I’ve fan-person’d many, many midcentury car illustrations here over the years, and I don’t intend to stop anytime soon, despite what a series of increasingly strident and vulgar letters sent to us from the American Egg Board demand. This particular one is worth any number of threats from the egg goons, because the illustration shown above there is so strange and clever and unexpected that I had to share it with you. Can you tell what that illustration represents?
It’s very highly stylized and abstracted, of course, but it represents something very specific. It’s also interesting in how it, in its very simplified and geometric form, conveys not just forms but time as well. Also interesting is that the style of this illustration is just one of many in this brochure, and is not even the most used style in the brochure, which is a British Ford brochure from 1960, for the Consul, Zephyr, and Zodiac. Is it a wave?
Know what it’s showing? Here’s the full cover, which should reveal the truth:
It’s a convertible top! Seen in profile, highly stylized, and shown in three states over time: blue for fully closed, gray for the halfway folded point, and orange for the fully folded position.
I really love how this was done; at first glance, it just reads like an interesting design choice, something unspecific, but it is, of course, the opposite. Somewhat strangely, there’s only one other illustration in this brochure rendered in anything close to the cover:
A piston and connecting rod! Ford offered four and six of these in these cars, depending on how much of a big shot you were. The rest of the illustrations are handled in much more conventional and naturalistic styles, like the careful illustration of the engine choices:
Lovely illustrations, too, of course. This same style was used for renderings of the cars themselves:
…but there were more variations as well. Some combined this careful, naturalistically-rendered style with a simple linear sketch-style:
That’s fun, everyone hanging out in Sketchy Illustration Outdoor Funland, with skiing and sailing and probably a nice buffet and/or swing club.
There’s a slightly looser style used as well, as you can see in these people happily crammed into the back seat. Compare this to how tightly the car itself is rendered:
Fantastic work on those light hotspots! I like these little British Fords, they have a sort of charming dowdiness, especially when compared to their American counterparts.
Finally, we have two other illustration styles here: the upper suspension diagram combines a careful, tight style with a coarse brushed colored background, while that crankshaft has a very different duotone, almost block-print or single-color silkscreen sort of approach.
That cover, though. It’s so good an unexpected!
I assumed it was a door handle based on the blue shape.
No peeking guess: a convertible top about to hopelessly break itself
…because that’s pretty much what mine looked like
I saw it right away. I also love blue for cold equals top up; orange for hot, down.
We have a blank wall in the house that I want to hang a picture on. The top shot would be perfect, and abstract enough that nobody would know what it is.
Perhaps it’s a little leftover shard of the art history class I had to take in college, but the way the top illustration is drawn it remains me of a river superimposed on a mountain range. Perhaps this is invoking some of the things you can enjoy in the convertible
I’m very suddenly curious – Which Ford did QEII own and drive so that Ford would rate a Royal Warrant?
https://www.automuse.co.nz/news/top-5-cars-owned-by-queen-elizabeth-zkka9
Apparently she actually had one of the Ford Zephyrs in the brochure!
It is a razor cutting a hair in extreme close-up. WTF it’s doing in a Ford brochure I’ll never know!
My first thought on this Rorschach test was a river, if a convertible could drive on it, rather than in it.
The blue is the road, the orange the destination, the grey represents your typical boozed up late 50s early 60s drivers path piloting period steering and suspension.
“egg goons”
If you’d hyphenated or put together the words you’d have had “egg-goons” or “egggoons” which would’ve given you a word with three of the same letter in a row, a feat in the English language matched pretty much only by the common English name for the birds of the family Meropidae, that is, the bee-eater or beeeater.
There might be other such three-consecutive-letter words in the English language which I have yet to look into but it’s too early in the morning and I’ve not had my coffee. (Though there’s the Unknown Last Line of the Saaamaaa Ritual but that’s a proper name and, of course, entirely fictional…)
The other word is ‚Tooorch‘
*only applicable when pronounced in Wisconsin.
Ha, yeah…
(Annoying Scrabble-player pedant voice) However, that’s a proper name.
Mr. Foyt has reminded me that we can also accept “Cooogan!”
‘Goddessship’ is the one I know (the state of being a goddess; feminine counterpart to godship).
This brought an amazing memory into bright, technicolor as if it were now focus.
My Maternal Grandfather, Warrie, had a two tone Zodiac convertible which was the coolest car ever! (Iwas very small). He announced that he was getting married, which was boring, and to a french lady, which was sort of interesting. He asked if I would like to come to his wedding, adding that he would take me in his new car. That was exciting. He duely came and picked me up very smartly dressed and off we went. To Lydd airfield!!!!
The wedding was in French France!!!! And he drove the big shiny car into an airoplane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A Bristol frieghter I think. It was the coolest thing ever ever ever.
I like the artwork too, but my inner 3 year old had to speak!
That’s a really cool story!
More auto brochures should celebrate the crankshaft.
I’m not artistically trained but that’s a great design. Firstly I see mountains, water, and desert rocks. The colors to me say cool, calm, hot. It wasn’t until later I saw the folding stages of a convertible. Bravo I say.
Also cheaper to print when you limit the color palette and amount of detail
One thing that hasn’t changed since the day. You see someone willing to drive with the top down on a freezing day, you stop, stand at attention and Salute. Just like the guy next to the Teal car in the 3 car spread.
My limit is anything below 30°F. Full heat, heated seats, and a warm hat make it comfortable enough.
