Features HAMB ERA PROTOTYPES

1955 ford la tosca, one of the best kustom-prototypes



and 55 ford mystere, similarly good

 

much less appropriate for this site but kool so i'm posting this 1969 century cruiser

 

The grille and bumper design looks like a takeoff or a precursor of the 1958-60 Squarebird Thunderbird
Here is a newer one with a Buick roof.
Movin/on

 

GMH (Australia) commenced building Holden's in 1948 and didn't produce station wagons until 1957, however GMH built limited prototype wagons. GMH had a prototype wagon built in 1952 by S.H Cordell, Bodyworks and Engineering. Note rounded sedan rear doors.













Other Ozzie coach builders built various derivatives. This is the original GMH built prototype. Note the square rear doors. Only a panel van (Sedan delivery) was offered, no wagons until 1957.





OEM panel van and sedan for comparison.

 

Interesting that it should resemble the Humber Super Snipe Series III, which would appear in 1960, much more than Pininfarina's work for BMC at the time:

Buick had a long tradition of cars which look like fish, be they live like this one, or dead like the '39

 

Thanks to everyone for finding all these cool photos of concept cars. Did anyone go to the 64- 65 worlds fair in N.Y.? My parents took me in 65. The best trip ever! I was about eleven. I never wanted to leave the G.M. or Ford pavilions . I drew this of the Firebird 4 in front of the GM pavilion. This car later became the 69 Century Cruiser. Ron...

 

…. The Flintstotron - X42 … Noted for it's conceptual renderings on "Run Flat" technology

 

I confess to being old enough to remember when that black/salmon color was all the rage - on cars/ in homes/2-piece ladies suits...

 

Yep I went with our school my first and only trip to a world's Fair. We must be about the same age I think I was 12 when we went.

 

I like the pink custom car.

 

Some of these may have been posted but this batch has nice and BIG shots


1954 Ford concept




1955 Ford La Tosca




1955 Ford Mystique




1956 Oldsmobile Golden Rocket



1958 Ford DePaolo

 

The 1954 Ford FX Atmos was unveiled at the 1954 Chicago Auto Show. It featured a glass dome roof, tail fins, rocket exhaust taillights and needle-like antennae protruding from front fender pods.



1954 Buick wildcat II



1958 Ford X-2000



1959 Cadillac Cyclone



again



1961 Ford Gyron



1962 Ford Seattle-ite

 

The Ford concept 1962 Cougar 406.

Named for the then new 406 405 HP engine in it.

 

Buick Wildcat










Trunk opened in two halves split down the middle.

 

1954 Ford FX Atmos






1965 Chevy surfer which featured the prototype AND a custom boat to match. both 396 powered to show off the new engine.

 

1964 Super Comet




Super Comet

It doesn’t appear there was ever any production intent for the Comet Super Cyclone, Mercury’s far-out fastback show car of 1964, but it’s still fun to wonder what if. Designed by Ford advanced stylist David L. Ash and his staff, the Super Cyclone was constructed by Dearborn Steel Tubing, a local Ford contractor that was also responsible for the Fairlane Thunderbolts, the Thunderbird Itelien concept, and other exotic skunkworks-type projects.



To create the Super Cyclone, famed designer-fabricator Vince Gardner and his associate Paul Shedlik, then in the employ of DST, started with a stock ’64 Comet Cyclone hardtop equipped with a 289 CID V8 and a Borg-Warner four-speed. After removing much of the factory sheet metal aft of the A-pillars, they modeled and constructed a new outer skin in fiberglass. The revised look sported radiused rear wheel openings to match the front and a radically sloped roofline to support a large, wraparound rear glass. Other custom features included a complete interior in white naugahyde, Astro custom wheels with bolt-on knockoffs, and teardrop racing mirrors. The revised front end treatment featured a custom grille with fine vertical teeth and French Cibie headlights. The rectangular lamps were popular on the custom car scene in the ’60s but technically, they weren’t legal for street use in
the U.S.




The Super Cyclone made its first public appearance at the Chicago Auto Show on February 8-15, 1964. The fastback was also a regular feature of the Lincoln-Mercury Caravan of Stars, a traveling exhibition on the hot rod show circuit, and in the April 1964 issue of Rod & Custom magazine it shared the cover with Ed Roth’s latest show rod, The Road Agent. We don’t know this, but since the Super Cyclone hasn’t been sighted in decades, we assume it was destroyed once its show career was over—the usual fate of show cars and concepts.

