Early cars used to have radiator caps with a thermometer sticking out to warn about potential overheating. In the 1920s these were replaced by ornaments, sometimes called mascots, really tools for branding as the modern advertising field would now call them.

WW II saw many of the cars dragged to scrapyards, hood ornaments carefully removed, before the scavenged car metal would be made into tanks and ships. You should be so lucky that your grandparents saved these mascots – they are now objects of desire in an intense collectors’ market, fetching up to $200.000. A piece.

Many of them are elaborate, beautiful, in tune with the design of the cars they adorned. These days we don’t have them because they could hurt bikers or pedestrians, if there was a collision. In fact, those cars who STILL have them as a matter of pride, Rolls Royce for example, have them in retractable form….or they flattened them out, like the current Jaguar symbol.

 

And then there is the alternative to a sculptured hood ornament……

I photographed many of these in garages here in PDX, in Texas, Florida, and in the car museum in Balboa Park in San Diego. Worth a visit. http://sdautomuseum.org