I’ve written before – probably multiple times – about a certain kind of mid-century automotive brochure art style that combines a very tight and controlled rendering method for the cars, but for the people and scenes around the cars, a much looser, more impressionistic style is employed. I generally like this approach, but sometimes I think it can go a bit off the rails, like I think it has here in this 1967 Chrysler brochure.
I think what’s happening here has less to do with the visual art style itself and more about the tone of how everything is handled. The artist is really leaning into the loose brushwork and heavy impasto, and that’s great, but in some of these images it feels like the artist is pushing it all just a little too far, and even more than that, there’s this strange overarching, almost sinister feeling to everything.
Also, some of these are just confusing. Like this guy, standing next to a New Yorker:
This one threw me. It’s quite dark and mottled, and I really couldn’t figure out what the guy is holding or what he’s doing. At first I thought he was maybe shoving a chunk of meat onto a long skewer? That whatever by his hand is pretty beefy-colored, and he’s looking at it pretty intently, like one does with a chunk of beef. Is he smoking? Or are those teeth?
Eventually I realized that’s a golf club of some kind, and the dude is, what, inspecting it? Pulling off bits of blood and hair from when he just bludgeoned someone with it? I’m sorry to go so dark, but this all just feels like that!
Look at that guy; he seems like he smells like bourbon and cigarettes and resentment. He has real abusive dad energy. I’m not getting in his New Yorker, hell no.
Even the more intentionally warm or pretty illustrations take on a sort of melancholy tone. Here, the flowers and people are quite nicely rendered, but there’s no joy here, only what feels like brooding tension. The couple isn’t really looking at one another, her head is canted down and to the side, and he’s behind her, fingers wrapped around her upper arm in a way that feels slightly menacing. Something is off here.
I really like the dramatic composition of this spread with the black shadows and angles and there in between is our fencing duo. Let’s look at them a bit closer. Computer! Zoom and enhance!
They seem to be lost in thought. Not exactly brooding, but, like most of the people here, they’re looking down, lost in thought. Who did she just stab?
And here, it feels like we have the 1967 equivalent of some Mean Girls, looking at you and judging. I bet they say some devastating things when they think you’re not listening.
Also interesting is how automotive terminology has changed a bit; this colossal Town & Country is described as a “3-seat Wagon,” which today means it seats three people, but back then meant three physical seats themselves, and in this case, massive bench seats. In today’s parlance, we’d say that thing was a 9-seat, at least. I’m betting a whole minyan could fit in there.
Okay, one last detail: these wrap-around taillights are fantastic and a little strange. Usually we think of wraparound taillights as just wrapping around the outer corner of the car to form a side marker lamp, but here these lights are on these extended protrusions and wrap around the outside and inside. This does help with being visible at lots of angles, but it’s pretty unusual to see now.
Man, I hope that dude with the golf club stays far away from me.
FWIW my first instinct on the dude was “chalking a pool cue”.
As a graphic designer I’m sure you’d agree that none of your interpretations were what the boys at Ross Roy intended. 😉
I think you get this style for a couple of reasons. First, vignettes have a long history but they tended to be smaller, surrounding the main car image. And those car illustrations or Boulevard Photographic photos were usually ridiculously distorted. So when that went out of fashion, you got more normal – and less dramatic cars – which often wound up being secondary to the vignette, as here.
Second, and as you know, there was a real graphic arts explosion starting in the fifties but really exploding in the mid-sixties. You had pop-art and op-art car campaigns, and this kind of rough Impressionism was a fixture for commercial illustration.
And finally, if you were doing car illustrations in the sixties – and fewer brands were – Vaughn & Kauffman’s work for Pontiac was the gold standard. Like here, you had two artists, one for the car, one for the background. But they managed to achieve a much better balance between the two. The cars were crisp, but softened through lighting and color effects, while the backgrounds were stylized but much crisper than these. So if you can’t match ’em, go the other direction, Chrysler.
BTW, VW and DDB are rightfully given the credit for brining ‘honest’ photography to car ads, but they weren’t above a little cleverness. Look at any of the classic VW studio ads and you’ll realize they were shot from a low angle. Which makes the Bug look heroic, while in the few early ads they did – like the original Think Small ad – they used normal eye-level photography and the Bug looked squat and lumpy.
I thought he was checking oil dipstick
As for the Golfer, it looks like a driver or fairway wood. Looks like he’s cleaning the face. The grass ain’t getting out by itself. He’s a guy on a sales day. Will he seal the deal? “Serious”, I hear it in the sounds of Wonder Pets.
The Couple, whoa, that does look tense.
Fencers are just doing maintenance, like Golfer, but more of just the thing you do when you are good. “Serious”. I do, however, find it interesting that the guy is on the sedan side, while the woman is on the side of that hardtop coupe, like the Couple. He is really “interested in her technique.” Hmm, theme here?
