Can you see difference between 1947 and 1948 Chevy Stylemaster in my old film?

Update: Newcomers to this thread, please look at the image in this message (directly below), then jump to the end of the thread.

Early messages established that this is a 1947 or 1948 Chevrolet Stylemaster Sport. The remaining issue is whether it's 1947 or 1948.

Use the mosaic image (small thumbnail to left) and enlarge it. The other pics are the ones the mosaic was made from, if needed.

Thanks so much! - Mike

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Hi all,

I have an old family movie I am trying to confirm a date range on, but there are few date-able things except the car shown here.

The first picture is a mosaic of the others. Click and enlarge it; only its thumbnail is small. All the attached pictures (including the mosaic) are at native (highest) resolution of the source film (regular 8mm converted to a full HD ProRes .mov). It's hard to make a perfect mosaic, so I included the source pictures.

Sorry, that's all there is... It only appears a few seconds as the photographer pans around.

The film was in a box marked "Jamaica trip" and "develop by June 1951", so that's the presumed date (summer 1951), but there is no guarantee. There was another Jamaica trip ~1955 and anything could have happened (boxes mislabelled or mixed up)... suffice to say, I'm just asking for an i.d. on the car, if possible. In any event, I'm sure the locale was Jamaica, and in the early to mid 1950s.

I have a tentative i.d. as a 1951 Opel Kapitan. Many distinctive features are great matches, even down to the driver's spotlight, but there's one glaring problem: the rear door opens the wrong way. The Kapitan was a German car; maybe it's an accommodation for the American market... could that have happened? I found perhaps a dozen 1951 Kapitan pics, and while they all had the rear suicide door, none of the pics seemed to mention original destination market or even current location (if it matters).

For what it's worth, it might be a taxi. Consider the circumstances: well-off passengers getting in a new-looking nice car in Jamaica, with a big placard on the windshield. Does anyone know what a taxi might have looked like then and there? Including its color scheme?

In case anyone doesn't know, it's possible to search for cars (or anything else) by pictures. Type your search terms into Google, then click on Images. That's how I found the Kapitan in a minute with my first search (I tried "1951 Jamaica taxi").

Too bad we can't see a little more, like the front grill or rear wheel well. If anyone wants the actual film, PM me and I can try to send it, but it's huge, and I doubt it can add anything. This is pretty much it.

Thanks if you can advise!

Looks like a 1948 Nash.

Grandpa

Looks to me like a 1947-48 Chevrolet.

Don

Looks to me like a 1947-48 Chevrolet.

Don

X2

Terry

I vote for 47-48 Chevy also

Thanks folks, great! Yes, the 47-48 Chevy works better than the Kapitan.

Looking at the brochures here indicates that its not a Fleetline Sportsmaster (this has its rear quarter window in its door), but can be either the Stylemaster Sport or Fleetmaster Sport 4-door sedans. (Wow, who chose these overlapping names?)

Also, the spotlight ("safetylight") was essentially optional for any car; it didn't come with a particular model, right?

A close comparison of the brochures shows the 48 Fleetmaster Sport has a ring of chrome around all the side windows, whereas the 47 Fleetmaster Sport has chrome rings around the individual side windows. But I find this very hard to see (either way) in the photo; it's almost like there isn't any such chrome ring, or it's been painted dark. Further, the wikipedia page on Fleetmaster suggests they all (all years) have individual chrome rings around side windows, and Stylemasters don't have any chrome rings around the sides windows at all. This latter contradicts the Chevy brochure, but also suggests the Jamaica car is a Stylemaster (but doesn't say what year).

Ok, enough conjecture for now... more thoughts, anyone? Can we narrow down the year?

Thanks!

This is a 47. I can't see any differences between it and the 48. Tey both have that chrome spear on the sides of the hood and the same ornament.

