Inside the Dynaflash

If you weren’t around during these domestic road cars’ heyday, but have seen your share of ’30s and ’40s movies, you may have the notion Buick owned the road, which was the impression General Motors’ cornerstone division wished to impart. In a shrewd move that caught competitors, including stablemate Cadillac, napping, Flint sent a fleet of Specials, Supers, Centuries, Roadmasters and lengthy Limiteds to Hollywood studios, chiefly Warner Brothers. Catch any Bogie flick and you’ll see Buicks careening down city streets and tearing along country roads, all the while heeling over on their all-coil-spring suspensions. The camera avoids (perhaps at contractual behest of Flint) close-ups of the driver spinning the big steering wheel to cope with a lazy steering gear ratio over winding roads.

But the big cars would move and looked exciting doing so. Edward G. Robinson, George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan — all the featured Warner Brothers contract players — had their Buick moments.

In 1940’s “They Drive By Night,” Ida Lupino offs wealthy husband Alan Hale using a ’40 Roadmaster convertible sedan without even putting it in gear. In 1941’s “High Sierra,” Bogie as “Mad Dog Earle” races up the mountain in a little Plymouth coupe, hotly pursued by a snarling pack of CHP black-and-white Buicks.

In a blend of spy, gangster and comedy genres, 1942’s “All Through the Night” features long, gleaming black Limiteds slinking down sleeping alleys and squealing around nocturnal Manhattan corners. And who could forget the ’40 Limited convertible sedan in “Casablanca”? This chariot has long made the auction rounds, changing hands amongst the sort paying $20,000 for the ruby slippers a 17-year-old Judy Garland wore in “The Wizard of Oz.”

As late as 1948, in the hilarious Myrna Loy/Cary Grant “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” Grant’s harried advertising executive drives a ’41 Roadmaster convertible. Off screen, Grant took part in street races through sleeping Los Angeles in a ’41 Roadmaster coupe.

You wonder that if more of Japan’s leaders had seen William Wyler’s lushly photographed 1940 adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s “The Letter” — starring Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson and a ’38 Century convertible sedan — that there would not have been a Pearl Harbor. The scenes of the Buick threading serenely through the narrow streets of a Malayan province — horn tapped now and then to clear a path — underscored America’s might that the “sleeping giant” Admiral Yamamoto feared he’d awakened on Dec. 7, 1941. Wishing to make an impression on FDR at Pearl Harbor, General MacArthur arrived in a bright-red ’41 Roadmaster convertible sedan.

Yet only eight years earlier, Buick was in a slump, suffering an image as a stodgy, conservative car, despite the top-line 344-cid Buick Series 90 being as fast as any other mass-produced car. The Series 90 was the target for Packard’s planned front-wheel-drive, 376-cid V-12, which quickly morphed into its 1932 Twin Six after Cadillac released a V-16, to Packard’s chagrin.

Buick had the medium-price field sewn up to the extent of being third in overall sales in 1926, trailing only Ford and Chevrolet. But by the Depression trough year of 1933, Buick tumbled to eighth place as the price range it ruled fell from 1926’s 28 percent market share to a mere 4 percent. Costing a fifth less than its 1933 predecessor, 1934’s Model 40 — with a 93-hp, 233-cid overhead-valve inline eight mounted in a Pontiac frame and with a Chevy body — sparked Buick’s comeback.

It was the brainchild of Harlow “Red” Curtice, accountant by training and salesman by nature, who rose from clerk to president of AC Spark Plug in just 15 years. AC Spark Plug was a GM holding just down the road from Buick’s Flint, Mich., plant. When 40-year-old Curtice became Buick’s general manager in the Depression gloom of Oct. 23, 1933, there was already talk at GM about dropping both Buick, as well as Cadillac.

The Buick Model 40, or Special, bought Buick some time while Curtice’s staff focused on its next coup — putting a spring in the step of Flint’s senior lines.

