I’m Don Draper, and I approve this message:
Postwar optimism, you’re soaking in it, baby.
Seriously though, I don’t get early 1960s automotive styling. I love the cars of the 1950s, with their tailfins and seafoam green paint and the major role they played in shaping the Hog Stomping Baroque period of American optimism, as Tom Wolfe would say. And I love the cars of the mid to late ‘60s, whether it’s the 1966 Cadillac Coupe de Ville or the great muscle cars of the era. But in order to get to the Mustang, Ford had to first pass through…the Falcon. And looking at this clip, and the early 1960s car ads in Taschen’s All-American Advertising book is a reminder that American advertisers labored long and hard and spent small fortunes to produce beautiful images to sell what were often really crappy cars.
Of course, flash-forward a quarter-century into the future from that 1960 Ford ad, and you’ll see reminders that that’s always been true:
(I wonder how much the would-be Sonny Crocketts of that period actually enjoyed jumping into their 1987 Pontiac Sunbird convertibles?)
But what happened to American cars in the early 1960s? Could somebody explain Detroit’s aesthetic thinking back then? It’s not based on a lack of cultural confidence, which helped to doom American cars in the 1970s. From the 1950s to the death of JFK, Americans sailed from the comfort of Ike in the White House to the brave new world of Kennedy’s New Frontier without missing a beat.
Of course, these days, as P.J. O’Rourke wrote in 2009, virtually all of the glamour has been drained from the automobile by the nannies who would ultimately make GM and Chrysler (not Ford though, at least not yet) wards of the state:
We’ve lost our love for cars and forgotten our debt to them and meanwhile the pointy-headed busybodies have been exacting their revenge. We escaped the poke of their noses once, when we lived downtown, but we won’t be able to peel out so fast the next time. In the name of safety, emissions control and fuel economy, the simple mechanical elegance of the automobile has been rendered ponderous, cumbersome and incomprehensible. One might as well pry the back off an iPod as pop the hood on a contemporary motor vehicle. An aging shade-tree mechanic like myself stares aghast and sits back down in the shade. Or would if the car weren’t squawking at me like a rehearsal for divorce. You left the key in. You left the door open. You left the lights on. You left your dirty socks in the middle of the bedroom floor.
I don’t believe the pointy-heads give a damn about climate change or gas mileage, much less about whether I survive a head-on with one of their tax-sucking mass-transit projects. All they want to is to make me hate my car. How proud and handsome would Bucephalas look, or Traveler or Rachel Alexandra, with seat and shoulder belts, air bags, 5-mph bumpers and a maze of pollution-control equipment under the tail?
And there’s the end of the American automobile industry. When it comes to dull, practical, ugly things that bore and annoy me, Japanese things cost less and the cup holders are more conveniently located.
The American automobile is—that is, was—never a product of Japanese-style industrialism. America’s steel, coal, beer, beaver pelts and PCs may have come from our business plutocracy, but American cars have been manufactured mostly by romantic fools. David Buick, Ransom E. Olds, Louis Chevrolet, Robert and Louis Hupp of the Hupmobile, the Dodge brothers, the Studebaker brothers, the Packard brothers, the Duesenberg brothers, Charles W. Nash, E. L. Cord, John North Willys, Preston Tucker and William H. Murphy, whose Cadillac cars were designed by the young Henry Ford, all went broke making cars. The man who founded General Motors in 1908, William Crapo (really) Durant, went broke twice. Henry Ford, of course, did not go broke, nor was he a romantic, but judging by his opinions he certainly was a fool.
America’s romantic foolishness with cars is finished, however, or nearly so. In the far boondocks a few good old boys haven’t got the memo and still tear up the back roads. Doubtless the Obama administration’s Department of Transportation is even now calculating a way to tap federal stimulus funds for mandatory OnStar installations to locate and subdue these reprobates.
And yes, that 1960 Ford ad can be seen from today’s perspective as high camp, beginning with the giant Freudian phallic telescope that expands into the very first scene and sits looming in the background of virtually every shot afterward. The grass is Astroturf, the sky is a painted cyclorama, and that Ford Falcon was the nadir of pre-seventies automotive design. But I’d give anything to put on a tux, jump in Doc Brown’s DeLorean and visit that set for a few hours.
