes over as managing director of Toyoda Motor Works and begins implementing a revolutionary "lean production" system devised by its engineering wizard Shigeo Shingo, 41, with help from Manchurian-born engineer Taiichi Ohno, 38. U.S. bombers destroyed most of the company's plant during the war, excessive credit restrictions imposed by U.S. occupation forces have led to an economic slump that has brought the company close to bankruptcy, it cannot afford the large new machinery considered necessary to improve efficiency, but it began production of the Model SA passenger car in October 1947. The younger Toyoda has come back from a visit to the Ford Motor Company River Rouge plant outside Detroit, noted Ford's employee-suggestion system and statistical process control, but recognized recognized the shortcomings of Ford's demeaning job structures, which alienate workers; Shingo has ideas that go beyond Ford's mass-production system, which works well with a single product that never changes but not so well when applied to new and multiple products.

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Racing & Rallies

● Abarth & Co. race driver Guido Scagliarini quits a race he is winning and elopes with his girlfriend to Argentina. He has won four major Gran Turismo events and the 3-hour Monza; his brother Carlo becomes Karl Abarth's new partner, and the company next year will begin exporting performance exhausts as Abarth begins creating modified versions of Fiats and developing relationships with Ferrari.

● Sydney Allard drives his new model J2 to a third-place finish at Le Mans even though its gearbox disintegrates. In place of the streamlined bodies used in earlier Allards, with their big wings

(fenders) and built-in headlamps, the J2 looks more like prewar racing cars, with two small curved windscreens (windshields) and a bonnet (hood) tied down with leather straps, and under the bonnet is a 5.4-litre Cadillac V-8 engine that can produce up to 160 British horsepower at 4,000 revolutions per minute, enabling the car to accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 7.4 seconds and cruise on an ordinary road at 100 mph. The J2 averages 87.8 mph (in top gear only) in the 24-hour Le Mans ordeal; Allard will update the car in 1952.

1950

All Cylinders

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● Florida's Sebring International Raceway holds its first competition December 31, attracting 30 race cars from across North America to the city founded in 1911. The winner of the 6-hour Sam Collier Memorial race is a Crosley Hot Shot driven by Fritz Koster and Ralph Deshon.

● An Alfa Romeo 158 driven by Giuseppe "Nino" Farina wins the first Formula One world championship at the Silverstone British Grand Prix.

● The first Porsche sports car to bear that name comes off the assembly line September 1 at Zufenhausen. Ferdinand "Ferry" Porsche Jr., now 40, has designed the Porsche 356 with a Porsche-made engine for Porsche AG, and a Porsche will win the Grand Prix at Le Mans next year, establishing the make's reputation.

● Automobile Racing Club of America cofounder Samuel Collier is killed at Watkins Glen, N.Y., September 23 at age 34 when his Ferrari goes off the road while leading the field in the third U.S. Grand Prix competition. His younger brother, Miles, will die of poliomyelitis in 1954.

Roads, Bridges & Tunnels

● The United States has 1.68 million miles of surfaced road, up from 1.34 million in 1940, and only 1.31 million miles of dirt road, down from 1.65.

● A second Tacoma Narrows Bridge opens to traffic across Washington's Puget Sound. The new suspension bridge has a 2,800-foot main span stiffened with a web truss.

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● Bridge designer Sir Ralph Freeman of 1932 Sydney Harbor Bridge fame dies at his native London March 11 at age 69.

● New York's Brooklyn Battery Tunnel opens May 25 and carries nearly twice the traffic anticipated; construction was interrupted by the war. The 1.7-mile tunnel will remain the world's longest for 50 years.

Traffic

● New York adopts an alternate-side-of-the-street parking rule on Manhattan's Lower East Side in August to relieve congestion and permit sanitation department sweeper trucks to clean the streets. Automobile owners double-park illegally on the opposite side of the street being cleaned and will continue to do so after the city applies the rule throughout the boroughs.

Auto Safety

● U.S. inventor Clinton Riggs patents the yield sign for highway crossings.

