Show

The first Automobile Show in the U. S. was held in Manhattan's old Madison Square Garden in 1900. Most models were foreign-built and all were equipped with tillers instead of steering wheels. Steamers and electrics were as popular as gasoline cars. Every afternoon contests were held for the easiest car to start, easiest to stop, easiest to steer. Winner of the steering contest had to navigate safely through a maze of boxes and barrels strewn on a plank track at 8 m.p.h. On the roof of the Garden was a ramp for hill-climbing demonstrations.

No contests were scheduled for the 36th Automobile Show that opened in Manhattan last week. Yet for exhibitors who had staked millions on their 1936 offerings, the Show was as exciting as ever. For the public, on the other hand, it has steadily lost zest since the duster & goggles era. In those days the average automobile owner knew his car intimately, could take it apart even if he could not put it together again. Today, when many a citizen in the most motorized nation on earth never sees the engine of his car except when a service station attendant lifts the hood to check the oil, most owners are ignorant of automotive engineering, take mechanical excellence for granted, are chiefly interested in appearance, comfort, economy, safety. And what determines the buyer's final choice is what gives motor manufacturers insomnia.

What motormen do know is that 1935 models gave them a prosperous 1935. Therefore instead of risking untried developments, they polished up this year's cars with refinements and improvements for the 1936 season. There are no major innovations like self-starters, four-wheel brakes, high-compression motors, balloon tires, freewheeling, independent front-wheel suspension. Only notable change was the date of the Show, which was moved ahead from January to November to streamline the curve of production and employment.

New Cars-- Heeding the public alarm about Sudden Death in highway accidents, the motormakers now soft-pedal speed. Though a number of makes will go 100 m.p.h. and nearly all will go faster this year than last, every Show visitor was handed a brochure on safe & sane driving.

With a few conspicuous exceptions, the new cars look remarkably alike. Only a slight exaggeration is Packard's claim that it is "the one 1936 car on the roads . . . you can recognize." Chromium radiator grilles are almost universal. Horns are recessed. Headlights spring out horizontally from the radiator shell like the two eyes of a rangefinder. Lower lines are horizontal, often more decorative than functional.

Streamlining has apparently reached its limit for conventional, long-hooded cars. Full advantage has been taken of the possibilities for additional room provided by moving motors ahead over the front axle. Disc or steel artillery wheels are now almost universal. Spare tires have followed trunks into built-in compartments. Hydraulic brakes have largely superseded mechanical brakes. Overdrive or fourth speeds for use above 40 m.p.h. are optional or standard equipment on many makes. Some form of independent front-wheel suspension is available on about half the lines. Superchargers are still a specialty but automatic chokes are popular. Prices were cut on many lines, raised on few.

Five of the 30 passenger cars in the Show were foreign. Britain sent its Rolls-Royce, Bently, Standard Swallow and two flashy little "M. G." roadsters. Italy sent a Bugatti racer priced at $11,500, delivered "with service for two races." One car that looked foreign was the graceful, flaring-fendered Brewster, produced by that famed old U. S. body builder and powered with a Ford V-8 motor. But the thousands of visitors that pack-jammed Grand Central Palace last week were there primarily to see the wares of 13 U. S. manufacturers:

General Motors has a family of six and each year it has a favorite child. GM's other makes get the benefit of improvements but radical redesigning is usually reserved for its favored line. In 1934 it was La Salle, which still has its distinctive narrow hood, clean lines, cupped louvers. La Salle changes this year were largely mechanical refinements.

For 1935 GM's best efforts were lavished on Pontiac. Two new lines of sixes and eights were turned out and sales spurted 80%. The 1936 Pontiac is supposed to be built to last "100,000 miles," retains the broad chromium band carried from the foot of the grille clear back to the cowl.

GM's 1936 favorite is Buick, which was redesigned from bumper to bumper and priced from $40 to $385 lower than comparable models this year. Blanketing the entire middle-price field ($765 to $1,945), Buick is GM's bid for a share of the rising national income. A smoothly-curved grille has replaced the old, heavy Buick front lines. For the sporty trade in the $1,000 class Buick has a Century line that will go 100 m.p.h.

With a 1935 design that sold 113,000 cars in the first nine months of this year, Oldsmobile confined itself to minor improvements. Among Oldsmobile's new gadgets is an anti-percolater in the carburetor that exhausts vapor, promotes easy hot-weather starting.

Another GM bid for middle-class spending is a Cadillac V-8 on a shorter wheelbase and priced at a new Cadillac low-- $1,645.

Chevrolet's biggest change is from mechanical to hydraulic brakes. Most of the features of the Master line were carried over to the cheaper Standard series. Now both lines have GM's "turret tops." Both have the same motor, but knee action is optional (for $20 extra) on the Master only. Chrysler has been gun-shy of startling body changes since it introduced its Air-flow at the Show two years ago. The sensation of that season, the Airflow was no money maker, though other manufacturers hopped on its fresh engineering ideas, such as sound weight distribution and integral body-&-frame. Supplementary models with more conventional appeal were brought out last year but Walter P. Chrysler still has his left foot in the future with the blunt-nosed Airflow lines. Regular 1936 Chryslers and De Sotos were further modified and, like the majority of cars at the Show, look slightly dated.

Dodge and Plymouth, Chrysler's two fast sellers, were improved this year by better modeling at the front end.