Hiya Dave,

Wikipedia and others point out the distinctive T in the grill midline that distinguishes 1947 from 1948. But my movie didn't get the grill, grrr. This pic is from the lovely 1948 Chevy Fleetmaster Sport 4-door Sedan at Playtoys; compare your 1947:

Now that you folks have narrowed the car down a lot, I will try changing the thread's title to something specifically on the 47 versus 48 Stylemaster Sport. Just to see if it can be teased out.

Everyone agrees it's a Stylemaster on the film, not a Fleetmaster, right? Based on the lack of chrome piping around the side windows.

Past that, can any Chevy expert find a detail on the film to distinguish 47 from 48?

Thanks - Mike

If it helps, I went to OldCarBrochures.com and took the Stylemaster images from their 1947 and 1948 reviews, to put side by side.

First I pulled out the insets with all four models of Stylemaster. Then I took the Sport Sedans from both insets, and put them side by side, too. Click, and then enlarge the popup:

But it's not very high resolution and doesn't seem to help. You can see the T grill, but I can't make out anything else. These are at original, highest resolution as available on OldCarBrochures.

Keep in mind that the sales brochures can often be wrong as far as details. These are artist's ideas of the vehicles and things may have changed slightly since production models came out.

I recall in the 1950's you could order the T-Bar like the '48 Chevys had and install it on the '47 grille. I think Sears Roebucks and maybe J. C. Whitney sold the bar for about $7.95. I bet one would bring a pretty penny today.

I don't know if we can call it a year difference but the car I posted, 47, looks to have a red hood emblem while the one Mike posted,48, is blue.

Dave, you're talking about the winged Chevrolet symbol, not the hood ornament (pedestrian killer), right?

The black 48 Fleetmaster I posted in message 8 is just to show the 48's grill T bar to you; my car of interest is the Stylemaster shown in message 1. You can't see the winged Chevy symbol on that.

It is new to me that there are different color schemes for the ornaments, though. Are you just tossing something out, or do you know there were clear differences like that, for sure?

keiser, your point is well taken, that brochures are not always correct. I recently called a computer part maker (Corsair) because the efficiency specs for a PC power supply unit (PSU) were similar on the PSU's box and on their web page for that particular PSU, but the specs were clearly different (better) in a compendium on their site showing specs for all their PSUs. Not hugely different, but still, enough to be clearly different (90% efficiency vs 88%). Of course, the question is, What's right? And why are they different? The rep told me that they make the box and the web page based on initial in-house development and testing (you have to make something before releasing it, of course), then send it to a third party lab for more rigorous testing. The big compendium of results from the third-party lab (80plus.org) is the best information and in fact showed better stats (better efficiency) for my PSU, because they don't want to appear to be misleading relative to the third-party testing done later, and therefore put conservative (sure to be right, at least that much) stuff into their initial info (box and web page). I guess in theory they could've at least updated their web page, but in fact, if someone is one of the few that cares so much about exact efficiency to go to all the trouble to compare all this info, they probably (should) know to use the compendium.

As for determining a 47 versus 48 Stylemaster, after you made the point about brochures, I spent a lot of time finding 47 vs 48 pictures that have a side view similar to my OP. So I could compare them side by side and look for differences. It's complicated because some models, such as Australian and perhaps other overseas ones, were made in different plants and have clear, known variations, even a rear-hinged door on the Aussie one. So you have to be very careful or your pictures can mislead you. Ultimately, I could not find any particular thing that stood out, and could be used versus my picture, to determine if it was 1947 or 1948. I can post them here if folks want, but it'd be about 6 large-ish pics... speak up, if so.

Can anyone else think of a way to distinguish the model year, for my picture?

Ask the question on the forum of the Vintage Chevrolet Club of America, vcca.org. If anyone can answer it those guys can.

Don

Hi Don,

Thanks for that recommendation.

On reflection, I don't want to spend yet more hours opening another account and starting yet another round of questions and answers, by posting this anew over there. This message thread was already just an attempt to confirm a minimum of 1950 for the film, which we now know this car can't help with, since it's 1948 at most.

But if anyone here is in VCCA and wouldn't mind posting a message there inviting anyone interested to come comment here, please do! Perhaps some of them are members of both forums, shrug.