In my youth I drove a TR6 with top down in below zero weather. We had on all our skiing gear. Got pulled over twice for “welfare checks”.
Wow, so if you drive a convertible in the winter, authorities will stop you and give you money?
What is this, some kind of communist regime?
I wish! It was more along the lines of “You fellas ok? Can I offer you some Narcan?”
I really need to convert to the glass rear window, as my plastic rear window becomes too stiff to fold below 6°C.
Maybe if I get a heated blanked to throw over it in my garage, I can put it down before I set off, then it’ll stay warm enough from being draped over my engine cover, in case I need to put it up.
If the sun’s out, the fam cruises the beach on holidays. July 4, New Year’s Day, and everything in between.
I love the age of illustrations. I had a strong fine arts portfolio in high school and my main subject was automotive. This stuff was inspirational to me in the early ’90s.
The stuff everyone else seemed to hate: mid-century design, brutalist architecture, abstraction (to a lesser degree, Surrealism: you need some background to make sense of stuff like Guernica, but once you get it, you really respect it).
Norman Rockwell – celebrated by the masses and dismissed by the haute artistes was an ILLUSTRATOR. And I always loved his work, especially the mastery of light. It was popular, so therefore, the art world didn’t like it (shit like Warhol, on the other hand, is fame-seeking trash; the more I learn about him the less I see any genius). Rockwell’s idols were the Dutch Masters (not the cigars), and you can see that. He also worked hard – he respectfully recreated a Pollock painting for one of his Life covers (also really like Pollock, and Mondrian).
He’s now getting his due, and I like that. The museum in Stockbridge is worth going to see. You can see the technique up close and the works are enormous. And the studio was like heaven, I wanted to stay there, tune into something good on AM and just get to work.
More illos, I say!
EDIT: Also – the Fitz and Van book is AMAZING
I’m always amazed at how that art was created – so beautiful, realistic, but also “animated”. I will always stare at them in amazment.
Those GM illustrations are impressive teamwork. One guy did BGs, the other guy did the cars, and they worked separately and THEN together (the reflections and stuff were added quickly at the end).
That stuff and the Boulevard Photographic work of the same time period created the fantasyland that we all now think was reality.
The book is amazing!
That moving piston image would make for a great t-shirt.
Or something to frame and hang on a wall. It’s really good.
A great Autopian t shirt!
Whew, I was worried Torch had graduated from taillights to tentacles for a minute.
He doesn’t strike me as someone who enjoys hentai, but you never know.
My initial thought that is was a comparison of two automatic transmissions with shifting points overlayed, or a manual vs auto. The points didn’t quite add up though. Convertible makes more sense. I like how they did it.
And her I thought it was a minimalist rendition of the Hertz driver flying into his driving seat. Whatdoya know!
As soon as my pointer hovered over the image, I knew!
I have to say, if it’s cold enough for skiing, it is also, in my opinion, too cold for sailing
I believe the folks in the background are iceboating, which involves a skinny, non-buoyant hull with a skate on its nose and two more on outriggers. I imagine they’re wicked fast.
Correction: I looked it up and they are wicked fast.
There’s also frostbiting, which is sailing in the winter and honestly, the worse the conditions, the more fun it is, as a hobby.
Do you have to dress up as Shackleton, or can you free-style it?
I dunno – boaters are superstitious. Not sure I’d invoke that guy’s topsy-turvy track record.
You can ALWAYS freestyle.
Fair point. Is there a subsect of extra-hardcore frostbiters that sail Lasers, or are they pretty much all on dry boats? Because I know we have some Lake Superior Winter surfers, but I imagine it would somehow suck even more to be wet out of the water.
A Laser would be a very wet frostbiting experience. Not much freeboard and lots of spray. Would be thrilling, though. Those things have a lot of sail.
People definitely frostbited in Blue Jays and other One Designs. Did a bunch of winter sailing in Dyer Dhows.
I also had a really memorable experience capsizing a 420 in February. Dry suits only keep you so dry.
You’ve got me really curious about this, I might find the courage to give it a shot this Fall.
Brrr, you’ve reminded me of a time helping out my dad, who was going for his sailing instructor qualifications. I think this was in March, beut I remember that it had been snowing in the previous week, and was still very cold.
One of the skills he had to prove was being able to stop the boat next to someone in the water (somewhat tricky in a sailing dingy. For practise, he was using a tyre wrapped around a buoy, and for reasons I still don’t quite understand, as he was helming, I had to be the one to haul the buoy out of the freezing water each time. My hands were bloody freezing after the first time, and I think I flat out refused after the fourth or fifth time.
Sounds miserable!
Don’t forget about turf skiing. Mostly a niche sport, more popular in Europe than elsewhere. Although, As I think about it, I don’t believe turf skiing had been invented as early as 1960. It was around in the mid 60s for sure, but most likely not when this brochure was created, so disregard this entire comment.
I totally went for mountain range and river. Color me fooled.
that was my exact thought, with the orange part being a beach
Little British Fords? We always saw Zephyrs and Zodiacs as medium-large saloons. For the era, the Popular was little, and later on, the Anglia.
My first thought was that it was the 3 states of a convertible top: Cold, warm and excited.
Sketchy Illustration Outdoor Funland was a great place to be. Then they had the incident and could never erase it from memory. Now it’s a different kind of sketchy.