1948 Crosley CC Wagon

In 1946 the smallest car made by General Motors was 16 and 1/2 feet long and weighed nearly two tons. The fact that the big automakers didn't make any "small" cars that were actually small created a niche market for the independent automakers. After World War II, Studebaker and Nash both went with new designs that were shorter than the shortest Chevrolet. But even those cars were big compared to this Crosley CC Wagon. The Crosley company was owned by Powell Crosley who also owned the Cincinnati Reds. The year that the wagon pictured was made, Crosley sold nearly 25,000 cars.

Crosley was responsible for numerous innovations that would eventually be adopted by other automakers. From Wikipedia, "Crosley introduced several "firsts" in the American automobile industry, including the first use of the term 'Sport Utility' in 1948 (albeit on an open model based on the wagon, not a wagon on a truck chassis); first mass-market single overhead camshaft (SOHC) engine in 1946; first slab-sided postwar car, also in 1946; first all steel-bodied wagon in 1947; first American car to be fitted with 4-wheel caliper type disc brakes in the 1949 model year (Chrysler Imperial introduced four-wheel disc brakes as standard equipment on Crown Imperials at the beginning of the 1949 model year, but they were not of the caliper type); and the first American sports car, the Hotshot, in the 1949 model year. 1950 brought the Farm-O-Road model, a 63-inch (1,600 mm) wheelbase utility vehicle predictive of the John Deere Gator and other UTVs."

 

Tweet