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Dream Cars, Girls & Reveals
For most of the past 120 years or so, men in particular (but not exclusively!) have loved fast and flashy cars. I’ve always enjoyed Jaguar’s sophisticated, enduring design, and solid and intelligent, no-nonsense engineering. They were never cheap, but they offered surprising value for the money. Sir William Lyons demanded of every car his company built: “Grace, Space, and Pace.” The clueless self-destruction of Jaguar’s gender(less) reveal party in Miami on December 2nd, unveiling their cars of tomorrow, is disconcerting to longtime fans of the firm’s twin chrome symbols, the Leaper and the Growler. (I realize, of course, that the company wants to get away from being associated with older buyers, especially male ones; I mean, these days, what advertiser doesn’t?)
Car shows—dream cars—and the men who dreamed of them: all very different once. Spring 1962. Easter Sunday was late that year, April 22. I was ten, and had just had my confirmation, a Catholic rite of passage for boys. As a reward, one of my uncles, an NYPD sergeant, generously took me to the New York Auto Show, at the Coliseum on the west side of Manhattan. It was there that I’d first encounter a dream car, as they were then called. The memory has an indelible connection to that other Madison Avenue exploitable corner of the male imagination, dream girls, as you will see.
Ford always sponsored one of the show’s biggest exhibits. A decade earlier, they presented the Futura, a bubble-topped dream car that was filmed being driven around Fifties Manhattan with the three Ford brothers (Edsel’s sons) in the front seat. Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably seen it. It was slightly restyled and completely repainted to become TV’s Batmobile.
For ’62, they presented a show car called the Cougar, which had nothing to do with the subsequent Mercury of that name. Cougar was never meant to be driven; it was a real car but designed only for occasions like this. On a stage under a ring of intense spotlights, it was gleaming with chrome and candy-colored turquoise bodywork.
A loudspeaker extolled the features of the experimental car, with a smooth, easy delivery that sounded like Motor Trend magazine embodied as a honey-voiced woman. Then the turntable revolved, and we saw the woman, speaking live, looking gorgeous and effortlessly reeling off details, of cubic inches and compression and final drive ratios. She paused for audience questions and strode over to us, the ring of spectators behind the railing, with a big smile. The first men she pointed the microphone at were startled or embarrassed. They babbled ignorable cliches. “Do you come with the car?”
And then, oh my brothers and sisters, with a great heavenly moving spotlight, the spokesmodel strolled over to me. “So, how about it? Do you have a question?”
I piped up eagerly, “Will this car really be for sale someday?”
She grinned even wider, delighted to have a question that had a stock answer. “Very possible, son. Very possible.” The crowd laughed and applauded. As far as ten-year-old me was concerned, adult life was going to be wonderful.
Of course, there was plenty else to see at the show that year. Studebaker displayed its new Avanti, a production car that looked like a show car. Designed by Raymond Loewy, it wasn’t enough to save Studebaker. But it was good enough to outlive its parent company by decades, as a series of investors kept Avanti going as a minor brand. Even as late as 1997 (Gattaca), moviemakers still used it as a futuristic car.
Israel was promoting its first sports car, the fiberglass-bodied Sabra; it got few if any US sales, but it had modest sales at home. There also were a couple of what we might now call vaporware cars, one electric, the other driven by a gas turbine. No vehicles, but prospectuses to offer investors. One actual electric car was on sale in ’62, the Henney Kilowatt, a Renault Dauphine with batteries.
Although there were a handful of experimental one-off cars built in the Thirties and Forties, the dream car phenomenon was really ignited in the Fifties by General Motors’ annual Motorama shows. These featured GM’s newest designs, including ones touted to be tomorrow’s cars. Held in a handful of cities, Motoramas traveled from town to town in custom-built transport trucks. They were enormously expensive, elaborate shows, ones that only the richest corporation in the world could afford.
There’s a hierarchy among show cars. The lowest level are mere “design exercises,” known more bluntly in the auto trade as “pushmobiles”—they are basically wheeled sculptures with no working innards (apparently what Jaguar displayed on Dec. 2). Most pushmobiles don’t even have useable doors. A “ghost interior” made of black felt simulates the shapes of a steering wheel and seat headrests.
