Art & Inspiration Fastbacks and other swoopy roofs

How about a '49 Nash 600, with a power house 172.6 Eng. Gosh all mighty, the header clamps for exhaust, are hard to find. I'll think of something, or get a good welder to fix, so i can use. My Brothers call it a Bath Tub. It was made by Kelvinator ! I saw one of these at at 1978 SRNats. in Columbus, and thought they were neat, I like Orphans !

 

Great thread. The elements mentioned in this thread are embodied in slddnmatt's chops; they lean towards a fastback flow, for those who like that approach. I also dug the fastback lines of the chopped 49 Chevy Fleetline that Bass was building. And an Oz Welch fastback chop on a 51 merc.

 

OT car, but the rear roof line on a 95 Chrysler LHS is down right sexy. Don't have a picture handy, but I think this roof piece could be incorporated into something.

 

Yeah, that's a sexy roof shape, but given it's on a late model ride, it's probably made of HSLA steel and partially glued in

'' Humpty Dumpty was pushed "

 

love the roof on a buddys car,its all about the flow.some of those overseas cars look stubby to me.

 

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I think my 1962 Ghia L6.4 Coupe fits in here. Virgil Exner design, Chrysler power and Ghia coachwork...












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Beautiful!



Marcy

 

One of the best rooflines (and most beautiful profiles) of any car, ever...

'57 Dodge two-door Custom Royal "Lancer" (aka hardtop.)

 

I just ran across this car for sale on the Hemmings website. I regularly forget about these ('68 Galaxie) when thinking about fastbacks, but it's really a nice looking roof on a BIG car:



What may cloud my vision goes to PalosFV3's comment about the roof line and its relationship to the beltline. This car has a lot of strong horizontal and near-vertical lines that distract you from seeing the top profile. I think they're pretty handsome cars despite that, but they certainly aren't often seen.

 

Tony, you might like this project we've just started on---using a Cyclone roof like the Ford above and my 63 Riviera.
This was the initial quick photoshop by Jeff Allison, but we've reeled it back in a bit to be more like something Buick might have prototyped-and a tick less pro-touring


Marcy

 

Great choices all, Larry. Speaking of sexy fastbacks, any progress on your Buick?

I have always loved '41 Cad sedanettes. I've had a fantasy about building this from a '41 for years, but I'm sure I'll never get to it:

 

looks like a 1940 laselle front end, sweet ride

 

Exactly right. Always seemed to me that LaSalle, as Harley Earl's leading-edge styling platform, should have had a fastback, but they dropped the line one year before GM started building fastbacks. The bigger '40 LaSalle and the '41 Cad seem similar enough that the body parts should join with only moderate difficulty.

I asked Rikster to do a Photoshop blend of those parts, which he did masterfully. After he did the stuff that I had in mind, he did the hardtop version pictured above.

 

looks amaizing, rikster is pretty good at the photoshop, i couldnt even tell!

heres a photoshopped one of mine, not nearly as cool lol



im not sure about slamming it as it is a survivor car, but im definatley going to re-paint it with the same colours and add a visor and swamp cooler. i also have the original skirts, but all that will have to wait until winter

 

Hey,

Whenever I see a 120, 140 or 150 Jaguar I gotta chuckle a bit.............

Sir William Lyons, head of all things SS/Jaguar both pre & post war didn't have a very high oppion of French automotive design. When he first viewed the swoopy, pre war Figoni & Falaschi bodied Talbot-Lago he deemed them ''vulgar''! When Jaguar designer Malcom Sayer ''penned'' the lines for the Jaguar 120 for 1948 introduction, and Lyons signed off on it, It didn't take a student of ''swoopy'' automotive design to figger jus where those lines came from ( hint, jus look at a ten year old Figoni bodied Talbot )!


" Do not reach greedily for the Kool-Aid "

 

[QUOTE=50Fraud



Rex, you regularly amaze me with the obscure stuff you know about early design and coachbuilding. Thanks!


Hey Tony, thanx for the tip of the fedora



I'm familiar with the Vedette, which looks like a dwarf '49 Merc sedan. Was there another iteration of a fastback shoebox? Could you show us a picture?

Tony, I can't post a stamp, much less a picture! I'm a total ''komputer retard'' and don't belong in the 21st. century, I jus loiter here! I'll start looking as to where I saw photo of the ''fastback'' schewbaux. There was a sketch done in "Collectable Automobile'' sometime back, by Frank Pieler.


The Matranga-style curved window frames that I was referring to could have been done with a fixed quarter window, like a stock '39-40 Merc coupe. My point was that the Matranga car's curved frames seemed to have influenced a bunch of other customs, even though that style never appeared in production.

Yeah, but on a production basis this design woulda never stood a chance with product planners/engineering..............too damn much hand work! I don't think Ford Motor made much on every '51 Vicky it built, but they were good for showroom traffic



Agreed! I think the XK (both roadster and coupe) certainly belong in the Swoopy Cars thread, although neither has a particularly fast-looking top.

Maybe the XKs didn't have a ''swoopy/fast-lookin top'', but check out the pre-war SS Jaguar Airline type body........................like the MG Larry posted, but more than double its' size


" Humpty Dumpty was pushed "

 

Hey Sylvian,

Thanx for posting your killer Chrysler Ghia again

Exner was pushing this design, line for line, as the 1962 Plymouth Super Sport, for production. Acting on a bad tip, Chrysler Corp. president scrapped the design line up, and instead pushed the down sized 116'' wheelbased Dodges & Plymouths. Chrysler lost its' ass in '62, and Virgil Exner lost his job!

Pretty Ghia, almost as pretty as your brother's Savoy

" Meanwhyle, back aboard The Tainted Pork "

 

One factory offering that hasn't been shown yet is the Bentley Continental.

It's like the British version of a 51 Fleetline - very cool lines.

 

Marcy, that's gonna be a knockout! If it were mine I think I'd lower the top just a tetch, but I think you're taller than I am!

By the way, I don't have any quarrel with pro-touring -- I've seen some great looking rides done in that idiom.

 

I can add one of those to the pile... 1953 Bentley R Type Continental

 

Thanks pimpin... My brother's Savoy is a thing of beauty. I will post pics in a Mopar forum of that one.

 

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1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 6C









1967 275 GTB/4




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1967 Toyota 200GT






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I love the skirts on the 38 Alfa Romero Berlinetta. Mostly I like curvy cars that have some eye candy interest.

 

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1968 Monteverdi 375








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1959 Corvette by Scaglietti








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^^ Damn! You have -- or hang around with -- waaay too much cool stuff!

 

Thanks for posting! This is an amazing topic. Automotive art! Keep 'em coming.

 

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I have somehow been very lucky to have many interesting cars in my orbit. I almost always have a camera around too.

By the way, your car is one of my favorite on the H.A.M.B. - Understated style and simplicity...
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1971 Lamborghini Miura S












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