Curtice had the right men for the job. Competing for dwindling sales in the Depression meant offering more car for the dollar, so from 1931 on, all Buicks had eight cylinders, as well as overhead valves, which had been a Buick feature since the company’s founding by Scotsman inventor/tinkerer David Dunbar Buick in 1903. The ’31 Buick eights had been designed largely by Ferdinand A. “Dutch” Bower, who resigned as Buick’s chief engineer in 1936 because of poor health.

Dutch Bower joined Curtice in pushing not just for more performance, but a generally more youthful image: “More speed for less money,” as Curtice put it. An approach of this new tack was to court the convertible market for the zesty panache that the sporty model would bring to all Buicks. From 1936 through the close of the ’40s, Buick would continually offer a heavy load of open models, so much so that, to a new generation of entrepreneurs and industrialists, a new Buick convertible was the sign of arrival. This image was reflected in the numerous open Buicks in John O’Hara novels, as well as the aforementioned movies.

Charles A. Chayne, assisted by Bower alumnus John Dolza, became Buick’s chief engineer in 1936. Chayne came to Buick in 1930 from Marmon, where he’d been an engine designer, and before that, an experimental engineer with Lycoming. Chayne had an engineering degree from MIT where he’d instructed automotive engineering. Lifelong auto-holic Chayne went on to serve as GM’s engineering vice president from 1951-’62, during which time he owned and restored one of the six Bugatti Type 41 Royales.

Like the Model 40 and most Buicks since 1903, the new senior engine retained Buick’s now-trademark overhead valves. But Chayne reduced the hoary old motor’s stroke from 5 to 4.31 inches while opening the bore from 3.31 to 3.44 inches. He installed a five-main, fully counterbalanced and forged steel crank, exchanged the cast-iron pistons for aluminum and substituted full-pressure oiling for the old mill’s partial splash.

The chain-driven camshaft worked mechanical tappets, long and solid push rods and rocker arms, and the vertical valves in line. This engine had better oiling than the overhead-valve Chevrolet, where only the main and cam bearings were pressure fed. The Buick’s valve train later cropped up in light- and medium-duty GMC trucks for 1939 and ’41, which had earlier used Pontiac and Oldsmobile flathead sixes. Those attempting absolute speed runs in straight-eight Buicks, as well as ’50s hot rodders using six-cylinder overhead-valve GMC truck engines, discovered the long, heavy push rods and adjacent parts of an overhead-valve valve train meant more reciprocating weight than a flathead (valve en bloc, side valve) or overhead-cam engine. But for most motorists, Buicks were, to borrow from the day’s jazz hit, “That’s a Plenty.”

The new “Fireball” 320-cid inline eight joined a stout chassis now with hydraulic brakes and independent front suspension cloaked in Harley Earl’s new 1936 Fisher bodies shared with other GM divisions. Earl’s new Fisher shells offered better streamlining and sophisticated detailing. Buick’s shortest-wheelbase model, at 122 inches for 1936 and 126 inches for ’37 on, was christened Century, harking to the famous New York Central crack express while suggesting 100 mph (95.6 at GM Proving Grounds). There was irony in Buick invoking the name and glamour of the nation’s, and one of the world’s, most celebrated high-speed — and steam-powered — trains. Because also in 1936, the first production E Series diesel-electric locomotives crawled from the General Motors Electro-Motive Division’s new La Grange, Ill., factory. Established in 1922 to design and market gasoline-electric locomotives, Electro-Motive sold 500 units in its first decade. GM bought E-M in 1930. Each new E Series locomotive was powered by a pair of 900-hp Winton V-12 diesels, GM having bought in 1924 E-M’s supplier, Winton Engine Co., of Cleveland, Ohio — an automaker itself from 1898-1924.

Also in 1930, GM bought Packard Electric Co., of Warren, Ohio, the original firm of Alexander Winton’s nemesis, as a source of automotive ignition wire and equipment, which survives to this day.

The ’36 Buick Century combined Flint’s senior engine with the Model 40 Special’s body from the cowl back, offering, as Curtice proclaimed, “.... a car that meets the secret wish of a vast body of motorists for a generation -— a car of cyclonic performance, yet compact and thrifty and manageable as a small car.” 

