Ponton (automobile).html



Mercedes-Benz 180 "ponton"

Ponton, which in French and German means "pontoon", can also refer to a certain slab-sided style of car bodywork.¹

Cars in this rounded, slab-sided style were produced by numerous manufacturers in Europe and the U.S.

In the 1960s, according to Jeff Miller, Germans used the term for "all vehicles of standard size, with front engines and rear trunks". He said it was unclear why "this former general expression" came to be used "exclusively by Mercedes-Benz enthusiasts" ² to designate the 1953-1962 models (see below).

Origin of the body style

The first car of the world with a ponton-body was the Hanomag 2/10 (named "Kommissbrot" because of its bread-like form), which was produced from 1924 to 1928. In order to have more passenger space in the little car, the designer Fidelis Böhler dispenced with the foot boards and integrated the fenders in the body. The cheap little car became a best-seller in germany.³

Pinin Farina designed a flowing ponton-style body for the Lancia Aprilia berlinetta aerodynamica coupé that made its debut in 1937, ⁴ and also the open body on the 1940 Lancia Aprilia Cabriolet. ⁵

Pinin Farina's 1946 Cisitalia 202

At the end of the 1930's the BMW 328 had some very modern ponton-body's (in closed and open form) which where some years ahead of its time. (example: http://commons.wikimedia.org/en/Image:BMW_328_Mille_Miglia.JPG)

The 1946 Cisitalia 202 coupé, which Farina designed from sketches by Cisitalia’s Giovanni Savonuzzi, was the car that "transformed postwar automobile design" according to New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). MoMA acquired an example for its permanent collection in 1951, noting that the car’s "hood, body, fenders, and headlights are integral to the continuously flowing surface, rather than added on. Before the Cisitalia, the prevailing approach followed by automobile designers when defining a volume and shaping the shell of an automobile was to treat each part of the body as a separate, distinct element." ⁶ Also introduced in 1947, the Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 ⁷ was another ponton-style Farina design which, together with those by Touring and others on the same chassis, has also been credited with setting the trend for post-war automotive design. ⁸

Rounded, flowing forms, with unbroken horizontal lines between the fenders—the style that Paolo Tumminelli calls "Ponton Side Design"—became "the new fashion in Europe", where Alfa-Romeo, Fiat and Rover were among the first to offer it. ⁹

An inspiration to American and Japanese manufacturers as well as to Europeans, Farina’s "ponton line" would be copied round the world. ¹⁰ One of the first American cars to adopt it was the 1947 Studebaker Champion, designed by Virgil Exner and Roy Cole¹¹ but sometimes erroneously attributed to Raymond Loewy. ⁹ Another, the Howard "Dutch" Darrin-designed 1947-1950 Kaiser-Frazer, was said to have been the inspiration for the 1949 Borgward Hansa 1500, Germany's first sedan in the ponton style. ¹²

In the Soviet Union the GAZ-M20 Pobeda was introduced in 1946, and in Britain the Standard Vanguard went on sale the following year.

Ford and General Motors followed the trend with their own designs in 1949.⁹

Origin of calling the style "ponton"

In Germany, the term Pontonkarrosserie (pontoon body) was used to describe European cars of the post-World War II period. They included Mercedes-Benz, Opel, Auto Union (inc. DKW) and Borgward (inc. Hansa) models.¹³

It may be that when in the early 1950s Mercedes-Benz integrated their cars' headlight into the fenders and blended the fenders into the body the new shape resembled a pontoon to people accustomed to the free-standing headlights and separate fenders of the previous models.²

Another theory is that a journalist likened the sub-frame of the 1953 Mercedes-Benz's novel unitary construction—in which a sub-frame holds the engine, transmission, suspension and steering, and the body is a stressed shell—to a pontoon bridge.²

Examples of "ponton" in automotive contexts

The term is now commonly used in reference to Mercedes-Benz models from 1953-1962. For example a book about the marque refers to "the Ponton", the "Ponton saloon", "Ponton 220", "Ponton 220S and SE coupes and cabriolets", and "the Ponton models". ¹⁴

A General Motors document refers to the 1953 Olympia Rekord as "the first Opel with a full-width, or ponton, body shell".¹⁵

In a reference work on alternative-energy vehicles, electrical-engineering academics used the term as a generic for saloon cars with "three-box design" ;¹⁶ also a 2007 German work on car design and technology mentions a "Rover-Ponton" (ponton-style Rover);¹⁷ and a French book on art and design also used the term in an automotive context in 1996.¹⁸

In Holland it is sometimes used to distinguish the Volkswagen Type 3 (1961-1974) 2-door notchback sedan from the fastback and wagon versions. ¹⁹²⁰

The 1948-1950 Packard had a "'Ponton'-style side section with the fenders running through from front to back", according to a blogger²¹ who also describes the 1951 Packard Patrician as "one of the first cars that featured the new Ponton-style (sic) with integrated front-fenders (sic) at the same level with the hood and a curved onepiece-windscreen (sic).” ²²

Gallery

At present, unlike the Mercedes-Benz Pontons, none of the "ponton"-bodied cars shown below take the "ponton" suffix (as per, for example, "Ford Ponton") among anglophones.

1944 GAZ-25 Pobeda prototype	Farina-designed 1947 Alfa Romeo 6C 2300 SC	1950-1958 Lancia Aurelia B20	1950 Ford (GB) Consul	1950 Ford (USA) Club Coupe
1950 Studebaker Champion	1951 Standard Vanguard	1952 Rover 75	1952 Borgward Hansa 1800	1961-1974 Volkswagen Type 3, sometimes called "ponton" in Holland

See also

• Mercedes-Benz Ponton

References