Convertibles or Sedans?

Even though I'm a CA native, convertibles have never been on my menu. I do like the two door sedans. My favorites are the 1934 & 36 Ford Victoria's. As for newer models the 1952 & 53 Ford Victoria's are beauties. My other choices would be the late 20's and early 30's.                                                                                                              

As I remember it, convertibles were more common in the early 50's.  My father had two. Then in the late 50's early 60's, as air conditioning became more prominent, people were buying air conditioned cars and convertible sales fell.  

People were much more conservative in those days, and the thought of an air conditioned convertible was frivolous, even embarrassing to the point one would be talked about.  After the 1980's as extravagance became the in thing, an air conditioned convertible was the way to go.

Of course all the cars were collector cars. Nobody collects plain Jane 4 door sedans so there would be none available now for period TV/movie duty. LOL

Sedans and trucks. 

I see sedans and other plain jane cars in movies a lot, sometime on the streets, parked, as props, and sometimes in use, as in "Driving Miss Daisy", where a Hudson

sedan like my great uncle favored was a "lead actor", and in "Bonnie and Clyde", who

favored '30's V-8 Ford sedans. What I have said before on here I saw the most of growing up were two door sedans, that seemed to be favored by young families.  My dad once drove the cheapest Packard, bought used, a six cylinder 1938 110 "touring coupe", which is a two door sedan I vaguely remember riding in, and seeing parked in front of the house.  He traded in the 1936 Olds convertible he courted my mother in.  My grandfather, uncle, and others drove Chevrolet two door sedans.  Brooklin has a

1941 (indiscerible from '39-'40) Graham, and a 1939 LaSalle as two doors.  Maybe

they have others ? (I just checked my streets, and, Happy Pappy, Brooklin made a

1930 Model A Ford Victoria, which I have in green, with a white top.)

I appreciate the heads-up. I may have it already. My wife is trying to find my journal, it contains my inventory. I've been buying 1:43 for over twenty years. Everything dates from 1925 to 1937. I know that I have many long discontinued models.

Two-door sedans were at one time popular with parents of small children, because the kids couldn't open the doors while the car was moving. This, of course, was before childproof rear door locks. 

Detroit Police Officers are in

Hot Foot Pursuit.......................

Red Cadillac, Convertible. 

Not true! 1950s chevrolets had a setting on the rear door that could not be opened from the inside. Even if the lock was unlocked, It disabled the inside door handle.

I have two convertibles on the layout. One is a 58 Buick Century that I drove during high school and college. The model is blue. My (mother's) car was white. The other is a 58 XK150S Jaguar that I owned in the late 60's. the model is the correct shade of dark blue. 

Wow...20 years and models from 1925 to 1937?  I, and I am sure, others, would like

to see and have a copy of the journal, just to know what might be out there and that

we could use, and start hunting for.  This is like looking for old O scale rolling stock

and structure kits...what the heck HAS been made?  Tinplate, except for maybe Boucher, or other obscure and early trains, are documented by their catalogs.

As a model car collector, I prefer closed cars. the top is a major styling point.

For my layout I would like to see more two and four door sedans and not the top models. a '54 Chevrolet 210 sedan would be a good example

When I was a kid, these were everywhere, although most did not have white walls

I prefer sedans as well. In addition I would like to see more of the more mundane cars many of us owned in the 50s and 60s. Seeminly missing are reasonably priced Darts, Novas, Skylarks and the like.

Also missing is a selection of city buses with front and rear doors.

I learned to drive on my mother's 1954 Chevrolet 210 in Morocco Red, with Powerglide, which model Richard E. has displayed above.

We made 4 camping trips to Colorado from Kentucky in it in the late 1950's, grinding across hot Kansas on two lane roads with no air.  My brother learned to drive on it, also, and when my brother had a '52 Chevy coach with a backyard engine swap 265 that wasn't reliable, the '54 went to my brother while the '52 went to the dealer when my mother bought a '62 Corvair coupe.  My brother got married while in college and drove the '54 through school.  I think it got traded on a '65 Corvair his wife bought.

Fun topic.

I model the modern era and I like to stick with regular, every day driver vehicles: sedans, SUVs, station wagons, etc. Part of the fun is trying to keep a realistic balance and searching for regular people vehicles. It seems just recently with brands like Greenlight, First Response and Motorart, it is easier to find normal cars: Ford Fusions, Escapes, Volvo station wagons, Ford Explorers, Chevy Tahoes. I do mix in the occasional convertible, but they are models of vehicles I've owned, driven or currently own. This way I don't get too out of control on the balance.

C'mon boys, play nice.

Brian

I have a few of each on my layout and never gave it a thought on my preference until now. I guess I;ll side with the convertible preferance as yuo get to show off the detail as more true life like and many us just place our sedans on the open road without a driver

Steve

Sedans for me.

Peter

I like closed vehicles.  Convertibles are not everyday vehicles, and have always been a small percentage of automobile production.  I model small-town 1950's west Texas, where folks lived by the motto, "Have more than you show."

Exactly, and what wasn't a Chevy was a Plymouth or De soto or Studebaker or Ford equivalent.  I recall some cars didn't even have much Chrome trim on the rocker panels, around the windows, etc.  Very basic: they still got you there.

I prefer convertibles, my first convertible back in 1964;

My last convertible in 2014

I like 'em all, and it appears that I have been buying vehicles for the layout, through the years, which were icons I wish I could have had in real life.

