I’m not here to car-body-shame. Hell, some of my favorite cars are ones that most people deride as being homely. Automotive beauty is in the headlight of the beholder, after all. But every now and then I’ll see something that even I just can’t abide. And today that un-abideable thing is the grille design of the 1953 Opel Olympia Rekord. I realize that, according to our demographics, about 48% of our readers drive 1953-1957 Opel Olympia Rekords. Wait, am I reading that right? That can’t be right. What is the Olympia Rekord ownership rate for Autopian members? 73%? What the hell? Who did these charts?
Anyway, I’m going to assume that either those numbers are off and/or even if they’re right, our Opel Olympia Rekord owners are secure and have a healthy sense of humor about their cars. Because I really find the early grille design of the Opel Olympia Rekord downright … disturbing.
I realize the Olympia Rekord leaned heavily into American-inspired styling of the era, but it’s worth remembering just how much that aesthetic was. Auto design in early 1950s America was a riot of excess, a cacophony of chrome ornaments and bulges and a mix of visual references that ran the gamut from jet and rocket-age inspiration to parts that resembled dinosaurs. Still, it often worked, though the sheer size of the cars was a big factor there. Scaled down to European sizes, things tended to feel even more overdone, and that may be what we’re seeing here in the 1953 Olympia Rekord:
Most of the car isn’t bad; nothing too exciting, but nothing feels that wrong. Until we get to the grille. I mean, look at that thing:
It’s not so much a grille as it is a cruel-looking maw, full of teeth and disappearing deep down that car’s gullet. In fact, people at the time referred to it as a Haifischmaul-Kuehlergrill, or a shark’s mouth. I should note that not all Olympia Rekords had this grille; later ones opted for something far less disturbing:
That’s much tidier. And it makes that face feel less unhinged. I think my issue with the 1953 grille is what it reminds me of; take a look at the grille and tell me if you can see what I can’t help but see:
Is anything coming to mind? Anything maybe, like this?
You know those solid waste shredding machines? Those hoppers with the rotating rows of indestructible teeth, just waiting to mulch pretty much anything into ribbons? I’m sure you’ve seen the videos:
Look at that! Unstoppable power for turning somethings into nothings. It’s the final fate for so many things, including cars, and it feels like an angel of death for the material world. They’re alarming things, and that Opel grille feels like one of those to me. It has that same chute-like shape, with its deep recesses, and its full of metal teeth that curve back enough that its easy to imagine them rotating, sucking in everything as this Opel drives along, pulling rocks and squirrels and birds and trash and bicycles and everything into its horrific maw, grinding and mulching, ever hungry, never satiated, driving eating mulching tearing shredding driving driving sucking chewing destroying driving driving driving
Forever.
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