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America’s Dreamcars…

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Ok, ok. We concede. America owned the car in the 1950s. Us Europeans made some good motors, and we set ourselves up well for the ‘60s with the launch of the Mini in ’59. But we couldn’t get close to America in the ‘50s; not on numbers, not on power, and most clearly of all, not for its extraordinary, unrestrained, never-to-be-repeated exuberance of design.

We think of America as being more in love with the car in the ‘50s than ever before or since, but when you look at the cars it made – and more specifically its concept cars – you’d think it was bored of the car already. This was the decade of jetliners and supersonic flight, of Sputnik and the start of the space race. Americans didn’t want cars that looked like they could go fast: they wanted cars that looked like they could fly. Tailfins! Yes! Now make them bigger! Plexiglas bubble canopies! Fuselage bodies! Turbines for engines! Who cares how hot that exhaust gas is! I want a car I can stand on its damn backside and beat the Russians to the Moon!

A little economic background. Continental Europe, plainly, was rent by the war; those car factories that survived had been turned over to munition and military vehicle production and needed turning back. Britain started rather better; the first post-war Motor Show of 1948 was rare flash of optimism amidst the grey post-war austerity, and saw the debut of the Jaguar XK120 (sex) and the Morris Minor (profit). Britain made around half a million cars in 1950, less than ten per cent of America’s output. But it exported three-quarters of them; globally, more than half of all cars exported from their home market came from the UK that year.

And that’s because America just didn’t have the time to bother with small, weird, poor markets overseas. Its economy rebounded much faster than Europe’s after the war and its car industry had a tough time keeping up; it too had to retool after the war and labour disputes limited capacity. Sales volumes didn’t really explode in the ‘50s; they started the decade around five million and finished around seven.

But everything else went nuts, particularly the styling. The Buick Y-Job of 1938 is generally held to be the first concept car, but such indulgence was quickly halted by the war. The Korean War caused a little restraint too, but by ’53 all bets were off, and America’s appetite for excess, speed, flight and space, and its ability to afford it, produced some of the maddest vehicles ever made.

Political correctness was of little importance. The ’56 Cadillac Maharani concept, named after the wife of a maharaja, really did come with everything including the kitchen sink, so a dutiful wife could more completely cater for her husband and family on a picnic. The 1951 Kaiser Safari was trimmed with zebra and lion skins.

Most concept cars – or ‘dreams cars’, as they were more often referred to – showcased some new technology or design innovation, but you wonder if the engineers at GM and Ford and Chrysler honestly believed they could bring some of them to production, or whether they were conceived purely as crowd-pleasers. Way out on the unlikely-to-be-seen-in-a-showroom end of the spectrum were some of the Ford concepts, like the two-wheeled Gyron (above) which used a gyroscope to stabilize it and had little legs that emerged as its slowed to prop it up at rest. Or the Ford Nucleon (below), powered by a rear-mounted nuclear reactor which only needed refuelling (“yeah, I’ll have a Ginsters, twenty Bensons and kilogram of uranium, please”) every five thousand miles.

The three-car Firebird series of concepts created by legendary GM design chief Harley Earl in ’53, ’56 and ’59 could be dismissed the same way. Each was powered by an actual gas turbine (the Nucleon, you won’t be surprised to learn, didn’t have an actual nuclear reactor) which GM took seriously enough as a future means of propulsion to build, run, and test. With exhaust gases at nearly 700 degrees centigrade it was probably soon obvious that a big, lazy V8 was still the better solution.

But the Firebirds were significant for two reasons. First, they set the tone for the jet-and-rocket aesthetic that dominated American car design in the fifties. The first one just looked like a jet fighter, with a fuselage body, bubble canopy and a huge single rear tailfin. Oh, those tailfins: they were the fifties and they were sold via artwork like that created by the great Art Fitzpatrick. They first appeared in ’48, got bigger every year until they reached their literal peak with the genuinely iconic foot-high fins on the back of the ’59 Cadillac Eldorado. Then they got smaller every year from 1960, until they disappeared around 1965. But they took off with the Firebirds.

And second, the Firebirds first posited a whole bunch of technologies we still get excited about today; lightweight composite bodies, keyless entry, car ‘platooning’ and crash avoidance, and air brakes, just like the one on the new McLaren MP4-12C.

So not only did they look like the future, they actually were. More importantly to 1950s Americans, they were great entertainment, and GM bust its best concepts out of the straight-jacket of the motor show and put them on the road in the Futurama shows, which toured the country from 1949 to ’61, displaing the cars alongside other space-age advances like microwaves and videophones and pulling in over ten million visitors.

