Page 44 - The Hunt - Spring 2020

Woodies are still fairly easy to find and reasonable to buy, with prices starting in the $40,000 range and up.
F
(Here and opposite page) The Harveys purchased their 1947 Ford woody back in 1972, and it still retains much of its original luster and surfy vibe.
stylists were doing a bit too much sketching on
their cocktail napkins during their three-martini lunches. The first car to sport tailfins was the 1948 Cadillac, which had small protrusions one might call “starter fins.” Over the next few years, the fins became monstrous, and designers had to make up reasons to excuse such excesses.
Fins were doubtlessly influenced by such aeronau- tical milestones as Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier in his fighter jet and international air travel becoming common. Plymouth officials maintained that fins helped in steering their cars down the new interstate highways—and Mercedes noted that its fins provided sightlines while backing up. Tailfins took on their most gaudy manifestations with the 1959 Cadillac and Chevrolet. After that, they gradually shrunk and disappeared—like a vestigial organ that no longer served its purpose.
150 THE HUNT MAGAZINE
SPRING 2020
or people who came of age during the 1950s and ’60s, two styles of automobile are likely to elicit smiles. The “woody”—with real
wood paneling on its doors and sometimes
on its rear—evolved during the Depression years, though it didn’t come of age until the postwar era. For the second stylistic statement, cars grew tailfins.
The woody typically came in the form of a station wagon designed for the emerging suburban culture. The 1953 Buick Super Estate Wagon and Road- master Estate Wagon were the last of the authentic production models. After production ended, their lifespan was expanded and idealized by the surf cul- ture of the 1960s, and some companies occasionally produced cars with simulated wood siding.
Great sweeps of grandeur and overstatement emerging from the rear of Buicks, Cadillacs and Chevys, tailfins made you wonder if the Detroit