The Buick Y-Job concept car of 1938 pioneered modern automotive styling. Its influence fully emerged post-WWII with the 1949 Roadmaster, the first Buick featuring "Ventiports" on its fenders.
These distinctive portholes originated from designer Ned Nickles, who added flickering amber lights to his 1948 Roadmaster, inspired by fighter plane exhaust. A GM executive approved the style for production, but without the lights. The ports served a dual purpose: extracting engine heat and denoting engine size. Models with the larger 320-cubic-inch engine had four ports per side, while those with the 248-cubic-inch engine had three.
Buick quickly made Ventiports decorative. For decades, the number of portholes signified a model's status, with four for premium lines like the Electra and three for lesser models. They appeared intermittently until the 1990s and had a modern revival in the 2008 LaCrosse, where port count corresponded to engine cylinders (four for V8, three for V6). They were last used in 2019.
Interestingly, Italian design house Pininfarina also used similar porthole vents on early Maseratis and Alfa Romeos post-WWII. This connection was notably criticized when the 2005 Maserati Quattroporte featured Buick-like portholes, a design some purists found out of place.