The future is now!

[Celethiel]

you know those old Fifties Commericals showing "The Technology of tommorrow" and so on...

well i found an article about old visions of what car makers thought the future in car design was going to be.

https://autos.yahoo.com/photos/dream-cars-a-vision-of-the-future-of-automobiles-slideshow/

it is interesting... especially the fact that cars of their future never went into those directions.

[Zombie]

I love these "cars of the future” from the 50s and 60s, especially the American ones

My favorite is this - the Chrysler Turbine car powered by a gas turbine, a modified jet engine



Unlike most concept cars this was actually built. In fact 55 were produced in 1963 and extensively road tested by American families covering over 1 million miles. It was as economical as similar cars of the period with good performance and, with very few moving parts, was reliable and cheap to maintain. It could also run on any unleaded volatile liquid fuel including petrol, diesel, paraffin, alcohol - even whisky and perfume Users were sad to hand the cars back to Chrysler when the test programme ended in 1964.

Engineers delivered all their design briefs and Chrysler was going to put the car into production but new car safety laws diverted investment into complying with new requirements such as seat belts and airbags, and government support  for the program was pulled - so Chrysler abandoned the project and had all the cars crushed to avoid import duties as the car bodies had been built in Italy However, six were saved for museums and 3 others survive in private hands and are still maintained and drivable. Jay Leno owns one *jealous* and it's worth watching this short doc he made

  Edited May 7, 2014 by Zombie

[Bill W]

Maybe not everyone that envisioned the future was spot on, but you have to admire how many of them thought 'out of the box.'  There were some interesting ideas and concepts and many of those ideas inspired others to go off in their own direction, whether it was similar or totally different from the original concept.  

[Sasha Distan]

cars were never cooler than they were in 40's and 50's America. so jealous.

[hh5]