The Family Car: A Monday feature

In this picture we have Mr. & Mrs. Almet Kennedy of Bucyrus, Ohio.  They are "standing in front of our house, with the new car", and the picture is undated.  Mr. Kennedy's suit is basic, and Mrs. Kennedy's dress doesn't show us a hemline, so it would be difficult to date the picture based on their clothing.  We can see that the trees are green, and the flowers in the planter under the house are mature.  Their house is on the West side of the road, and sun the is coming from the west, but low in the sky.  There are some leaves in the grass.  Taking all of that into consideration, we can guess that this picture is early fall.

In the past we've described how we can use the car in the picture to date the photograph.  So what do we look at on the car to date it?  We would normally start at the license plate, but the picture doesn't give us much on that plate except that the plate is very light in color.  The numbers, barely visible look a bit greyish.

We can tell by the size of the car and the style that its a late 1960s vehicle, so if we Google Ohio license plates that were on the road in late 1960's, we see that:

1967 - Dark blue background, white letters
1968 - White background, red letters
1969 - White background, dark blue letters
1970 - Grey background, red letters (Supposedly they were Scarlet and Grey, Ohio State's colors)

License plates in Ohio, in those days were issued in April, for all vehicle owners, and the bore the annual date of year for the following March 31st.  So for April through December of 1967, your car's plates bore year 1968 right up to April issue of the 1969 plates in April 1968, and so on.  It wasn't until the late 1970s that Ohio issued non dated plates, and stopped exchanging plates annually.  Instead reused plates with renewal stickers.

So for this picture, based on the plate cycle, and the white background and darker lettering, its a pretty safe bet that this picture was taken in the early fall of 1968, right?  Right.

So the car is a 1968 something, right?

Wrong.

Beginning in the 1930s, at the request of President Roosevelt, American automobile manufactures began introducing their new, next year models in the fall of the previous year.  Roosevelt was trying to stimulate the American auto industry production, and he felt that if consumers could see the new cars in the fall, it encourage them to spend money on them, and on the holiday gift giving season.  It got to be a regular thing.

So IF this is a new car, and IF the plates are blue and white (Ohio's 1969 colors), and if this is early fall, then in fact this car has to be a 1969 model.

In the case of the Kennedy's car, the details are fairly unique.  If we go to my favorite resource, Tad Burrness' Car Spotter's of American Cars, 1966-1980, or Tad's other book, The Monstrous Car Spotter's Guide, this should be easy to find.

In 1969, General Motors had five divisions: Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac.  Since Cadillac didn't make station wagons, were down to four different makes. In 1969, only Chevrolet and Pontiac built a station wagon on a full sized frame.  The more expensive Oldsmobile and Buick brand's used a stretched mid-sized chassis with a raised rear section.  This wagon has that raised rear section, and we can tell because the rear side windows are higher than the door windows.

Oldsmobile called their wagon the Vista Cruiser.  Buick called their the Sport Wagon.  The Oldsmobile featured a front grille with a divided grille.  But Buick featured what was called the "Sweep Spear" - a side trim element that dated to the 1940s.

So for confirmation, if look up the 1968 Buick Sport Wagon, we get this:

Copyright 1967, Buick Motors Division, General Motors

 
And we see that the faux wood is under the sweep spear.  But if we look at the 1969 model, we get this:

Copyright 1968, Buick Motors Division, General Motors

The wood grain is above the sweep spear, but below the belt-line, just like in the Kennedy's picture.

So if the car was "new" from a dealer, the picture of Almet and Mildred Kennedy most certainly was taken in the early fall of 1968.

There is something else about this couple and their station wagon that you should know.  The Kennedy's daughter's were in a catastrophic car accident in the late 1930s.  One daughter died from injuries, their eldest daughter was paralyzed from the neck down after being ejected through the canvas top of the car that she was driving.  So Almet and Mildred used the station wagons to transport their daughter Jean to and from the doctor.

Their middle daughter Lucille, was the mother of Pam Fullerton - who was posed in front of the Plymouth Barracuda featured in the first car ID posting.

So cars, for better, for worse, or even in tragedy, shaped this family and their struggles.  Yet they continued to feature them in their pictures.

Knowing this, I hope you can better understand how the Family Car is more than a machine or a conveyance.  They are, like it or not, part of lives, and they can help us date when and why pictures were taken against them.

If you have a family car picture you would like me to date, send it to me on the address on the profile page.

In my next post, we'll look at what a funeral home record can tell us about a death in the family.

Family Car returns next Monday with a picnic lunch mystery.