The gestation period of the Dodge La Femme can be traced back to the early Fifties. By then, pent-up demand for new cars had been filled, turning the postwar seller's market into a highly competitive buyer's market. An exciting era was thus born, as auto companies unleashed a flood of new cars, loaded with new ideas to attract the attention of car buyers.
In the process, designers were given more power and freedom to experiment than ever before. The stylists were fascinated with flashy lines, chrome, tailfins, swivel seats, and wraparound windshields — and apparently so was the American public.
Exotic show cars appeared with great regularity from the major companies, almost always sporting new (and often highly impractical) styling and all sorts of doodads. But the car-buying public had an insatiable appetite for those "dream cars," which served as shiny bait to lure people into purchasing the more mundane (and practical) production-line cars.
In most cases, of course, the public never got to buy such snazzy features as turbine engines, power-assisted hoods, and rain-sensing convertible tops. However, there were a few examples of show cars that became production cars, such as the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham and Chevy's Corvette.
Those cars are well known and coveted by collectors today, but they were among the very few show cars that made good, selling in small numbers and, more importantly, increasing their makers' prestige. More common is the tale of the show car that hit the marketplace and sank without a trace.
This 1958 Chevrolet Impala convertible show car was nicknamed the Martinique. It was designed by Jeanette Linder (shown) for a 1958 GM Fashion Show that was held in the main exhibit hall at the GM Building. This show car was one of ten cars 'feminized' for this special fashion show. Note the lighted vanity mirror and the cosmetic case, which has been tucked into the dashboard.
Actually, show cars designed with feminine appeal were fairly common back in the Fifties. General Motors fielded quite a few of them, such as Pontiac's pink-interior Parisienne, Chevy's Impala Martinique (which was only one of GM's ten "feminized" show cars of 1958), and Cadillac's Eldorado Seville Baroness, among others.
The 1958 Cadillac Eldorado Seville “Baroness”: The late Suzanne E. Vanderbilt made her career as part of GM’s praised Creative Design Team. She was one of the original Damsels of Design – a group of eight skilled female designers that the famed Harley Earl hired during the early-1950s.
She designed two special Cadillacs: the black-on-black Eldorado Seville coupe known as the “Baroness” (and available with a telephone and extra compartment space for driver and passengers), and the Cadillac Saxony convertible, offered in a unique grey-green metallic color. She also designed many other products, including the interiors for the Chevrolet Vega and Monza models.
But it was Chrysler Corporation that got the ball rolling in 1954 when it took the La Comtesse and Le Comte around the auto show circuit...
No comments:
Post a Comment