Auto Sales Brochures From roughly 1935 through 1940, it was in vogue for the covers of automobile sales literature to feature strong images, commonly in color artwork, of the diagonally up-thrusting front end of each model. Previous sales literature had generally shown the front of a car in dead-on full frontal view, and the industry mostly went back to that approach in the 1950s, though some pieces through the 1940s and 1950s also adopted the diagonally up-thrusting angle so popular in 1939.
1936 Opel P4
1934 De Luxe Ford (British)
1934 Oldsmobile Six
1933 Donet ( not in Sheaff collection )
Citroën ( not in Sheaff collection )
1935 Nash LaFayette
1936 De Soto
1934 Hupmobile (front and back covers)
1935 Hupmobile
1936 Ford V-8
1937 Oldsmobile
1938 Oldsmobile
1937 Plymouth
1838 De Soto
1938 Ford V-8
1938 Oldsmobile
1939 De Soto
1939 Singer
1939 Studebaker
1939 Plymouth
1939 Buick
1940 Lincoln Zephyr
1940 Graham
1940 Ford
1941 Chevrolet
1941 De Soto
1941 Chrysler
1942 Studebaker Champion
1946 Buick
1947 Chrysler (full frontal)
1949 Buick
1949 Mercury
1950 Buick
1951 Buick
1951 Oldsmobile Rocket 88
1953 Kaiser-Darrin (full frontal, photographic)
1954 Pontiac (full frontal)
1954 Chevrolet
1954 Willys
1954 Plymouth
1960 Vauxhall
1939 Nash
1969 Mustang Mach I ( The first new car I owned was one of these, green, Hurst shifter. )
Auto Postcards There are many great images of vintage cars on postcards, the early ones (20s, 30s) mostly in B/W, the subsequent ones in color. I'll post a few . . .
1939 Buick
1940 Buick Special
1947 Pontiac Torpedo Sport Coupe
This is essentially the car on which I learned to drive. From 1941-1946—over the WWII years—the design had remained pretty much the same, with a few trim changes there and there. In the 1947, the front fenders were extended back, lengthened. About 1950, my folks bought a used 1941 Torpedo Sedan Coupe, a low-end 2-door. After it was taken off the road and parked in the back yard, after my parents moved on to their next well-used second-hand car (a 1948 black 4-door Dodge), the Pontiac was mine (ae14) to drive around in the small fields and the wood roads behind our house. I of course had visions of putting it on the road the minute I reached ae16 and had my license. I thought that my parents were on the same wavelength. Not. One afternoon not long before that birthday, I came home from school to find the car on its side in the back yard, and a guy from a junkyard well along, using a cutting torch to cut it down into smaller scrap metal pieces. Major bummer.
"My" 1941, beside the kitchen porch in 1954 (I was 10 years old then) . . .
1955 Dodge Lancer
1955 Packard Clipper
1956 Pontiac
Clicking on a thumbnail image opens a larger image . . .
