By the early 1950s, externally mounted spare tires sitting above the rear bumper had become a popular fad in automotive design. Unlike other style traits of the era such as tail fins, wraparound windshields, and chrome, this spare tire setup, known as a Continental kit, provided both form and function. Moving the spare to the rear added visual appeal and freed up valuable trunk space.
Automakers ranging from Nash to Cadillac offered options for protruding spares that could add feet to the length of a car. Aftermarket kits also found their way to the market, allowing one to dress up just about any car on the road.
This trend can be traced to the luxurious Lincoln Continental, which sported a purposefully mounted spare tire on the exterior of the trunk. The Continental Mark II hit the street in 1956 having shed the rear spare in favor of a tire-shaped hump in the trunk that concealed the rubber entirely.
Once again, the Continental birthed a new fad: trunk humps. In the following years Chrysler, Packard, and others introduced their own variations, but several of these humps didn't actually hold a spare; they simply borrowed the appearance of high fashion. As automotive styling evolved and engineers found new places to hide spare tires, the Continental kit became passé. By the early 1960s the look had nearly disappeared. The faux trunk stampings, however, would last into the 1990s before the style finally fell into retirement.
Edsel Ford, son of Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford, led the family business as president from 1919 until his death in 1943. During an early-1930s trip to Europe, Edsel found inspiration in the vehicles he saw. At Edsel's direction, Ford's chief designer Eugene T. "Bob" Gregorie built a Euro-inspired sports car based on a 1932 Ford Model 18.
What resulted was the Euro-inspired Continental, crafted from the bones of the V-12 Lincoln Zephyr. The prototype proved so popular that it was put into production as a Lincoln in 1940. A statement of its design was the inset rear-mounted spare tire. While it wasn't the first to wear a tire back there, it is cited as the first to do so purposefully and seamlessly.
With the introduction of the Continental Mark II and its trunk hump in 1956, the visible-spare-tire craze began to wind down. A primary aspect of this was evolving automotive styling, leading to the near disappearance of the kits by the middle of the 1960s. Another reason that led to their demise: general impracticability. To make access to the trunk convenient, automakers had to overengineer the setup to make the whole apparatus swing or roll out of the way.
For many automakers, the trunk made the most sense for spare tire storage, with tires placed in a recessed well or stored vertically to one side or the other. These days, some new
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Continental kits evolved from functional spare tire mounts to purely decorative trunk humps by the 1960s.
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This shift shows how automotive styling often prioritizes appearance over practicality in luxury car design.
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Edsel Ford's 1930s European trip directly inspired the Lincoln Continental's iconic rear-mounted spare tire design.