A big step up are real cars with drivetrains and interiors. A chromed V-8 under the hood looks awesome. However, chances are it’s not a “runner.” The next step: drivable cars with working engines. Even those are seldom driven faster than a walking pace, just enough to get them out of the truck and onto the show floor.
Rarest of all are show cars intended for actual road use, like Ford’s Futura or Chrysler’s 1963 turbine cars. GM’s 90s electric car, EV1, was like Chrysler’s turbine car of 35 years earlier, a pilot marketing project: more than a pure experiment, less than an immediately saleable product.
Auto show cars often have exotic, super-expensive paint that looks great under the lights but whose colors fade fast in sunlight. These cars are seldom if ever safety-tested (if there’s only one in existence, you can’t crash-test two dozen of them). They aren’t made to stand up to rocky roads, torrential rain or freezing temperatures. And that’s primarily why, like GM’s EV1, they are destroyed once they leave the show circuit and the test market: Liability worries. America is a very litigious country. GM’s lawyers tried and failed to come up with a release-from-liability contract that would stand up (in Heinlein’s phrase) even before the Throne of God. Too bad for automotive history.
There are exceptions. Private collectors like the famous Joe Bortz and Jay Leno seek them out, sometimes even resurrecting them from junkyards. For them, GM, Ford, and Chrysler/Stellantis wink and look the other way, because Bortz and Leno are rich, sophisticated experts who won’t try to sue the company if the 40-, 50-, 60-year-old parts go wrong.
Dream cars are in movies and TV. We mentioned Gattaca’s Avanti and the Lincoln Futura-derived 1966 Batmobile. There are plenty of others. A Twilight Zone episode features Buick’s 1951 Le Sabre as a 21st-century car. The Outer Limits depicted the early 80s twenty years earlier by using cars from local L.A. customizers. Even the Nazis might have joined the act; in 1938, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer wrote to Volkswagenwerke, asking about the possibility of borrowing a few cars to film a futuristic European scene. The Germans, unsurprisingly, didn’t take Louis B. Mayer up on the offer, but did send MGM a lavish color brochure.
In 1957 and ’58, at the height of our love of automobiles, a wave of debunking books hit the best-seller lists, like Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders, or John Keats’ Insolent Chariots. In time, they’d help trigger the consumer movement. Both told the story of why car dealers put a red convertible in the showroom window, even though few buyers will ultimately order it: it brings in foot traffic from men. Vance Packard claimed it was because the convertible was a symbolic mistress. If so, most women accepted it as a fairly harmless rival, provided the family could afford it. Most men agreed that they couldn’t, not really, and then husband and wife both laughed it off while hubby dutifully signed on the dotted line for a sensible four-door sedan.
I once read a perceptive but somewhat cynical definition of romantic love: “A friendship based on beauty.” That’s not a fair way to treat a woman. But it’s a perfectly fair way to treat a show car.
Published in General
What fun! Thank you for another wonderful post.
I was never captivated by cars, but perhaps being out of major metro areas in my late 10s and teens prevented exposure at the right time.
I did appreciate the practical family cars we had. A 1968(7?) VW bus (the last year with swinging rather than sliding doors in the US). It went to Okinawa and back courtesy of the US government. The 1972 Chevy Blazer with a suspension like rocks, no fun in the back seat on the concrete US 2 in the UP that shifted every 50 feet. The 1975 VW Bug that gradually disappeared over only five years because my parents neglected to get it treated with Ziebart rust prevention.
But no dream cars.
Thanks as always for reading it, Clavius! I’m just a wee bit older, and I remember weekends in the Bronx with black and Latino dads out at the curb, doing repairs or impromptu spray can “repaints”. Even inner cities and their kids were car crazy in the 50s-60s.
You might ask (a corny rhetorical device; clearly, I’m proposing to do the asking for you), why did the GM Motoramas come to an end? A couple of reasons.
The GM styling department loved them. It gave their top talent a chance to try attractive designs that might catch fire with the public, like wraparound curved windshields, tailfins, and bucket seats. The 1953 Corvette was previewed as a show car that was rushed into production when the public loved it. But corporate GM noticed that Harley Earl’s styling department, in testing ideas soon to be on its cars, gave away a lot of clues to their competitors.
