{"id":55503,"date":"2013-07-23T11:00:37","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T15:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=55503"},"modified":"2013-07-23T11:47:05","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T15:47:05","slug":"too-good-to-succeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/23\/too-good-to-succeed\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Good to Succeed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"120418100357_action-comics-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Very often you have to be a lone nut to come up with a really original idea.\u2026 People are very insular\u2009\u2026\u2009even [in] a great city like New York\u2009\u2026\u2009people are\u00a0like fish swimming around in aquariums and all they know is the water in the aquarium.
\u2014Francis Ford Coppola<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the summer of 1938, when the first issue of Action Comics<\/i> introduced the world to Superman, its cover featured the Man of Steel lifting a steel-framed Chrysler Air\ufb02ow, \u201cthe first sincere and authentic streamlined car,\u201dSaturday Evening Post<\/i>, December 16, 1933, p. 31.”>1<\/sup><\/span> above his head. It was the 1937 model, down to its rounded, beetle-brow hood and tapered rear, its grooved speed lines and triangular back \u201copera\u201d window, its whitewall tires and condensed, newly horizontal grille. The following year, when Universal Pictures decided to make a film version of the popular radio serial The Green Hornet<\/i>, the screenplay called for the hero to drive a car with \u201cultramodern lines,\u201d something that looked <\/i>fast. (\u201cThat thing travels faster than the bullets I send after it,\u201d notes a patrol officer during a chase scene.) But by then, the Air\ufb02ow\u2014a vehicle vastly superior in speed, safety, and comfort to anything on America\u2019s roads\u2014had been so maligned in the public\u2019s imagination, thanks in part to a competitor\u2019s expensive smear campaign, that, decades later, it would still be spoken of as the greatest failure in automotive history. Instead, Universal chose a 1937 Ford Lincoln Zephyr. The name was meant to evoke the Burlington Zephyr, a 1934 streamlined train (featured in the 1935 film The Silver Streak<\/em>). When The Green Hornet<\/em> returned as a TV series in 1966, the Black Beauty returned as a Chrysler Imperial, modified to fire rockets as the 200-mph Black Beauty, the Green Hornet\u2019s signature transport, its speedster \u201clook\u201d augmented with stylized lightning bolts painted on the fender skirts and a \u201cFlight of the Bumblebee\u201d soundtrack.<\/p>\n

Chrysler\u2019s 1929 coupe had been inspired, claimed company ad men,\u00a0by \u201cthe canons of ancient classic art\u2009\u2026\u2009authentic forms of beauty which have come down the centuries unsurpassed and unchallenged,\u201d its radiator with cowl molding suggested the repetition motif in a Parthenon frieze, its front elevation replicated the Egyptian lotus leaf pattern. \u201cThis patient pursuit of beauty will doubtless prove a revelation to those who have probably accepted Chrysler symmetry and charm as fortunate but more or less accidental.\u201d The following year, the new models were said to be \u201cas distinctive and charming\u201d as the Parisian couture of Paquin and Worth. But the focus soon shifted from ancient history and European aesthetics to what was taking shape in the New World\u2019s own backyard. Walter P. Chrysler was a self-made man who understood the importance of tenacity and vision. In 1905, he had borrowed a considerable amount of money to buy a car that caught his eye for the sole purpose of dismantling it to see how it worked. A few years later, he was General Motors\u2019s first vice president, and not long after that, he quit to start a rival company that was now riding high. In 1933, despite a debilitating economy\u2014wages nationwide had dropped sixty percent, more than twelve million Americans were unemployed, and business as a whole was running at a net loss exceeding five billion dollars\u2014Chrysler turned a considerable profit, the only company to produce more cars that year than it had in its Parthenon-Egyptian Lotus phase, just prior to the crash. <\/p>\n

And there was encouraging news wafting in from the Pacific Coast: a brand-new culture, designed around the gasoline engine, was emerging. Drive-ins\u2014from drugstores, flower shops, banks, and restaurants (complete with carhops) to outdoor \u201cpicture shows\u201d (twenty-five cents a head)\u2014were sprouting up like mushrooms after a rain.2<\/sup><\/span> While other auto executives remained reluctant to invest in the substantial retooling costs that a streamlined vehicle required, Chrysler had, as early as 1932, appropriated some $25,000 for the development, \u201csomewhere in the Canadian woods,\u201d of what was known in-house as the RD 124 model. \u201cStreamlining\u201d had suited the corporation well enough when it came to the recently completed seventy-seven-story Chrysler Building, the triumphant Art Deco stalagmite at the corner of Forty-Third and Lexington. The plan was to increase riding comfort using balanced weight in lieu of independent springs, to produce a lighter, faster car, with better gas mileage, at a price below anything Ford or GM could offer.\u00a0Various delays and second thoughts followed. According to Fred Zeder, one of Chrysler\u2019s top engineers, Bel Geddes\u2019s Horizons<\/i>\u2014with its inherent challenge to the automobile industry\u2014was \u201centirely responsible\u201d for giving his employer the courage to proceed. The book, a 1932 bestseller, was required reading for all company top brass.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt Works Like Magic. It Feels Like Flying!\u201d<\/center><\/b><\/p>\n

