Ned Nickles Credited with Buick's Famous Post-War Design Features

Buick developed a number of well-remembered design themes in the years immediately following World War II, including hardtop convertible styling (eliminating the center side pillar), massive "carnivorous" grilles, portholes (originally called VentiPorts) and the "sweepspear" side decoration.

Most can be attributed to GM designer Ned Nickles, but partial credit for one of them goes to Edward T. Ragsdale, then Buick's manufacturing manager, and his wife, Sarah.

Recalled Nickles: "It was about 1945. Ragsdale looked at my model of the hardtop and said his wife always wanted convertibles because she liked the styling, but never put the top down because it made here hair blow around."

This observation by Ragsdale, later a Buick general manager, was credited with helping "sell" the idea as a production feature in 1949.

Although historians credit Chrysler's 1947 Town & Country cars with being the first "hardtop convertibles," only seven were built. Buick popularized the idea with more than 4,000 hardtop convertibles in 1949, the first of hundreds of thousands it would produce over the next few years.

A few of the 1949 Roadmaster Rivieras (the Riviera name at that time referring to hardtop convertible) included the sweepspear, described as a bright metal side decoration that began in the front fender as a slim horizontal molding and became wider as it swept in a downward curve along the doors, dipping to the base of the leading edge of the rear fender, and then kicking up over the real wheel openings. It would become another long-lived Buick identity feature from Nickles that would change in detail, though not in concept.

While Ragsdale supported the hardtop convertible idea, he didn't think much of Nickles' portholes. Nickles had cut holes in the sides of the hood of his own 1948 Roadmaster convertible and behind them installed amber lights attached to the distributor. The lights, flashing on and off, suggested an unusually powerful engine with flaming exhaust. Nickles said he got the idea from World War II fighter planes.

Ragsdale saw the custom work one day and complained to Buick General Manager Harlow H. Curtice that Nickles had "ruined" his convertible. Curtice, however, was so intrigued he immediately ordered the portholes into production for 1949 - but without the lights.

(Curiously, Nickles soon afterward designed two Buicks now considered "modern classics" - the 1953 and 1954 Skylark - and in both cases he eliminated the portholes which were on all other models in those years. He also created the first design of a later Buick classic - the 1963 Riviera - under the direction of GM styling chief Bill Mitchell.)

The vertical-bar grille theme was started on 1942 Buicks (an abbreviated run before Buick turned to war production), with the grilles becoming ever more massive after the war.

On styling in general during this period, Nickles said: "I have heard criticism of the amount of chrome we used on those postwar Buicks, but I come from a different perspective than some of these writers. You have to judge things in the context of their times. We had just come through a war, and you couldn't get chrome during the war. So in the postwar years, we were entertaining people with chrome on cars. I think the cars fit in well with the times."