American Iron: The Cars That Defined American Mobility
In America the great memories include the muscle cars that impressed us with acceleration and power. We loved the Pony cars that Ford started with the Mustang. And we identified even with standard family sedans by virtue of their successes in modified form, in NASCAR racing. The sports cars that have moved us with their performance include the Corvette and more recently the Viper. The original Thunderbird in the 50's was a bold sporty departure that was long on style and long overdue.
The heritage of "Detroit-made" excellence in performance goes back to the earliest days of motoring. Before there were muscle cars in the 60's and 70's, there were the strong and sporty big sedans in the 50's, including the Oldsmobiles and Chryslers, and the small sporty Thunderbird started a trend that would develop into what Detroit would variously term the "sport coupe," and the "personal car."
Earlier there were the Cord and the Auburn and the most extravagant and unmistakable example of both elegance and performance, the Duesenberg. The incredible Model J was the car of the stars-almost no one else could afford it. Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century Barney Oldfield made Peerless a household word that lasted for decades, as did many of his racing records in Peerless automobiles. In a different way the great luxury sedans of America have impressed us with their opulent elegance of style rather than their performance. They have deservedly become collectibles, and include the long chiseled-looking Lincoln of the 60's and early 70's, the finned Cadillac of the 50's, Packard in the 40's and earlier, Chrysler Imperial among others in the 30's, and Pierce-Arrow as early as the 20's. Packard lived on as a shadow of its former greatness into the fifties. Earlier, it was a contemporary of the superlative Duesenbergs, but had a lineage that went back to the pre-classic period. The Packards of the 30's exhibited a quality in workmanship and finish that was unrivalled and was a proud inheritance from Packards as far back as pre-1920. In those days the standard of quality was defined by America's Packard in a way that Europe's Rolls Royce envied and would soon emulate.
In the early performance arena, America had a memorable example of excellence in the sporty Stutz Bearcat. And even before that, as early as 1904, the standard for quality in sporty roadsters was Stoddard-Dayton.
These cars have moved us, so to
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