Before the Air\ufb02ow, cars were still based on a horse-and-buggy model, their passengers sitting in \u201cwagons\u201d behind motors (whose strength is measured in \u201chorsepower\u201d), and owners were still draping blankets over the engines when their cars were garaged, as if they were stabled steeds. Their ungainly shape, wrote Howard S. Irwin in Scientific American<\/i>, \u201crepresented little more than a series of unrelated compromises.\u201d Now, the body was being designed around the engineering, with new layouts, new format, and new materials, a body worthy of the high-compression engines Chrysler had developed, a body conceived, it was said, when engineer Carl Breer spotted a chevron of geese that turned out to be a squadron of fighter planes flying low at low speed. The typical Detroit automobile of the day brings to mind a stodgy hearse. The Air\ufb02ow, in contrast, bore a striking resemblance to \u201cthe People\u2019s Car\u201d (aka the Volkswagen, or \u201cBaby Hitler\u201d) that Germany was developing for the Autobahn, with the help of Ferdinand Porsche.The Extraordinary Life of Josef Ganz<\/em> (2013) credits a Jewish engineer with originating what became the \u201cPeople\u2019s Car\u201d\u2014Ganz\u2019s Maikaefer, or May Bug, the earliest sketches of which were made in 1923.”>3<\/sup><\/span> To say that the Air\ufb02ow was ahead of its time is almost to damn it with faint praise. It was the first car with automatic transmission and (pre\u2013air conditioning) an adjustable, two-piece windshield, and there was an automatic choke. The side and vent windows tripled passenger visibility, could be lowered simultaneously with the flick of a lock, and virtually eliminated wind roar inside the vehicle. It had hydraulic brakes (unique to Chrysler at the time) and automatic overdrive (\u201cThe hum of the motor fades. An invisible power seems to pull you along.\u201d) The welded (rather than bolted) all-steel \u201cmonocoque,\u201d or unibody (other cars still relied on wooden frames), gave it unprecedented rigidity and passenger safety, while still managing to reduce overall weight.<\/p>\n

The taillights and dual headlamps were flush to the body, the rear wheels were enclosed; there were chrome-enhanced, wraparound bumpers, a dust-proof luggage compartment, and one no longer had to step up from the running board to get inside. An almost theatrical (what Loewy would call \u201chysterical\u201d) grille of vertical chrome bars ran up and over the sloped hood. And then there were the white-walled inner-tube tires, a natty touch, like a double pair of gleaming spats. Adding white as \u201ctrim\u201d on black was, according to at least one contemporary source, a Bel Geddes innovation.4<\/sup><\/span> The interior featured divan-like adjustable seating. The leather-trimmed cushions set into polished chrome tubular frames created a sophisticated, Moderne armchair look. The flooring was marbleized rubber, the various hard surfaces molded from Bakelite or Formica. It has so many Art Deco touches, notes vintage car collector Jay Leno, that \u201cit looks like you\u2019re sitting in the Chrysler Building.\u201d5<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

The eight-cylinder, 130-horsepower engine (powerful for its day) with two-barrel carburetor could run ninety to one hundred mph.Popular Mechanics<\/i> magazine predicted transcontinental automobile trips as \u201ca summer outing,\u201d but added that \u201ca person will not be over-anxious for more than one trip in a lifetime.\u201d”>6<\/sup><\/span> Moved some twenty inches forward and placed directly over the front axle, it offered the \u201cDynamic Balance\u201d of nearly fifty\/fifty weight distribution; passengers were now cradled inside<\/i> the frame, instead of on<\/i> it. This, in turn, moved the driver\u2019s seat and the steering wheel forward, almost directly above the front wheels, resulting in more head and legroom. The front seat could now, for the first time, comfortably accommodate three; the back seat (with \u201cthe spaciousness of a drawing room\u201d) sat six. For emergencies, the tank held three gallons in reserve. Studies of \u201cthe exact \u2018periodicity of movement\u2019 most restful to human nerves\u201d had resulted in \u201cindependent suspension\u201d\u2014elongated front springs that functioned separately from the rear ones. \u201cRoad shock\u201d was absorbed and distributed, and engine tremors eliminated, producing\u00a0a \u201cFloating Ride that has a rhythm like a walk,\u201d in sharp contrast to the rocking and pitching that passengers had come to expect. And for an additional fifty-five dollars, buyers could augment their purchase with\u00a0 with a custom-tailored, \u201cgolden tone\u201d Philco automobile radio.<\/p>\n

The result of six years\u2019 work, some fifty prototypes, and rigorous testing, the Air\ufb02ow debuted at the January 1934 National Auto Show in New York, on Chrysler\u2019s tenth anniversary. Before the show was over, thousands of orders had been placed.<\/p>\n

Promotion of the company\u2019s star attraction had begun back in December with headlines like \u201cA New Kind of Car that Literally Bores a Hole Through the Air!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou ride inside a bridgework of steel\u2009\u2026\u2009with strong steel girders actually over your head!\u201d boasted one ad. \u201cThere is the sleekness of a racing yacht\u2019s cabin\u2009\u2026\u2009a suggestion of a modern penthouse apartment in the rich upholstery fabrics and gleaming Chromium trim.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA car that turns gravel into asphalt\u2009\u2026\u2009and makes asphalt seem smooth as glass,\u201d read another. \u201cA car that will take you over twisting rut-torn gravel roads at speeds up to ninety and let you read, write or take a nap as you go. A car that cleaves the air like a bird\u2009\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