Europe just didn’t have anything to compare. The concept car wasn’t an entirely alien concept – Alfa and Bertone produced the mad BAT series, for Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica, between ’53 and ’55. And when the Italian carmakers and design houses started doing concepts for every big motor show from the late sixties, they made some of the most memorable and outrageous automotive sculpture ever seen.

But the outrageous was irrelevant to the European motoring culture in the 50s. Small, affordable, practical and smart was what mattered if we wanted to get back on four wheels. Forget the Firebird concepts - you could have put a late ‘50s American production car like that ’59 Eldorado onto a European motor show stand and it would have looked like it had arrived from another planet. Which would have been just what its designer had intended, and his audience had wanted.

Europe’s Glory

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Fiat Abarth 750 Zagato
Give a tiny Fiat chassis the Zagato bodywork treatment and a tuned engine and tweaked running gear from Mr Abarth. What more could you want from a pocket rocket for the fifties? Post war Italian austerity gets a shot in the arm, If you couldn’t afford Ferrari’s 250 TR – this was the bargain basement racer of its time.

 

Ferrari 250 TR
With a body by Scagietti and Ferrari’s race-focussed engineering, the TR was dominant in its various arenas and remains unassailable in its aesthetic appeal. This was the car that announced the true arrival of the prancing horse as a global force. Not surprising, then that the few on the market command as much dinero as a prime Picasso.

 

Mercedes 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé
Benz’s head of motorsport Rudolph Uhlenhaut bespoke two of these enclosed, gull-winged versions of the W 196 SLR for road use. Reputedly the fastest car on the planet in 1955, the coupé version of Moss’s recordbreaking Mille Miglia winning car invokes the Ride of the Valkyries with a Gene Vincent backbeat. Scarily teutonic.

 

Maserati Tipo 61 'Birdcage'.
Unveiled with Stirling Moss at the helm in 1959, the Tipo 61 got its moniker because of its cage-like space-frame chassis - which was lighter and stiffer than its competitors at the time. We like it, though, because of its arachnid styling and the way its design exemplifies that moment when the fifties with its make-and-do feel of the ancien regime gave way to the self conscious modernism of the relatively affluent sixties. Lecture on social history over. Just look at it!

 

Jaguar XK SS
Contender for sexiest car of all time, let alone the fifties - this was the road-going version of the all conquering D Type racer – with a passenger seat, a door and a proper windscreen. Unseemingly curvaceous and rare – due to a fire at the Jag plant – it remains a totemic road-going piece of British automotive craftsmanship. Steve McQueen and his XKSS were, apparently the focus of a free donut bonus scheme by the LAPD. The Coolest Man in the Universe and his ride would tool around the Hollywood Hills on the limit it seems...

 

Maserati A6 G
We're repeating ourselves here a bit but we couldn't leave this beauty out. The curved proportions of the coachwork combined with its laid-​​back, hunkered down poise get us in the back of the throat. Those tiny rear headlamps. The huge Maserati trident on the grille. The minimal brushed steel bumpers and the pertly curved boot! Those Webers! Those wire wheels! We're STILL in love.

 

BMW 507
Originally intended for export to the US to compete with sporty and succesful Mercs and MGs, the 507's pretty roadster lines live on in the Z-series of roadster. Never selling in numbers due to high costs they now fetch silly money. There's only 200 or so in existence - and we doubt you can name a prettier German car.

Rebel Bikers?

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Leather jacket and jeans. The motorcycle rider’s default setting. Motorcyclists have been wearing leathers since their machines developed enough power to bother a rice pudding’s epidermis.

The cowhide and denim combo became a global ‘rebel’ uniform, however, after the release of the 1954 film The Wild One. Despite the image being close to 60-years-old it remains the basis of a myriad of fashion shoots, major label collections, motorcycle ad campaigns — not to mention a million middle-aged fantasies.

It is ‘Johnny’, a 29-year-old Marlon Brando’s sullen anti-hero, who should be credited with setting the template of Levi’s and Schott Perfecto lancer front leather jacket. This character is reputedly based on Shell Thuet, a real life, polymathic motorcycle hero.

But Thuett was a doer rather than a nihilistic pout in a camp cap. As a member of the 13 Rebels Motorcycle Club he raced bikes, tuned them and went on to make competition chassis for some of best West Coast riders of the 60s and 70s including Kenny Roberts.

And just as Thuet is the real thing, the disturbance in the movie is based on the real Hollister ‘riot’.