As long as I can hop into my 1985 Mercedes 500SEL afterwards.
Related: Ford’s 2011 advertising employs a very different, if no less effective tone: “Video: Ford’s Honest, Brutal Anti-Bailout Commercial.”
“In the far boondocks a few good old boys haven’t got the memo and still tear up the back roads.”
IOWAHAWK
Can I join you with my mink stole, white gloves and tight fitting pale pink sheath.
That’s exactly what I said while viewing it with my daughter, I just want to inside that commercial.
Oh it’s why my parents came to this country, escaped under the cover of darkness by foot from a communist European Country. The dream was a Cadillac.
He got the Cadillac.
mac, my sentiments exactly!
You might be interested to note that the second commercial, the one featuring Pontiacs, was filmed – at least partially – on Yonge Street in Toronto. At about 19 seconds you see the car passing a store with the sign “Sam”; that’s the old Sam The Record Man store on Yonge and Dundas. (Sam’s went belly up several years back; I’m not sure what’s moved in to that store.)
Sorry, but I LOVE the early ’60s designs!
I owned a ’62 Skylark and it was the grooviest little machine I’ve ever known.
(Do a Google image search and you can see my lost love.)
I’m not really a car aficionado, but I’ve always liked the ads from that period in my collection of old National Geographic and Life magazines. It was the dawn of the Space Age, and it all must have seemed new and wonderful, with endless possibilities.
As for the telescope, I’m guessing maybe the 100″ at Mount Wilson? It was the largest scope in the world for over 30 years until the 200″ at Mount Palomar came online after WWII. It was still the second or third largest in the world in 1960.
Without the success of the Falcon there never would have been a Mustang.
Ed, since you asked what happened to Ford styling in the early ’60s, it was in transition. Elwood Engel had moved from Chrysler to running Ford’s styling and it would be a year or two yet before his influence would be fully felt.
Still, at Ford and GM as well, the ’60 and ’61 cars represented a break from the baroque overstyled cars of the fifties. Though the Thunderbird in 1960 still reflected earlier styling trends (and the ’61 ‘Rocket’ Bird would be a much better looking car), the Falcon and Galaxie have much cleaner lines than the monstrosities of the ’57-’59 era.
Ronnie Schreiber
http://www.carsindepth.com
nice trip back in time! The Falcon I appreciate because I know how it led to the 64 Mustang; and the Galaxie is cool in a totally over the top retro-funk kind of way.
but that Thunderbird is a travesty, especially when you remember what the T-Bird was just 3 years before. That’s unforgivable.
I have fond memories of our Falcon, and wish I had one today. Setting the issue of styling aside, it was a very modern design, with a sturdy, lightweight uni-body chassis employing galvanized steel in critical areas. 25 years later, 1980′s era Hondas were being recalled for rust in such areas. The Falcon was perhaps Ford’s first “world” car, with variants produced in South America and Australia. It was also one of the world’s largest volume designs, with variants produced (Mustang, Maverick, Comet, etc) into the 1980′s. By then, the original lightweight design was staggering under an extra 1000+ pounds of emissions and safety regulations. It was mercifully put out of it’s misery when production of the Granada ceased.
The Falcon is not yet dead!
From the mid-1950 through the mid-1970′s, there was effectively one car company with a lock on the US market… the UAW. Three companies, one union. And the result was that for those 20 years, the union diverted as much revenue as possible to the assembly line. There were virtually no engineering developments during this time. The cars sold in 1972 had basically the same V-8 and straight-six engines that were designed in the 1950′s (or earlier), nearly every American car had a live rear axle with leaf springs. The American car companies were geared toward pumping out as much big iron as possible. A “small” car was still over 3000 pounds. The only way for the three automakers to differentiate themselves was through design. So we did have some exciting body styles in that era. But let’s not forget that American cars were basically monopoly junk until foreign companies started importing in quantity in the 1970′s.
Perfect illustration from the mid-70′s. Honda: CVCC engine. Chevy: aluminum-block Vega.
Late 50′s, early 60′s some of us still built our own stuff but Detroit was building cool cars. If the styling didn’t fire your rocket look under the hood. And GM was the company with the goods, followed by Chrysler. And more important we didn’t look like a bunch of bums. Best clothes, best cars, best music. Eat your hearts out boomers.