One copywriter simply paraphrased Horizons<\/em>: \u201cYou only have to look at a dolphin, a gull, or a greyhound to appreciate the rightness of the tapering, \ufb02owing contour of the new Air\ufb02ow Chrysler.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though his name had sometimes been attached to products, it was unusual for Norman to lend his face, as well. He appeared\u2014in a suit, tie, and overcoat, a pale-brimmed hat pulled down to his ears, leather driving gloves, and a pipestem in hand\u2014in the Saturday Evening Post<\/i>, framed in the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s broad doorway, holding a copy of Horizons<\/i>, the \u201cfamous book\u2009\u2026\u2009in which he forecast the Air\ufb02ow motor cars\u2009\u2026\u2009[a product] of modernist design tenets.\u201d That same week, the irascible Alex Woollcott lent his visage and bulky frame to a full-page endorsement in Collier\u2019s<\/i>, slouching in the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s backseat reading a book (the crook of his cane resting provocatively between his thighs) while the car \u201ctook a dirt trail at seventy.\u201d Thanks to the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s Floating Ride, \u201cI was able to write on a pad on my knee;\u201d the pad with Woollcott\u2019s scrawl was duly featured in a close-up. A similar ad showed a grandmother threading a needle from her backseat perch.<\/p>\n

\"Chrysler_Building_Chicago_Worlds_Fair_F\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cPersonally, I\u2019ve never understood why progress should crawl when it can be made to leap!\u201d \u2014Walter Chrysler<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

That spring, the Air\ufb02ow was showcased performing stunts at Chicago\u2019s \u201cCentury of Progress\u201d World\u2019s Fair, open for its second season. Chrysler\u2019s seven-acre pavilion included a quarter-mile-long exhibition track where automobiles were, as the Fair\u2019s guidebook put it, \u201csubmitted to experiment.\u201d Throughout the day, a crew of “Hell Drivers” demonstrated what the Air\ufb02ow, along other Chrysler vehicles, were capable of, taking banked turns, negotiating a forty-five degree incline, making skid-free stops on a slicked down track. Other tests included a \u201cBelgian Roll\u201d (a \u201cshimmy\u201d machine that shook a car, running at full speed, \u201clike a terrier might shake a rat\u201d),7<\/sup><\/span> an operating wind tunnel (a device traditionally used for testing airplane design8<\/sup><\/span>), and a sandpit where cars were deliberately rolled over. Between shows, fairgoers took demonstration rides in a model of their choosing, with a Hell Driver at the wheel. But in spite of the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s extraordinary performance on all counts, feedback indicated that its exterior \u201clook\u201d might benefit from some finessing in the name of public appeal. In September 1933, Bel Geddes had been personally brought onboard to improve the car\u2019s overall streamline characteristics and reinvent its controversial \u201cwaterfall\u201d grille. So secret was the RD 124 that Chrysler\u2019s representative on the project was referred to, in Norman Bel Geddes & Co. meeting memoranda, as \u201cMr. Q.\u201d Bel Geddes replaced the grille\u2019s thirty-nine slender vertical bars with twenty-one thicker ones, which strengthened and broadened out the front end while softening its look. He raked the windshield, slanting it back to the sides and top, set the headlights into curved wings over the wheels, and, based on experiments with his own eighth-inch-scale wind tunnel, introduced side grooves along the front that allegedly channelled air around the moving body. True to form, Norman and his staff were soon pushing for improvements beyond their mandate. There was talk of emphasizing its design attributes with a two-tone color scheme. The steering wheel\u2019s rakish tilt was modified, the \u201cspare\u201d was brought inside so as not to interrupt the back\u2019s clean sweep, the marbleized floor mats were replaced with carpeting.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s estimated that Chrysler\u2019s wind tunnel cost $5,000 to build, some $87,000 today. There\u2019s some dispute as to whether Bel Geddes initiated its fabrication or if Chrysler had already acquired one, before he came on board, at the suggestion of Orville Wright. In any case, it included a running belt over which a scale model car could be suspended; Norman used it to test various ground conditions beneath the wheels. The model and belt could also be turned at an angle toward the \u201cair\ufb02ow\u201d (ergo the name, intended as a synonym for streamlining) to check the effect of side winds. One of the test discoveries was that conventional, boxy cars of the era were more aerodynamic when traveling backward.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Bel Geddes had taken on a second auto-related commission, what he would later describe as \u201cthe first attempt at a slow-leak double-tube tire,\u201d\u00a0for Firestone Tire & Rubber Company\u2019s 1935 line. The \u201cFirestone Streamline,\u201d which never got past the drawing stage, featured tapered sidewalls and a slightly bulging hubcap; the letters of its name were molded into the treads in bold, deco-like capitals. The overall effect was that of a preternaturally handsome (yet to be invented) Frisbee.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur suggestibility is tremendous.\u201d \u2014Selling Mrs. Consumer<\/i>, 1929.<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

