Proportion:that's complicated !!!

The other night I went to the supermarket in the HENRY J, as I walked through the parking lot towards the car I got the most awful feeling. As I looked at the car I realized that the front wheels/wheelwell were about two inches back from where they should be in relation to the overall fender. I was sick, how could I have missed such an obvious design flaw? Sure, I was clever enough to droop the nose for the proper attitude but boy was I blind to THAT black eye! I couldn’t stop thinking about it, it would’ve been sooo cool! To make matters worse, I should have been aware of this problem, one of my secret heros, FAT JACK ROBINSON had this same problem years ago on a ‘56 F-100 truck he had built. He moved the front wheelwell 6” forward in the fender. AMAZING! Of course, once I started thinking about that, then my mind just drifted into this whole dissertation about proportion. I’ve gotta say, in my defense, over the years I’ve seen EVERY BIG TIME car builder screw up some proportion on many of the “million dollar cars ” we’ve all been subjected to! If you’re gonna cut something up bunky, you’d BETTER know what you’re doing! I remember reading a car feature on a ‘40 coupe a long time ago. It stated that the hood was pie cut 4” in front, tapering to 0” at the cowl to give the front a downward slope. Wow! I thought, great idea, then I looked at the side view of the car. EEEEEEWWWWW!!!!! The hood looked WAAYYY too skinny in relation to the big bubbly fenders! Anyway, after obsessing over my screw up for days, I finally pulled up a side shot of the HENRY into PHOTOSHOP. I moved the front wheels about two inches forward…it looked GREAT…AAARRRGGGHHH!!! Then, I changed something I WAS aware of while I was building the car but knew I wouldn’t be able to get the owner to pay for the labor. Alot of ‘50’s cars have a really high crown on the roof of the car above the rain gutters. The HENRY is particularly guilty of this problem. I took about 1 1/2” out of the crown in my photochop. I now had the “perfect” HENRY J ! I left the image on my monitor and did some other stuff, occasionally looking back at the screen. Man, now I gotta build ANOTHER car so I can get this right! It’s just waay too COOL!! I actually started planning out how I would build a new and improved version of a car I already did! I’d use an LS motor this time, and a manual trans, a more rigid chassis! YEAH!! Then I looked back at the monitor, MY GOD, THAT THING IT JUST PERFECT ! It’s like a little rocket! It’s PERFECT !! Something began to bother me…as I stared at the “perfect” little car I’d realized something. It wasn’t “cute” anymore. I had the same problem when I swapped out the wide whites for the HALIBRANDS. This time I’d removed the very thing this car has going for it in the first place. It’s quirky, almost goofy looking. That’s it’s character , make it all SWOOPY and it ain’t got no SOUL !! Boy, this proportion thing sure is complicated! The same thing applies to EVERY modification we do to our cars. Sometimes out of proportion is "perfect" other times, horrible. Of course, one may argue that you just have to have an eye for that sort of thing.Problem is, you've still got that old "eye of the beholder thing". My head hurts...

 

Me too!

 

that hurt my head.

 

I'm confused...I understood something about bringing a Henry J to a grocery store and I got lost after that...

 

Paragraphs are your friend...

 

Pics would have said it all!!

 

Pics, or it didn't happen.

 

haha,
opps sry ...

 

Photo shop can be a lifesaver for quick mockups.
On a unchanneled 40, the hood works great with a 3/4" taper, not more than 1" in my opinion, it is hard to spot if done right, but takes the nose down to a more pleasing proportion.

 

So lets see tha photoshop. I want to see a perfectly proportioned Henry J!

 

Here is a comparison of the HENRY J, but my point was more of an observation on how sometimes out of proportion is sometimes good, sometimes bad. But then, you guys knew that!

 

im gonna be honest i read the first two lines and gave up.

 

that's a lot of work to bring the nose down on one of those..... wow.

 

same here haha

 

did they overcharge the dude at the grocery store?

 

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I read it and fully understood.
I look at cars all of the time and vision the Herculean tasks of making it "Perfect".

The time and talent are what causes me to shake my head. I have neither...only the visions in my mind.

Maybe I need to hang around Jonah or John from the Butcher shop a bit more.

 

I will remember that always. it is haunting me to write better, thanks

 

Continue on Man!!

 

Trust me- I get exactly what you're saying. All parts of it.
...do it all day, every day.

 

Henry J's are just goofy looking anyway.
But that's why I want one.

 

the trick 8's look right on & the wheel combo totally gives the car a different look.
i remember reading something about being able to stand back and look at a car. you had to be probably 30 or feet back , but if its right , its right. if not , fix it till it is.

 

If you're gonna include pictures, make 'em big enough so us old guys can see the damned things. I think I could see the diet effect on the roof crown but I'll be damned if I could see the front wheel well moved/modified. But I DID read your dissertation, and I agree, proportions are a very subjective thing .... some get it, some don't........ (southpark comes to mind).

 

Try "clicking" on the pic, it'll get bigger.lol

I like the bottom pic, it's not ruined at all. You were right about the front wheels, they look better moved forward. Oh well, next time huh?

 

Drive car, get food, Oh Boy I'am Helping !!!

 

...everybody knows Henry J's are sposed to be jacked way up in the front!

 

You guys can give Scott all the crap you want about his paragraph, but his cars in Hot Rod magazines during the 80s really motivated me to get into building my own. He can sure build nice stuff.

 

The crux of the issue can be likened to a scale : on 1 end is 'right' proportions and on the other; character. Where it 'balances' is up to the individual.

IMO, a LOT of what constitutes 'right' proportions is often merely genericizing design, or taking something relatively unique and making it more like the mainstream... or dare I say 'traditional' design. EX: taking a solid '50s design & giving it a '60s roof crown.
Is it thusly 'better'? Perhaps. More people may definately like it... but is that the point ?

Personally, I tend to gravitate toward unusual (but tasteful) proportions; after 25 years oogling cars, mainstream stuff tends to get boring. EX: I think tri-5 Chevys are great, iconic designs, but I can barely look at them anymore.

 

I lost my train of thought when you started talking about the crown, then I started thinking about the whopper and BK broiler and fries mmmmmm fries.

Honestly, I live on a corner so I push the mocked up roller out of the garage and walk to the corner and then spin around. It either hits you as being right or it's wrong, just wrong and you know it when you first hit the spin.
In this picture you can see the blue mail box at the corner, that's usually where I turn around for the "shot"

 

Diggin' your wheels choices on the Merc!