I think we will see a return to America’s love affair with cars, the seeds are already sprouting. Our culture has frowned upon risk and embraced safety for long enough, this is changing fast. This weekend many of us will have our attention drawn to the road as numerous convoys of loud flashy Harleys cruise on by. As our brave men and women come home from war, they will take notice of the sandwich generation and say no way do I want to exist like that. Struggling to put kids through college just to find out a college education is not worth the investment, while taking care of our parents who are alive yet not living. Our young people will choose to take risks, realizing that it is better to die at 70 skydiving or riding motorcycle than die at 90 while someone has to help you do life’s most basic tasks. They will choose to work 60 plus hours a week for themselves instead of 40 hours for someone else. They won’t look the other way while thugs and parasites take over our neighborhoods like the previous generation did. They will be Fonzi cool instead of Richie safe. Or maybe we will ban personal vehicles and we can all take the train.
Too much generalization! “The cars of the 50s”, “the cars of the early 60s” – those were very diverse groups. Ed, you seem to use the Falcon as emblematic of early 60s cars. I agree that it is a deathly-boring design. But that was the year that the Big 3 introduced its compacts – just look at them. The Falcon’s marketing team apparently believed that the best way to market the practical, compact car was to make it as conservative and boring as possible. Chevrolet, on the other hand, introduced the Corvair, radical as can be mechanically and also aesthetically in an austere way. Chrysler introduced the Plymouth Valiant, as bizarre and extreme as any 50s design.
I, too, love the cars of the mid-to-late 50s, and believe that 1957 was the high point. i cherish my ’57 Ford Ranchero. After that, the lovable excess became excessively excessive! Check out GM’s entire ’58 line of cars, or look at how the beautiful ’57 Plymouths and Dodges degenerated into hideous barges by 1959.
The early sixties saw conservative design from Ford and GM, but continued bizarre space-age experiments from Chrysler. To me, the period is a heroic one, largely because GM refined its designs in a beautifully tasteful manner. Just look at the ’61 Olds, ’62 Chevrolet Impala, or ’63 Pontiac Grand Prix or Buick Riviera – all gorgeous and tasteful. Then look at the ’63 Corvette Sting Ray – the split-rear-window coupe, as radical a design as ever mass-marketed, and as beautiful. That period also featured the greatest automotive advertising art, particularly the Pontiac paintings from 1959 to the late 60s.
A few weeks ago, I was in San Diego, when as luck would have it, my BMW started sputtering and the dreaded light came on. I called a mobile mechanic out of the phone book. An hour later an old guy with one tooth who looked like the hobo in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure showed up in his old Mercedes diesel. I wasn’t sure how well he was going to be able to deal with this. He didn’t have a code reader that would work with beemers, so he pops the hood, starts the engine, and starts disconnecting wires. In about 30 seconds, he says “here’s your problem”. A mass air flow sensor.
So yeah, it’s a different game now, but if he can learn these newfangled engines, I think eventually the shadetrees can.
Sorry, I disagree.
The Galaxie and Thunderbird are (over the top) beautiful.
Even if you don’t like them, at least they took chances with styling back then.
I love the early ’60s American designs: not as ornate as the ’50s, but simpler, cleaner of line, and oh-so-elegant. Matter of fact, I wrote about it here: http://www.carlustblog.com/2008/12/1962-it-was-a-v.html
I made 1962 the touchstone, but really 1960-64-ish are where it’s at, IMO.
Sigh, well you can purchase aftermarket code readers for a reasonable price. You can get manuals online with the codes their translation, and what to do about them, but the engine compartment is so crowded and designed solely with only assembly cost in mind, not maintenance that you have to remove three of four things to remove and replace one thing.
For a brief period there was some effort to make cars easier to work on but the only thing left from that is yellow colored caps and handles on fluid check and add access.
I look at the mess under the hood and think back to a Ford straight six or a Dodge slant six set up from the 1960′s. There was enough room under the hood to climb in between the fender and the engine. Of course on the old slant six you had to wrap a used inner tube around the distributor and the start of the wiring harness to keep the oil leak from the valve cover from soaking it….don’t ask.
