When we think of the 50s, classic diners, pin-up girls or cars with tail fins may come to mind. A vision of the aesthetics of the American dream in which these last extinct car equipment played a fundamental role. The era in which these elements became a curious fashion for automobile designers and achieved great popularity among consumers is called the tailfin era. This was relatively ephemeral, since we can frame it between 1948 and 1961.
The fashion for rear fins was born as a result of technical advances in the field of aviation and the first studies on automobile aerodynamics. The Austrian engineer Paul Jaray, who had worked on the design of the first zeppelins, was the precursor of installing a fin on the rear of cars inspired by these aircraft to give them greater stability on the road. In fact, Jaray signed for the Czechoslovakian manufacturer Tatra, whose 1934 T77 model set a precedent for what North American companies would reproduce years later.
Who was the chief designer of General Motors since the 1920s, Harley Earl, was inspired by one of the World War II planes, the Loockheed P-38 Lighting, to give life to the first automobile with not one, but two fins. rear. We are talking about the 1948 Cadillac, for whose design, Earl visited the fighter aircraft at a base in Detroit. The idea was so well received among consumers that the automobile group would soon implement it to the rest of its brands, despite the initial reluctance of the company’s directors, who considered them too radical.
In the 1950s, the popularity of tail fins was already unstoppable, until they became an aspect for which the designers of the main automobile groups in the United States competed. While GM chose to associate them with exclusivity, Ford Motors Company introduced them in all its brands to make them more accessible. Chrysler entered the fray with the signing of Virgil Exner, former Studebaker designer, creator of a line of luxury cars, marked by chrome elements, dual-optic headlights and increasingly daring rear fins.
The designs become increasingly ornate and futuristic, with new inspiration such as the space race as a backdrop. In 1959, Hearley Earl’s last year at the head of the GM design team, the new Cadillacs were launched with record heights for the rear wings, which rose more than five feet above the ground. This same year, the group imports the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham from the Pininfarina factory (Italy), much more restrained than the models made in the USA.
The rear fin fashion would arrive late to the European continent, through models such as the Fiat 1800/2100, the SEAT 1400 C and 1500 or the Mercedes-Benz W111. Meanwhile, in the United States the trend towards increasingly austere models would continue, after the dismissal of Virgil Exner from Chrysler in 1962 and the failure in sales of the 1958 Ford Edsel.
However, it was Ford Motors Company that put an end to the tailfin era with the presentation of the Lincoln Continental in 1961. This car approached classic stylistic currents and made straight shapes and lines back into fashion. Meanwhile, the rear fins were maligned for their dubious effectiveness and some complaints of safety problems. The situation allowed manufacturers to get rid of this extra cost at a stroke, until it currently became a nostalgic bastion with limited and timid returns to the automobile design line.
