  Cman710 Member Username: Cman710 Post Number: 28 Registered: 07-2006 |
Hey everyone, On another thread, several members have started to talk about concept cars, so I figured that we might as well start a thread and see where posts lead us. So, does anyone know what has happened to many of the older concept cars? Are they all kept in storage? Have some been destroyed? Have individuals ever been able to buy them as collector's items? What is the oldest concept car that you know of an American manufacturer featuring? | ||
56packman Member Username: 56packman Post Number: 744 Registered: 12-2005 |
Chrysler has the Newport (1941 concept car) Thunderbolt (also a 1941 concept car), Chrysler Special (1953 concept car),the 1963 Chrysler Turbine car, a concept of which 50 copies were built and lent to 200 persons in 50 states to evaluate, the Interceptor (1982 concept car)the Atlantic (1995 concept car) and the Chronos (2000 concept car) on display currently at their Walter P. Chrysler museum in Auburn hills. Perhaps the oldest "concept car" might be the 1924 Chrysler touring car prototype on display at the walter P.--it was one of seven prototypes built by the Maxwell corporation by the brilliant turn-around man they hired to save the company, Walter P. Chrysler. After fixing several endemic problems in the Maxwell line he had his exceptionally talented "three Musketeers" engineering team of Zeder,Breer and Skelton design a new car that bore his name. That car took off like wildfire, and the following year Chrysler bought Maxwell and renamed it the Chrysler Corporation. | ||
56packman Member Username: 56packman Post Number: 745 Registered: 12-2005 |
Joe Bortz from Chicago purchased several GM concept cars from Warhoop's junk yard (Sterling Heights?) and restored them. Harley Earl's Y-job and X-car were on display at the HFM, on semi-perminent loan from the Sloan Museum in Flint. Packard's 1933 "Car of the dome" (special sedan created as a concept for the 1933 Century of Progress in Chicago) was just sold at auction from the estate of the late Otis Chandler. The last Packard concept, the Predictor is on display at the (new) Studebaker museum in South Bend, IN. The City of Detroit historical collection has one of the Packard Pan-American concept cars, one that was modified with 1955 styling accents, it's one of the many cars that the DHC has on loan to outside museums. | ||
Gravitymachine Member Username: Gravitymachine Post Number: 1398 Registered: 05-2005 |
GM has a facility in Sterling Heights called the Heritage center that houses, catalogs, restores, and displays most of their most concept/historic/noteworthy cars. The collection is always on rotation as vehicles are sent out to various other sites like the tech center, HQ and other GM sites around the world. Its not open to the public unfortunately, but I've been and its amazing. | ||
Gravitymachine Member Username: Gravitymachine Post Number: 1399 Registered: 05-2005 |
the oldest concept car, or at least widely regarded as the "first" concept car is the Buick Y-job, designed by Harley Earl himself. It still runs and drives, I've seen it motoring around the tech center before....though that wasn't nearly as cool as first hearing, then seeing the firebird III driving around! (its a turbine powered car for those who aren't familiar) | ||
Yaktown Member Username: Yaktown Post Number: 57 Registered: 02-2006 |
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Yaktown Member Username: Yaktown Post Number: 58 Registered: 02-2006 |
Firebird concepts comin' atcha!    | ||
Cman710 Member Username: Cman710 Post Number: 35 Registered: 07-2006 |
Very cool concepts...what year was the firebird released? I like the horizontally narrow front grill. (Message edited by cman710 on November 29, 2006) | ||
Fury13 Member Username: Fury13 Post Number: 1236 Registered: 10-2003 |
"Joe Bortz from Chicago purchased several GM concept cars from Warhoop's junk yard (Sterling Heights?) and restored them." I went to Warhoops once in the '70s or '80s, saying I wanted to look around the salvage yard, and they let me. I saw the wreck of an old GM concept car. It looked like it was beyond repair. Now I realize that it was the LaSalle II (see photo in the link), which was saved by Joe Bortz. http://info.detnews.com/joyrid es/story/index.cfm?id=408 | ||
