Merry Christmas To All Who Christmasize, Here’s Ford Throwing Holiday Shade To Chevy In The Late ’50s

As you’re likely quite aware, tomorrow is Christmas, a shortening of Christ’s Mass, which, for those of you unfamiliar, is somewhat similar structurally to Michaelmas and Candlemas, but focusing on some very different liturgical elements. I’m sure you can learn more about the holiday at your local library. However you choose to celebrate, just know that we’ll have the day off most of today and tomorrow, and, let’s be honest, probably most of Friday.

But still check in; we’ll have some stories up, and I’d hope you’ll want to break in all the fun new presents you get that are capable of going online by visiting the Autopian! I hope we see a surge of internet-connected refrigerators and shoehorns and personal massagers and pneumatic drills pinging the site tomorrow!

For today, though, I just want to wish you a very happy, peaceful, joyful day, whether you’re celebrating Christmas or not, and to remind you of one of my favorite examples of Ford throwing Christmas Shade at Chevrolet. It’s part of this dealer-training filmstrip from 1959, comparing the Ford Falcon to the Chevy Corvair:

Of course Ford wanted to show the Falcon in a better light than the then-new Corvair; the Corvair was a revolutionary (well, for American cars) rear-engined, air-cooled design, and Ford’s very conventional Falcon looked pretty tame next to it. I went over all of this before, but since it’s Christmas, I wanted to revisit one significant frame of this filmstrip:

In trying to show how the Corvair’s front-mounted trunk was a disadvantage, Ford brought up the example of buying a Christmas tree, and then trying to shove it into the trunk to get it home. The front trunk absolutely introduces some real visibility issues, and the tree lot owner is a pretty opportunistic old dude, attempting to sell the Corvair owner a periscope to drive home.

Was this guy getting so many Corvairs (and, perhaps VW Beetles and Renault Dauphines) that he started to stock periscopes?

I think it’s time to really scrutinize this idea, a mere 66 years later. Was this really a valid concern? Let’s see:

Hm. While there’s no question that there would be significant visibility issues in trying to transport a Christmas tree in the front trunk of a Corvair, I think it barely matters, because you’d have a pretty precarious tree-in-trunk situation in the Falcon, too, with over half the tree bouncing around outside the back of the trunk, which is also hardly ideal.

Both cars had fairly high lift-over areas to get into the trunks, so the angles those trees would be sitting at would be fairly dramatic, which could cause trunk breakage where it rests on the trunk’s lip.

The truth is the only sensible way to transport a Christmas tree is on the roof, trunk first, and well-bound in, very likely, a shibari-style. With this in mind, I think we can call this petty rivalry done, with both cars happily capable of taking a tree to your home to prop up in your living room and cover in lights.

See? Finally, peace between Ford and Chevy! Let this be an inspiration to us all, and, once again, have a positively delightful holiday.