By Jim Hagarty
I pulled into a parking lot today and saw this beautiful 1939 Buick parked there. It was like seeing a deer in an open field. When the “horseless carriage” first appeared, the car makers copied the old buggies that had been drawn forever by horses. That was their template. But the ’30s was an amazing period of creativity, in art, architecture and auto design. The old square black buggies were a thing of the past. Designers also leaned towards the aviation industry for inspiration. A little bit of that influence can be detected in this Buick. That trend would accelerate until by the 50’s and 60’s, huge fins were added to cars to complete the airplane look. Also, it is interesting how creative car makers were in a day when there were 3,000 companies building them. Uniformity set in when the big auto companies bought up the smaller ones. Eventually part of General Motors, the Buick started looking like the Chevy, the Cadillac and the Oldsmobile.
