They joked about putting it on with a trowel. Each year the chrome was getting
thicker, wider, more detailed. It was becoming more body part than highlight, as it
stretched from nose to tail, roof to roll pan.
The rear quarter panels aped vertical stabilizers and delta wings. The headlight
surrounds, jet air intakes, the taillights, rocket exhaust. But it was all cosmetic. The
body proportions were still high, occationally wide, and often, more remarkable than
handsome. But as GM’s design staff moved into their new architecturally modernist
design center in Warren Michigan outside Detroit, they were at the top of their game.
And the public seemed to love it. It was all a vision of the future from the nineteen
fifties. Then, suddenly, over at Chrysler it was 1960.