The standard explanation for the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s demise is that the public took an immediate dislike to its unorthodox look. To the contemporary eye, the external differences between the 1934 Air\ufb02ow (think: New Coke) and Chrysler\u2019s conventional 1934 sedan (Classic Coke) seem relatively subtle: the former is more rounded and tapered, its windshield slanted, its headlights more discreet. Critics\u2014none of whom admitted to having taken a test drive\u2014compared the Air\ufb02ow to a bathtub, its hood to the face of a basset hound, a rhinoceros, a burglar in a stocking mask. Harper\u2019s Magazine<\/i> editor Frederick Lewis Allen called it \u201cso bulbous, so obscenely curved, as to defy the natural preference of the eye for horizontal lines….\u201d (One wonders if Allen\u2019s taste in women ran more to angular Flappers or the Lillian Russell model.) \u201cI now want to eat crow,\u201d Paul Merchant wrote Bel Geddes in the fall of 1934. An editor at a major New York publishing house, he considered himself a car authority. An argument months before over \u201cthe relative virtues and merits of GM and Chrysler,\u201d during which Norman \u201cdefended the Air\ufb02ow lustily,\u201d had led Merchant to explode with a string of expletives. Now, having finally driven the object of his scorn for nine thousand miles, he admitted it was \u201cthe most magnificent piece of automobile machinery it has ever been my good fortune to handle\u2009\u2026\u2009I wouldn\u2019t trade [it] for any car made in this country, from the Cadillac 16 on down\u2014and I\u2019ve driven plenty of Cadillac 16s….\u201d \u201cIt may interest you to know, Norman,\u201d the newly minted convert continued, \u201cthat the antagonism we have heard expressed\u2009\u2026\u2009is confined entirely to hyper-conservative sons of bitches who are against all change, and it may also interest you to know that the people who are crazy about the Air\ufb02ow are children of two years of age and up. Very frequently when [my wife and I] drive through towns, they dance up and down, shouting \u2018There goes my car!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Air\ufb02ow caused a sensation. According to Breer, more orders were placed for Airflows at the January Auto Show than for any new car ever exhibited there.\u00a0It didn\u2019t hurt that New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia could be seen tooling around Manhattan in one. But the inventory wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n

General Motors would later claim that Chrysler had rushed the Air\ufb02ow through production after learning that GM was about to debut an \u201caero car\u201d called the Albanita. Though no official records of the Albanita\u2019s existence survive, Chrysler had, GM insisted, gone so far as to commission espionage photographs, taken through GM\u2019s not-particularly-secure Proving Grounds\u2019s fence in Milford, Michigan.planned<\/i> for the Albanita, with its \u201crather dull design cues,\u201d to be seen and copied by the competition, knowing that the public would reject it.”>9<\/sup><\/span> The Air\ufb02ow\u2019s innovations required unprecedented expertise that many of Chrysler\u2019s factory workers lacked, at least that first year. The bridge-type steel frame had to be welded upside-down. The wide, upright, chrome-trimmed seats required their own special assembly line. The 1934 Air\ufb02ow was offered in four eight-cylinder-engine models, the largest of which sported the industry\u2019s first one-piece curved windshield, so difficult to install that four broke for every one successfully put in place. Some of the first two or three thousand cars had serious defects. A tool and die makers strike in the fall of 1933 hadn\u2019t helped matters. Delays piled up,and dealerships began to lose patience. Detroit\u2019s Big Three were as competitive as starlets. Taking advantage of the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s predicament, General Motors adopted a strategy at least as time-honored as espionage. They mounted an expensive smear campaign.<\/p>\n

The \u201csmear\u201d (a tactic GM would again resort to in the 1960s in an effort to discredit Ralph Nader) had been employed to dramatic effect by no less a personage than Thomas Edison, an early Bel Geddes hero.10<\/sup><\/span> In 1903, the inventor publicly electrocuted\u2014\u201cWestinghoused\u201d he called it11<\/sup><\/span>\u2014\u00ada three-ton elephant in an effort of discredit Nikola Tesla\u2019s alternating current campaign, which threatened his patent royalties. When Topsy, a Coney Island elephant who had killed a sadistic trainer, was put on trial and sentenced to hang, a humanitarian backlash ensued. Coincidentally, New York had just replaced the gallows with the electric chair.\u00a0Edison, who had previously arranged for several dogs, cats, and the occasional horse to \u201cride the lightning\u201d in the course of his campaign, recognized an unprecedented opportunity and offered his services. (As a precaution against failure\u2014there were 1,500 spectators and the press was on hand with motion picture cameras\u2014Topsy was fed cyanide-laced carrots at the last minute.)12<\/sup><\/span> Edison, himself, had been \u201csmeared\u201d by the gas companies when he first introduced his DC electrical system.<\/p>\n

In the end, the animal sacrifices were all for naught. AC proved its superiority and DC fell out of favor. Edison prospered, nonetheless; Tesla, arguably the more deserving, did not.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Saturday Evening Post<\/i> was the country\u2019s most widely circulated magazine, reaching some three million readers a week. Bel Geddes had touted the Air\ufb02ow there; the competition would do him one better. In a\u00a0barrage of double-page spreads, GM presented itself as a company that didn\u2019t make a move without \u201cthe priceless verification of the public itself,\u201d a company predicated on protecting the unwary \u201cagainst ill-timed or dubious experiments.\u201d The reference to Airflows wasn\u2019t lost on John Q. Public.<\/p>\n

