Here’s an example of the latter from Car of Tomorrow (1951). Narrator Gil Warren tells us about a brand-new model. “But we advise against buying it.”
Cut to the car’s hood. “It still has a few bugs in the motor.” The hood lifts up.
Roy Williams and Rich Hogan are both given story credits on this. I don’t know who designed the cartoon; Gene Hazleton maybe? I quite like the approximations of early ‘50s cars. Johnny Johnsen drew and painted the backgrounds. The animators are Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons.
This has a ring of truth. Bad cars of the early 1950s were usually that way because of weak designs -- most bugs and weaknesses originated at the blueprints. But the 50s were a time of rapid modernizing with better-designed parts, so that Consumer Reports saw even the worst 1956 models as better than almost anything from five years or so earlier. Bugs were far more often from another source -- carelessness on the assembly line.
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