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The Year in Cars: 1942

In this edition of The Year in Cars we look at 1942, the shortest year in Motor City auto production but an inter­esting and important one.

In the 1942 model year, automobile production was capped at barely one million units when civilian manufac­turing was suspended early in February. Volume had topped 3.6 million vehicles in 1941, a figure the car biz would not match again until 1949. Following Pearl Harbor, the industry’s entire output was focused on military production, creating what President Franklin Roosevelt called the “arsenal of democracy.” It was the most awesome industrial war machine the world had ever seen.

Of the handful of passenger cars manufactured in January ’42, many used painted rather than plated exterior trim, as chromium was declared a strategic material. Extremely rare today, these vehicles are known as blackout or victory models. Starting on January 1, sales of all new vehicles were strictly rationed, with the remaining inventories stockpiled and slowly meted out over the balance of the war for military and strategic civilian use.

Lost in all these momentous events were the 1942 models themselves. The new DeSoto featured hidden headlamps, an almost-industry first pre­ceded by Cord in 1936. The fastback torpedo look at Gen­eral Motors was now in full flower, creating a slick, pseudo-aerodynamic profile that would stick into the early ’50s. Fenders were disap­pear­ing into the bodies, and the traditional vertical radiator was evolving into horizontal grillwork spread across the front of the car. Harley Earl termed this development “catwalk cooling.”

The 1942 model year created some handsome cars—a good thing in retrospect, since Americans would be looking at them for some years to come. New car production would not resume until MY 1946. And with a few exceptions, the ’46-’48 cars were mildly facelifted ’41-42 models. So here, essentially, are the cars America was driving through much of the ’40s. Gallery below.

I cut and pasted this entire article. At this point the author has a slide show of 27 1942 models of cars and work vehicles. If you'd like to check them out, go HERE.

This last image is from my own collection...

1942 Lincoln Continental