\"Silver-Medallion\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAn eye to the future, an ear to the ground.\u201d \u2014GM\u2019s anti-Air\ufb02ow slogan<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

In the late twenties, GM president Alfred Sloan had initiated the industry\u2019s yearly style change (referred to, in-house, as the \u201corganized creation of dissatisfaction\u201d) in an attempt to get an edge over the ubiquitous Model T, which Henry Ford refused to \u201cupdate.\u201d (Ford\u2019s \u201cany color as long as it\u2019s black\u201d approach was more practical than Puritan. One color reduced inventory and supplies. And it cut production time. Prior to nitrocellulose lacquers, black paint dried faster.) But the annual \u201cnewest,\u201d and \u201clatest,\u201d perforce, was meant to single out their<\/i> particular offerings. GM had streamlined (read: smooth running, efficient) vehicles, but theirs had \u201ca mature refinement,\u201d and \u201cbeauty as well as speed.\u201d Theirs \u201cdid not leap full-born into being,\u201d the hasty products of \u201cabrupt inspiration,\u201d but were the result \u201cof deliberate growth.\u201d Going on about how ugly the Air\ufb02ow was (leave that to the journalists) would have been unseemly; competing against its obvious advancements was dangerous ground. Just as Edison had presented AC current as a danger to be eliminated, the word went out that \u201cthe safest motorcar the world has seen\u201d was patently un<\/i>safe, at a time when traffic fatalities were already averaging more than 34,000 a year.13<\/sup><\/span> At the bottom of each double-paged magazine spread was General Motors\u2019s Silver Anniversary medallion, one side of which depicted a speeding, futuristic automobile backed by an immense vertical wing, the other an artistic rendition of an engine\u2019s combustion chamber. The irony (presumably unintentional) was that Bel Geddes had designed it.14<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

Chrysler rallied with a spectacular publicity stunt. An Air\ufb02ow was pushed off a 110-foot cliff\u2014an eight-story plunge\u2014into a Pennsylvania rock quarry. The car flipped over, landed on its wheels, then was driven away under its own power, battered but intact, all the doors and windows in working order. Then professional racer Harry Hartz was hired to run an Imperial Air\ufb02ow coupe at Utah\u2019s Bonneville Flats, where it set a series of new records, after which Hartz drove the same car from Los Angeles to New York, averaging 18.1 miles per gallon (another record). A sister model, the six-cylinder DeSoto Air\ufb02ow, would average 21.4 mpg on the same cross-country run. Filmstrips documenting these feats were distributed free of charge to movie theaters, and miniature Air\ufb02ows showed up as prizes in Cracker Jack boxes.15<\/sup><\/span> The Air\ufb02ow would go on to win the Grand Prix and Premier Prix at the Concours d\u2019Elegance in Monaco. \u201cPioneers are apt to be people who are sure of themselves\u2009\u2026\u2009go their own way\u2009\u2026\u2009make decisions with independence,\u201d ran a new Chrysler ad. The Air\ufb02ow\u2019s initial purchasers \u201cwere that kind of people. Modern-minded, they investigated. Quick to appreciate, they bought.\u201d The First Three Thousand<\/i>, a booklet free for the asking at dealerships, listed these \u201cdistinguished\u201d first owners and their praises.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Timing, it\u2019s often said, is everything. The Air\ufb02ow was the car that subsequent cars would be based on, but the \u201cwindow of opportunity\u201d had been lost. Had the streets been busy with them for the public to see, ride in and talk about, things might well have been different. But production delays, combined with GM\u2019s pedantic spin (\u201cthe common sense of the common people!\u201d; \u201che travels farthest in the right direction who is willing to listen as well as to lead\u201d) and smug observances in the press, won out over Chrysler\u2019s gamble on \u201ca refreshing new kind of beauty\u201d that had evolved from the inside out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Gleam is Fresh and the Gadgets Are New\u201d<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

Fourteen years after the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s ill-timed debut, another \u201cstreamlined car of the future\u201d would emerge\u2014the Tucker Torpedo. Like Bel Geddes, Preston Thomas Tucker was a product of the Midwest. An indifferent student, he studied engineering via mail-order courses, then went on to develop race cars, gun turrets, and a one-hundred mph bullet-proof, air-conditioned military tank that was turned down by the government as being \u201ctoo fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a Bel Geddes-worthy, Devil-take-the hindmost boldness, Tucker set himself up as the first new automobile manufacturer since Walter Chrysler, hoping to take advantage of the booming, postwar economy.\u00a0His eponymous Torpedo, designed in collaboration with former GM and Chrysler stylists, embodied a number of Air\ufb02ow advances, including individual wheel suspension, a rear motor that could accelerate to 130 mph, an emphasis on safety, and a handsome, \u201cfuturistic\u201d exterior. Advertised as \u201ca modern miracle of mechanics,\u201d it also featured individual torque converters, interchangeable front and back seats with seat belts, a padded dashboard, an under-seat heater, a pop-out safety windshield, and a directional third headlight, dubbed the “Cyclops Eye,” that lit up whenever the car turned more than ten degrees. It got twenty-plus miles to the gallon and had hundreds less parts than traditional automobiles.\u00a0In 1948, the Tucker Torpedo went into production. In very short order, a campaign of misinformation\u2014the general consensus is that Detroit\u2019s Big Three were behind it\u2014was followed by an SEC indictment for fraud and \u201cviolations.\u201d Fifty-one Tuckers were built before the factory was forced to shut down. By the time Preston Tucker was acquitted, two years later, the damage had been done. The car\u2019s revolutionary safety ideas would, like the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s, inform future standards.\u00a0Preston Tucker would die at the age of fifty-three, less than a decade after the first Tucker Torpedo rolled off the assembly line. The official cause was pneumonia exacerbated by lung cancer; the unofficial cause was a broken heart.16<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