But the term ‘riot’ is something of a stretch.

It all took place on Independence Day, 1947. There was a race and rally nearby and the town of Hollister, inland in Central California, filled up with motorcyclists, the vast majority being World War II veterans.

There was a lot of drinking, a few minor scuffles and some illegal drag racing down the small town’s high street.

Jim Cameron, one of the Boozefighters, the most famous of the early patch clubs, rode his bike into a boozer and leant it against the bar.

The bar owner asked Cameron to lean his Indian on a wall so there was room for people to drink. He moved it. There was no major threat to the fabric of American life and the hoo-ha would’ve been pretty much forgotten except for the posed photo of an unwitting chunky drunk, sat on a stripped Harley with a beer in each paw and a puddle of empty bottles surrounding him.

A local eyewitness remembers the photographer positioned the bottles by the bike himself. The photo ran in Life Magazine and post-war middle class America panicked about this new ‘threat’ to law and order.

In the wake of the disturbance even the most law-abiding riders and racers became feared, demonized against the backdrop of the post war American boom.

A year later, another race meeting in nearby Riverside prompted the headline “Riverside Again Raided by Gang: One dead, 54 arrested as motorcyclists stage riot…”

Bike riders became thereby exactly the bogeymen a post-war press needed to help sell papers. But the story was so exaggerated that the local Undersheriff wrote an open letter to put the record straight.

“It was convenient to omit, for the sake of sensationalism, that this one person killed in all of Riverside County on that weekend was nearly 100 miles from Riverside at the time he ran into a bridge abutment on the highway and was killed… at the time he ran into the abutment, according to authentic reports, he was not going to or from the Rally in Riverside.”

Undersheriff Abbott also wanted to let the world know Sheriff Rayburn did not get his trousers torn off in the riots. How the reporters managed to invent that ‘fact’ is astonishing.

There were arrests at Riverside for drunkenness and driving offences. A park warden got a punch in the face when he woke a rider to tell him he could sleep in the park.

It was about as wild as any decent-sized contemporary market town on a Saturday night. Nevertheless the die was cast. Bikers had become dangerous scum.

Clubs like the Boozefighters had already at this time been referred to as ‘outlaws’ by the American Motorcyclist Association, the AMA, simply because they organized race meets that weren’t sanctioned by the AMA, not because – like the hardcore ‘outlaw’ patch clubs that followed - they earned money from drugs and vice. But the outlaw tag was deemed appropriate and stuck anyway.

In 1954, The Wild One, a film described by the New York Times of the day as “A picture that tries to grasp an idea, even though the reach falls short,” gave rebels, both real and the weekend variety, a dress code, while those who just wanted to ride or race were tarred with the same brush.

After The Wild One and a dozen Corman-esque exploitation flicks, everyone in America who rode a bike and wasn’t a cop was regarded as a Hell’s Angel.

This, incredibly, even stretched to professional racers hauling their immaculately prepared bikes thousands of miles across country from one race to the next.

Steve McQueen, a lover of motorcycle racing and genuine Hollywood rebel, wasn’t impressed with the image motorcycle had been lumped with. “Brando's movie, The Wild One, set motorcycle racing back about 200 years,” he said in the mid-1960s.

These days dentists and bank managers dress up like Johnny to channel some 60-year-old rebellion while the very companies whose sales were affected badly by the outlaw image of biking are now relying on it to shift units.

In reality, if you want to look like a 21st century outlaw biker, not a mid-20th century one, you need to forget the £500 leather jacket, blue jeans, engineer boots and American V-twin. Instead, get yourself a Japanese 450cc supermoto, strip the stickers off it so no one has a clue what it is and can’t give an accurate description to the Feds (these bikes all look identical).

Get down to the outlet shop for pair of trackie bottoms and trainers. Finish the look off with a black ski jacket and a motocross lid. Keep your number plate in one anorak pocket and lurk around outside expensive jewelers with half a brick in your other pocket.

That’ll really freak out the squares.

Internationalist!

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words and pictures Liz Seabrook

Andy Watkins is a self-confessed motorbike geek. In his basement garage in Bristol sit five beauties: a 1937 Ariel, a Hailwood Ducati replica, a ’66 Harley patiently awaiting attention, a Norton 650 and the apple of his eye, a 1958 Norton International Model 30.

By the time the ’56 came around, the Manx International was a dying breed and Norton itself was hurtling into difficulties. The American market wanted the power that a twin could offer and Norton was struggling to produce the goods. The golden pre-war years of the marque were fading fast. Norton had pulled out of racing and the ’58 Inter was the last to be produced. For a few years after 1958 a number of private dealers lovingly sourced and assembled the abandoned Manx cat, but by the mid sixties production had halted all together.