So... Thanks everyone! At the outset, I didn't know if it would be helpful to i.d. the car, and ultimately it wasn't... but I still enjoyed the entire trip, and learning more about vintage cars.

There is only one production (standard) hood ornament used on 1947-48 cars. They are chrome with red in the depressions in the tail. The green car and the maroon car both have production hood ornaments. The black 48 has the correct accessory hood ornament. From the pix of the green car it is impossible for me to determine if it is a 47 or 48. It is one of those two. It is my opinion that the factory painted the background on the model designation badge on the side of the hood black for all three styles in both years.

Thanks Curti, this is good to know. I saw some variations on hood ornaments when I was looking at pictures but I figured I better stick with what looked like the most common, probably stock one, as you say.

But as long as you brought it up, here's another one I found fairly often. Less often than the stock one, but often enough that it seemed not to be chance. This example is from a flickr pic by joel/chico guevara; I'm not sure he stated his Chevy's model/year right, but anyway, I saw this particular ornament (or something close to it) on a number of 47 - 48 Chevy pictures:

It begs the question, was there some other semi-common "improved" hood ornament sold at that time?

You can see from, e.g., OldCarBrochure's list of Chevy accessories that Chevrolet sold an "Ornament--Hood", although it might simply be a standard replacement.

Also - what do you call those huge "sun shades" over the windshield of that car? Quite a few old Chevies "prettied up" in modern days have them.

That is the deluxe 1947 only hood ornament. It is the same as the 48 but has the loop over the top. Sun-visors are aftermarket as well as the visor-ed headlight bezels. Be cautious of Google images.

I used to have a Chevrolet parts business 1948 - 1929. I have a complete Chevrolet hood ornament collection 1927 - 1956 that I kept when I sold the parts business. Most are NOS, no reproductions.

Thanks Curtis - wow, some of them are beautiful. You should take that picture again, in far higher resolution!

But I also can't help but think, how deadly they all are to pedestrians, laugh.

I wonder if you can help with something. If you look at my original captures, there is a small chrome knob thing just barely in the frame to the far right. As though it's on the left fender, above and a little behind where the headlight would be.

I can't make any sense of this. Stock Stylemasters do not have chrome rings around their headlights (right?), and it's not in the right place for it, anyway.

I've double-checked the movie but that really is the farthest extent of what was filmed. There doesn't seem to be anything else behind the car but that old wall; it would be really surprising if that isn't part of the car. But I can't recall seeing anything in all the images I've trolled, suggesting what it might be. It really doesn't look like a blinged out car, though it does have the optional safetylight. Also FWIW it may well be a Jamaican taxi.

Thanks Curtis - wow, some of them are beautiful. You should take that picture again, in far higher resolution!

But I also can't help but think, how deadly they all are to pedestrians, laugh.

I wonder if you can help with something. If you look at my original captures, there is a small chrome knob thing just barely in the frame to the far right. As though it's on the left fender, above and a little behind where the headlight would be.

I can't make any sense of this. Stock Stylemasters do not have chrome rings around their headlights (right?), and it's not in the right place for it, anyway.

I've double-checked the movie but that really is the farthest extent of what was filmed. There doesn't seem to be anything else behind the car but that old wall; it would be really surprising if that isn't part of the car. But I can't recall seeing anything in all the images I've trolled, suggesting what it might be. It really doesn't look like a blinged out car, though it does have the optional safetylight. Also FWIW it may well be a Jamaican taxi.

The item on the front fender looks to be some sort of added turn signal or lamp.

The thing on the very front fender, the spotlight, and maybe a mirror on the LH 'A' pillar as well as the rectangular object on the RH side are add on's. John's post #20 is accurate.

There was an accessory King Bee outside mirror for these cars, but that doesn't look like what is on the subject car

That brown car has the "T" bar indicating 48. It has a red bowtie on the hood emblem which I had said was 47 and the Deluxe hood ornament which Curti said was 47.