I finally got my dad to dig out some his stuff he got from Ford Chrysler and GM when he was a kid... I guess back then, if a kid asked for something with a letter, they let loose with the goodies. I scanned some of the brochures he got from Fords (what people from Detroit call Ford), this is a small taste, mostly from around '55-'56. When I was a kid in the 70's I would go down to the basement and go through these things over and over, I'd even try to draw the cars myself. Here is the cover of a Ford Dream Cars brochure, it is about 8.5" x 11", it folds out to about 17" x 22" The inside opened up (the back has some glue marks where he put it in a scrapbook, but there was nothing but an address there anyway). Heres both sides of an accordian brochure. there are some doubles with the one above, but there is more test about the dream cars.
Here's one of the envelopes the stuff came in, and a postcard size picture of one of the cars, the backs are blank. Turnpike Cruiser Lincoln Futura, Holy crap Capt. Obvious, it looks like the Batrmobile!
Seems like the Ford concept cars were much further out than GM's, and produced little that ended up on production cars. When you look at the Motorama cars, there are hundreds of details that were mined for use on the regular lines within a couple of years.
Nice to see people share this stuff with everyone.Thanks,too much of this cool stuff gets hidden away,never to be seen again.Very cool.
I wouldn't exactly say that the Futura "survived" after barris got ahold of it. kool stuff! Bring on the GM!
Good stuff Mike. It's interesting to see where the designers went when the bean-counters were not involved. Let's see more. The somewhat smaller Mike
I love that old historical stuff. It's always cool to look at these things and see where peoples heads were at at that time. Especially when you live in their future and get to see what they thought it would be. Sometimes you wish they were right,... and sometimes you are glad they weren't. I always love the concept cars though. It seems like back in the 50's and 60's there was alot more imagination and artistic effort. Not everything had to have a purpose, some things were there for your ocular pleasure.
I will take one "Nucleon" Please. Is Ford still offering no interest for 60 months? That would be sweet. It is like a "Factory" Deora. It looks like Cadillac also used the rear fin idea from the x-1000 Too bad that they are all probably smashed now.......
Two books to look for: "Ford Styling" and "Ford at Fifty (1953)" The latter contains a big photo showing dozens of styling study models, some familiar, laid out on the floor!
I have some more Ford stuff, but they are more like large, multiple page brochures, press kits, some really nice illustration work, Lot's of Rotunda brochures too. This is the tip of the iceberg, he has all the regular sale brochures too. Ryan, he was really into the European sports cars back then, so he has a bunch of brochures and press kits from Mercedes, Porsche, Jaguar, MG, Triumph, etc. Might be a good idea to keep them off the HAMB and post them on GJ.
A couple of posters have mentioned the Futura. In case someone doesn't all ready know, The Futura went on to become the Batmobile. The X100 is in the Henry Ford Museum.Several others are also in the museum, including a Chrysler Turbine.
Didn't some guy in Europe somewhere build a full size, functional X-2000, complete with the (nonfunctional) rocket thrusters on the back? I swear I've seen pictures. Great stuff, looking forward to the Mopar pictures, hopefully lots of Exner-influenced stuff in that set.
I too sent off to car manufactures for what they called a "Press Package" of their car lines during the 50's & 60's when I was a kid. I only have one and it's from Chrysler on the '58 DeSoto. I'll scan the pictures and post them when he runs the MOPAR stuff.
The '55 and '56 Chrysler 300 press kits are stupid cool, got one photograph of a 58 too. Here's one more Ford, Mustang II, Cougar II and Allegro
A lot of the Dream car/ Concept car stuff for most of the car manufactures was subcontracted out to a place called "Creative Industries" . ( the Buick Riv was actually called "the 1963 Silver Arrow")
I saw several of the Ford cars at the Rotundra when I was a kid and living in Dearborn. The chopped Riviera was in a museum in Flint sometime in the eighties when they had a display of Bill Mitchell's cars.I was doing a seminar in Flint and I think the museum was the Sloan museum. Don't think it is still there.
It's not just Detroiters that called it "Fords." A lot of folks in Ohio where I grew up stick an S at the end of names that shouldn't have had it - K-Marts, Wal-Marts. Etymologically, I think they originally expressed a possessive (as in, "I'm shopping at Ford's place."), but that form changed over time to a simple s. Great find, btw.
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