Re: Brown Bomber article

Posted by Craig the Clipper Man On 2016/4/12 15:25:11

JW:

I am pretty much in agreement with you. An odd car, to say the least!

The landau design was originally designed for carriages and used with cars such as landaulets to good effect. Used on a two-door Victoria, it looks garish -- kind of like the useless, added-on chrome of that brontosaurus of the Chrome Age, the 1958 Buick Century!

This car seems to struggle with its identity. The Darrin 120s tended to be sporty looking cars, with clean lines and their lowered belt line on the doors. You see this influence on the Jaguars of the late 1940s/early 1950s. The landau look is associates with more formal cars. At least the "Y" Job knew what it was and had clean lines.

The second iteration of this car look pretty crude. In striving for modern styling, you'd think Macauley could have a least dropped the vestiges of the running boards, followed the curvature of the front fenders for the hood lines to eliminate that strange panel behind the fender, which he did in the final iteration. The third iteration is certainly better than the second, but I can't understand why he didn't experiment with a single curved windshield instead of the two-piece used in each version.

Finally, who thought up that name? The Brown Bomber? Must have been something that came to Macauley while he was in the bathroom ...