"Fins and Chrome" – Celebrating Detroit's Supposed Heyday

Ronnie Schreiber
by Ronnie Schreiber

The Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance is the most prestigious collectors and special interest automobile show east of the Mississippi. Started in 1979 by Don Sommer, a Detroit area collector and restorer, the concours is held on the grounds of Meadow Brook Hall, the 110 room, 88,000 sq ft Tudor mansion built in the 1920s by Matilda Dodge Wilson, in Rochester, Michigan, about 15 miles north of the city. Yeah, that Dodge. John’s widow, Horace’s sister in law. The mansion and the rest of Matilda’s estate are now the campus of Oakland University.

Only the Pebble Beach event in California rivals the Meadow Brook concours. It’s a must for serious collectors from North America and abroad, and RM Auctions, one of the leading car auction houses, always has a sale the weekend of the event.

The show’s organizers say they are feeling the pinch of the meltdown of the domestic automakers. Not widely known outside the Detroit area is just how philanthropic the automakers are. Getting government aid puts you under the microscope, so GM and Chrysler are ratcheting back sponsorship of all sorts of events. In prior years, one or more of the Detroit automakers would have helped underwrite the Meadow Brook show.

Still, this was the Meadow Brook concours’ 30th anniversary, and there were some very significant cars this year. Alfa Romeo is returning to the US market, starting with the gorgeous 8C Competizione, so to honor that marque, the 8C’s namesake, a one of a kind 1934 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300, aluminum bodied Boattail Speedster, was featured. Of course Alfa had a new 8C on display as well. Actually, two of the $282,000 Maserati built coupes, one in yellow and one in red. Seventy 8Cs will be sold in the US. Financier/Producer/Collector James Glickenhaus bought a red 8C so it’s possible one of the display cars was his. He may have had room in the transporter because he didn’t show his famous bespoke Pininfarina Ferrari P4/5. He did bring the P4/5’s inspiration, a 330 P3/4 racer, and a one of a kind Dino 206 Competizione

The Rolls-Royce Phantom was a featured model, and there were examples of every Phantom model produced. Also on display were classic American and European luxury marques like Duesenberg, Cord, Isotta Fraschini, Hispano Suiza, and Talbot Lago. There were some gorgeous sweeping Delahayes, and majestic V12 Packards.

So despite the economic woes of southeastern Michigan, there were some pretty well healed car enthusiasts at Meadow Brook this year. RM Auctions sold 80% of the cars consigned for Saturday’s auction.

Meadow Brook makes a great backdrop for million dollar cars. It’s one of America’s great homes. The wealth created by the early auto magnates was so great that Meadow Brook Hall was built even before Walter P. Chrysler bought out the Dodge family. Still, from the grounds of Meadow Brook you can literally see Chrysler’s headquarters looming nearby. It’s just on the other side of Squirrel Rd. from the Oakland campus. Looking at the Chrysler HQ from Meadow Brook it’s hard not to compare the company’s fortunes now to when it bought out Mrs. Dodge.

Likewise, some of the show’s themes almost naturally contrast Detroit at its heyday with its sorry state today.

“The Best of Detroit” featured 80 cars chosen to highlight the best examples of styling and design from Detroit automakers from the roaring 20s through the swinging and psychedelic 60s, an era when the domestic automakers led the industry in innovation. “Fins and Chrome: The Convertibles of 1959” showcased a year when Detroit’s styling was at its boldest, Volkswagen only sold a handful of Beetles and Japan was known for cheap radios, not reliable Toyotas. Fourteen fullsize 1959 convertibles from the Big 3 were on display.

Actually, while tailfins were never taller, nor more chrome ever applied to more trim in more places, perhaps 1959 only appears to be Detroit’s apogee. The country was coming out of the 1958 recession brought on by the UAW’s marathon strike against GM and the factories were cranking out cars, rather profitably.

Call it rot, call it hubris, but by 1959, Detroit was already starting to decline. The UAW strike cost GM a huge amount of money and managers at the Big 3 embraced a “labor peace at all costs” mentality. Labor peace (and the tax code that didn’t tax benefits) meant ever increasing wages and health benefits that have now come back to haunt them. The branding confusion of GM in the 1990s and into the 21st century was prefigured decades earlier at Ford and Chrysler.

The ’59 convertibles are literally stunning in their styling – certainly compared to today’s equivalents. Loud, garish and sparkling with chrome, with styling elements pushed to the edge of their envelopes. The quintessential big American land yachts. However, not all of those ’59s were successful. There’s an Edsel Corsair Convertible. In 1959 Ford was busy losing $200 million dollars (when that was real money) on the Edsel debacle, trying to shoehorn a semi upscale brand between Ford and Mercury. The Edsel experiment would end only a year later. Not far from the Edsel was a Desoto Adventurer Convertible. Now Edsel is a more famous failure than Desoto, so much more so that Edsel is a synonym for failure and nobody even remembers Desoto, but once upon a time Chrysler had a brand that was supposed to slot above Dodge but below Chrysler (Plymouth was the budget brand).

Just like minor styling differences in the 1990s didn’t distinguish Oldsmobiles from Buicks from Pontiacs, fancier Dodges and Fords didn’t make much sense to consumers coming out of a deep recession in the late 1950s. The Desoto brand, perhaps inspired by its namesake, soldiered on for a year past Edsel, with the brand and its dealers dying in 1961.

Another of Ford’s 1959 models featured at the concours, the Continental Mark IV convertible, reminds us that Edsel wasn’t the only problem the Dearborn automaker had in the late 1950s. They had briefly given Lincoln’s Continental brand its own division, but failed to compete with GM’s luxury cars and closed down the division in 1957. The Continental brand would not thrive until the landmark 1961 model. The 1959 Ford Skyliner on display is a technical curiosity with its retractable hardtop roof, but ’59 was the last year of that expensive and money losing feature. The only ’59 Ford convertible that sold well was the Thunderbird, which was much more popular as a four seater than the original ’55-’57 sports car.

In 1959, Chrysler had stumbled a little, and Ford had made some serious missteps. GM seemed to be a powerhouse, but it too was about to create a public relations disaster by saving a little money on the Corvair’s rear suspension and hiring a PI to investigate Ralph Nader. Only the first of many mistakes that ultimately lead to bankruptcy and government control. Lessons that could have been learned were ignored as the companies made money during the 1960s.

On the outside, in 1959 Detroit was big and brassy, fins and chrome. If you look past the chrome to the brand names that were chrome plated, though, you’ll see that in 1959 the rust may have already set in.

Ronnie Schreiber
Ronnie Schreiber

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, the original 3D car site.

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