The Sad Demise of the Car Brochure

The Sad Demise of the Car Brochure

by Todd Duhnke

Comedian Dennis Miller used to do a series called, “Now I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but….” And then off he’d rail about some perceived injustice or pet peeve. It reminds me of a rant I’ve had for the last several years. That being, what the heck ever happened to the manufacturers issuing car brochures? Do they think we only live on our phones and iPads? That we are all as computer and tech savvy as our children or grandchildren? Or wish to spend even more hours glued to our phones or computer?

I grew up in a household where the latest car brochures were treasured. Every fall my dad, brother and I would go to all the car dealers to see the latest models. It was a cherished ritual. Dad would pick up all the brochures and put them by his favorite chair and study them over several weeks. One or two would usually be placed on his desk for further contemplation and lusting and the rest went into a box. By the time I was seven I thought that if collecting car brochures was good enough for my dad, then I too should start doing the same. Unfortunately, many of the early ones I collected got cut up and made into worthless scrapbooks.

This went on for many years. One box became two. Two became six and finally my dad said he could no longer keep them. So now I had his boxes and mine as well. Those brochures visually took you away from schoolwork to many exotic places filled with people having simply grand experiences. Men in white tux tails and ladies in gorgeous gowns at cocktail parties. Girls in bikinis who looked nothing like mom. The way the cars were drawn created unbridled desire. Backgrounds were the beach, rockets, ski slopes, with the newest jet airliners and around mansions with huge swimming pools.

Early brochures were drawn by talented artists who could make even the lowliest ’59 Chevrolet Biscayne four door look long, low, wide and sleek. Every dimension of the car was seemingly exaggerated. By the late fifties actual photography was becoming much more commonplace. This created a problem because an actual 19-foot long ’57 Lincoln could no longer be drawn like it was 23-feet long.

For the most part early car brochures were simple and rather small in size. Many early brochures were either black and white or brown and white. Use of color was limited. For the luxury car brands the opposite was true. Very detailed, colorful and large, spiral bound brochures were offered like this 1941 Lincoln brochure.

While the artwork isn’t particularly detailed, the 50-page brochure very much is. Rare for the time was the plastic covers and cellophane cutaway of the structure of the car. Most brochures of this time were vastly simpler in design.

During WWII and after, Ford used this iconic slogan, “There’s a Ford in your Future.” It gave servicemen serving in the war another thing to look forward to. Ford used this slogan in both advertising and brochures. The slogan lasted into the early Fifties.

While some magazine advertisements used actual black and white photography, most manufacturers relied upon artwork for their brochures. By doing so they could manipulate the length, lowness and width of the vehicle. Exotic background scenes were merely painted in.

It wasn’t until after WWII that actual photography started showing up in GM brochures. Artwork still dominated, however, as color film was quite expensive and grainy.

Oldsmobile depicted a rocket in nearly every ad and brochure throughout the Fifties. Numerous brochures of nearly every make had America’s first jetliner, the Boeing 707, depicted in the background. Our fascination with space, rockets and the jet airplane were common background themes.

Some of the artwork of the Fifties was truly expressive as in these 1953 and 1954 Chrysler brochures. Very unique artwork. Rich in both color and use of shadows.

In the 1950s many prestige catalogs became incredibly large like this 14-inch X 12-inch, 36-page 1958 Buick brochure. It had to be very expensive to produce.

Cadillac and Lincoln also created specific brochures as direct mail pieces to lure prospects into the showroom. Typically, these were anywhere from 8 to 16 pages in length and 14-inch × 12-inch in size—sized to catch attention!

Not only was color film expensive, it was initially grainy, posed all sorts of lighting difficulties, but most damning—it showed the actual proportions of the car. No longer could you exaggerate and accentuate the dimensions of the car. Lastly, photography required shooting in desirable locations. More difficult and certainly more expensive than using an artist’s brush to position the car in Paris, the beach, or Carmel.

One creative photographic studio, Boulevard Photographic, came up with a clever solution. Curve the back of the 8 × 10 film holder on a studio camera. A longer negative made for a longer looking car. There were limits on this as if they put too much of a curve on the camera back, the tires would start to look oblong! The ’58 and ’59 Lincoln brochures are examples of this technique. Making the largest car ever built look even longer. As if a ’58 Lincoln needed to look bigger than it already was! It was a ridiculous time.

Boulevard, at one time the largest automotive photographic studio, developed other methods to accentuate and highlight a car’s best features. Tricks like anamorphotic lenses, prisms, motion platforms and ultra-wide angle lenses allowed the desired manipulation of reality.

Pontiac elected to stick with artwork into the early seventies as they were blessed with, by far and away, the two most talented artists in the business. Art Fitzpatrick and Van Kaufman. Fitz painted the cars in the most flattering way and Van created the aspirational backgrounds, many times in exotic places like Monaco.