But … but … we had segregation back then.
well I can’t seem to Google to a video, but wasn’t it a singing Lettermen ad circa 1963:
Which Ford will it be?
It’s as easy as 1-2-3!
Falcon, Fairlane, and if you please:
The beautiful Galaxy!
The Falcon is the king of the compacts,
A million happy owners agree with me!
The next step up is the Fairlane,
Between the Falcon and the Galaxy.
The top of the line is the Galaxy
At a price that you can’t beat!
And because a Ford costs less to buy
Your pocketbook’s on Easy Street!
So which Ford will it be?
It’s as easy as 1-2-3!
Falcon, Fairlane, and if you please:
The beautiful Galaxy!
I always thought that the 1960 Ford Skyliner convertible was the best looking of the lot, across all lines of the Big-3. But, what would I know, I was just an 18-yr old kid, in SoCal.
Ed, I think you have it backwards, or maybe upside down: As Don Draper and I will attest, the early ’60s were the PINNACLE of American auto styling. Never before and never since have American cars been so stylish and sexy. Consider:
1961 Lincoln Continental
1962 Lincoln Continental
1963 Thunderbird
1964 Thunderbird
1964 Chrysler 300
1964 Chrysler Imperial
1962 Corvette Sting Ray
1963 Corvette Sting Ray
1962 Pontiac Bonneville
1963 Pontiac Bonneville
1964 Pontiac Bonneville
1963 Pontiac Grand Prix
1964 Pontiac Grand Prix
1963 Pontiac Catalina
1964 Pontiac Catalina
1964 Pontiac Lemans
1964 Buick Wildcat
1963 Buick Riviera
1964 Buick Riviera
1962 Studebaker Hawk
1962 Studebaker Avanti
1963 Studebaker Avanti
1964 Studebaker Avanti
Case closed!
The thing that I found fascinating about this old Ford ad (I would have been nine at the time it was aired) was how Disneyesque it was. My family made a ritual of watching “The Wonderful World of Disney” every Sunday evening. The musical score and the announcer sounded like they were contracted out of the Disney stable. The animation of the comet was classic Disney as well. I wonder who the ad agency was?
Here’s a 1960 Ford ad that’s a little bit less dated, featuring Charlie Brown and Lucy (Charles Shultz liked the animation work so much here he had the same people handle the Peanuts specials when they started airing on CBS five years later). The animated part of the ad really isn’t that dated; the second half (with, I believe, Harry Von Zell as your announcer), is definitely old school.
My dad bought a white 1960 Falcon, that looked exactly like the one in the ad. It was a great improvement on the 52 Dodge he traded in. The motor died one year later. Bad oil supply to the main bearings. The dealer was real nice about it, and for a few hundred dollars the family car was now a white 1961 Ford Falcon, which was put out to pasture in 1970 with over 100K miles on it. The original Falcon had a window sticker price of $1975. The 61 model was about $2050, but it had more optional stuff on it.
I think the 60 T-Bird was gorgeous. I know there is much moaning about the move to the 4 seat Bird, but few people actually bought the 2 seat, which was more a boulevard cruiser than a sports car. Chevy won that battle by producing a better sports car. Ford tried bringing it back a while ago and the same, not a real sports car, problem sank it a second time. Nostalgia aside, the market rejected the 2 seat Thunderbird twice.
The 4 seat T-Bird was a much better car for the market. Stylish, powerful, and compact. Perfect if you mostly had one or two people in the car, and wanted to look glamorous driving. The large trunk and rear seat made it the perfect car for the person who wanted sportiness and practicality in one car. Teenage boys and girls drooled over those cars at the time, and they even made it into a Beach Boys song. Hard to top that.
Our Falcon’s engine also died, after maybe 3 years. We had it replaced with the much improved 200 cid engine, and kept it another 10 years.
Are comments cut off? I’ve tried posting 3 times on this thread in the past 3 days, but none of the posts appear. What gives.
Guess my comments have been banned from this blog because I like the 1963 Thunderbird. Go figure.
I am really inspired with your writing talents as neatly as with the structure to your weblog. Is this a paid subject matter or did you customize it your self? Either way stay up the excellent quality writing, it’s rare to see a nice blog like this one today..