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Bill Vance: The rise and fall of the Cadillac tailfin

The automobile tailfin trend started modestly after the Second World War when General Motors’ colourful chief stylist, Harley Earl, decided cars needed a more distinctive rear-end appearance as a styling signature.
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The automobile tailfin trend started modestly after the Second World War when General Motors’ colourful chief stylist, Harley Earl, decided cars needed a more distinctive rear-end appearance as a styling signature. In an era when society was enthralled with rockets and jets, Earl was the right man for the times. It was a styling theme that blended perfectly with his handsome six-foot-four stature and a personality that exuded flair and flamboyance.

Earl had been captivated by the twin-boom tail stabilizers on the P-38 Lockheed Lightning fighter airplanes he saw flying over Selfridge Air National Guard Base north of Detroit. He decided to apply the idea to the Cadillac.

When the P-38-inspired taillights appeared on the 1948 Cadillac, it was obvious he had captured the public’s optimistic mood. Although dealers were initially skeptical, Cadillac’s tailfins, as they were quickly dubbed, became an immediate success.

Pioneering aerodynamicist W.I.E. Kamm and others at the Stuttgart Research Institute in 1930s Germany had demonstrated the stabilizing effect fins had on cars in crosswinds. But Earl wasn’t an engineer, and his fins were conceived strictly as a styling statement to expand styling to the previously bland rear of the car. Fins quickly became a Cadillac hallmark.

Tailfins proliferated, but remained reasonably restrained until 1957, when the Chrysler Corp. fired a styling shot across Cadillac’s bow by introducing fins that were bigger and higher than anything on GM’s finest. While Chrysler claimed its 1957 fins reduced steering correction by up to 20 per cent, nobody took them seriously. The public perceived them as styling features, not stability aids.

Fins would soon spread through the industry to the extent that even staid Mercedes-Benz succumbed, fitting small ones to its compact 230 sedan.

Lincoln was trying to take a chunk out of Cadillac’s luxury market, and brought out huge, canted fins for 1957 that made Cadillac’s look puny.

The tailfin war was on, and Cadillac was not to be outdone. Cadillac stylist Bill Mitchell set out to recover the crown, and not surprisingly Cadillac’s 1959 fins clearly re-established it as the King of Fins.

Never before had tailfins soared so boldly or made such a garish statement. The term “wretched excess” was coined to describe 1950s American cars, and the 1959 Cadillac could be called the most wretchedly excessive of them all.

The 1959 Cadillac was excessive not only in styling but in size. It stretched a full 5,715 millimetres (almost 19 feet!) long, and rode on a 3,022-mm wheelbase. It nudged 2,268 kilograms of “road hugging weight” and had a 6.4-litre (390 cu in.) 235-horsepower V-8.

This marked the pinnacle of fins and, coincidentally, the decade that would mark the zenith of the American auto industry’s power. Before there were emissions, safety and fuel-economy regulations, and with minimal competition in the world’s most prosperous society, it was the king of all it surveyed.

Although the smaller auto makers were always fighting for survival, and the postwar pent-up demand for cars had attracted newcomers such as Tucker, Playboy, Davis and Kaiser-Frazer, only Kaiser-Frazer got established. And under withering competition, K-F exited the North American car market in 1955 before it had time to add fins.

But there were already shadows on the horizon in the form of some pesky Europeans such as Volkswagens, Renaults, Austins, Volvos and Mercedes-Benzes. But American cars, particularly from the Big Three, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, still dominated the world’s largest market.

The decline of fins in a way paralleled the decline of the American industry’s power. The 1960s could be called a watershed period, Detroit’s last free decade. Just as fins were beginning to recede, Detroit was about to encounter growing competition.

Recognizing an increasing interest in smaller, more economical cars, the Big Three introduced the compact 1960 Chevrolet Corvair, Ford Falcon and Chrysler Valiant. Other than a slight hint on the Valiant, there wasn’t a fin to be seen.

While this did temporarily reduce the import penetration, they would ultimately recover, led by the funky little rear-engine German Volkswagen and soon, the Japanese.

So just as 1960 was the year that imported cars were acknowledged as a threat, it was also the year that Cadillac’s fins began to recede. The double, bullet-shaped tail lights of the 1959 Cadillac Brougham were replaced by slender lenses integrated into smaller, lower and slimmer blades for 1960.

Cadillac fins continued shrinking through the 1960s, and other manufacturers followed as fins were gradually abandoned. And import sales continued to rise.

The fins on the 1959 Cadillac stand as an instantly recognizable monument to the styling excesses of the American auto industry in the 1950s. Somewhat ironically, they also helped make the 1959 Cadillac a sought-after and valuable collectible today.