History What did people think of tail fins back when they were new?

As someone who wasn't around more than 20 years ago, i can only wonder, but what did people think of automotive design like tail fins back when those cars were new? Did people think they were stupid or ugly? Nowadays i look at cars and think they all just look like blobs with wheels and not much good taste in design and that got me thinking about this question.


What'cha got in there, kid?

 

I have always thought that they belong on a juke box, or a rocket on a kidde ride.

 

They were the source of amusement, scorn, envy and a competition among customizers and manufacturers....and then they retreated.......and the next big thing came along.

Ray

 

I didn't like the 1949 Cadillac, but it grew on me.

 

Dad really liked the looks of the 1959 Ford, but passed on buying a new 1960 because they were butt ugly and had a real small trunk lid. I can still remember looking at sales brochures of the 1961's and picking out what options Dad would get, I was ten years old at the time. Still think the '61's were good looking. Bob

 

stupid and ugly is a good description. The only exception is the fins on a well executed 59 Impala.

 

The fins were introduced onto the cars due to the period of flight. Anything that represented space and flight was a boom in the auto industry and diners during the late 1930's and into the 1940's and 50's. This boom actually took off in the 1930's and was Art deco. Anyway, it was ugly as hell.

"The Wonderful World of Disney" did a few shows in color about the fins and art deco.

Sent from my SM-G930T using H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Ah, so it seems like people generally disliked them. I guess when all of the cars looked like that back then it would start to seem like a gimmick and not really a great design. I'm afraid to ask what you other hambers thought about cars in the mid 60s when everything became square


What'cha got in there, kid?

 

they started looking pretty good in the mid 60s....

 

I kinda like the fins on the 57 tbirds.

 

As a kid, I remember some liked them, some didn't . Mostly the public liked them - or maybe they had no choice? They were conditioned to want the newest models in the brave new world. Who could blame them? There was lampooning of course (MAD magazine, etc). But generally they were liked. The fins seemed to symbolize new things.

And something else is going on here. A psycho/cultural shift in the American scene. After deprivation and fear of the depression followed by deprivation and fear of the WWII, people were ready to get on with life. Many wanted things not had before.

There also began a change in attitude over debt. Previous generations saw debt as generally bad and to be avoided. But the credit industry was changing all that. With credit you could live the American dream. The everyman could drive a new car and buy a house.

Four years in a fox hole or on a rusty tub of a ship and the fathers and those at home were ready to start their lives. Millions dead, millions more homeless, Europe was bombed flat, Japan on its knees and what was happening in the U.S.? A seemingly endless river of defense spending and new credit. A flood of money...

So American auto design reflected the era. You could hate your job, fear the cops and worry about the communists but ya could still have a car with gaudy/cool fins...

What embodies the great American Century, cold war, duck and cover, space race as much as the excess of automobiles?

 

RP3: I thought they were really cool and the bigger the better. I think there was a school of thought that they improved high speed stability.???? Remember, I was in my early teens in the late fifties. Equally as innovative, just a few years later, we saw no fins but "swept back" back windows, ala nascar stuff. Come right down to it, those of us that age got in on a lot of way out there design stuff. Not so much now adays huh?

 

We just kept an eye on'em...didn't want to be the poster boy for 'FIN DEATH.' We just figure they were testing stability for the flying cars just around the corner! I'm still waiting for the flying cars. Nothing better than having an accident at 5,000 ft and then plummet to the ground! What would have been a fender bender on the road is now a major mid-air collision! HEADS UP!

 

Just like everything else that becomes popular overnight. It grows so ridiculously out of control it comes a caricature of itself and then the bubble bursts. Still waiting for that to happen with R*t R*ds. And "Dubs". It'll happen. History always repeats itself eventually.

 

My Dad bought a '59 Chevy wagon in '62. It wast the age of the Jetsons!

