Friday Lady's Art Déco camping holiday

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We're now well into the middle of October and the wind is blowing, rain is falling and the summer holidays seem like they were an age away. But that's why Nicéphore Niépce invented photography, so we can preserve memories of those happy days in the sun and return to them when those cataracts and hurricanoes spout.

It's as well these two ladies remembered their camera, since any holiday taken in a DeSoto Airflow and a rather expensive-looking caravan ought to be one to remember.

Scientific streamlining

The 1930s may have been the age when streamlining was really en vogue, but there was such a thing as too much, as Chrysler found out at its own expense. Car-buyers preferred the dramatic look of a vertical grille, followed by a tapering tail - in other words, streamlining in name only, but not in practice. Chrysler made the mistake of actually being scientific about it and, in the pursuit of real efficiency, it designed a car in a wind tunnel, one of the first car-makers ever to do so. It also pioneered unitary construction.

To accompany the Chrysler, a slightly cheaper companion model badged as a DeSoto was introduced to run alongside it, but the public didn't share Chrysler's enthusiasm and only around 55,000 Airflows were sold between 1934 and 1937, a disappointing number by the standards of America's Big Three, which saw Chrysler adopt a policy of conservative styling lasting into the 1950s.

This right-hand drive DeSoto Airflow would have been built at Chrysler's British factory in Kew, Surrey, before finding its way to Huddersfield, where it was registered. There can't have been many Airflows sold in Britain, and it must surely have been unique in Huddersfield. We wonder if any British-market examples survive today? Anyhow, it marked these women out as ladies of taste and discernment, and, to paraphrase the postcard, we wish we were there.

Words and picture: Zack Stiling / Stiling Collection

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