At any rate, I amuse myself with having them on the layout and have made a point of having parked as well as "moving" vehicles, convertibles and otherwise, possessed of seated drivers and/or passengers, when their inclusion suits the vignette.

I esp. like the Artista seated figures, even using them in working construction and logging machines, because they can be bent-to-fit if reconfigured gently and slowly, with the heat of one's hands helping limbs to move a bit.

Sometimes, I have cut other figures off (like Santa inserted into his gift-truck cab) at the waist to accommodate their being inserted into the front seats of vehicles, wanting something different, at times, as drivers.

FrankM

FrankM

I like that motto, "Have more than you show", vs. "If ya got it, flaunt it."  However, and not to go down the backseat safety road, but, depending on what one calls a

convertible, convertibles (open cars, roadsters and tourings) were much more common

up into the 1920's, from the "lawnmower engine on a buggy" dawn of automobiles.  I would consider the year Ford sold more closed Motel T's than open ones as the turning point, when the cost of a closed body was not much more than open, and bugs in your teeth was not a financial necessity.  Ford outsold everything else those early years.

I don't remember when that corner was turned, but I think it was by 1925.

Good point. I had to look long and hard to find plausible vehicles for my WW2-era backwoods layout. My parents (born in the mid 30s) don't recall seeing any convertibles in rural Tennessee until many years after WW2 was over.

It has been a treat reading all of the many comments to this thread. Vehicles are an important part of most layouts. We have about 130 feet of roadway that translates into many vehicles.

My love has always been the fifties when I think the most innovative car designs came out of Detroit. Just about all of our model cars come from this decade.

Going to the York Meet is always fun as I get to see a lot of model vehicles. Looks like many of you feel the same way about what you collect and display. Thanks for your input.

My folks were just about the first people in town to have two cars.  In 1954, they had a 1951 dodge and the second car was a 1938 chrysler 4 door with suicide doors.  So if modeling the early 50s, one needs to have a lot of "older" cars on the road too.  Was not uncommon to have early 40s and 30s cars. A few model "A"s.   Model t s were history though by then. Maybe someone had one crown vic, but thats about it for collector cars. The well to do drove 4 door caddis.

The only convertibles I will ever have on the layout are these:

 

 

Well, remember there were these convertibles, too . . . 

My grandfather drove his 1940 Chevy coach until trading it on a used 1952 in 1955.

He drove his 1937 Chevrolet pickup, bought used, until 1960, when he took it apart

and dumped the parts in a hollow out behind the barn while I was away at school (to my considerable chagrin, as I would have loved to have gotten my hands on it).  He then bought a used 1952 Chevy pickup.  People seemed to drive less, certainly through

WWII, and keep their vehicles longer. 

No cars were made beween Feb. 1942 and July 1945 (for Ford. GM was Oct.), tires were not available, and gas was rationed. Over half the cars on the road were over 10 years old after the war. Supply of new cars did not catch up with demand until the end of the decade.

My dad talked a lot about how his Mom and sister made it through the war.  He had an '34 Pontiac with new tires that he tuned up and left when he enlisted, but they could not get much gas and it had only 2,000 of so miles more on it after the war.  My grandmother told me the only reason they kept the tires throughout the war was that the car was parked in a locked and bolted garage right outside her bedroom window: people would steal wheels and tires and parts.  

I recall my Dad telling me that that it was a good year or two after he got home before gasoline was plentiful again.  He drove that Pontiac until '49 - it was 15 years old them - when he finally could get a new Buick: I came home from the hospital after my birth in that Buick about four months after he got it.   

Originally Posted by p51:

The only convertibles I will ever have on the layout are these:

 

 

Well, remember there were these convertibles, too . . . 

 

Yeah, I do have a Command car on the layout. I haven't yet seen a good enough model of any of the Weapons Carrier series yet that matches my standards. All of them on the market have one really awful error or another. That Eaglemoss WC62/63 has a truly awful top to it, they added at least 2 scale feet to the soft top and ring mount for some ungodly reason...

This, of course, is why we have workshops . . .  

Looking for 1:43 cars? go to the forum buy/sell catagory.

 Though I got rid of most of them, and I have a few others near O to mix in, I stopped counting my VW toys at about 600. I might have broke 800???  I kept a few for the trains, but most are Beetles, and 50% of those are drop tops. So there is always a VW show in town on my layouts. They "snugly" fill in my Evans auto loaders too  

I have a small collection of Beetles too, from 1/160 to 1/24 scale.  Just three 1/43 VWs populate my layout, though - a recently acquired '49 sunroof, a convertible and a Microbus.  Every layout set in the late steam/early diesel era needs VWs.

We had a whole bunch of beetles.  Little brown critters, that moved fast on lots of legs.  I was going to use them as passengers but I could never catch them.   

Most of the convertibles in Logan, Utah... at least until I moved away in 1965... were foreign sports cars driven by college kids.  I had MGAs. a Sprite, a TR3A and a Healey 100-4.  Lots of triumphs, Healeys, a few Porsches, a Volvo or two, and one spectacular Jag 120.  Most cars were low to middle market family cars, coups or sedans.  We had a Dodge 2 door HT and a '57 Chevy 2 door HT, but most were Chevy or Buick 4 door sedans.

There were a lot of older cars, some back into the late 20s and through the pre-war years, and a huge number of post war cars.

One old lady drove a perfectly wonderful 1935 Packard four door convertible with the top down in good weather.  I never saw it in bad weather and never saw the top up.