And the shows were extravagantly expensive, like the ones the tech industry has gifted itself with in our time. Television, rather than in-person attendance, became more important. The NY World’s Fair, with its costly dueling car company pavilions, ate into the promotion budgets.
But maybe a deeper reason: car brands segmented themselves. In 1952, there was one Chevrolet, on one wheelbase. One choice of engine. In 1953, there was the niche market, fiberglass bodied Corvette. But by 1967, there was Chevrolet, Chevy II Nova, Corvette, Corvair, and Camaro, with Chevelle around the corner. With a bewildering number of labels to update, GM opted to go for more enduring designs that would be freshened every three years or so, and substantially updated only once every seven. The radical annual face change was over, or at least diminished.
Car companies still exhibit at auto shows, and from time to time still present interesting new pre-production concept cars.
I’ve reached a point where I will not likely be buying many more cars or motorcycles (partly because the ones we have are so good), but until a few years ago there were still annual new car and bike shows around (maybe I just quit paying attention). We would make the trip to Dallas to check out the new bikes.
Having many years ago owned a Jaguar V-12 XKE…a lovely piece of machinery that drove and cornered like a dream. The leather seats felt like sitting in a large cupped hand. But not cheap to maintain.
I still like nice cars, but am old enough and uncomfortable enough about leaving one out, that I drive a 6 cyl. Toyota Avalon. I like it a lot. Reliable, smooth, good power to get up to and maintain highway cruising speed, and did I say reliable. Nice interior with good legroom, front and back. Nice capacity trunk. I’m going on a road trip in the spring/summer when I retire and am looking forward to taking it home to the NW.
BTW, about the sex divide. I had the Jag (and read Car and Driver back in the David E. Davis days when PJ O’Rourke wrote for them), my husband drives a mini-van. It was a large station wagon before that. I doubt he could identify a Jaguar without reading the name across the back.
Great article, Gary, as usual. Thanks for sharing.
Well, praise be unto you, Caryn! I haven’t heard anyone mention Car and Driver or David E. Davis in many a moon.
I miss Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Plymouth and Mercury. (I have nothing against Saturn, but they weren’t around long enough to impress me as a brand.) Olds was on the way back up, and GM gave it the funds and the time to field a good lineup. But its pretentions of being an upstart US BMW rival were a joke.
The end of Plymouth happened almost a quarter century ago. I am still surprised because it was a well established brand name with a reasonably good reputation. But apparently they and Dodge grew to cover much the same price territory, so Chrysler ditched the chrome Mayflower and went with the rams’ horns of Dodge as the corporation’s low-to-mid-priced champions.
Killing off Pontiac, which was starting to do well again in the US, was a political move, made under duress to secure a Federal bailout. Obama’s Team Auto, directed by Steven Rattner, had the authority over city halls and unions that only Democrats could wield. Their Wall Street-trained advisors felt that GM had too many brands, and Pontiac was merely a slightly more expensive Chevrolet. There’s a coarse grain of truth there; but the existing arrangements also gave GM the ability to license more dealerships. Pontiac gave Buick and Cadillac dealers a less expensive line to sell..
Mercury’s a funny case because the brand that was promoted in the Sixties as “The Man’s Car” was, by the end of its run, being promoted by spokesmodel Jill Wagner as being all but explicitly The Woman’s Car”. Neither label seemed to do much good. Buyers knew well that Mercury dealers had two cars to sell: a stripped Lincoln and a gussied-up Ford.
NTTAWWT.
I always liked Pontiac. They had their own variations on steering, suspension, engine … even the feel of the gas pedal was different. The GM sport line. That culminated for me with my ’94 Trans Am, the first year they were reintroduced. I gave it up when I moved to NYC in 2000.
Auto shows aren’t as interesting as they used to be. Prior to the 2008 economic crash, practically every mainstream brand would have a new concept car every year. General Motors would have about half a dozen new concept cars every year, as there was typically one for each brand. But with the 2008 crash, budgets had to be slashed, and concept cars were one of the things cut. From 1991 to 2016, I went to the Chicago Auto Show 22 times. I’ve only gone once since then. It’s just not as interesting without the concept cars, and nowadays you maybe see one out of every five brands will have a concept car in any given year.
