Late 1930's interiors

[Constantine]

Hello All! Which cars from this era are considered to have the most stylish interiors? Also, there seems to have been a huge improvement in style and quality between 1937 to 1939; eg. compare a 1937 LaSalle or Lincoln-Zephyr with the 1939 cars.

[Guest BJM]

Good question. In my limited experience, I've seen maybe only 250 cars from this era over 15 or so years, I would say most interiors were the same but you could see trends developing.

The best interior in my opinion from the 34-37 period is the Chrysler Airflows, especially the long wheelbase cars. They were trying to copy the comfortable seating styles of the passenger trains of the day and the seating had stylish chrome trim.

Dash work on all mid thirties cars was a distinguishing feature. For most manufacturers, there wasn't much they could do with the seating/door panels.

[Rusty_OToole]

They all used pretty much the same mohair or striped wool blend material didn't they? Or leather for the open models?

Chrysler's Highlander had a plaid interior in 1940 or so. They offered a Highlander model for years and started something of a fad for plaid seat covers.

Chrysler Highlander magazine ad:

http://www.prestostore.com/cgi-bin/pro03.pl?ref=scannell&ct=35591&pd=144800

The first car maker to really feature high style interiors was Kaiser-Fraser. They had to do something because they only had the one 4 door body style. So they brought out fancy interior styles in order to have something new to sell.

This was in the late 40s and early 50s.

By the mid 50s all cars were featuring nylon upholster, shot with gold threads, or a brocade material in the pricier models. Many colorful interior styles to go with the chrome and tailfins.

But in the 30s and 40s car upholstery was usually kind of dowdy.