In 1958, Ford released its experimental Edsel, named after the company founder\u2019s son, an arts patron with a penchant for sports cars who had died ten years before.17<\/sup><\/span> Despite self-adjusting brakes, contoured seats and seat belts, childproof rear door locks, boomerang-shaped taillights (on the station wagon model) and the oh-so-cool Teletouch Drive transmission (pushbuttons \u201csmack dab\u201d in the center of the steering wheel for \u201csyrup smooth shifting\u201d), it would quickly crash and burn. Madison Avenue honed in on its narrow vertical grille (versus the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s wide vertical one), comparing it to everything from a horse collar and a mouth sucking a lemon to a vagina. (It was the sex-phobic Fifties.) Its high price, odd name, and introduction during a recession didn\u2019t help. \u201cIt\u2019s an Edsel\u201d quickly entered the vernacular as a synonym for\u2009\u2026\u2009a lemon.<\/p>\n

\u201cDesign is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.\u201d \u2014Steve Jobs<\/strong><\/center>
\u201cDesign is 25% inspiration and 75% transportation.\u201d \u2014Raymond Loewy<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

Success predicated on traditional good looks would not be limited exclusively to the automobile industry, though its impact was most strongly felt there. In the 1990s, Bill Stumpf\u2019s Aeron Chair would be dubbed a monstrosity. Vastly superior to other office chairs in both comfort and utility, the product of passionate and determined research, it had the audacity of defy pre-existing aesthetics with its hard mesh seat and speculum-like shape.17<\/sup><\/span> The push buttons of the Edsel\u2019s transmission, which proved too forward-thinking for some drivers (wasn\u2019t that the horn?) would, some four decades later, be called on to lend familiarity to Apple\u2019s first generation iPods. According to technology blogger Jim O\u2019Neill, the first iPod\u2019s buttons were a conscious design concession. Today, in the age of the iPhone, with its sleek look and full-touch screen, they \u201clook quaint, almost archaic.\u201d But back in 2001, O\u2019Neill posits, the iPhone \u201cwould likely have been too far outside the bounds\u2009\u2026\u2009to make any sense to consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only 11,292 Chrysler Air\ufb02ows and 13,940 DeSoto Air\ufb02ows sold in 1934, the numbers ratcheting down each year to 1937, after which they were discontinued. (Action Comics<\/em> fared significantly better, selling over 200,000 copies of its premiere issue, despite the publisher\u2019s doubts that anyone would believe that a guy in a cape and tights could lift a car over his head.)Action Comics<\/em> was selling more than half a million copies a month, at ten cents a pop. Superman\u2014originally a cynical wise guy who enjoyed humiliating his adversaries\u2014was the new American icon, and the Golden Age of comic books had begun.”>18<\/sup><\/span> Chrysler survived partly because its Plymouth model sold like hotcakes, and partly because it had hedged its Air\ufb02ow bet by introducing the Airstream, a big, boxy, conventional car, trimmed to evoke a streamlined \u201cfeel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though a number of Bel Geddes\u2019s \u201cimprovement\u201d ideas never got past the development model stage (rear fins, a \u201ccrumple zone,\u201d radically indented grooves running from front bumper to back), and though he was only a contributing designer, detractors used the car\u2019s very public fall from grace to their advantage as yet another example of Bel Geddes\u2019s expensive impracticality.19<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did the Air\ufb02ow Chrysler, a Norman Bel Geddes design embodying the latest wrinkles in aerodynamics, find few takers?\u201d Raymond Loewy would ask, more than a decade after the fact. \u201cAutomobiles were ugly to the point of being repellant,\u201d he would write. \u201cHow long would the public put up with it?\u201d Loewy\u2019s MAYA principle (\u201cMost Advanced Yet Acceptable\u201d), combined with his allegedly superior European aesthetic, was a bulwark against just such hugely expensive faux pas, though it\u2019s unclear when, exactly\u2014before the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s demise or after\u2014he coined the acronym. Norman\u2019s perennial arch rival, Loewy had created the Hupmobile Aerodynamic series in 1934 and \u201935 (flared headlights, rounded corners, and a three-piece windshield borrowed from Paul Jaray\u2019s Tatra), and financed it, in part, out of his own pocket.20<\/sup><\/span> But with fewer than five thousand paying customers a year, the Hupmobile had faired more poorly than its repellant foil.Art in America<\/i> critic would observe in the 1970s. Only with the advent of WWII would Loewy \u201cmaster the automobile by mating it with the war plane\u2014fusing cockpit and bullet.\u201d”>21<\/sup><\/span> The ever-conservative Henry Dreyfuss, \u201can ascetic [who] always dressed in brown, even when he was sleeping or swimming,\u201d saw the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s demise as \u201cthe classic example of going too far too fast.\u201d And then there was Harley Earl, whose Buick Y-Job for General Motors is often credited as the first \u201cconcept car.\u201d Its main claims to innovation, notes Christopher Innes in Designing Modern America<\/i>\u2014\u201cstreamlined\u201d teardrop rear end, wraparound bumpers, horizontal radiator grille, fenders extending back into the doors, groves along the sides\u2014\u201call came from Norman Bel Geddes, who had introduced precisely these features to Chrysler more than five years earlier.\u201d Notes Stephen Bayley, Loewy\u2019s much-praised 1963 Avanti sportscar was, according the W. Dorwin Teague Jr., \u201cprimarily the work of [veteran car designer] Bob Andrews, who received no recognition for it. More typical of Loewy\u2019s own work were some of his early Studebakers with the projecting pseudo-streamlined beak in the middle of the radiator.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both the Aeron and the Air\ufb02ow were designed as \u201cnext generation\u201d products, embodiments of a future to which the public said, \u201cNo thanks.\u201d The former would eventually transmogrify from ugly duckling to swan, becoming a much-imitated bestseller. The latter, too, would prove profoundly influential, despite its brief life span. GM and Ford would use streamlining as a style device in everything from the Lincoln Zephyr22<\/sup><\/span> and Cadillac 60 Special to Chevrolets, but at a carefully incremental pace, on the alert for \u201ceye resistances rather than wind resistances.\u201d Half a century later, Airflows, Tucker Torpedos, and Edsels would all become highly sought after by collectors. \u201cThe influence of the Air\ufb02ow on other automobiles was unmistakable,\u201d wrote Arthur Pulos in American Design Ethic<\/i>. \u201cThe V front and the slant back became standard in the industry, and, by 1939, the formal differences between one automobile and another were so slight that graphic identification had to be used to distinguish them.\u201d23<\/sup><\/span> The Air\ufb02ow\u2019s lowered silhouette, all-steel frame, and unified exterior shell were standard features on most 1940s production automobiles. In the 1960s the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s progeny, the VW \u201cBug,\u201d would revolutionize an automobile industry rife with enormous, gas-guzzling \u201cland yachts,\u201d outselling Ford\u2019s record of fifteen million Model T\u2019s.<\/p>\n

