Coke bottle styling

Coke bottle styling is any automotive body styling that bears an overall body shape resembling the classic glass Coca-Cola soft drink's contour bottle design when viewed in profile. It is a style of automobile bodies with outward curving fenders with a narrow center. In contrast to "straight-edge" designs, automobiles such as the sixth generation AMC Ambassador featured "swoopy lines ... in the 'Coke bottle' mode."

The design was used in airplanes as a way of greatly reducing the sharp drag rise that occurs at transonic speeds; its utilization often results in a pinch-waisted fuselage shape that National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) labeled the design principle 'area rule,' and variously identified as coke bottle, wasp waist, or Marilyn Monroe shape.

As tailfins were influenced by jet aircraft of the 1950s, stylists were inspired by supersonic planes. Automotive designers incorporated the "wasp waist" body shape among numerous passenger cars, as they found that the previous "ponton" appearance seemed dated. Cars with this style treatment earned this term "by having more rounded body panels with arcs over the wheelwells, making them resemble bottles of Coca-Cola laid on their sides." Aircraft such as the F-102 were designed with narrow waists and bulging forward and rear fuselages to conform to the area rule to achieve supersonic speeds.

Studebaker introduced the Raymond Loewy-designed Avanti with pronounced Coke-bottle look in 1962. The 1962 Pontiac full-size models also "had a subtle horizontal crease about half way down [the bodyside] and a slight wasp-waist constriction at the doors which swelled out again in the rear quarters" One of the cleanest examples of the “Coke bottle” styling was the 1963 Buick Riviera. Chevrolet first tried the coke bottle look on Bill Mitchell's 1963 Corvette Sting Ray as a styling theme since the area rule does not apply at road speeds.

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