Street Presence, Vanishing Hood Ornaments

Stately and stylish hood ornaments and mascots graced early cars, initially as functional parts of radiator caps. Affixed to external radiator caps they carried rudimentary temperature gauges to tell motorists when the cooling system started to run hot.

A device on the dashboard made the embedded gauge obsolete and when manufacturers moved the radiator under the hood that finished off any functional role for the device.

With the radiator under the hood, ornaments morphed into a contemporary role as a decorative item to add a distinctive touch of style and an enhanced branding statement to the front of the automobile. Today, most hood ornaments exist as oddities, such as a set of longhorns on Texas pick-ups, and more frequently in car-buff magazine photographs as a leggy model draped over the front of the vehicle.

Though some exotic adornments can be purchased in the after market, only a few luxury models produced today sport a hood ornament, in part because of their vulnerability to vandalism or outright thievery. Recent allegations that some of these metal pieces injured pedestrians involved in accidents eliminated many that carried into the late 20th century. Some upright ornaments that remain have spring mechanisms that allow the ornament to give on impact to save the pedestrian from injury.

Motifs used in the past include the human form, birds and mammals, fanciful items associated with space, heraldry, devices linked to mythology and winged wheels. Of those mascots and ornaments that came and went, many recognize the now politically incorrect Native American on the Pontiac, the Oldsmobile rocket, the Mayflower atop a Plymouth and of late the Cadillac's crest and wreath.

From Europe we still see the leaping jaguar on the car of the same name, but horses on Porsches and Ferraris, art statements from Louis Lejeune of London and even finely sculpted glass figurines crafted by the well-known French designer Rene Lalique have almost all but disappeared as three-dimensional objects. The ornament today sits as an indistinct almost two-dimensional object fixed to the grill or flat against the hood. And it has minimal design flair or the panache of their ancestors that once stood proudly at the forefront of the automobile.

In looking for the uncommon in common things, photographer Jerry Kalman makes the rounds of auto shows and museums in search of interesting hood ornaments, some of which now tell part of the rich history of the automobile industry.