While driving down Charles Street in Baltimore the other day, I chanced to fall in behind a 1940 Buick Special sedan. Obviously well cared-for and bearing "historic" vehicle plates, it was black and shiny and looked jaunty, indeed, with its immaculate wide whites. There are more than a few old cars inhabiting the tony north end of town, including a heart-stoppingly gorgeous 1937 Packard convertible. I encounter them on the road from time to time, but it is still far from being an every day occurrence.

Yet, as I followed this Buick what really struck me was that it didn't seem out of place in modern traffic. Of course, the styling was old-fashioned, but the dimensions — or "package," in industry jargon — wasn't. No, not old-fashioned at all. Indeed, I've been meditating for some time now on the fact that with the recent sport-utility boom our tastes are, in effect, regressing back to an era when vehicles were taller and somewhat shorter, and you had to step up into them. Much as with those funky old clothes you have hanging around in the back of your closet, if you hold onto to them long enough they'll come back in style.

When that 1940 Buick was built, that was the way cars had always been. It used the 1939-series General Motors B-body, which it shared with Pontiac, Oldsmobile and LaSalle. (Shown above: 1939 Pontiac DeLuxe Six.) A new, somewhat sleeker, B-Body appeared for 1941, but it was still much the same in its dimensions. The real change toward longer, lower and wider cars didn't come until GM's first postwar cars appeared in 1948 and 1949, and there were many at the time who fought the trend.

A few years ago, I wrote a book about the history of Pontiac (Pontiac: They Built Excitement). In the course of my research, I came across some fascinating internal correspondence that revealed the bitter struggle concerning this issue — led by the engineering staff — that went on within Pontiac Motor Division.

That Pontiac engineering was unhappy with the 1949 program is an understatement. Pontiac's 51-year-old chief engineer, George A. Delaney, was a bulwark of conservatism in an already conservative organization. Delaney had been Pontiac's top electrical engineer since 1934, assistant chief engineer since 1939, and chief engineer since the end of 1946. Everyone who knew Delaney in this period recalls him in much the same way. All remember the high-button shoes (years out of fashion even then), the ever-present cigar, and the hide-bound attitudes toward engineering. "A good nuts and bolts engineer," as one former Pontiac manufacturing man put it, "but VERY traditional." (Shown here: Delaney, left, and General Manager Klingler in 1946.)

A detailed memorandum written by Delaney on July 26, 1946, gives a scathing assessment of the proposed 1949 Pontiac. The accompanying letter addressed to General Manager Harry J. Klingler is bad enough:

"In my opinion, the proposed 1949 'A' Body will not be acceptable to present Pontiac owners. The sacrifice in interior body space and seating comfort is so drastic that unfavorable customer comparison is unavoidable. If these sacrifices could be accompanied by a substantial price reduction, there might be some basis for concluding this represents a sound policy based on predicted economic trends. However, there is no basis for assuming the car as presented by Styling can be built any cheaper than the 1946 model. In fact, it is not apparent how the present costs can be maintained.

"If cost is considered the dominant factor, it can only be attained through weight reduction and attendant simplicity in styling.

"If style improvement is considered the most important consideration, there is no valid reason to sacrifice passenger comfort. The increased cost to provide such comfort is small in comparison to the cost of the added styling features."

The memorandum itself goes into a lengthy analysis of the new body in comparison with competitive bodies and comes to this conclusion:

"Since the 1949 proposed design presents no appreciable cost or weight saving but does contain several objectionable features from the customer's point of view, it would seem that no real advantages would be offered except perhaps advanced styling. It hardly seems to be sound policy to continue year after year to sacrifice basic product advantages on the altar of style. There must be a point beyond which the customer will resist styling changes which rob him of sound transportation values."

What precisely were the "sound transportation values" that, in Delaney's view, were being sacrificed year-after-year on the altar of style? He went into a litany, including the fender caps on 1942-48 Pontiacs ("which add $10 to list price and 30 pounds of dead weight"), reduced vehicle height ("men are continually knocking their hats against door openings, and women with wide brimmed or high hats frequently hit them against the openings"), and angled rear windows ("which collect snow"). He also singled out the downward curve of the rear door on the proposed 1949 A-body and the supposed problems of rear seat entry and exit. The memorandum was replete with wistful statistical comparisons with the 1939 Pontiac B-body — the same body used by the 1940 Buick Special mentioned above — evidently in his estimation the last decent car GM had built.

Delaney had a number of other objections, as well, but his recommendations on what to do were startling. He listed several options, but his bottom line recommendation was to forget the whole thing. Barring that, he recommended:

"If Corporation policy requires the use of the proposed 1949 'A' body, we should then recommend: 1. Build it as a 6 only on 116-inch wheelbase. 2. Retain the 1948 body and chassis in 1949 with both six- and eight-cylinder engines on the 119-inch wheelbase and with new styling changes."

In other words, having the division's cake and eating it, too. None of Delaney's recommendations were accepted, though, at least not at Pontiac. Chrysler Corporation, led by K. T. Keller, was at least as conservative in this era and put into its first postwar cars much of the feel Delaney wanted. That the two were kindred spirits is evidenced by a speech to the students of the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1948 in which Keller declared:

"Many of you Californians may have outgrown the habit, but there are parts of the country, containing millions of people, where both the men and the ladies are in the habit of getting behind the wheel, or in the back seat, wearing hats."

And, on another occasion, Keller stated adamantly:

"Cars should accommodate people rather than the ideas of far-out designers."

Delaney was working for the wrong company. Consider, for example the following comparisons. Note that the 1939 B-body figures are for the Pontiac DeLuxe:

Tall and narrow, the all-new 1949 Dodge was much closer to the 1939 B-body Delaney admired than to the 1949 Pontiac. What is even more astonishing, though, is the similarities between that B-body and two typical modern sport-utilities:

The dimensions aren't an exact match, but, allowing for the exaggerated length of the old B-body's hood, they are remarkably close — and strikingly similar in general proportions. It would appear that the B-bodied 1939 Pontiac was slightly larger than the contemporary Blazer, but not so large as the new Tahoe. You've come a long way, baby! (Shown here, 2000 Chevy Trailblazer.)

It took a while to get back to the future, though. Delaney lost his battle at Pontiac, but the entire 1949 Chrysler line, which was built in some form through 1954, fairly dripped with the solid transportation values he cherished. As a result, Chrysler's sales went into a near terminal slide. Between 1948 and 1954, Chrysler's share of the market fell from 21.5% to 12.9%, and they recovered only when the all-new, Virgil Exner-designed 1955 range was announced. (Irony of ironies, Exner had been head of the Pontiac styling studio in 1937-38 when Delaney's beloved 1939 B-body was under development!)

The altar of style had won. Or, had it?

It certainly seemed so. Delaney went down in flames and was forced into retirement a few years later. Keller's career followed a similar trajectory. Then, after decades of contorting themselves into cars that grew ever longer and lower, American consumers suddenly rediscovered the virtues of driving a vehicle you could step up into, one that was taller and shorter, one that had SOLID TRANSPORTATION VALUES. We call them sport-utilities, but they might be more properly termed Delaney's Revenge. So, the altar of style lost in the end, after all (at least for now).

Yes, George Delaney would sit proud and tall behind the wheel of a 2000 Blazer or Tahoe. And, K. T. Keller could even wear his hat. R&D

(Images, top to bottom: 1939 Pontiac DeLuxe Six, George Delaney and General Manager Harry Klingler circa 1947, and the 2000 Chevy Trailblazer.)