Remnants of an Era Bygone
I'm not a car junkie. Hell, I'm not even a car driver. All I know about cars is that my boss's Toyota has a lever whose ergonomics and flashy red label both scream out to me to pull it, and, which I came to know later, pulling it can result in disastrous consequences due to it's function as a hand-brake. So I stay away from these mechanized monsters for most part. Unless there's a car rally. Especially vintage. Because those beasts are not just mechanized. They're beautiful. An art form in itself. This picture is the hood ornament of what I believe is a 1934 Buick 40 Series 2-door sedan, taken at a car rally held in Pune. For reasons that I won't go into, this is the only decent picture that I could come up with on that day.
The story behind this car is that the president of the Buick company, Harlow Curtice, believed in giving customers more speed for less money. This car, with an all-new 117-inch wheelbase was a result of this belief. The more modern and stylish design of the new car was considerably different from the boxy look of it's predecessors. In addition to technological innovations which I don't understand, this car also dropped the soft top in favour of the hard shell. The overall effect of all these changes was a tremendous boost to demand, and thus output, from 47,000 cars to 71,000. The number further shot up to 100,000 by 1936.