In David Mamet\u2019s 1977 play, The Water Engine<\/em>, a struggling young Depression-era engineer, Charles Lang, creates an engine that runs on the energy released when the hydrogen and oxygen molecules of H2O are separated. Cheap. Efficient. \u201cGreen.\u201d Revolutionary.24<\/sup><\/span> It\u2019s his ticket, Lang thinks, to a better life. At first, the powers-that-be take him for a madman, a crazy dreamer. But when his engine proves itself, they quickly try to buy him off and bury it. When Lang refuses to relinquish the rights (the bad guys include a patent lawyer), both he and his sister meet a gruesome end.\u00a0It\u2019s difficult to ignore the shadows of the Air\ufb02ow and the Tucker Torpedo in this cautionary tale. Set against the background of Chicago\u2019s \u201cWorld of Progress\u201d Fair, where the Air\ufb02ow had been showcased, it\u2019s a haunting indictment of the American Dream, an evisceration of the Horatio Alger and \u201clevel playing field\u201d myths that so many in the twentieth century were raised to believe in. Thirty-five years after Mamet\u2019s play debuted, an MIT professor invented his own \u201cwater engine,\u201d an artificial leaf that, when dropped into a jar of water in the sunlight, bubbles away, releasing hydrogen that can be used in fuel cells to make electricity.<\/p>\n

1. The quote, attributed to Bel Geddes, appeared in \u201cI Salute Walter P. Chrysler,\u201d Saturday Evening Post<\/i>, December 16, 1933, p. 31.<\/small><\/p>\n

2. Like California\u2019s thriving eucalyptus trees, which hailed from Australia, the first drive-in movie hailed from Camden, New Jersey. Its creator, Richard Hollingshead, went so far as to use lawn sprinklers to simulate rain as a \u201cspecial effect.\u201d The first drive-through wedding chapel (hometown: Las Vegas) would have to wait until 1951.<\/small><\/p>\n

3. Paul Schilperoord\u2019s The Extraordinary Life of Josef Ganz<\/em> (2013) credits a Jewish engineer with originating what became the \u201cPeople\u2019s Car\u201d\u2014Ganz\u2019s Maikaefer, or May Bug, the earliest sketches of which were made in 1923.<\/small><\/p>\n

4. All-white tires had appeared on the earliest automobiles\u2014it\u2019s rubber\u2019s natural color\u2014but carbon black was soon added to increase traction, endurance, and ease of cleaning.<\/small><\/p>\n

5. Leno is the proud owner of a 1934 Imperial CX Air\ufb02ow limousine, complete with a Dictaphone in the rear for communicating with one\u2019s chauffeur.<\/small><\/p>\n