 

Caddy El Camino

The exciting dream car in Cadillac’s GM Motorama exhibit for 1954 was the El Camino, a close-coupled two-passenger coupe with a roof panel of brushed stainless steel. Note the red, white, and blue GM logo on the rear quarter panel. While the El Camino had no production future as a Cadillac, the name lived on in Chevrolet’s passenger-car pickup offered in 1959-1960 and 1964-1987.







The swimming pool at the swank Key Biscayne Hotel in Florida was a favorite location for show car photography in the Harley Earl era at GM. Shown here is the 1954 Cadillac Espada, a two-seat fiberglass convertible with a disappearing top. The flamboyant tailfins foreshadow the 1956 Eldorado production car.

 

Built by Dean Jefferies.

 

That roof worked a lot better on the first generation Barracuda, didn't it?

 

That is what they were contemplating when the barracuda was announced BEFORE the mustang or comet.

 

A few I like.

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Are those models not full sized cars?

 

Buick Skylark III

The Skylark III story begins in 1957 when General Motors executives and stylists, including Harley Earl, Harlow Curtice, and Ned Nickless, directed the construction of a full-scale clay model that was originally known as the Buick Skylark II. Built on a radically shortened Buick chassis, the model employed close-coupled two-seat coupe bodywork, but closely tracing the lines and styling theme of what was soon to become the 1959 Buick production car.




Management was pleased enough with the full-scale clay proposal that it contracted with famed coachbuilder Pininfarina of Cambiano, Italy, just south of Turin, to build an operating prototype. Actually, GM ordered two cars. One was a white coupe with sweeping, tapered tailfins (a little like the 1960 Dodge, folks would note today) and an elaborate, segmented grille, as shown.




The second car was painted silver and employed sharp, diagonal tail fins virtually identical to those found on the production ’59 Buick. In this form, the car (or cars) was now known as the Skylark III, with the internal GM experimental designation XP-75. Obviously, the Skylark III never made it to the showrooms; Buick would not offer a production two-seater until the Reatta was introduced in 1988. But the Skylark III did cut quite a dashing figure, and it did accurately foreshadow the dramatic styling of the ’59 Buick production cars.

 

I wonder where they got the pointed headlights on the white car.

 

The first one is a photo, the rest are just some of my models. I have always liked the concept cars of the 50s and 60s. Here's a few more if you like. Ron... Ron...

 

Based on a production 1963 F-85 convertible, the Oldsmobile J-TR show car is little known today, but it bears the unmistakable stamp of GM styling boss Bill Mitchell.



When General Motors closed down its Motorama traveling auto extravaganza in 1961, the automaker’s focus in show cars had shifted from scratch-built concept vehicles to tastefully customized versions of the company’s production models. One prime example is the 1963 Oldsmobile J-TR, based on a standard F-85 convertible but with a number of distinctive custom features.

Unmistakably the work of Bill Mitchell’s GM styling crew, the J-TR boasts a number of trendy ’60s touches, including a stylized racing stripe and futuristic Cibie rectangular headlamps from France. Note the slim two-piece front bumper, a striking departure from the production F-85, and the minimalist grille treatment.

Unveiled at the 55th annual Chicago Auto on February 16-24, the J-TR made the rounds of the national show car circuit in 1963, including the New York Auto Show where it shared the Oldsmobile stage at the Coliseum with the reigning Miss America, Jackie Mayer, and two companion show cars, the El Torero and the Custom Cutlass.





The split-bumper theme is continued at the rear, matched to subtly redesigned F-85 tail lamps. The wheels are elaborate aluminum castings with knockoff hubs, while the finned rocker panels with integral exhaust outlets—simulated, we presume—are yet another Mitchell studio trademark.

The color is Fire Frost Silver, a custom high-metallic paint (developed by Englehard Corp.) then available only on Cadillac and Corvette via special order. The name J-TR suggests there’s a Jetfire turbocharged aluminum V8 under the hood, although Olds didn’t offer the production Jetfire as a convertible, only as a coupe.



