Family Car Monday: Inside, looking out onto 1935-36

Today's "Family Car Monday" tells a different story.  Instead of identifying a car, we're looking from inside a car at the surrounding's on the outside - a street scene if you will - and we'll use the cue's to give us a rough date on an image.

This picture was taken during a family trip (not my family) to the gulf coast.  The back of the image says "Jackson, Mississippi?", and it may well be.

So how do we find a possible date for this picture?  The car's, of course!

The wagon's excepted, we can tell one thing, right off the bat: The car that the photographer is riding in was produced from the early 1930's onward into the early 1940's.  We can tell this by the rounded curves of the window frames.

As American automobile manufactures entered the 1930's, they discovered that eliminating squared corners from metal stamping eliminated the need to patch in right angles in the stamping's because the steel could conform to gentle curves verses right angles.

And if we look at the cars parked on the street, the cars are early 1930 style newer cars out on the street, from left to right also have these types of window stamping's, while the while the car to the right of the third car reverts back to a 1920s style Touring car.  And from there, what other cars we can see are mostly 1920 and earlier 1930 bodied cars.

But its that third car - to the left of the wagon, that holds the key with its rear fender over the rear wheel.  That rounded fender, which is rounded and fuller than the other fenders on the cars that we can see is a shape that comes into popularity in the mid 1930's.  The other thing to notice is that the front door has a vent window - you can see the vertical of the post.

So my best guess is that car is a 1936 model Chevrolet.

Advertising art frequently stretched the body of smaller cars to make them appear larger. 

Now, the 1935 and 1936 Chevrolet's looked similar, but the 1936 model had one giant improvement.  1935 Chevrolet's featured "suicide" front doors.  This meant that the front doors were hinged at the back, on the "B" pillar.  In 1936, after customer feedback, they reverted to front hinged doors, which is what this car has.  How do we know?  The door handle is positioned at the back of the car door.

If I am right then the picture was take after November 2, 1935 when the 1936 model was taken.  And given that its the only car with the pontoon style fenders, that it was taken early in the model year.

So when you are looking at a picture and they are cars parked all around, look to the styling cues.  Those can give you a ball park on the date of the image.