When I have more time I will come back and share some auto show pictures.
When a lad in high school I regularly drooled over the XKE ads in Car & Driver and Sports Car Graphic magazines. $5500 manufacturer’s list price! But it was never more than a dream.
Or another: the 1963 Ford Mustang concept car, never in production as a 2-seater:
I agree about the “mistress” feeling of a convertible.I have a “little car”, my SC430. She drives like a luxurious dream, will go 150 (I’m told), the retractable hardtop always amuses, and she’s made by Lexus so there’s none of that “expensive to maintain” business – nothing ever breaks.
(Ehem. I did have to replace the exhaust system, and it was $8,000! 3 catalytic converters on that tiny car! But we’ll say no more about that.)
Some history: Marketing early electric cars to women.
As a commenter at Chicago Boyz mentioned, weird that the article did not mention the problem of starting: prior to the electric starter, this required hand-cranking, which could actually lead to injury if you weren’t careful.
Berthe Benz and the first road trip.
Not sure about the front end on that one. Looks like it might try to sail. Like the funny cars that take flight if they accelerate too hard.
That car has those large air intakes ahead of the rear wheels because this concept car is mid-engined. Ford used that styling element on-and-off in production Mustangs for decades, even though the production Mustang is front-engined.
Yes, those evil, manipulative auto manufacturers. In a just world, cars would be viewed as transportation appliances, arousing no more passion than washing machines. In later decades, it would be a common theme for car haters to joke that men who love cars are impotent or have some other sort of sexual dysfunction.
Dodge Copperhead, from the 1997 Chicago Auto Show
Mercury MC4, from the 1997 Chicago Auto Show
Cadillac Cien, from the 2002 Chicago Auto Show
Mazda Ryuga, from the 2007 Chicago Auto Show
Mitsubishi Concept-RA, from the 2008 Chicago Auto Show
Buick Riviera, from the 2008 Chicago Auto Show
Kia GT4 Stinger, from the 2014 Chicago Auto Show
Designed for low coefficient of drag when traveling backward.
Maybe that profile is not as bad as it looks. This was Richard Petty’s NASCAR Plymouth Road Runner Superbird, and the front profile looks quite similar.
These days it’s trucks and SUVs, because sports cars are no good for bugging out when society crumbles.
We’re pretty much there now, thanks to federal mpg requirements. Available styling choices are a uniform water drop (sedan) or a truck (SUV).
You underestimate how much passion is aroused by washing machines in some circles.
I tried, but I couldn’t find a CoC-compliant image to illustrate the point.
That front end is not very Dodge-like. More like a Mazda or a Saturn.
A few years back at a neighborhood party, the guys were discussing the cool, fast cars they had in the past. At that point most of us were driving sedans or minivans, but I had also kept my Mustang GT convertible. One of the guys who had been quiet piped up that he didn’t need a fast car to prove his manhood. Maybe the delivery was off, but it didn’t come across as a joke. We continued on with our conversation. Two years later we see him driving up the street in a BMW Z4.
Gary, thanks for a great essay. In the late 60’s Jean Sheperd of A Christmas Story fame had a monthly column in Car and Driver magazine. You not only could dream about some of the cars featured in the magazine but Sheperd’s column by itself was a great read.
From the December 1973 issue of Car and Driver, “I’m a Good Driver…” written by Jean Sheperd.
You can read the entire essay by clicking on the link.
The post and the comments are a blast.
Great story. It reminded me of the first auto show my father took me to in Milwaukee in the early 60s when I was probably 8 or 9 years old. I think I may have seen the same turbine car you mentioned. But the most memorable thing was our brief appearance on local television news. There was a transparent V8 engine model on display with moving parts and my dad was explaining to me how it worked. Unknown to us at the time, a news crew captured that scene on film and broadcast it during the evening newscast. My father received several calls from people in our small village telling us we’d been on television. Back then, the only chance most kids had of being on television was as a guest of the local kid shows that most large cities had at the time. But we missed the broadcast, and I never saw my television debut.