The cockpit (below) is probably the wildest aspect of the J-TR exercise, with four molded bucket seat modules and a custom instrument panel that sports four round dials instead of the rectangular layout of the production F-85. Check out the beautiful door panels in brushed aluminum, which might be our favorite feature.

 

Corvette Impala 1956

Work began on the five-place Corvette project, known internally at GM as XP-101, in July of 1955, and the Impala made its first public appearance in the General Motors Motorama at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York on January 19, 1956. GM stylists Carl Renner and Bob Cadaret included key elements of the two-seater production Corvette in the Impala’s look, including the large, Italianate radiator opening in the front, filled with a chrome grille bar with 13 sparkling teeth. (Production 1953-1957 Corvettes used the same number of teeth, coincidentally.) Discrete badging on the front header panel and rear deck indicated that despite the rear seat, the Impala was indeed a Corvette.




The body, fiberglass, naturally, with a brushed stainless roof panel rode on a conventional Chevy passenger car-type chassis with 116.5-inch wheelbase, with short-long arm independent front suspension and Hotchkiss drive with leaf springs at the rear.

A Corvette 265 CID V8 equipped with two-four-barrel carbs and rated at 225 hp was coupled to a Powerglide two-speed automatic gearbox, with the exhaust pipes snaked through the driveshaft tunnel. All fairly typical stuff underneath, though real wire wheels with knock-off hubs supplied some sports car flavor.




A folding armrest allowed occasional three-abreast seating in the front, with room for two more passengers in the coupe’s rear seat. The dramatic Interior fabrics were blue vinyl with a contrasting silver cloth in a heavy crossweave pattern. Instruments and controls were concentrated in a module directly in front of the driver, with an unusual speedometer that featured a horizontal array of sequential lamps that lit up in progressively brighter red as vehicle speed increased.






Originally finished in metallic turquoise, the Impala was repainted in medium metallic blue for the 1957 Motorama show season, and it made its debut in the new color at the Chicago Auto Show that year.

 

The 1961 Tempest Monte Carlo was loosely based on a Tempest production car, but with radical modifications, including a large chunk removed from the midsection to convert the compact sedan into a racy two-place roadster. Other sports car cues included a metallic blue interior with bucket seats, Halibrand mag wheels, and a cut-down plastic windscreen. For the 1962 show car season, wire wheels and a conventional passenger-car windshield were swapped in.





April of 1963, Bill Mitchell’s styling staff unveiled this full-sized fiberglass mockup to the Pontiac brass as a proposed treatment for the 1965 Grand Prix. The dramatic tapered fastback roofline, which recalls both the 1963-1967 Corvette coupe and the 1971-1974 Buick Riviera, never made it to production.





Buick’s entry in the final General Motors Motorama of 1961 was an Electra 225 convertible with several novel features, including a flamboyant custom paint job in shocking, shocking pink. Here’s the fabulous Buick Flamingo.

The Flamingo was based on a production Electra 225 convertible, but with several noteworthy modifications, starting with the color: an eye-searing pearlescent pink. Custom paints with trick pigments and toners—pearls, candies, metalflakes—were just coming into use in the custom car world in the early ’60s, but it would be many years before these finishes would be suitable for standard production cars.




The other key attraction of the Flamingo was the its full-house custom interior, which included two-tone upholstery in pink leather and cranberry brocade. A wide console with bright-metal trim ran between the front bucket seats, although the shift lever for the Turbine Drive automatic transmission remained on the steering column. The clock, mounted in the top of the dash on the production Buick, was relocated to the console riser, where it could possibly be mistaken for a tachometer. But the most novel addition was the pivoting passenger seat, which turned 180 degrees to face the rear passenger seats, ostensibly for outdoor entertaining tailgate parties and such.

 

Oh MY ! ! ! Those concept cars are just terrific ! I remember seeing a few of them in the various magazines of the day, brings back a whole lot of memories of being a kid and looking through my father's and uncles's car mags at the summer cottage. My uncles from Long Island all drove Mercury convertibles in the yellow and black and pink and black colors. They were most impressive when they arrived at the family cottage in those cars for vacation, they all towed speed boats behind. VERY fifties of them !

Thank you this thread !

 

I've always loved the Buick concept cars. Most looked like they could of put them right into production. Some company's cars were more like customs.
I would like to have any one of them in my garage to care for.


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