| FINS.... you gotta love `em.
We did in the 1950s when the US car makers appeared to be in some form of competition to see who could produce the car with the largest tail fins ... or the oddest shape. Like any fad, fins were relatively short-lived. The man credited with inventing the fin as a styling cue was GM chief designer Harley Earl.
Fins were actually were used on American cars as early as the mid 1930s. But the design cue took off after GM's 1948 Cadillac featured a pair of conservative size fins. With the WW 2 over, car designers had notebooks full of designs they could not wait to implement. This culminated in possibly the most famous fins of all, those belonging to the 1959 Caddy. These were the fins to end all fins. Australia's best known and largest fins were featured on the 1960 FB and 1961 EK Holden.
This followed a more sedate fin on the FE and FC Holden of 1956-58.
Americans who see the FB and EK Holdens for the first time tend to refer to them as `Baby Chevs'. With good reason. Put the pair next to a 1956 or 1957 Chevrolet and the cars are obviously related by the DNA known as GM. Both feature prominent vertical fins, have pronounced headlights built into a forward thrusting front mudguard, have a swooping bonnet line, a similar roof line and door handles, wide grille and classic profile.
Fins were nothing more than a quirky design cue intended to create a look that would appeal and therefore sell. At the same time were more than that and relate to the car as an `art form.' Generally, the only practical role of the fin was to house the brake, tail or indicator lights. As such they pulled their weight as a functional part of the car. But the main reason was aesthetics. From this aspect the FB and EK Holdens are unique in Australian car design and an under-rated vehicle in terms of our following world trends ... or that should be US trends, as few cars outside the US took up the fin.
The English conservatively followed with Vauxhall Cresta from 1958-62, Triumph TR4/5 and the forgettable Triumph Herald. And, who could forget the Sunbeam Alpine or Get Smart's (Don Adams) similar looking V8 powered, Sunbeam Tiger in the original TV series. The fin was most likely inspired by the tail fin on aircraft where it was functional and not part of the bling.
Fins were not always vertical. R and S Series Valiants had smallish horizontal fins, while the daddy of all the horizontal fins belonged to the 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air. They were so broad the ball-shaped indicator lights were suspended under the overhang. Some 174,747 FB Holdens were built and 150,214 of the EK model, the face-lifted FB. The most noticeable change between the two models was the dropping of the curved flash along the side of the FB. As such the EK was a simpler, cleaner looking car, usually with the roof a different colour, white mainly, to the body colour. A major change mechanically was the introduction, for the first time in a Holden, of an automatic transmission, the three speed Hydramatic box imported from GM in Detroit.
Other changes from the FB were minor: exterior badges were changed and a redesigned grille featured wider spaced parking lights/flashes. The EK stayed in production for just over a year before the introduction of the EJ which, although an entirely new shape, used the same 2.26 litre `grey' engine as the FB and EK. There were two spec levels, Standard and Special, costing $2212 and $2576 respectively. By 1963 fins were out. Holden's new EJ model was all curves, Ford's Falcon had a round theme and the third member of the Big Three, Chrysler with its R and S Valiants had gone from front and rear fins to no fins and a conservative rounded boot lid in the AP5.
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