Last week, we studied the beauty of speed by looking at some of the more inspiring designs found on the land speed course - then and now. This week, I thought it would be fun to do the same thing with some of the more outlandishly designed concept ca... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
I'm LOVIN' that Pontiac Club de Mer.... My brain's already trying to cook up how to do that.... I really need to develop metalworking skills. dv
Sorry never go near that stuff....... always looks like you'd get part of your cloths caught if you bumped into the wrong spot Then I'd be explain'n to MOM again 'How I got my jacket torn'
The Ford X200 was never built, this car was approximated from a model by Andy Saunders in England, it started off as a 62 Mercury. I think the nose piece might have been an original Ford mock up part, I have the details in an old Custom Car magazine but I'll never find it.
The cool thing about these is how you see bits and pieces of the styling appear on later model production cars. As an example look at this one, the 51 Buick Lesabre.
I'm sitting here trying to put the connection together between the sexy dream cars and the loose & sexy naughty lady of easily obtained pleasures. If you have the car, do you get the lady? If you don't have the car, does the lady help you get over your short comings? If you have both is it like winning the car guy lottery?
I'm afraid that if you showed up here with ANY part of this car as part of a '49 Mercury, you'd have to have ass reconstruction surgery.
Rich We can start a list........ If you have the car you might get the lady if: You use the right goop on your hair. Wear the right after shave. AND Shave! Have the right job. Drink the right whiskey. Smoke only cigarettes and the right ones. Tell her you know Bruce Lancaster (He was famous for knowing stuff then too) And show her your Briggs & Stratton
Are any of these conceptual vehicles, that were built, still in existence? Or are they stuffed away in private collections or hacked up and permanently discarded?
Style is a funny thing. When viewing those pics, some made me throw up in my mouth a little, but the next car would be so good it was easy to choke back down.
Great thread!Brings back a lot of memories of my childhood.I still have the two keychain tags I got at the 1956 GM Motorama.Those dream cars(the word,"concept" didn't come along until much later)were just that;something to fire up your imagination of what kind of car you would be driving when you finally grew up. Their real purpose was essentially the same as it is todayraw in the people(read potential customers)in off the street and after they wipe the drool off their mouths(but before the glaze goes out of their eyes)steer them toward today's production models.The female models only added to the mix. And yes;a lot of them were outrageous but in an era where various shades of gray were the norm,they stood out like a hooker in church.Sort of like people going by a particularly horrible accident scene:You can't help but look. And in a lot of the car designs,you could usually tell who the designer was from certain cues;Harley Earl for his lavish use of chrome;Virgil Exner for his fins and aysmmetrical touches and so on. Personally the more outrageous looking they are the more I like them.
You never got close enough to tear you jacket on one....... they were f'n dangerous. Not to mention the woopin I got DREAM?...................... MY ASS
Check out all the skinny Whitewalls on some of these early '50's cars! I think the styling departants at GM were all given what became the Corvette floor pan and windshield off the Le Sabre and then the different divisions each made a styling statement on it. The LeSabre (and Y-Job) was a Corvette size car but looks larger because they put 13" wheels on it and the smaller than you expect wheels trick your eye into thinking the car is bigger, especially in a photo without any other items to judge size by.
All three Turbine Firebirds are in the AACA museum near Hershey right now. The Le Sabre will be at Hershey next week. Sure would like to put some DNA on that red Corvette.
A lot of George Barris' later stuff was garish and silly looking IMHO, but the Futura (and the Parisienne) was one where it looks better after he was finished than when he started.
Guess many of us like the style of the work that was done for the '50s dream/show cars because they often were incorporated into the designs of the cars we grew up with and continue to enjoy. The future looked a bit different at that point. The Paris motor show pictures would indicate that the efforts to get attention with dream/concept vehicles is still on going, but in a very different world.
A concept that made production 1956 Gaylord Gladiator Production run: 3 Survivors: 2 Whereabouts: Unknown In 1955 Chicago enthusiast Ed Gaylord took his dream of a American Sports car to Brooks Stevens to design. The car was built in Germany by Spohn of Ravensburg. It was powered by a Cadillac V8, 365 ci engine developing 305HP at 4700 rpm.
To answer Sixinarow's question, I have never seen the Stingray referred to as a XP-87 but the '59 Stingray is still very much in existence and my favorite. If I could scratch build a replica it would be that one. Furthermore, I think that the Chrysler design studios have done a fine job with their concept cars lately and Chryco in general has brought a number of them to production...but that is OT. Okay, back on topic the dream cars of the fifties show some of the best design elements of auto design when the stylist was king and the engineer was second place.
If I recall correctly(and these days I rarely do)it was actually referred to as the XP-887.I assume that refers to,"eXperimental Prototype # 887.I believe each idea was assigned a number and I'm sure a lot never made it past the sketch. One of the other Corvette prototypes(The Mako Shark)was indeed made aftermarket in either kit of finished form.It was created by a friend of mine named John Silva(who sadly passed away a couple years ago)and was called the,"Maco";obviously for copyright infringement reasons.John built several cars and while an extremely talented fabricator was somewhat less as a businessman.It was eventually acquired by Joel Rosen of Motion Performance who marketed them for awhile.I still have some of John's original sales literature around including a full color rendering of the cover. John also built one of the cars(I don't recall which one)for the Ford Custom Caravan of the mid-60's.
some place i have a double page spread from a 50'S LOOK magazine with 5-6 of these models grouped together i have to go look for it .. well i just spent an hour lookin thru old posters and have not found it yet ... will keep lookin tho...man do i have lots stuff sheeeeeeeeeese
My favorite Chrysler concept car from the 60s. The XNR styled by Virgil Exner. If I can find the car he did for his son I'll post it. You won't believe that it was his daily driver! Here's his son's car... woooooHere's his son's car... woooooah!
I'm endlessly fascinated by these dream cars from that era and the imagination that went into them. They weren't even based on previous automobiles so much as being a part of the "jet-age" and then space-age. From Virgil Exner's "The Look Of Things":
In the pics you posted Ryan, I see similarities in the beauty of speed and style. Part of beauty, for me, is design. With all of the images from each blog there's obvious thought to "movement" and although style and speed are different motivators they cross many of the same intersections while designing. The more I learn (and the more time I spend here) the more I appreciate the thought process behind design and the beauty within the execution of the processes.
Looking at the Lincoln Futura it is easy to see where Barris got the inpiration to build the Batmobile.