While everyone else had switched to straight photography, Pontiac soldiered on with “Van and Fitz” through the early 1970s.

Car brochures evolved in other ways. Some were simply four panel folders in two colors. Others such as Cadillac were very large format, lavish affairs with tissue paper and 40 pages. Manufacturers typically made available both a cheaper folder brochure and a prestige catalog with many pages highlighting all the features, colors and available options.

Equally lavish were early 1960’s Thunderbird brochures with heavy stock crepe textured covers, tissue paper inserts and in a large format. Again, Boulevard Photographic created the photography.

Brochures also captured the trends of the times. Car brochures are interesting to look at not only because of the cars, but also the clothes and styles worn at the time.

In the late Sixties the Mod Look became popular and nobody pulled it off better than Dodge and their highly successful “Dodge Rebellion” campaign. White Go-Go boots and all. The Dodge Girls commanded as much space as the cars themselves in these brochures.

Going into the 1970s and throughout the ’80s and ’90s, American car brochures became less glamorous, smaller and usually on cheaper paper. Large divisions like Ford and Chevrolet produced individual model brochures, usually fairly standard in size at approximately 8-1/2-inch × 11-inch. More expensive cars received nicer pieces, but nothing like we saw in decades prior.

In the seventies, European manufacturers such as BMW began to produce brochures that were highly technically detailed. These 50–80-page brochures shunned the girls in bikinis at the beach for a thorough, part by part, description of why the BMW was, “The Ultimate Driving Machine.”

With time the European car brochures got to be more detailed and expensive to produce. Some even being hard covered. The more expensive the car, the more lavish the brochure.

Bentley, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, and Ferrari brochures over the years were by far and away the most beautifully presented pieces. Rich in gorgeous photography and highly detailed they had to be phenomenally expensive to produce.

I was maybe 10 years ago that I started noticing that certain models no longer had brochures available. And the ones that were being produced became thinner and smaller for the most part. Then manufacturers like Mercedes stopped producing brochures all together. The salesman saying everything was now “online.” Racks that used to be full of available brochures on every model became smaller and eventually disappeared altogether. One had to begin to ask for a brochure. The bean counters had apparently overruled Marketing and Sales.

So why do I find this all so upsetting? Because I think the manufacturers are making a mistake. I miss sitting in my easy chair looking at a brochure on the next car I might trade for. Brochures were easy to navigate. It gave you something tangible in your hand to explore. Something tactile. Something richly put together.

Not long ago I went into a German manufacturers local dealer to see a model I had been given a ride in by a friend. I enjoyed that ride. Maybe I’d start the process of trading off my ten-year-old car with 38,000 miles on it for one of those. It was a dismal experience. They had none in stock to look at. The salesman, who I had to seek out and approach, knew little of that model and had no information he could have me leave with. No brochures, no examples of available colors and just a comment that it’s all online.

To me that is terrible marketing. It’s unconscionable to allow a prospect who could write a check for the car leave without anything to keep him focused on a potential purchasing decision. Nothing to build excitement. Once I left the store it drifted out of my mind. I had nothing in hand to remind me.

Back in 2015 my wife wanted a new SUV. But she refused to go to the dealerships. She hates the process of buying a car. Being the car guy that I am, I went. Only two manufacturers had brochures to bring home and show my wife. She looked at the two brochures, saw one she liked, and we went to that dealership together. She didn’t even consider the others as they had nothing for her to look at while at home. And there was no way she was going to sit in the computer room for an hour or two and look at all the SUV websites. We have a Navigator partly because they had a brochure I could take home, and she could look at.

It’s true that age plays a role in this. Young adults spend seemingly an inordinate amount of time on their devices. Seniors, for the most part, not so much. But consider the average age of the buyers of certain models. I’ll bet the average age of an S Class Mercedes buyer must be 60+. Same for a Bentley. The older the buyer, the less likely he is willing to seek information on the Internet. A brochure is a better served marketing tool for the older buyer.

I still have every brochure my dad and I collected starting in the 1950s. The collection is now some 15,000 pieces strong plus another 7,000 aviation pieces. 98% were picked up at a dealership. Free, except for a little gas money.

Today, items such as the Cadillac prestige pieces can bring as much as $200 each depending upon condition. Or maybe $2 for a ’75 Pinto brochure. An ’80 Plymouth Volare’s brochure’s future is likely the dumpster.

The last brochures I was able to pick up were 2020 and 2022 Corvette brochures. Large in size and very rich in detail. These are the last brochures I have been able to see in any dealership.

I eventually did try to go to the German car’s website. The information on features and options was very limited. The site is not the easiest to navigate. Colors looked unrealistic. But then again, all you seem to be able to get are shades of white, silver, gray, or black. But we’ll save the lack of available colors in today’s automotive world for another rant!