’55 Oldsmobile

A ’55 Olds. (Photo by Richard Lentinello.)

The February 2013 issue of my Hemmings Classic Car magazine arrived the other day, probably Wednesday December 12th, 2012.
On its cover is a picture of a 1955 Oldsmobile, what I think is the prettiest manifestation of the ‘50s styling genre.
It heralds a feature of the “Top 10 Oldsmobiles of the ‘50s.”
I try to avoid doing scans of magazine pictures, instead doing screenshots of Google-images.
Scans of magazine pictures are always marginal.
Magazine pictures were usually printed four-color dot-matrix that can reproduce in the scan. I can filter that out with a Photoshop “noise” injection, but if the picture was small enough I get “moiré” (“mware;” as in “are”) I can’t filter out. “Moiré” can ruin a picture, especially if it’s a picture-wide pattern.
I also get text or pictures bleeding through white areas in my picture; text or pictures bleeding through from the flip side of the page.
Beyond that there’s a fair likelihood the magazine picture won’t lay flat on my scanner. So I get variation in image-focus across the picture, and cloudiness.
Screenshots do none of this, and are also a way around a copyrighted picture I can’t download.
Screenshots are always screen-resolution, 72 pixels-per-inch, which is very low. But if the image I screenshot was big enough, I’m usually reducing it in size, not enlarging it.
A basic rule of image manipulation is to downsize not upsize.
Upsize a small screenshot and you might get “jaggies.”
But I couldn’t find a Google-Image of a ’55 Oldsmobile the colors in this magazine, the best colors: pearl-white over turquoise-green.
The “Top 10” article lists other Olds models throughout the ‘50s, but to me the ’55 is the standout, even better-looking than the ’55 Chevy.
The two-tone styling is overdone, but it’s done right.
And the headlight nacelles are perfect, the best-looking of that styling genre.
The ’54 was this body, but not these lines, which are perfect.
The ’56 isn’t even pictured.
Earlier Oldsmobiles, ’51 to ’53, are turkeys, and later Oldsmobiles get uglier by the year.
Worst is the ’59 Oldsmobile, which at that time I considered the ugliest car ever.
A friend disputes this. He claims the ugliest car ever was the Pontiac Aztek, and I agree.
But the ’59 Oldsmobile is a joke, obviously designed by a committee.
Styling elements thought to be necessary are included, but they fight each other. Where was the single guiding hand? (Where was Pininfarina?)
But for 1955, Olds was fabulous. After 1955 the car began to look bloated and overweight.
And now Oldsmobile is gone, along with Pontiac. A victim of GM brand rationalization because of the bankruptcy.

• “Jaggies” occur when pixels are so enlarged they become discernible squares; what were previously smooth edges become small horizontals and verticals. They become “jagged.”