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Seems to me that the only car makers who were making more than very minor changes to their 49s and 50s cars were the senior brands of General Motors. It takes a sharp eye to tell the year of either a 49-50 Ford or Chevy, but bigger things were happening with Olds, Buick and Cadillac. Meanwhile, although Ford was busy correcting some mechanical shortcomings that had shown up in the 49s, people had to look closely at the door handles and parking lights to tell one from another. Same with Chevy, although Mr. Earl allowed Chevy to have a new mid-1950 Bel Air hardtop (Pontiac, too) just to keep up with the more expensive cousins. In 1949 Packard, Nash and Hudson were still selling the mostly unchanged bodies that were brand new and fresh the year before. Chrysler Corporation, too. So, was the AMA satisfied by those very small changes? Suppose they were. It might take the foreign invasions of VWs, Renaults and Simcas to cause America to reflect on planned obsolescence.

Packard's efforts in the early Thirties to sell people on the wisdom of buying a second-hand car that still looks somewhat like a new model probably helped dealers move both new and used Packards. But by 1951, Americans were ready for new and exciting every year. Until the Beetle changed that a bit later with "Keep it clean and shiny and people will think it's new." With more chrome and bigger tail lights, that 1950 Packard might be just different enough to abide by the supposed American Auto Manufacturer's dictate. If that were still true today, Corvette would not have gotten 8-9 years out of their C-6 body styles.

So, was the AMA satisfied by those very small changes?

For what it's worth, the "Standard Guide to 1950s American Cars" says at the top of page 193:

By 1952, Packard Motor Car Company was forced to change its traditional thinking and adopt the annual model-year change system used by its competitors

http://books.google.com/books?id=l096ebZSm9EC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=packard+forced+model+change+1951&source=bl&ots=OI3NyAkJ-v&sig=e_cvtU8Ito1A5JlzwDQm_l-zC4E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ufTJU8KBKYayyAT7kYGgCA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=packard%20forced%20model%20change%201951&f=false

That page does not say how or by who Packard was "forced" to conform to annual styling changes. It is apparent that the transition to annual styling changes came about rapidly just as the post war seller's market came to an end.

That page also comments on a presentation at a 1934 SAE conference advocating the shortening of the service life of automobiles, the begining of "planned obsolecence", as described by Vance Packard in "The Waste Makers"

...appeals to purchase something because it is more expensive, or because it is painted in a new color. The book also brought attention to the concept of planned obsolescence, in which a "death date" is built into products so that they wear out quickly and need to be replaced.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/250912.The_Waste_Makers

People living here in the rust belt can tell you how fast cars rusted out from the 50s through the 70s. I have to laugh when I watch the film released by Fisher Body in 55 that brags "through rust proofing protects them for a lifetime". In Michigan "lifetime" was 5-7 years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbquyC8Xz5Y

Whether PMCC was legally "forced" or made to do so out of a dictum in somebody's rule book is rather academic. And unfortunately the "Standard Catalogue" series has slipped considerably from where it once stood on the accuracy-O-meter.

By the early 1950s, Americans were deep in the throes of expecting change in an automobile every 365 days. Period. We can wax all about this today in an academia sense, but this is the reality of the way it was down on the ground. This is why the next year's cars were held in such secrecy and why the dealers clouded up the dealership windows to prevent people seeing inside at new model introduction. Why many cars were shipped from the factory fully or partially covered... so you could not SEE the new styling! It means little or nothing today, but the annual styling change was important back then.

Designers weren't called "designers" back in those days. They were officially called "stylists." It you wanted to study automotive design, you were preparing for a career in what was known as "automotive styling"... and the even the chiefs of this field were known as heads of styling, not design. Ford and GM issued books that were officially titled "Styling" ...not design. And the very premise of style-especially in the American postwar era lexicon-meant what is IN and what is OUT of style. Last year's car was yesterday's newspaper and therefore, definitely OUT of style.

Packard, who perceived their automobiles in series was "forced" to go to year designation and a yearly change in "styling" since nobody wanted to look like last year's car. Anybody in touch with marketing in those days knew this was a hard fact to be ignored only at a company's own peril.

Americans were more concerned with keeping up with the latest style and identified their car years by style, not by series or serial numbers or any mundane ID marker. They wanted longer, lower, wider, latest style. Believe me, I vividly recall...everyone knew what a 1955 Packard LOOKED like. Same way they knew what a 1957 Chevy was. By the style.

As for those who bemoan the so-called "hi-pockets" high beltline of the Reinhart styled bodies-either then or now-I've got news for ya. All this stuff is a matter of style-and as such, it is cyclical. Just as "style" always, always is.

Don't believe me? Nearly a couple of decades back, Rolls Royce and Hummer came out with super-high beltlines and windows that looked like rifle slots. Did people recoil from this styling paradigm shift after decades and decades of cars with almost knee-height beltlines? Nah! Americans ate it up. No you say? Then look at the Chrysler 300 sedan series that followed the Rolls and Hummer and sold for many years. The 300 all had super high beltlines and sold a gang of 'em. These cars even got to the point where their name out on the street was "baby Roller." But by then it was a style statement. High beltlines had become cool again.

