The Family Car: Ohioan's picnicking on a Florida beach

I love this picture more than you will ever know.

And evidently, others do too - its been shared, published, colorized cropped - this one has been cropped so we can focus on the car better.

My great grandmother, Hattie and her sister Ethel, used to make the drive from Ohio, to Florida every year. I have dozens of images of them having a picnic on the beach, all dressed up by today's standards.

This picture is not them, although Hattie did own this same make model and year car.

First of all, we know somethings about the picture.  So lets review them.

1) We know that this is either a dark blue or a black four door sedan.
2) We can see the dual tailights.
3) We can see the license plate, Ohio, but the year - because of JPG compression, is blocky.  It looks like 1942, but we'll come back to that.
4) We can just see, just to the left of the man's head, the hood detail and the position of the headlight.
5) We can also see that the paint on the car is in good condition.
6) We can see that the trunk of the car is integrated with the body.
7) We can see a chrome spear that runs from the front to the rear of the car. And finally,
8) We can see the trim detail on the back of the trunk,  the logo for the car.

Let's start with the license plate.  We know it's from Ohio because we can read that.  But because of the file compression, we can't clearly see the date.  However, the Ohio Department of Motor Vehicles does have a nifty little pdf, Ohio BMV Chronological 1908-2015   that shows us examples of Ohio plates from every year of issuance. And if we look at that source, we can tell that based on the dress and other design of car, that these plates are 1940 issue.

So lets look at the car.  The shape of the car tells me that its from the late 1930's.  How do we know?  The trunk of the car is pronounced.  As the 1930s evolved, automobiles went from having real removable trunks, carried on platforms and strapped to the car,. By the mid 30's car backs were either sleek with no trunk, but with door access to a thin chamber that head the spare, or a slight tall trunk could be "tacked" on to the back of the car with a narrow lid access at the top.  In 1938 Cadillac introduced the Sixty Special model with a model trunk designed onto the rear of the car.  Other GM models began to introduce this concept, and other car companies would follow.

From that hint about the 60 Special, we can assume that this car is probably a GM product, from 1938-1940.

GM built six car lines in 1938-1940.  Each line was a step up in price, comfort, power and quality, and the thinking was that as people prospered, they would step up to the next level of GM product.  This meant, in theory, no GM product fought for price point market share.  From least expensive to most expensive the brands were Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, LaSalle and finally Cadillac.  (GM would discontinue LaSalle after the 1940s model year.)

So, how do we tell one GM car from another, the more expensive they were, the bigger they got - LaSalle being the exception.  But the chrome banding just under the engine hood can be a finger print of sorts.

Again, from hauling out Tad Burness's excellent book, Monstrous Car Spotters Guide, we can look through at the pictures and see which make model and year used that style and texture of chrome banding.  That book suggests that the car in the picture is a 1938 Buick, and that it is Buick's entry level Series 40 "Special" model.

The car in the picture matches the 1938 special in the hood trim, and the hub caps match the caps in the picture as well.  The chrome molding, along the beltline (there is that term again) just below the greenhouse also matches.  But lets look at the rear.

And BINGO, it's a direct match.  Tail lights, bumper shape, bumper guards and logo above the licence plate, all match the 1938.  Just to verify it, the chrome detail on the headlight pod wasn't present in 1937, and in 1939, the pods were sunk into the front fender.

According to the Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1805-1942, by Beverly Rae Kimes and the dean of pre war automobile authority, Henry Austin Clark, Jr., the 1938 Buick Special.  The Special was a way that a family could afford a Buick, with spending money for the racy Series 60 Century, or the Series 80 Roadmaster.  At the very top of the pecking order was the Series 90 limited, a car that was enormous by today's standards and cost as much as a Cadillac. Many of these Limited models road on whopping 140" wheelbase.  The largest Buick built to today, the LaCrosse rides a 114" wheelbase.

One other note.  1938 was the year of the Roosevelt recession, and Detroit was hit hard.  It was a slow year for car sales.  So if this family bought a Buick, they were more than likely, "comfortable", in their finances.

Now, here is one mystery that could be solved by someone smarter than I am.  That "G" in the plate.  That letter was assigned to a county for distribution.  In my home county of Marion County, Ohio, for years, if you lived in Marion, you license plate began with the letter "Q", or the letter "P".  My late uncle, whose initials were J and M, would have my mother get his plates on the east side of Cleveland because that is where the JM plates were issued.  So if we knew where "G" was issued, we would know the county of these folks.

Tomorrow, we'll take a look at  cars by the decade.