Customer Reviews

Cruise-O-Matic, Automobile Advertising of the 1950's

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're looking for vintage car ads, pass this by. The reproduction quality is very poor. Many of the ads were cropped badly, and much of the text is not readable. It's obvious that many of these must be amateur scans of magazine ads and not the original source material. I'd love to see a professional-quality re-work of this subject matter.

This is a terrific resource for illustrators, writers or anyone interested in 50s cars, design or culture. The color reproductions of the car ads are a real treasure -- the layouts, typefaces, symbols, cultural themes and color schemes are invaluable sources of information about 50s social history, values and imagery. And if you love the cars, it's even better! Chronicle Books does a nice job with books like this -- and at a very good price.

Certainly a neat idea for a book: to see how Detroit created car sales with ads brimming with extravagant headlines, copy and visuals. I bought this book years ago and this is a timely reprint but I doubt I would have bought it now. This is because of the production, all the lovely ads have just been copied as whole originals without taking the trouble to separate the color graphics from the flat color headlines and copy. Doing it this way means that none of the photos or illustrations sparkle and frequently the ad copy is very light and not too readable.

Another reason I would probably not have bought it is because I have a copy of 'All-American Ads: 50s' by Jim Heimann (ISBN 3822811580) which has two hundred car ads from the Fifties over 188 pages (in a 926 page book) with much better production so that the images really look good, even on the pages with four ads.

It is unfortunate that the ads in 'Cruise-O-Matic' do not look as good as they should because they celebrate a particular American stylistic exuberance of the past.

This book takes you back to the flamboyant 1950s, the decade when the USA really took the lead as the world's greatest nation. It shows just how far this great country had advanced in automotive technology after 20 years of depression and war. The wraps were off as each individual carmaker tried to outshine their rivals in styling and performance. With gasoline at 25 cents a gallon anything was possible! It reminds you of the days when the USA alone set the standard for automotive excellence. Great reproductions of classic, colorful hand-drawn automotive advertisements. A great piece of nostalgia. As actor Henry Winkler as Fonzie said in the "Happy Days" TV show, "I wish it could be 1955 forever!" Amen.

Great slice of American history from a period of some of the flashiest cars ever made. Not much meat to it, but a great reference if you are an owner of 50's cars or just like seeing how life used to look and how Detroit approached the American public in a time when the U.S. was king of the auto world.

THIS BOOK WAS A TOTAL HIT, IT TOOK ME BACK TO A TIME LONG AGO. BUT NOT FAR FROM MY HEART. TO A KINDER GENTLER PLACE OF CHROME PERSONALITY, AND WHERE EACH PERSON THAT PULLED UP TO YOUR HOUSE CAR WOULD SCREAM THERE OWN PERSONALLITY.EACH PICTURE TOOK ME BACK TO WHEN I WAS A KID SITTING AT THE DOCTOR'S OFFICE WITH MY DAD AND I WOULD HEAR HIM SAY !" HEY MARK LOOK AT THIS BEAUTY" AND THEN HE WOULD SHOW ME THE PICTURES. AS YOU CAN TELL CARS ARE MY PASSION. CARS FROM THE 50'S WERE ART. BEAUTIFUL DETROIT IRON. MULTI-COLORED. BEHEMOUTH ROLLING BARGE'S WITH FENDER SKIRTED, WIDEWHITES..AND OFCOURSE CRUISE-O-MATIC.....WOOOOO WOOOOOO.. MOVE OVER RALPH NADER.... WHEN YOU LIVE IN BUFFALO N.Y. AND YOUR WINTERS ARE LONG, COLD, AND DEEP IN SNOW YOU LOOK FORWARD TO SPRING. BUT UNTIL THEN I'VE GOT MY CRUISE-O-MATIC AUTOMOBILE ADVERTISING OF THE 50'S BY NONE OTHER THAN YASUTOSHI IKUTA. JOB WELL DONE.....WELL IT'S TIME FOR WINTER....MY WIFE TELLS ME I LOVE MY CARS MORE THAN HER??????? I BETTER LEAVE THAT 1 ALONE. HAPPY MOTORING MARK MARINACCIO BUFFALO, N.Y