Early in 1942, North American automobile production stopped and auto manufacturers turned their expertise to the military needs of the Second World War.
It wouldn't resume until late in 1945. When peace came, there was an almost four-year pent-up demand for new cars.
Established automakers responded by returning to slightly revised versions of their 1942 models until they could design new ones. Not surprisingly, this seller's market attracted many upstart car companies trying to cash in on a situation where motorists would buy almost anything.
The most successful of these was Kaiser-Frazer, which lasted until 1955. Powel Crosley's tiny Crosley was another.
Although Crosley made a few cars before the war, he was really a postwar manufacturer. But in spite of a fine overhead-cam, four-cylinder engine, and even though four-wheel disc brakes were used for awhile, Crosleys were just too small. The company went out of the car business in 1952.
There were others who never enjoyed success. These included the radical rear-engined Tucker, the Bobbi-Kar, which became the Keller, and the imaginative three-wheeled Davis.
The Playboy, built in Buffalo, N.Y., from 1947 to 1951 by the Playboy Motor Car Corp., was a sporty, three-passenger convertible. The Playboy name had already been made famous in the 1920s by Ned Jordan and his Jordan Playboy car, which he promoted with pioneering lifestyle advertising.
The most interesting feature of the new Playboy was the fold-down steel top.
This was hinged in the middle and the seam was sealed with a rubber gasket that company engineers swore wouldn't leak. It was counterbalanced and manually operated and could be raised and lowered from the driver's seat.
When folded, the top formed part of the rear deck. In this endeavour, Playboy joined a few others such as Peugeot in the 1930s and Ford's retractable Skyliner of the '50s that were true hardtop convertibles.
Apart from the folding steel top, the rest of the Playboy was pretty conventional. Its 40-horsepower Continental (a few Hercules engines were also used), four-cylinder, side-valve engine drove the rear wheel through a three-speed transmission.
The car was quite small, with a 2,286-millimetre wheelbase, a width of 1,473 mm and an overall length of just 3,962 mm. The tiny 6x12-inch tires must have been taxed to support the Playboy's 862-kilogram weight. The body and frame were welded together to form a kind of unit construction.
The Playboy would be called an "assembled" car, in that major components such as the engine, transmission and other parts came from outside sources. The company turned this to its advantage by advertising that "all standard automotive parts are used, thus facilitating servicing." Suspension was conventional, being independent A-arms and coil springs in front and a solid axle and leaf springs at the rear.
Tom McCahill of Mechanix Illustrated magazine put a Playboy through its paces for the February 1948 issue. He reported that the Playboy's 40-hp engine gave it "the snap of a rubber band" (a typical McCahillism). This snap translated into a zero-to-48-kilometres-an-hour acceleration time of six seconds and zero to 80 in 17 seconds.
Although company engineers claimed it had a top speed of 121 km/h, McCahill could get only 114, although he felt it may have reached that speed when fully broken in.
Fuel economy was good, but McCahill's numbers were less favourable than the company's: The manufacturer claimed 6.7 L/100 km; McCahill reported 7.8L/100 km.
As far as handling was concerned, McCahill wrote: "As long as the road is reasonably smooth, it hugs it like a leech. Naturally, when bumps or ruts occur, this light, short, 90-inch wheelbase job will not sit as well or give you the feeling of security you get in a larger, heavier car."
The rarely achieved dream in those days was to offer a sub-$1,000 car (Crosley did it). Playboy reached this by pricing the Playboy at $985, f.o.b. Buffalo, meaning buyers paid the freight.
The Playboy, like the other American postwar upstarts, didn't survive. The usual under-capitalization meant that proper development and marketing could not be carried out. And in the meantime, the established carmakers were preparing their appealing new models and the seller's market was quickly turning around.
The company struggled for four years, during which an estimated 97 Playboy cars were built. Bankruptcy came in 1951, and with it the close of another interesting, brief and ill-fated chapter in automotive history.
-- Canwest News Service
PREVIOUS