But this is, of course, what makes this bike so appealing. This is a simple beast. There are a couple of specialist tools needed for maintenance,, but nothing compared to the bikes of today, or even older bikes from other marques. Knowledge flows uncensored owner to Norton owner along with the relevant tools. And it’s what Andy loves about it.

‘You can mess with them yourself with very little equipment. A lot of the old manuals tell you how to do it – some of the techniques I wouldn’t advise; ‘hit it stoutly with the hammer.’ A lot of stuff you do have to clout to get off, but it’s probably better to use a copper hide mallet.’

Not only were these bikes easy to fix, but also – and still are – cheap to run. They burn the purist’s lubricant of choice, Castrol R. Ok, so you might smell like you’re towing a chippy and the laxative side effects may not be for everyone, but it’s the other side effect everyone craves: nostalgia. "I’ve known people to put a bit of Castrol R oil in their tanks just to give off the impression that they're riding a classic," boasts Andy, with a smug little smile.

"[Back in the 1950s], cars were just too expensive for most people to own. Owning a bike like this was a way you could get out and about – and you could emulate the racers of the time – particularly on this sort of bike."

What’s particularly special about this Cat is that it has never been restored, what you see is what you got more than half a century ago. History is what makes old bikes so exciting to ride. You are fully aware of the where they’ve been and what they’ve accomplished. From the transfers on the frame to the oil badge to the worn out bevelled rubber on the tank, vintage bikes wear their miles proudly. "Everyone says with this one that it would be a shame to restore it. You couldn’t recreate that originality." Andy explains.

For all its years and its retrograde engineering, it’s still this enthusiast’s favourite bike to ride. "This bike just handles like it’s on rails. It's a simple big single and just thumps along. When you get it really wound up, it gets into the groove and it just goes."

And when you can give something that high praise why change it?

Shawn Dickinson

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Artist Shawn Dickenson was born and raised near the coast of Los Angeles and spent most of his childhood surfing and drawing cartoons. Eventually he studied art at the Antelope Valley college before pursuing a career as a cartoonist. He got his start as an artist in the custom culture scene of Southern California when he drew an underground comic book series called Untamed Highway. UH was filled with images from the 50's-60's kustom scenes: cars, tikis, pin-ups, etc. and his drawing style quickly caught the eye of car enthusiasts, tiki collectors, bands and more.

Suddenly he was doing commissioned and freelance artwork for custom culture guys as well as surf, garage, rockabilly & punk bands, radio stations and more.

His work has appeared in various art and custom culture magazines, on bands' t-shirts, album covers, gig fliers, even various comic book projects for unruly garage and surf bands like The Hexxers and The Ghastly Ones.

He's recently been doing cartoon art as paintings and has been featured in art galleries, like Kustom Lane Australia (where I had my very first art exhibition), and Gasoline Gallery California.

Current projects include my new comic series, Schitzles Der Cat, about a German rock 'n' roll cat obsessed with hot rods, guitars, dangerous women, ratwursts & bier!

Q: Who are your artistic inspirations?
A: My characters are inspired by cartoons from the 1930's (the craziest era for cartoons)...especially animated cartoons by Dave Fleischer, Bob Clampett, and Tex Avery. All other imagery and situations in my art is inspired by the 1950's-1960's (the craziest era for cars, bikes, art, music, etc.). I'm especially into art by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, Rick Griffin, Basil Wolverton, Jack Davis, and Harvey Kurtzman.

Q: What is it about the car and bike culture of the 1950s that interests you?
A: Mostly that it is technically an ART culture that began in the 1950's, yet is still one of the very few art scenes that has been able to maintain it's pure roots throughout the years, even through the 60's & 70's and still goes on even today. It's a genuine scene, man!

Q: V8 or V twin?
A: That is a tough choice! But: V8.

Q:What’s your daily drive?
A: My daily drive is always to CREATE and SHARE. As an artist, I try to stay on a constant path to learn and create new things. As a cartoonist, I'm always trying to use those tools I've learned to entertain and make people happy.

Q: Chuck Berry or Gene Vincent?
A: Another tough choice...but gotta say Chuck Berry.

Q: LA or San Francisco?
A: Los Angeles. I was Born and raised in southern California — land of hot rods, surf culture and the golden age of Hollywood cartoons!

More of Shawn's work can be seen here:
http://shawn-dickinson.blogspot.com/