 

It was a trend. Started in 48 or 49 and like other trends, it grew and became part of the automotive landscape from nearly every OEM. As mentiomed above, advances in aviation and space exploration helped inspire designers all the way to the ridiculous fins found on the 59 Cadillac. Virgil Exner used em on nearly all of his "Forward Look" Chrysler designs at the end of the 50s and the very early 60s. The market responded on many fronts with some selling really well, some selling just because it was out there and wild. Did the car buyer of the time have a choice? Not really as the market was sort of conditioned to accept and maybe subconsciously admire those designs. It was much like the horsepower wars at the beginning of the 60s and pushed on through the early 70s. Car commercial advertising was almost totally dominated by horsepower figures and cars billowing clouds of tire smoke. Even elapsed times were used in order to convince buyers of the car's ability to accelerate well beyond the family car versions. Today, other than every car looking like a giant fecal sample on wheels, all it seems to be is resale or fuel mileage. Today fins are a living testimony of past times, some interesting and admirable, some as a reminder of excess. And maybe they're like a morning discovery of a tattoo you can't remember getting.

 

1959- biggest fins, most chrome = 2016 - biggest, stupidest blackest SUV, most annoying sound system.

 

It also makes me wonder, did people care about the appearance of cars back then? Because to day it's clear, people either dont care, or have horrible taste in style.


What'cha got in there, kid?

 

I wasn't around in the 1950's, but have always liked tailfins. Some more than others, though. To me the cars with tailfins all have something that new cars don't. That is, in a word, "Style". A 59 Ford looks nothing like a 59 Chevy, which looks nothing like a 59 Plymouth, which looks nothing like a 59 Studebaker, etc. Once more, some were good and some, not so good.

 

Absolutely people cared about style! The answer to that is the cars of the period! GM Motorama was a big deal. Harley Earl proved people would buy 'style' starting in 1927 when he formed GM's Style and Colour Dept. and set the standards for the rest to emulate.

Ray

 

Most of the post millennials that are coming to this thing seem totally oblivious to the fact that what the general population liked had little to do with what hot rodders and other real car people liked. Hence the current fashion to hang 40's/50's era JC whitney accessory shit like visors and swamp coolers and shit like that off cars, and suffer under the delusion that this has something to do with "traditional hot rodding".

 

No i realize that cars that were rolling off of the assembly line weren't necessarily what car people liked but its kind of neat how car companies took hints from kustoms of the time and used them on new cars. It just seems odd how it seems like a lot more time was put into designing a car back then bs today.


What'cha got in there, kid?

 

I guess it has something to do with america losing interest in the automobile and instead becoming interested in electronics. For example looking at computers from the 1980s, they were ugly and not meant to look good because only a few people bought them. Nowadays though, cell phones and computers are all about design and performance just like cars were back in the mid 20th century.


Wow i think i just answered my own question


What'cha got in there, kid?

 

falcongeorge, I agree! The heyday of accessory installation was the immediate post WWII period when manufacturers, and dealers in particular, added accessories to almost every car that went through their stores to add margin to the cars. The demand was so high, people just accepted that if they wanted the car, they 'wanted' the accessories. Cars from '46 through about '48/'49 were those most often festooned with sun visors, bumper over riders, chrome gravel shields, seat covers, etc. A fair number of people added vent wing trim, headlight half visors, fender skirts, dual antennas, etc., though there was a "regional component" to that.

But all that said, most of the current popular 'add-ons' were not seen on as high a percentage of cars back in the day as they are now.

Ray

 

Art deco faded away after WWII, had NOTHING to do with the tail fin era...

Art deco automotive styling...








Even the locomotives got into the act for a while...

 

The United States was entering the "Jet Age". Rockets, jets and earlier, "The A Bomb", were in the news and on the public's mind. Automobile designers played on it and gave the public what they were interested in. Research and marketing at it's finest.

 

I remember everyone around here wanting them. Chevrolet brought them out on the 57s then none on the 58s and sales suffered. That might have been because of all of the 57 models sold and not that many buyers left by 58 but, whatever the reason, Chevrolet brought them back with a vengeance in 59 and 60. I remember my uncle waiting 6 months to get a new 59 Impala. They kept trying to sell the 58s but once people saw the 59s they were a hard sell.

 

What did people think of tail fins? Size Matters!

 

I was born in 60, the first family car I remember my dad having was a 60 Chevy. Most the cars in the neighborhood had fins. Always liked em.
We got tee boned in the old Chevy by an old lady in another finned car. I broke the passenger side window with my head. Some people say that's why I have a screw loose.
60 Chevy still makes my short list of favorite cars.

 

Damn George, ya had me on that swamp cooler thing. I had to Google that shit.
Makes ya wonder what the hell is wrong with people. I'd end up getting a buzzard caught that thing and fill the car full of feathers.