Sunday, November 3, 2013

Dagmars

The 1950s were an epoch in American automobile design, a decade of the best designs penned by the best designers in the world.  The cars were unique to America, and were as unique as America was back then.  It was the time when big was better, and even bigger was even better.

The 1950s sat between the war and scarcity induced blandness of the 1940s and the not-yet-imagined muscle car era of the 1960s.  The marines, sailors, soldiers and airmen who fought in World War II had come home, gone to work, started businesses and found economic success.  New communities sprang up, new tract homes built, new families started, and life was good.  A large middle class sprang up - a strata that was rare and small before the Big War.  And the middle class liked to celebrate its success.  It was the era of Sinatra, scotch, steaks, suits and cigs.  And big cars.

General Motors, the most important company in the world, employed Harley Earl, the best automobile designer in the world.  Harley Earl designed big, shiny, shapely cars.  Most prominent and shapely were their front bumpers.  Big chrome bumpers with bullet-like points on each side. The points became known as dagmars, a name given like an imagined female character in a Wagnerian opera.


Cadillacs had dagmars.  Big, curvy, pointy dagmars.  Dagmars, of course, referred to opera singers in polite conversation.  Society was more polite back then, genteel even.  What everyone thought when someone said "nice dagmars" wasn't opera singers, it was (Alert! NSFW) this.


Chevys had dagmars.  My first car was a '57 Chevy.  It was junk by the time I bought it in '67, having survived a decade of hard use in the rustbelt.  The floor sills were rusted through, the quarter-panels were see-through in places, the engine smoked and the transmission slipped.  But it had dagmars.  And to my impoverished high-school senior eyes it was the coolest car on earth.


It had pasties, though, the cheap black rubber replacement for chrome dagmars.  I ordered the chrome pieces from the JC Whitney catalog, but they fell off over bumps.  At least I wasn't stuck driving a cheap Pontiac, a car which looked just sad.  It looked like it been in an accident the day it was built.  Or like some chrome-eating creature had gnawed on the bumper.  It was a church lady car if ever there was one.


Custom cars were the breast implants and facelifts of the dagmar era. Chopped, channeled, stretched, lowered, body seams filled in with lead.  Candy color paint, abundant chrome, and exaggerated grilles.  They were the automotive predecessor of the Orange County woman of today.


In time I grew to admire the rear of the Harley Earl designed cars as well as the front.  I became a fin man.  Finshad the can-do swagger of rockets and spaceships.  They were the automotive embodiment of JFK's promise to put a man, an American man on the moon.  Cars were named after that brash pledge.  The olds Rocket Eighty-Eight, for example.  Fins.  The beautiful butt behind the pointy dagmars.


It's gone now, that era of fabulous design, the era of unlimited promise, of boundless expectation, and big of dreams without worries.  In two brief generations we've gone from this.....


........to this.


A set of blinders put on the era of big dreams, big cars and big Dagmars.  It's like watching Secretariat become a dray mule.

24 comments:

I'm Full of Soup said...

Wow - those are some great auto pictures HAZ! And great history too- never knew the Dagmar word or meaning before.

And I think Trooper York may have fitted that lady for her bumpers.

ndspinelli said...

There was a large breasted actress in the 50's named Dagmar. She was maybe one of the first entertainers to just use one name? Did Yugo or KIA have Dagmars?

ndspinelli said...

I bet there were a few pairs of panties left in the back seats of these cars.

Known Unknown said...

We've left yearning and dreaming behind.

How could we have been so foolish to aspire to big things?

I miss the future.

Icepick said...

EMD, the future is so last week.

YoungHegelian said...

@ndspinelli,

My dad use to say that the reason they came up with wider TV screens in the 50's was so they could fit all of Dagmar on screen at the same time.

I bet the car parts are named after her, just like the Navy called their life vests "Mae Wests" in WWII.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

If you had asked me what a Dagmar was a few minutes ago, I would've said it was a currency.

Great post Hazman.

chickelit said...

My dad warned my grandfather not to buy a '49 Ford which appears to have had one Dagmar.

He himself fell for the 1952 Merc. Here's a photo of it: scroll down.

vza said...

What a great post!

In 2001, many 1950s American cars could be seen on the streets of Damascus and Aleppo.
We hired a driver to take us to the archaeological sites in northern Syria, and we rode in comfort in a beautiful 1957 Studebaker.

vza said...

What a great post!

In 2001, many 1950s American cars could be seen on the streets of Damascus and Aleppo.
We hired a driver to take us to the archaeological sites in northern Syria, and we rode in comfort in a beautiful 1957 Studebaker.

Chip Ahoy said...

This is an impressive post that I am linking to my family and friends. All that talk about automobiles over the years, all that mechanics, and no mention of them ever having tits.

Chip Ahoy said...

The nice respectable young woman with the impressive firm and upright 100% all natural dagnars has dagnars on her dagnars and that is doubly impressive for its doubly uprightness and double dagnar firmness.

That's my new thing, double dagnars in impressive pairs for being quadruple dagnars.

Chip Ahoy said...

If this post does not get 1,000 views then there is something wrong in America. Just saying, I told everybody I know.

virgil xenophon said...

YH@12:17/

LOL. You've beat me to it and did my work for me.
A.J Lynch, in his ignorance of who or what a "Dagmar was/is reveals himself to be a mere young whippersnapper compared to some of us. :)

virgil xenophon said...

Chickenman@1:05 am./

My Dad had a 49 Ford (all black Also a 51, 53, 55, and 57...2-door hardtops all.) That center "Dagmar" could be replaced by a remote swivel spotlight controlled by the driver. Ours had it and Dad used to shine it onto oncoming cars that refused to dim their brights, lol. (remember, most travel was on 2-lanes in those days)

ampersand said...

Sorry my friend but Dagmar twern't no opera singer.

ampersand said...

Harley Earl must have been channeling Jack the Ripper with his car designs. Bill Mitchell , however, was a genius. There were 3 great car American designs in the fifties,the Continental Mark II, the 57 Chrysler 300 and the 53 Studebaker coupe.
The 55 T-Bird and 56 Corvette are very good too.

bagoh20 said...

Seeing those make me feel funny inside. I feel like I should donate some money to Greenpeace and say ten Hail Marries.

I remember when I was a little kid having a full gang argument among my friends about how fast certain cars with wings would have to go before those wings would cause them to fly. A Cadillac needed 150mph, and a Dodge Dart which had little wings had to go 200. We figured it all out with sticks, dirt and Calculus. This was before computers or even hand calculators, so we might have made a mistake and forgot to carry the 1.

Michael Haz said...

Studebakers and Fords had propeller noses.

Michael Haz said...

Nick, the '50s had a confluence of Dagmars, cars and actresses.

We get Miley Cyrus and minivans. Bah!

edutcher said...

The PC crowd doesn't like exceptionalism.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Unless you are in the 1% and can afford a car in the high 5 or mid 6 digits, all we get to chose from are little boxes and ugly plastic jelly bean cars.

Lipperman said...

"It's like watching Secretariat become a dray mule."

And beautiful lady has become sexy bitch.

ken in tx said...

My wife gave me a photo-realistic painting of a 58 Buick grill for my birthday. It hangs in our living room. I love it.

BTW, I also love Studebakers. We had two when I was a kid.