Supersport Member Username: Supersport Post Number: 10937 Registered: 10-2003 |
You wouldn't have been happy with it anyways Fury, probably would have had a bunch of rattles and what not, surely not up to your standards.  | ||
Fortress_warren Member Username: Fortress_warren Post Number: 238 Registered: 10-2006 |
The Firebird and couple more were in the dome at the Tech Center in the early 70's. My only trip to Warhoops was to find heat exchangers for a Beetle that weren't rusted out. No luck. Never did see anything like concept cars, he had the largest collection of foreign cars in the Metro Detroit area. How that happened in Sterling Heights instead of somewhere on the West side, where all the foreign cars were, needs 'splaining. | ||
56packman Member Username: 56packman Post Number: 757 Registered: 12-2005 |
not to threadjack here, but some friends and I got into Mound auto wrecking in the early 80's (like about 1980) when they were going out of business. They had sold the land to developers who built an industrial park on the site. The deal with the developers was the new owners got all of the cars--they scrapped them for the metal. I don't think Mound had ever scrapped a single car. They had cars going back to the early 30's including a badly rusted (not salvageable) Chrysler Imperial. Lots of other cars. You could by a complete car from them, but you had to replace it with another junk car--year, make or model didn't matter, so long as the head count remained the same. You could buy a 55 Chevy and replace it with a '73 Vega. I got lots of Packard parts. There were badly weathered and rusted Chrysler Town & Country convertibles, the wood looked like driftwood. There were unibody AMC cars, bent in half in the middle. I learned how to fumigate a junkyard car before getting inside to remove parts, and came home one day with more mosquito bites on my back then I knew was possible. Learned about Cutters insect repellant too, much better than Off! | ||
Fury13 Member Username: Fury13 Post Number: 1237 Registered: 10-2003 |
"You wouldn't have been happy with it anyways Fury, probably would have had a bunch of rattles and what not, surely not up to your standards." Naaah, Sport, it's just the American PRODUCTION cars that were and are full of defects. The concept cars were just fine... they were handmade and custom-built... | ||
Polaar Member Username: Polaar Post Number: 16 Registered: 10-2006 |
There are some at the Henry Ford Museum - The 1951 Buick LeSabre concept car, and a small model of the 1958 Ford Nucleon, a proposed atomic-powered car. I'm pretty sure there are others as well. | ||
Yaktown Member Username: Yaktown Post Number: 60 Registered: 02-2006 |
The pics I posted above were taken at the Meadowbrook Concours in 2002. It was the first and only time I've gone. I believe the first three pics are of a 1956 Firebird concept (Firebird II?) and the other two are the 1959 concept, Firebird III maybe. | ||
Adamtc1 Member Username: Adamtc1 Post Number: 7 Registered: 10-2006 |
My stepfather works for a company that builds concept cars for all the major auto makers (GM, Ford, Chrysler, Nissan...) They are called Special Projects Inc., based out of Plymouth, MI. They have built many of the cars you see at the NAIAS. They store the cars for the auto makers after all the shows and photo shoots are over with. Then every so often they hold auctions and sell all of the cars. I know that the auto makers keep some of them but I had the opportunity to own a concept truck by Ford from the early 90's but lost it to someone else. | ||
Cman710 Member Username: Cman710 Post Number: 39 Registered: 07-2006 |
When you owned your concept truck, what did you do for maintenance? It seems like some systems within the car would be proprietary, which would make servicing more of a challenge, especially in some of the more radical concepts. | ||
Adamtc1 Member Username: Adamtc1 Post Number: 8 Registered: 10-2006 |
I never actually was able to own it, it was sold to someone else before I was able to get it. The mechanics of the truck were pretty well stock, a larger engine than most but it was more concept design, such as the body and interior. |
