The Latest

• Tweet

• Tweet

Elsey Cowman’s Monaco

While there, I spoke to a man who said he had a Glen-L “Swish” in his garage that needed to be restored and it got me thinking about this great classic boat with “tail fins” that were so popular in the 1950′s. The Swish, L Dorado and L. Capitan are classic Glen-L designs with these fins. Chris-Craft made a 21′ Continental Landau in 1958 and we saw one at the boat show that was one of my favorites.

Jim Kirkpatrick’s (Capt. Kirk) Tahoe 23

Come to find out, Harley Earl was the man responsible for the fin design on cars which he began putting on movie stars cars back in the 1930′s, even though legend has it that his designs were inspired in 1948 by the P-38 war birds of World War II. Regardless, he was quite an innovative designer of the time. Glen-L’s finned boats were designed in 1957.

Continental Landau at Arrowhead Boat Show

A while back we received an awesome photo of a Swish that our client Fred Jones built back in the late 50′s and which is still in use today at the family cottage in Ontario, Canada. Fred’s son Brad sent the photos to us and as you can see, it ‘s gorgeous!

L Dorado towed by Glen’s T-Bird

One of my favorite photos is from our 1957 catalog cover of an L Dorado being pulled by my father’s Thunderbird from the same era–I still can’t believe MY dad had a T-Bird!

Glen & Vera in the L Dorado

But, my very favorite is this picture of my mom and dad in the L Dorado. This one ran in articles in many of the boating magazines of the day that featured this design.

Talk about a classic boat–these “fin boats” are truly classics along the lines of a Cadillac Eldorado (hmmm, sound familiar?).

In fact, I found a really interesting website about tail fin cars in which they state:

“Fins were an ebullient expression of devil may careness, the hoisting of a flag to honor America and a hope of better days ahead. They were splendidly outrageous, impractical and most people loved having them rest on the back ends of their cars. It’s likely if you did a national poll today you’d probably find out that many Americans still feel this way!”

Cadillac “El Dorado

So, do you like the tail fin enough to actually build your own boat with them? I don’t know, but wouldn’t it be cool? Your fin boat would definitely stand out among all the others on the water…