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Insurance

● Sears, Roebuck's 19-year-old Allstate Insurance Co. adopts the slogan, "You're in Good Hands with Allstate." A company sales manager has created a slogan that will help Allstate overtake many rivals.

Communications

● West Virginia-born New York advertising copywriter and Field & Stream writer Ed Zern, 40, begins a series of pun-filled advertisements for the Nash Airflyte.

● L'Auto Journal begins publication at Paris under the direction of Brittany-born entrepreneur Robert Hersant, 29, who went to Paris 10 years ago, joined a pro-Nazi movement called Jeune Front, has served a month in prison (he was sentenced in 1947 to 10 years' loss of civil rights for collaborating with the Nazis), will be pardoned in 1952 as part of a general amnesty, and will go on to build a publishing empire whose newspapers (Le Figaro, Paris Soir, etc.) will control 30 percent of France's circulation.

Buses & Trolleys

● New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal opens December 15 on Eighth Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets. The

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facility will handle upwards of 7,000 buses and 200,000 passengers per week as it becomes the world's busiest bus terminal (it will be enlarged in 1989).

Politics

● Communist North Korean armored columns clank across the border into the Republic of South Korea June 25, beginning a 3-year Korean War that will involve 16 nations against the communists. Josef Stalin rejected Kim Il Sung's request for assistance last year, but he has supplied his client state with planes, tanks, and other military weapons, UN Secretary General Trygve Lie urges UN members to support South Korea June 27, and President Truman that day orders U.S. air and sea forces to "give the Korean government troops cover and support." He has resisted sending ground troops to the peninsula, but Seoul falls to the North Koreans June 28, and in

the next few years U.S. auto plants that have only recently returned to making passenger cars will divert some of their capacity to producing war matériel for what Truman calls a "police action."

Commerce

● General Motors announces 1949 profits of nearly $636.5 million, a new high for any U.S. corporation. GM signs a 5year contract May 23 granting United Auto Workers (UAW) employees pensions and wage boosts, with a health insurance program paid for in part by GM. AF of L membership reaches roughly 8 million, CIO membership 6 million. The U.S. Gross National Product (GNP) reaches $284 billion, up from $99 billion in 1940 and $103 billion in 1929. Government spending accounts for 21 percent of the total, up from 18 percent in 1940, 10 percent in 1929.

● Subscriptions to Consumer Reports reach nearly 400,000, up from 100,000 in 1946, as pent-up demand for consumer goods soars. Automobiles will comprise its largest testing program by the 1950s, it will publish its first full auto issue in May 1953, and the House Un-American Activities Committee will drop Consumers Union from its list of subversive organizations in 1954.

● Thrifty Rent-a-Car System has its beginnings at Tulsa, Okla., where entrepreneur L. G. Crow makes six Volkswagen Beetles available for rent at a daily rate of $6 each. Franchising will begin

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in 1962, and by 1980 Thrifty will be operating in 70 countries and territories worldwide.

● The first Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance November 4 is a charity event that draws crowds to see an exhibition of 30 antique and classic cars on a practice tee and driving range adjacent to

the 31-year-old Pebble Beach Golf Links. Held in conjunction with a race sponsored by the Sports Car Club of America conducted on a circuit of closed public rooms, the event will be moved in 1952 to the 18th green of the Golf Links and grow to be an annual August judging contest with as many as 227 entries from 15 countries worldwide.

● U.S. auto production reaches 6.7 million units, up from 5.1 million last year. Buick alone makes 550,000 cars. Used car sales exceed 13 million, and auto registrations show one passenger car for every 3.75 Americans, up from one for every 5.5 in 1930. Americans own some 40 million cars, up from 32.6 in 1941, and the figure will more than double in the next 25 years until the average family owns 1.4 automobiles.

● Automobile pioneer Ransom E. Olds dies of cancer at Lansing, Mich., August 26 at age 86; former General Motors finance committee chairman John Jakob Raskob at his Centreville, Md., estate October 15 at age 71.

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