6. Only a century before, in 1829, New York governor Martin Van Buren wrote to Thomas Jefferson about railroad carriages moving at fifteen mph. \u201cThe Almighty,\u201d he insisted, \u201ccertainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.\u201d In 1903, Popular Mechanics<\/i> magazine predicted transcontinental automobile trips as \u201ca summer outing,\u201d but added that \u201ca person will not be over-anxious for more than one trip in a lifetime.\u201d<\/small><\/p>\n

7. Named after the jolting stone blocks of Belgium\u2019s roads that had proven brutal to earlier automobiles.<\/small><\/p>\n

8. As early as 1921, Hungarian engineer Paul Jaray had been testing automobile designs in the ZeppelinCompany\u2019s wind tunnel in Friedrichshafen, Germany, where he worked. But after Germany\u2019s instigation of WWI, followed by its subsequent defeat, few in the West were interested in what the Huns were up to.<\/small><\/p>\n

9. \u201cThe Little-Known Albanita,\u201d GM\u2019s Automotive News, 75th Anniversary Issue, September 16, 1983. According to the article, a GM mechanic employed in 1933\u2014Ivan Tector\u2014claimed that repeated industrial espionage on Chrysler\u2019s part had GM\u2019s project director carrying a rifle to threaten culprits off. \u201cToday, GM has no official recollection that the Albanita ever existed. Records were either lost, destroyed or so well classified that no one can touch them.\u201d According to www.carofthecentury.com, GM planned<\/i> for the Albanita, with its \u201crather dull design cues,\u201d to be seen and copied by the competition, knowing that the public would reject it.<\/small><\/p>\n

10. Like Bel Geddes, Edison was a man of limited formal education involved with entertainment technology (the phonograph, motion pictures).<\/small><\/p>\n

11. Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. had purchased Tesla\u2019s AC current patent.<\/small><\/p>\n

12. A film clip of the pachyderm\u2019s demise can be seen on YouTube.<\/small><\/p>\n

13. The figure might have been considerably higher but for the invention of the rear-view mirror, the three-color traffic light, and Englishman Percy Shaw\u2019s \u201cCatseyes\u201d for navigating poorly lit roads.<\/small><\/p>\n

14. In a brochure published by the Metallic Art Co. (1933), which cast the medallion, Bel Geddes is quoting as saying that \u201cthe [future] form of the motor car is so difficult to forecast\u2009\u2026\u2009{ but} we do know that ultimate efficiency in speed cannot be attained without conforming to nature\u2019s own laws for bodies moving through liquids and gases.\u201d The medallion, as well as pieces from Vienna\u2019s Wiener Werkstatte, was \u201cgifted\u201d to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1934.<\/small><\/p>\n

15. Radio Steel & Manufacturing Co. maker of the hugely popular red Radio Flyers and Streak-o-Lites wagons, followed up with the Zep, inspired by the Air\ufb02ow\u2019s lines.<\/small><\/p>\n

16. Francis Ford Coppola, director of a film based on Tucker\u2019s story, owns two Tucker Torpedos, as well as a Bel Geddes-designed Simmons bed.<\/small><\/p>\n

17. Not taking into consideration the changing value of the U.S. dollar between 1934 and 1994, the Air\ufb02ow originally sold for $1,245., the Aeron for $1,150.<\/small><\/p>\n

18. By its seventh issue, Action Comics<\/em> was selling more than half a million copies a month, at ten cents a pop. Superman\u2014originally a cynical wise guy who enjoyed humiliating his adversaries\u2014was the new American icon, and the Golden Age of comic books had begun.<\/small><\/p>\n

19. Bel Geddes would continue to work for Chrysler, supply models for GM\u2019s 1939 Buick Series 40, and contribute to the \u201cstreamlined\u201d 1941 Nash.<\/small><\/p>\n

20. According to one source, to the tune of $18,000.<\/small><\/p>\n

21. \u201cLoewy\u2019s automobile designs of the 30s were invariably awkward and timid, no match for the brio of Bel Geddes\u2019s streamlining,\u201d an Art in America<\/i> critic would observe in the 1970s. Only with the advent of WWII would Loewy \u201cmaster the automobile by mating it with the war plane\u2014fusing cockpit and bullet.\u201d<\/small><\/p>\n

22. The Museum of Modern Art, notoriously slow on the uptake, would dub Ford\u2019s Zephyr\u00a0\u201cthe first successfully designed streamlined car in America.\u201d<\/small><\/p>\n

23. On November 14, 2009, a 1934 Air\ufb02ow sold for $44,850 (Bertoia Auction Co.). In January, 2012, a Tucker Torpedo went for $2,915,000 (Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale Auctioneers), more than doubling the previous record Tucker sale price of $1,127,500.<\/small><\/p>\n

24. Allegedly based on two Texans who, in 1935, were awarded a patent for an electrolytic carburetor.<\/small><\/p>\n

Two-time NEA Writing Fellow B. Alexandra Szerlip is in the process of writing a history of twentieth century design seen through the unique lens of Bel Geddes\u2019s life. She\u2019ll be speaking about him in August, in Chicago, at the Industrial Design Society of America conference<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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