So... as style goes... style goes. Wait long enough and everything comes back. Go hard enough in one direction, then someone will get a lot of attention by designing something in just the opposite direction. With most cars today looking like grinning or frowning jellybeans or potatoes (and a few on the top end looking like variations of a stealth fighter jet), I predict cars with skirts and hidden headlights are not too far off in our future. The problem is only that the American public (due to turnover in the populace age) rarely realizes that what seems to be "new" is usually just a rehash of something that was once considered "old" and-dare I say it-out of style.

For those of us who were fortunate enough to be car-aware in the early Fifties, style was everything, indeed. I clearly remember as a six or seven year old on my way to school spotting a new 1952 Ford from several hundred feet and wondering what kind of car it might be. The consensus from three of my friends and I was that it must be the new Willys Aero. When we saw the Ford name, we were stunned. After all, we knew how a 49-51 Ford ought to look. A year later, when the 53 Ford came out with minor changes to the tail lights and grill, all four of us had become experts. The first Studebaker Starliner coupe really knocked our socks off, but I was the only one of us who preferred drawing the new 52 Nashes, with the Pininfarina square styling. I was also the only kid in the gang to convince my mother that I absolutely had to go to the Buick dealer to see the new 54s. The full color "Beautiful Buy" brochure from that trip stayed with me until Vietnam called and my mother pitched them all as old trash. Styling and ad writer's hype really had me as a future customer who made do with a sixty-five cent weekly allowance. But, both parents did listen to my hopes, dreams and suggestions when it came time (every two or so years) to look at a new car.

Sadly, my youthful eyes never strayed towards Packard as a kid. For me, that was a car my grandmother drove. The first Packard I really paid attention to was the new 55. By that time, our local Packard dealer had closed, and there was little enough reason to drive all the way across town to the one remaining dealer in St. Louis. The family had been converted to GM-only brands for the next twenty years. Alfred Sloan and Harley Earl had won another victory for style and the value of change.

If you study sales figures from the fifties you will see that when a car came out with a completely new style, sales went up. When they repeated the same style (with minor changes) sales went down by about a third. Each year without a new style, sales dropped another third.

When they came out with an all new style, sales went back up (if the new style caught the public eye).

This is why major facelifts became popular, in hopes of stretching a design out a little longer without killing sales. By the late 50s GM adopted a policy of major facelifts every year, and all new bodies every 2 years.

I was over at the Concours of America at St. Johns and I ran into an acquaintance of mine that collects design renderings from the 1940's, 50's and 60's and he wanted to show me some new stuff he acquired.

They are from the hand of Bill Brownlie when he was at Briggs body - well before he was the head of Dodge design. They are two renderings of 1957 Clippers that he did as a proposal, potentially for Packard.

Comment away.

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Ahhh. And Bill once told me that he liked neither the Plymouth Belmont nor the Plymouth Plainsman. But then what do I see here?

The Belmont's (which kinda-sorta came from Briggs) tunneled and heavily chromed headlights on one car... and the Plainsman's heavily tunneled front bumper ends, hooded headlights and wrap-around windshield on the other car!

Thank heaven the Kaiser-esque-cum-Oldsmobile-cum-Buick never made steel.

Bill, wherever you are, I'm sitting here smiling... and probably so are Bill Schmidt and Dick Teague!

I agree with our "last guy who was there when" Leeedy where he compares the two drawings to both the Plainsman and Belmont. We had a first-hand view of the Belmont offered to us at our High Museum's show, The Allure of the Automobile. Compared to other cars in that show, the Belmont was outclassed. The hooded headlights were one of the show car's more distinctive elements. Adding those to a Packard, and that homage to the Futuramic Olds 88 rear fender treatment, would have resulted in far fewer Packard sales than what really showed up under the direction of Teague. Thank goodness for some missed opportunities. However, seeing what might have been is always a treat, so thank you for sharing those renderings.

Plymouth Belmont

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I have seen the 1954 Plymouth Belmont in both red and teal paint. I believe it's the same car, but with different paint. Seeing it, up close and personal, in the Atlanta concept car museum display, I was surprised by the lack of sophistication in the interior. Apparently, they just took the standard Plymouth steering wheel and column out of a Belvedere sedan, complete with plastic transmission shift indicator that showed "Hy-Drive" proudly on it. The Belmont was done in fiberglass, possibly in response to Chevrolet''s new Corvette.

To me, the choice of the 1954 St. Louis Automobile Show was an unusual pick for its debut site. That might have rubbed some salt into the wounds of some Corvette assembly workers who were making Chevy's version about eight miles away. That car show venue was my first car show as an eight year old. I didn't miss another until the military took me away. So, I might have actually seen the Belmont three times. And it might have meant that the first time with the Belmont was utterly forgettable.