Curtice was conveniently overlooking Hudson’s ’33 Essex Terraplane 8, the decade’s quickest car.

Curtice continued, “You’ve never seen anything like it. To be specific (the Century offers) acceleration from 10 to 80 mph in 33 seconds, with a top speed that will crowd 100 anytime the emergency demands it.”

The 1936 Centurys still had curb weights of 3,960 to 4,055 lbs., depending on body style, so lighter cars with strong engines could get the jump on a Century from a standstill, but from 25 to 70 mph, the new Buick was hard to beat. A 21-second 0-60-mph time was good for the day.

 The Century’s price ranged from $1,095 to $1,135 FOB Flint. Of the 180,000 cars Buick built for 1936 — more than three and a half times 1935’s production — 25,980 were Centurys, outselling all models but the bottom-rung Special. Above the Century was the roomier Roadmaster on a 131-inch wheelbase for 1936-’37. For ’38, the Roadmaster was stretched to 133 inches, but from 1939 on, the wheelbase was down to a wieldier 126 inches.

The longest-wheelbase Buick, and the Buick with the most luxury trappings, was the Limited. It rode a wheelbase of 138 inches, again invoking high-speed steam rail glamour. (Diesel-electric locomotives’ appeal was the ability to better overcome inertia (i.e., start under load from rest) than an equally powerful steam locomotive, making diesels naturals for yard and switching duties, as well as not requiring additional water crossing the arid American west.) Like its senior brethren, the lengthy Limited initially shared the 120-hp, 320-cid straight-eight with a 5.45:1 compression ration. At its introductory year of 1936, this engine produced 238 lb.-ft. of torque at only 1,600 rpm. This was good, but Packard’s new junior car, the One-Twenty, owned the upper-medium-price field, pumping out in the same year 120 hp at 3,600 rpm with 225 lb.-ft. of torque at 1,800 rpm from its 6.5:1-compression, 282-cid L-head inline eight. 

The $1,945 Buick Limited of 1936 weighed 700 lbs more than the Century, so in order to offer sprightly acceleration in keeping with Curtice’s youthful ad campaign, it resorted to a necessarily truckier 4.55:1 rear axle, limiting top speed considerably beneath the Century’s 3.9:1 cog.

But it was the Century that was the most popular, and lowest-priced, senior Buick. At $355 less and at 500 fewer pounds than its 1935 counterpart, the Century was perceived as a real bargain, offering the affordable speed of which Curtice boasted.

The new senior Buicks’ rousing performance and trim lines beckoned all strata of society. Edward VIII, soon to become Duke of Windsor, ordered a pair of 1936 sedans: a Limited for himself, a Roadmaster for “the woman I love.” The duke placed repeat Limited orders in 1938 and ’39, the former Mrs. Simpson of Baltimore, Md., apparently satisfied with her Roadmaster. Considering the new Rolls-Royce Phantom III introduced in 1936 cost £3,000, or $15,000 U.S. — enough for seven Limiteds — Edward saved a royal amount of money.

In the years before World War II, Rolls-Royce was annually disassembling a new Buick Limited to glean the latest Detroit production tips, but then the 1920 Buick Six had been the model for the “small horsepower” Rolls-Royce 20 of 1922 — the spiritual grandfather of all subsequent Rolls-Royces — and from 1933 on, Bentley engines (other than the vast 1936-’39 Phantom III V-12). That lasted until the Chrysler-inspired V-8 of 1959. It should be remembered that the 1906-1925 40/50 Ghost, on which Rolls-Royce’s reputation was built, cagily maintained and guarded to this day, was a vast, beautifully finished carriage powered by a 7.6-liter L-head inline six.

For 1937, the Buick 320 received a new “Aerobat” carburetor, produced by both Marvel and Stromberg, in a bit of a stretch hyped as “.... similar to the type used in aerobatic aircraft.” Revised cam timing and a modest compression bump to 5.75:1 raised horsepower to 130 units at 3,400 rpm, and torque to 258 lb.-ft. at 2,000 rpm. Though all Buicks, like many successful automobiles and people, became slightly heavier, a ’37 Century could jog from 0-60 mph in 18.5 seconds, 2.5 seconds quicker than in ’36.