The T&C Wagon is driven to the Club. Where Golfer plays. Ya, Good Luck getting into that clique. Vintage Escalade vibe. Bet it’s got a 440.
Cool taillights on the Wagon though.
I do think the images reflect the execs more. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination for me why the images get chosen. Or maybe it does.
Went to Boston MFA last week by myself. On a weekday. Art is fun to look at and interpret. Awesome article on these brochures as always.
Really? 2 seconds sharpening an arrow. Show the vehicle can transport a deer.
He’s saying bend over, buckaroo, you’re getting the ranch logo branded on your butt whether you like it or not! Seriously, though, he’s chalking up his pool cue and placing a bet on the black ball going into the corner pocket.
I thought at first maybe dark guy was was wiping down his dipstick with a red shop rag in his left hand, but the shaft is too wide at the top, I fear. It seems obvious now he’s taking a cover off a wood and you can just make out the golf bag and the other clubs.
I think it’s notable that the 440 was STANDARD in the ’67 300. I miss the luxo barges so much.
My grandmother bought a 1967 Newport sedan new and, disliking the look of new Chryslers when the time came around that she normally would have traded it in on a new one, kept it as her daily driver until 1984 or thereabouts. I drove it for part of the summer of 1988, but the transmission died and by then it wasn’t really worth fixing. I don’t see a Newport in the pages you’ve put in here–accompanying illustrations insufficiently disturbing?–but these four-doors are sufficiently similar to trigger the nostalgia.
I thought he was playing the violin but why do they all look like art therapy art.
As a lefty duffer, I’m gonna say he’s not cleaning the club, he’s putting on the headcover, which he made from his neighbors’ obnoxious pomeranian. He’s listening to “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians, because he just shot a 96, and a guy driving a New Yorker can’t be satisfied with just breaking 100. He’s gonna go to the 19th hole to load up on Cutty Sark, then take his agression out on the schnauzer across the street and make a proper cover for his 3 wood.
New Yorker Man has got Wood.
Newport Gal is ready to Slay if he doesn’t get his hand off her arm.
300 Gal is really ready to Slay.
Town and Country Ladies are ready for Lunch.
And Grasshoppers.
Keep bringing them Grasshoppers…
Town and Country Ladies look like “On Wednesdays we wear pink” 40 years early.
At first I thought the first gentleman was cleaning off some sort of cultish bladed tool, likely used in dark ritual sacrifices. Then it looked more like he was struggling to play a small tenor stringed instrument.
Guess it shows that advertisers really only know how to market sects and violins.
That took me far longer than I’d like to admit.
My first thought was playing a tiny violin with a comically oversized bow (is “bow” what the violin stick is called?* I dunno, I was a brass player).
*: Google says yes.
Based on the heart-shaped bloodstain on her vest, I’m going to say “herself”.
The first guy is polishing his putter. He had to serve six months community service. The fencing duo are Emma Peel and John Steed visiting the colonies. The three amigas need all the cargo space for their hat of the month club.
I love those old Chryslers. The styling was so much cleaner than the GMs and Fords of the day.
Click for the The Avenges reference!
I thought maybe he was holding a violin.
My dad owns a 67 Newport so there are several prints of Chrysler ads from this time around his house.
I feel like some of the art was done by the same person who did the art for Atari game boxes and brochures in the late 70s and early 80s.
Looks like a series on shish-kabob assembly. The three women are just waiting to eat.
Nah — he is just checking the oil and wondering where it all went….
My first thought before I even clicked the headline to see what Torch wrote was “the dude is checking his oil”
I thought the guy was holding an arrow at first, while gesturing at something with his left hand. I also thought Fencing Lady had a fishing rod before I saw the zoom-and-enhance.
Yep, that was my thought too, an arrow.
If you’re going to bludgeon someone to death with a golf club, you should look for a big trunk. Contorting someone into a Wolseley Hornet’s trunk after rigor mortis sets in does not sound fun. You’d have to bring a golf club AND an axe for that situation. Then you have TWO potential pieces of evidence with the victim’s DNA on them to dispose of, which…tsk, tsk.
Get you a Chrysler as big as a whale. Also, please don’t murder me.
Always go to Walmart the night before a murder and get yourself captured on camera buying bleach, a hack saw, gloves, plastic bags, duct tape, couple of large suitcases… nothing suspicious….
Oh, and use a credit card.
Getting some strong vintage abusive gender relationship vibes here. That fencer def beats his SO when she wins a match.
I thought he was chalking a pool cue
My first thought was the dude is a musical conductor holding the baton in his right hand, gesturing angrily with his open hand at the second violin section, where all shenanigans begin in string orchestras.
Second violins: basically as good as the first violins but not nearly as uptight.