Automotive Design II: Streamline Moderne & Art Deco — Embracing Aerodynamics and Elegance

As the Roaring Twenties tripped over their own excesses and landed face-first in the Great Depression, the world—and its cars—began to change. Out went the upright, boxy silhouettes and ornate bric-a-brac of yesteryear. In came a new vision: sleek, modern, and unapologetically optimistic. Enter Art Deco and its smoother, faster cousin, Streamline Moderne.

Art Deco, born in the glamorous interwar period, was all geometric glamour and jazz-age pizzazz. It was the aesthetic of flappers and fluted columns, of chrome and Bakelite, of opulence somehow made modern. But when the stock market collapsed and economic hardship set in, its exuberance was sanded down into something more restrained—but no less stylish. The result was Streamline Moderne, a design movement that married Art Deco’s love of ornament with the machine-worship of the new industrial age.

This was design in love with speed. Inspired by aerodynamic forms—Zeppelins, bullet trains, metal-skinned airplanes—the Streamline aesthetic embraced long, flowing lines, rounded corners, and horizontal “speed lines” that visually suggested motion, even when the car was at rest. The French dubbed it style paquebot, or “ocean liner style,” in homage to curvaceous luxury liners like the SS Normandie.

Cars got lower, longer, and wider. Grilles were slanted back like a gangster’s fedora. Windshields leaned rakishly into the wind. Wheel arches swelled and merged like Mae West’s, er, frontage. Materials joined the revolution, too—glossy enamel finishes, Vitrolite glass, Bakelite trim, stainless steel detailing. All of it screamed (or perhaps suavely murmured) modernity.

The 1933–34 Chicago World’s Fair played a key role in popularising these ideas. Just as the 1925 Paris Exposition had launched Art Deco into global consciousness, Chicago gave America its first mass-market taste of aerodynamic design. And the automakers had more to show than the aforementioned Ms. West.

Chrysler’s 1934 Airflow was one of the first production cars built around the principle of streamlining rather than style alone—although, in a twist of fate, its futuristic looks terrified conservative buyers — to be fair it does resemble the illegitimate offspring of the PT Cruiser and The Pontiac Aztec) and nearly tanked the company. Meanwhile, the Studebaker Land Cruiser (also 1934, and in no way related to the Toyota Land Cruiser) offered a more palatable dose of modernity. Over in Czechoslovakia, Tatra unveiled the remarkable T77: rear-engined, wind tunnel-tested, and as much fastback hearse as sedan. With its teardrop shape and central fin, it looked more like the Batmobile than a family car—and yet, it influenced automotive design for decades to come.

Then there was the French contribution, naturally infused with a little extra I don’t know what. The 1934 Peugeot 402 brought the Streamline aesthetic to a broader European audience, with its concealed headlights and curvaceous bodywork. Citroën, never one to miss a chance to be iconoclastic, followed with the 1934 Traction Avant. While it wasn’t overtly Streamline in its styling, it was radically forward-thinking in engineering terms: front-wheel drive, monocoque construction, and low-slung lines that hinted at the aerodynamic future of cars in general and Citroëns in particular.

Even in post/pre/mid-war Germany, streamlining had its moment. Mercedes-Benz released the 540K Autobahn-Kurier in 1938, a grand tourer clearly intended for the Reich’s newly constructed Autobahns (the name was a clue). It combined brutish power with elegant, sweeping bodywork—a sort of Teutonic art deco war chariot.

Meanwhile, Japan’s automotive industry was still in its infancy, but not without ambition. Toyota’s 1936 AA model was its very first passenger car, and its streamlined, rounded lines were heavily inspired by the Chrysler Airflow—a fact that becomes obvious the moment you see them side-by-side. Though production numbers were tiny, the AA symbolised Japan’s growing interest in adopting, adapting, and improving upon Western design principles for a domestic market.

Back in America, others followed the streamline path: the dramatic 1933 Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow of which for reason known to man nor beast only five were ever made, the teardrop-shaped Lincoln Zephyr, and the unforgettable Cord 810/812 with its hidden headlights, front-wheel drive, and styling that must have influenced Daniel-san’s 1947 Ford Super Deluxe Convertible.

But Streamline Moderne wasn’t just about looking fast. It was a design ethos born of tough times. Its clean lines and smoothed-over surfaces mirrored a shift away from extravagance. In architecture, this meant rounded concrete corners and glass bricks. In cars, it meant a rejection of fiddly flourishes in favour of purity, progress, and performance.

In a world still limping out of depression—and inching toward global war—Streamline Moderne was a vision of the future. A promise that the machine age could be beautiful, that technology could deliver comfort and confidence, and as we said in the introduction cars could move us in every sense of the word. Form didn’t just follow function; it caressed it and sent it speeding into the sunset.

P.S. The Goodwood Festival of Speed is a fantastic place to view cars like these and many more.