There were three new Century models for ’37: a convertible phaeton (the name Flint gave its four-door convertible sedan) and two- and four-door fastback sedans. Only $26 more, the fast/plain-back “sport sedan” exchanged the trunk back touring sedan’s additional room in the boot for a more streamlined rear.

While other Buicks retained 16-inch wheels for a racier lower, racier look, the Century ran even smaller-diameter 15-inch wheels from 1936-’42, most of the domestic industry going to 15 inches for 1941.

All ’36 Buicks shared the new Fisher Body “Turret Top” all-steel roof, eliminating the previous fabric insert. For 1937, the entire body shell was further refined with Fisher’s new all-steel construction throughout and given the trade name “Unibody” despite being mounted on conventional full chassis frames and having nothing to do with unit-body design. Chrysler’s excellent Airflows were box office poison, but their ads rightfully ballyhooed all-steel, unibody construction as being far stronger than conventional bodies, something not lost on a public reading Chrysler’s ads, if not buying their cars. Fisher Body/GM/Buick knew what they were doing when they used that promising, if inaccurate, name for the bucket mill coachwork that would whisk their middle-class clientele to new heights of affordable affluenza. No more wood in Fisher bodies was a big ad spiel, though a naval architect could tell you that, pound for pound, wood is stronger than steel, and better absorbs sound.

Styling for all ’37 Buicks was sleekened and more muscular than the Art Deco style of the ’36 models. This revision was handled by veteran designer Franklin Q. Hershey, recently recruited from the Murphy Body Co. in Pasadena, Calif., which had cloaked many Duesenberg Js. Hershey’s efforts are the reason many buffs today, even those who are not GM fans, appreciate prewar Buicks. The 1937-’38 Buicks share a more solid, unified look. There’s even a club devoted strictly to these two years of Buicks.

As the 1937 Buicks were beckoning doctors, accountants, pharmacists, lawyers and middle management to showrooms, on Dec. 20, 1936, autoworkers in Flint — frustrated by corporate stonewalling and indifference to their serf-like working conditions — organized a sit-down strike that spread like wildfire through GM plants across the nation. Production halted as the most decisive labor struggle of the decade began. Government figures showed half a million workers struck from September 1936 through May 1937. U.S. workers in all industries increasingly used non-violent sit-down strikes to demand fairer, safer, more equitable treatment by chillingly indifferent (and, at best, paternalistic) employers.

By 1938, Buick’s senior eight was up to 141 hp at 3,600 and 269 lb.-ft. of torque at 2,000 rpm, thanks to a trace warmer cam, 6.35:1 compression and a Buick dealership mechanic’s suggestion to dome the pistons, christened Turbulators, in the newly named Dynaflash engines, just in time to combat a sharp recession halving the entire auto industry’s sales. Buick wisely left 1937’s handsome bodies alone, other than bolder horizontal grille bars, a gas cap hidden by a rear fender flap, centered license plates and wraparound taillamp housings, the result ending Packard’s consecutive three years as the Gallup Poll’s Most Beautiful Car. 

GM Proving Grounds staff coaxed a ’38 Century to 103 mph, and a Century coupe held its NHRA class record for 25 years. The 1907-’12 Brush aside, ’38 Buicks and Oldsmobiles were first with cost-saving coil springs at each corner. Buick rode quickly and smoothly to fourth place in sales. 

Not everyone was enamored with Buick’s rear coils, despite being cheaper and reducing unsprung weight. No Buick or Olds of the day was a paragon of high-speed, winding road handling. Yet it wasn’t just straight-line acceleration and reduced prices rescuing Buick from its earlier slump. Recounted veteran auto writer and advertising maven Tim Howell, Red Curtice dropped Campbell-Ewald and let Arthur Kudner handle Buick advertising. Curtice had known Kudner since he’d had the AC account at Erwin Wasey Advertising and knew Kudner had the creativity that Henry Ewald lacked. But when Kudner asked for the Buick account, Curtice replied, “I’m not ready for you yet.”

