VGM

VELOCITY GROUP MAGAZINE

The Forward Look

   They joked about putting it on with a trowel.  Each year the chrome was getting thicker, wider, more detailed.  It was becoming more body part than highlight, as it stretched from nose to tail, roof to roll pan.
   The rear quarter panels aped vertical stabilizers and delta wings.  The headlight surrounds, jet air intakes, the taillights, rocket exhaust.  But it was all cosmetic.  The body proportions were still high, occasionally wide, and often, more remarkable than handsome.  But as GM’s design staff moved into their new architecturally modernist design center in Warren Michigan outside Detroit, they were at the top of their game.  And the public seemed to love it.  It was all a vision of the future from the nineteen fifties.  Then, suddenly, over at Chrysler it was 1960.