GM Motorama of 1954

It’s hard to find much exciting news in the mass production car world today- Most of what you do hear is about is safety recalls or autonomous vehicles with no steering wheel that run on pure boredom. That wasn’t always the case though, as we look back 60 years ago to the Motorama of 1954. There was a time when General Motors would take their traveling car show around the country to show the latest floor models and tease the public with beautiful concept and dream cars. It was a massive production, logistically difficult and expensive event to produce, but it drew thousands of spectators and prospective buyers to come look at GM’s latest and greatest. How many young customizers were in the audience getting some wild inspiration from the turntables? It was only their second annual event, but the ’54 show was especially good, as a few of my all-time favorite Motorama cars premiered that year: The Corvette Nomad station wagon, the bubble top Pontiac Bonneville Special, and the sleek fastback Oldsmobile Cutlass. All were made of fiberglass, and all three were pushing the design and technology envelopes in exciting and beautiful ways. To some degree, the Motorama dream cars exposed the general public to radical customs for the first time, when a car of the future could be anything you could think of…