Gallery: Car Ads Didn't Used to Be So Bleh. They Were Serious Art
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Car brochures were the original car ad. This one's all about the Oldsmobile Six and Eight models of 1937, the gold standards of prewar car design. The illustration, notes Automobile Design Graphics, is more children’s book than pin-up, with the vehicles’ large and gleaming grilles evoking images of adventuring ocean liners.
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An advertisement for the 1924 Moon, right at the start of the 1920s car advertising renaissance. Mass production techniques meant more cars existed post-war than every before---makers just had to sell them. This St. Louis car company would go out of business just three years later, but look at that slick black trim!
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Car brochure renderers of the 1930s took care to exaggerate the proportions of the modern, mighty vehicles of the day. These 1939 luxury Chryslers are shinier (and cleaner) in print than they ever could be in real life.
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Okay, so this Lincoln-Zephyr came out in 1940. But its brochure highlighted the car’s iconic 1930s design, which is echoed by the typography. The car’s curvy, horizontal-bar grille serves as the brochure’s main motif.
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Behold: Woman laughing with Buick, 1946. Her happiness made a lot of sense, as the country looked forward to a prosperous postwar future. Plus, brochures like this would usher in some of Buick’s best years.
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A 1957 Volkswagen in an illustration by the stylish German artist Bernd Reuters. Compared to the ornate American car designs of the postwar years, Volkwagen’s were remarkably streamlined, stressing functionality over flourish. With the subtle branding looking on, the woman in this ad welcomes American consumers with a smile.
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A muscular, patriotic, 270-horsepower 1958 Chevrolet Corvette.
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“An automaker could convince you that you were smart, a good spouse, and a hero to your kids if you picked its car,” historian Jim Donnelly writes in the new book "Automobile Design Graphics.
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“If smart styling alone sold cars, De Soto would have likely survived,” the book notes. (Chrysler terminated the line in ’61.) The car---and its brochures---had a definite love affair with space age, with streamlined lines and bold but simple designs dominating its design, ads, and typography.
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By the 1960s, car designs had pivoted back into minimalism, as had the ads used to sell them. The name of the game was sleekness, placed in chic contexts consumers might enjoy: Say, a romantical city street.
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Flower child? Maybe not. But the 1967 Ford Falcon’s ad certainly tips its hat to the fashions of the day, albeit in a more family-friendly way.
