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Cars of Futures Past – 1981 Cadillac V-8-6-4
1981 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Photo courtesy GM Media Archive. Variable-displacement engines are used by a variety of manufacturers today, including Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Chrysler and Honda,...
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Cars of Futures Past – The Chevrolet Corvair
1969 Chevrolet Corvair Coupe. Photo courtesy GM Media. It was Shakespeare who penned the words, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Though spoken in regard to Hamlet’s...
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Cars of Futures Past – Ford Probe
1993 Ford Probe GT. Photo courtesy Ford Motor Company. Throughout much of its existence, the Ford Mustang has been ruled by a few design imperatives: It must be rear-wheel drive, it must have the...
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Cars of Futures Past – The Taylor Aerocar
An Aerocar Series I prototype. Photo by Lotzman Katzman. The dream of flying cars has likely been with us since the first automotive traffic jam, but making the leap from concept to certification and...
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Cars of Futures Past – Oldsmobile Aurora
First-generation Oldsmobile Aurora. All images courtesy GM Media Archives, unless otherwise noted. Prior to its 2004 shuttering by General Motors, Oldsmobile, founded in 1897 by Ransom E. Olds, had...
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Cars of Futures Past – Chevrolet Vega
1971 Chevrolet Vega hatchback. Photos courtesy GM Media Archives. Designed to go head-to-head with the best compact cars in the world, the Chevrolet Vega seemed like it had the potential to modernize...
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Cars of Futures Past – Mazda Cosmo
Mazda Cosmo Coupe. Photo courtesy Mazda. At the dawn of the 1960s, Mazda was a little-known Japanese manufacturer of light-duty trucks, with a single urban commuter car (the R-360) to its credit. Like...
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Cars of Futures Past – Ford Model T
Henry Ford with a 1921 Model T. Images courtesy Ford Motor Company. Though Henry Ford’s name is often associated with the birth of both the automobile and the manufacturing assembly line, he actually...
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Cars of Futures Past – GM EV1
GM’s EV1 electric car. All images courtesy GM Media Archives. Modern electric cars seemingly fall into the same category as politics or religion, and it’s virtually impossible to discuss any of these...
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Cars of Futures Past – Stout Scarab
Photo by Mark J. McCourt. William Stout wasn’t just an automotive engineer. In fact, the man billed as the “father of modern aviation” had a series of aeronautical credits to his name, including the...
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Cars of Futures Past – Ford Nucleon Concept
Ford’s Nucleon concept, wearing current livery. Images courtesy Ford Motor Company. The mid-1950s were a time of boundless optimism in the United States. Scientists had harnessed the limitless (and...
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Cars of Futures Past – Citroen DS
Once in a very rare while, a new car comes along to raise the bar for both style and technical innovation. In the history of the automobile, there are perhaps few better examples of this than the 1955...
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Cars of Futures Past – 1948 Tucker 48
Tucker Model 48, number 1034. Photos courtesy RM Auctions. Fortune, the saying goes, favors the bold. Were that truly the case, the Tucker Model 48 would have been an uncontested success for Tucker...
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Cars of Futures Past – 1986 Corvette Indy concept
1986 Corvette Indy Concept. Photos courtesy GM Media Archives. Generally speaking, concept cars exist to showcase designs and technologies under development by automakers, that may or may not be ready...
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Cars of Futures Past – 1901 Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus and Mixte
Ferdinand Porsche’s 1901 ‘Semper Vivus,’ the world’s first hybrid automobile. Photos courtesy Porsche AG. Ask a casual observer to name the first hybrid automobile, and the responses are likely to be...
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Cars of Futures Past – 1954 Kaiser Darrin 161
1954 Kaiser Darrin 161. Photograph by David LaChance. If asked to name the first production American sports car with a convertible top, inline six-cylinder engine and a fiberglass body, most...
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Cars of Futures Past – 1966 GM Electrovan
GM Electrovan. Photo by Daniel Strohl. In 2000, automaker Honda began using its experimental FCX-V3 hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicle as the official pace car of the Los Angeles marathon, and by 2002...
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Cars of Futures Past – 1976 Tyrrell P34
Jody Scheckter drives the Elf-Tyrrell P34 at the 1976 German Grand Prix. Photo courtesy Lothar Spurzem. In Formula 1, arguably racing’s highest level of evolution, the difference between victory and...
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Cars of Futures Past – Tatra T77 and T87
Tatra 77 advertisement calls it “the elegant car.” Public domain image. Fans of the Dakar Rally (formerly the Paris-Dakar Rally) will likely recognize Tatra as a manufacturer of heavy-duty trucks,...
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Cars of Futures Past – Cord L-29
Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1929 Cord L-29 Cabriolet. Photo courtesy Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Today, front-wheel-drive cars make up the vast majority of new car offerings, but rear-drive cars still...
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