Studebaker's interior hardware and instrument panel was designed by Helen Dryden, one of the top U. S. industrial designers and one of the few women designers in the automotive field. For 13 years she was with Vogue as a cover designer, though her first contribution to that magazine was a boudoir cap. Later she designed Stehli silks, a Hardman Peck piano, hardware for Toledo's Dura Co., an automobile supplier. Her Studebaker instrument panel was one of the smartest at the Show. But Miss Dryden did not design Studebaker's "hill-holder," a worthwhile device that permits a driver to shift his foot from the brake to the accelerator on hills without having the car slip backward. Brakes are locked automatically until released by depressing the clutch pedal.

Hudson's own models and its low-priced Terraplane were smartened considerably by economizing on chromium. Still featuring its "electric-hand" gear shift, Hudson abandoned its "axleflex" method of front wheel suspension in favor of another development--"radial safety control." Two massive steel arms pivoted on the frame eliminate all axle movement except up & down in a true arc. This maintains alignment, improves steering, permits use of softer springs, since the arms, not the springs, absorb braking and lateral road shocks. Another Hudson innovation is an auxiliary mechanical brake system which works automatically when & if the regular hydraulic system fails. For winter or dusty driving windows may be closed tight, ventilation being provided by an air filter in the rear. All major changes were carried out both in Hudson and Terraplane lines.

Hupp, despite its uproarious management squabbles of the past year, succeeded in preparing two lines--sixes and eights-- for the 1936 season. Hupmobile's streamlining, even slicker than last year, is one of the outstanding designing jobs in the industry.

Graham dropped a supercharged car into the lower-priced bracket for the first time. An old device long used on airplanes and racing cars, a supercharger forces fuel vapor into the motor under pressure. In an ordinary engine the vapor is sucked into the cylinders. Graham claims that a supercharger provides nearly one-third more power at a substantial saving in gasoline.

Pierce Arrow tuned up its potent motors, installed over-drives, strengthened its frame and body to provide "defensive safety" for its rich customers.

Nash increased the size of its low-priced LaFayette so much that a double bed may be made up in the back of the car by proper arrangement of the rear seat. A neat Nash engineering achievement was a motor with manifolds cast within the engine block, saving no less than 509 parts.

Reo's new line has the much-publicized "self-shifter" introduced in 1934 but the device, optional, is no longer plugged in advertising.

Willys still bogged in receivership, is the only standard four-cylinder car produced in the U. S. today.

Packard's exhibit included a twelve with a $5,000 price tag but its real display was made up of 120's the medium-priced line introduced last January and slightly modified for 1936 (TIME, Nov. 4).

The Cord Group was led by four huge Duesenbergs with a combined value of about $55,000. Duesenberg, controlled by Cord Corp., is reported to be planning a new line but the exhibits last week were the famed custom models, some with exposed exhausts, all priced above $13,500. Reaching down below the $1,000 class were Auburns, not much changed from last year. But Auburn's trump was the new front-wheel drive Cord, the only completely new car at the Show.

Front-wheel drive is no novelty. Cords with forward driving axles were introduced in 1929, discontinued in 1932. What made the new Cord exciting was that it incorporated front-wheel drive in a completely new design. The body is low and sleek with a rounded rectangular one-piece hood that opens from the front and is banded with vane-like "Venetian" (blind) louvers. Water and oil caps are under a cowl lid on the right, matching a cowl ventilator on the left. Front lights are retractable like an airplane's landing gear, disappearing into the fenders when little cranks are turned on the dash. On convertible models, the top disappears into a covered compartment behind the seat, leaving nothing exposed to offer wind resistance. Since the four-speed transmission is ahead of the V-8 engine, and propeller shaft is eliminated, Cord was able to lower the floor without ridging it in the middle. Centre of gravity is the lowest on any stock car and running boards were abandoned.

Front-wheel drive is a safer method of power application than rear drive because the vehicle is pulled around corners, not pushed. Another advantage is reduction in below-the-springs weight, prime factor in riding quality. Unsprung weight in the Cord is about 300 lb. less than it would have been with rear drive. The cumbersome gear lever that protruded from the dash on the old Cords has been replaced with pneumatic shifter controlled from the steering column.

Ford officially dropped out of the Show this year when sponsorship returned from New York City dealers to the Automobile Manufacturers Association, which Henry Ford has never joined. But, much to the annoyance of other motormakers, a 1936 Ford (virtually the same as this year's models except for a 25% improvement in braking and steering and a more rounded hood) was on exhibit at the Show for anyone who wanted to visit the third floor where trucks and accessories were displayed. The lone Ford was lugged in by Jackomatic Corp. which used it to demonstrate an automatic jack attachment operated without getting out of the car.

At Manhattan showrooms, and hotels-- however, Ford exhibited the confirmation of a perennial rumor--a medium-priced Ford product. Not a glorified Ford but a completely new car from the Lincoln plants, it was named the Lincoln-Zephyr. Powered with a V12 engine, it is currently made in only two models, a two-door sedan at $1,275 and a four-door at $1,320. Its body construction, like that of the closed Cord models, stems straight from Walter P. Chrysler's adventures in aerodynamics: like the Airflow Chryslers and De Sotos, the Zephyr has no conventional frame; wheels, engine and running gear are mounted directly on the rigid, trussed, steel body.

In the interior Henry Ford had the same trouble that every maker has when he lowers the floor over a rear drive--a ridge in the rear floor for the propeller shaft, a hump in front for the transmission. But as in most modern cars there is plenty of room if the feet are put in the right place. And in appearance the Zephyr achieved the swiftest, cleanest lines of the year.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.