Our highly esteemed CColleague Don Andreina created this series a few years ago, and it stuck with me ever since. “Deliberately anonymous” cars are actually pretty widespread, depending on where you look. In the present instance, we will go through a selection of posters designed for the Geneva Motor Show.
The first edition of the Geneva Motor Show took place in 1905, followed by a second one in 1906 – a time when most women couldn’t even afford clothes, much less automobiles. Zürich was selected for the 1907 show, with limited success.
The idea of a regular car exhibition took a while to set in; the Salon de Genève only returned as a true international event in 1924.
Most of the posters we will be looking at today were made between 1925 and 1950: PR and graphic design became a lot more abstract in the ‘50s, so the deliberately anonymous cars of the prewar era were typically replaced by coloured dots or stylized road signage.
Those later posters are all the poorer for it. The glorious Art Deco of the ‘20s and Streamline Moderne of the mid-to-late ‘30s made for exquisite artwork, in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, there were some great graphic creations in the ‘50s and ‘60s too, but fewer.
The posters for 1938 and 1939 were unfortunately not car-themed, and the 1940 to 1946 editions did not take place, despite Switzerland managing to stay out of the war. The Geneva Motor Show returned in 1947 and would remain a regular Spring fixture all the way until its next hiatus, brought about by COVID-19, in 2020-22.
These early post-war artworks still feel very ‘30s. Superb stuff.
The ’49 poster is the strangest of the bunch. The vehicle depicted, which luckily and fittingly seems completely fanciful, is an aesthetic nightmare. Whoever drew this had little to no interest in cars.
The frequency of deliberately anonymous cars featuring on Geneva Motor Show PR material fell off a cliff in the ‘50s, though I may not have had access to every single poster ever designed.
Then we have the case of the 1967 poster. A work that, for those of us who have a thing for “deliberately anonymous” cars (in silhouette form), is a bit of a dream come true.
A weird one, this ’78. A deliberately anonymous dashboard with some not-very-anonymous cars in the background: we can make out a blurry Ferrari BB and a Citroën GS.
The final poster is a great one, looking back to previous decades as well as forwards to a one-box teardrop future. We never did get to that, did we? Automotive design went more with the angry-robot-on-stilts route. We still had delusions of aerodynamic purity in the early ‘90s.
Related posts:
CC Outtake: The Deliberately Anonymous Car Part 1, by Don Andreina
TATRA87, Your posts continue to set the standard. Thanks once again for rewarding my curiosity.
Well done, what a mesmerizing post. It makes me think of a couple of anon-cars from British TV.
There’s a quick glance of a 1920s stylized roadster in the opening animation of “Jeeves and Wooster” (1990); and another in the opening of “A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery” (1987).
Of course we all know that Lord Peter Wimsey drives a 1927 Daimler Double Six in the BBC1 series from the early ’70s. Not anonymous but still very cool.
Don’t quite understand why they wanted a naked lady on their 1906 poster. Wouldn’t she get very cold if she went for a ride in that touring car? But I am in love with the art deco posters that came later. Having them in my inbox makes a perfect start to my day.
That’s a fine collection. Although they appeared just about everywhere it was possible for them to be applied, in the tight space of the advertising poster the motifs of artistic movements of the early to mid-twentieth century (Futurism, Cubism, Art Deco, Vorticism) worked really well. Fortunately we can imagine what motorists would have worn in 1906 because of a 1942 entry in Count Ciano’s diary. Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903–1944; Italian foreign minister 1936-1944) wasn’t an impartial observer of anything German but he had a diarist’s eye and left a vivid description of the impression the Hermann Göring (1893–1946) made during his visit to Rome in 1942: “At the station, he wore a great sable coat, something between what motorists wore in 1906 and what a high grade prostitute wears to the opera.” Fashionistas probably think Lindsay Lohan wore the sable coat better at New York Fashion Week in 2024.
Oh, what a superb finger-up-his-nose comment about that man! Just wish I’d been there, and had the wit and courage to say the same to his face. Or, on second thoughts, I don’t.
Reminds me of the equally wonderful (though famous) comment made in the ’60’s by the American writer Ralph Stein, who said words to the effect that the somewhat baroquely-adorned and fat Mercedes 540K “looked like dear Hermann Goering himself if he’d had wheels.”
The suit under that coat also reminds me of the Ernst Stavro Blofeld villain from the James Bond films, and by extension his Dr. Evil parody later, so I’d reckon Herr Göring’s sartorial tastes must have inspired the costuming for those characters.
That 1906 poster up top – it looks like the car is staring up and over at the model. Though few would blame it.
Oh, yes, you’re right, there IS a car.
The ’78 poster looks as though they used off-the-shelf diecast toy cars for the upper part.
It was already known in the early ’90s that any one-box teardrop future would be a reversed teardrop – people would not give up their passenger and cargo space! – leading to a shape appropriate for an era concept only if you accept it’s facing the opposite way to the others.
That 1967 poster seems to have a Rolls-Royce Camargue before Rolls ever built one- it’s following what’s either a 2CV or a Beetle…
Though unfortunately, the Camargue looks like a Camargue even after Rolls did build it.
These are spectacular. I’m glad someone thought to preserve auto-show posters from a century ago. They sure had some great graphic designers back then.
I like many of these vehicles, even the odd looking one in the 1949 poster .
-Nate
“Christine’s, older cuz”.
Professor T, you have quite excelled yourself. What a simply gorgeous collection. Has this sort of ability gone from us for good, or am I just being old?
This topic reminds me of a video I recently watched. An introductory promotional film for the International ‘S’ Series Medium Truck.
I’m a big music fan, and immediately recognized the tune of the music International used, as a full blown redux of ‘More than a Woman’ by the Bee Gees. I guess it flew under the radar (pre-Internet), of the people who would have represented the Bee Gees, and their record company.
It worked well here. But it appears infringement. Unless it was approved?
Wild, given the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was massive.
Fun, to listen to both songs, back to back. You be the judge. lol
I’m quite certain it would have been some kind of licensed adaptation. There are SO many pop songs that have become commercial jingles over the years — I assume record labels have standard contracts for that kind of thing, if the money’s right.
You are likely correct. The 1977-1978 era were MASSIVE for RSO Records and the Bee Gees. They neither would have needed the marginal marketing or revenue, International would bring. Love how disco was, used to sell trucks.