When the new 320-powered Century, Roadmaster and Limited senior models debuted, Kudner left Erwin Wasey, opening his own agency to handle Buick, courting traditional buyers while targeting the young and upscale (the day’s yuppies). Buick ads became breezy and as informal as a Constance Bennett/Cary Grant farce. One ’38 ad alluding to Buick’s newfound popularity was headlined, “We’re up where we hardly belong.” Another trumpeted, “Make way for the Roadmaster.” Like all ’38 ads, it was bannered, “Best Buy’s Buick,” a play on ’36’s “Buick’s the Buy” and ’37’s “Better Buy Buick” and “It’s Buick again!” For 1939, “Buick’s the Beauty” headlines tried to make the best of the new, mixed-review Buick grille that harkened to the grille on the 193-mph Mercedes Grand Prix racer and hampered Buick’s cooling. All ads omitted any mention of price, instead reminding readers, “Worth its wait in golden moments.”

Curtice, Chayne and Kudner typified a golden era when the auto industry was run by car men, not MBAs. From 1933 through late ’48, when he left to become a GM vice-president, Red Curtice was Buick. Kudner died in 1944, his agency later taking heat from dealers for Buick’s stodgy backsliding in the late ’40s and into the ’50s. Kudner’s agency was replaced by McCann-Erickson in time for 1959’s new names: LeSabre, Invicta and Electra.

Near the end of the Vietnam years, Buick sloganeering fell to “Something to Believe In,” a long way from “So Nice to Come Home To” for returning War II GIs.

Fine-car cynics overlooking nostalgia’s charm point out Buick’s babbitt mains ’til 1947, rod bearings until ’49, torque tube drive and coil springs, the latter giving rise to the derisive “Beauty Rest” suspension by wags attracted to imported MG-TCs and the like. Those owning Centuries and Roadmasters today are well served to find 1939’s rare, no-cost 3.6:1 “economy” rear axle in place of the usual 3.9:1 since no “GMobile” until the ’55 Chevy offered overdrive. In July 1939, a Century coupe with a 3.6:1 axle driven by Mark Light beat 41 other entrants to win the inaugural 200-mile stock car race at Langhorne, Pa. Light claimed he ran the entire short track race in second gear. Whether the Century pacing that year’s Indy 500 also had the 3.6:1 axle is unknown, but a Century could now rush 0-60 mph in 17 seconds.

For 1940, 1939’s grille was opened into a more attractive, cooler-running cloverleaf motif. Century Model 60 and Roadmaster 70 shared the 126-inch wheelbase, but only the Roadmaster received the racy new C-body. The Limited 80 rolled on 133 inches, the Limited 90 140 inches. For 1941 and ’42 only, Buick offered “Compound Carburetion,” a pair of dual throats with progressive linkage, optional on the 248-cid juniors (the Special Model 40 and its sleeker C-body variant Super 50) and standard on the 320-engined seniors. With the big eight’s 7:1 compression, this meant an advertised 165 hp and 3,800 rpm, less inflated than the claims of most other automakers, but enough to best Packard’s claimed 160 hp, and 15 more than Cadillac. When Buick offered a line of Brunn-revised catalog semi-customs, Cadillac insisted on an end to Flint’s one-upmanship, despite only one Brunn Roadmaster “Town-Master,” a sleek ebony town car, being built along with several modestly formalized Limiteds.

Compound Carburetion proved a gas hog just in time for war rationing (to save rubber tires, not yet gas). It also fouled the 10mm spark plugs shared with Cadillac, Chevrolet and Packard, and it also vexed many mechanics. The 320’s compression was lowered to 6.7:1 for ’42, postwar models to 6.6:1, and back to a single dual-barreled carburetor for a claimed 144 hp at 3,600. The ’42 Roadmaster’s wheelbase was stretched 3 inches over the Century to 129 inches, the final year for both Century and Limited, although both names were reprised for 1954 and ’58, respectively.

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