|
Michael Rose,
Tuesday, February 27 2007
|
America was smitten with jets in the 1950s. These fast and sleek planes represented the future and automotive designers rushed to incorporate high-flying styling cues into their earth bound vehicles. In 1950, General Motor’s larger than life head of styling, Harley Earl, brought the look of a fighter jet’s curved windshields, nose cone and afterburner to his LeSabre dream car. This long and low swoopy car featured aviation inspired air-cooled brakes and more importantly -- fins. He’d first introduced fins on the 1948 Cadillac after seeing a P38 Lightning-fighter at a local Air Force base during World War Two. He couldn’t wait to put those rudders on all of his car Post War cars. The fin fetish raged until they became ludicrous icons of the excess of the era. Earl’s LeSabre show car toured the country as part of the GM Motorama. It joined a host of other dazzling designer vehicles that the company used to generate excitement. People responded to the designers’ jet age creations and Earl pushed the concept to its illogical next stage – he ordered up a real jet powered show car. GM like several other automakers had been researching gas turbine engines since the 1930s. Its aviation engine division, Allison, was awarded the US Army contract to produce jet engines after the War. Since GM designers were creating jet like cars and the company’s engineers were building real jet engines why not put the two together? They did in 1954, GM introduced its first turbine car, the Firebird I. It was the hit of that year’s Motorama. Chrysler had been building prototype turbine powered cars but their vehicles looked like everyday sedans. The Firebird design was in synch with its futuristic powerplant. Though never intended for production it was more than just a show car. The Firebird I was capable of rocket like speeds of 230 miles per hour. The engineers kept pushing for more and more speed. This thrust developed exhaust temperatures of more than 1250 degrees F, which made it somewhat impractical in traffic, unless you wanted to torch everything in your wake. In 1956 General Motors unveiled its next, rocket shaped, turbine car, the Firebird II, complete with all the gadgets and goodies, that according to the PR film shown at the Motorama made the car ready " for the electronic highway of the future.” The four-passenger Firebird II was still a concept car but its regenerative gas turbine engine ran nearly 1000 degrees cooler. This would still peel the pant off any car in your wake but the car featured some useful innovations such as the first use of wheel disc brakes, fully independent four-wheel suspension and the sophisticated electronic guidance system to help you, ”take off on the highway of tomorrow." General Motors continued to entice the public with the romance of a turbine-powered future. GM engineers worked on the turbine for three more years, they wanted to make it practical for everyday driving and cut down on production costs. The stylists pushed the rocket ship design to the outer limits. In 1959, the Firebird III was launched. This car took the designers from the jet age to the space age. It had an aerodynamic glass fiber body and a pearly silver-gold paint job. Its wide, tapered nose, twin plastic bubble canopies over the passenger compartment and the high dorsal fin at the tail made it look like a rocket ship ready for take off. A steering wheel was too mundane for this wild craft. Instead, it featured a combination of "no-hands" steering and a single-stick “Unicontrol” developed by GM Research Laboratories. As a new promo film said, “You're ready now for the driving thrill of a lifetime." To some it was a comic book car that looked like it belonged in another galaxy and time. The Firebird project costs were also out of this world. The cars were too wild, too expensive and by the end of the decade, destined to be out of touch with the sleeker, slimmer, styles that would be typified by Jackie Kennedy’s Chanel suits. While the project was dropped the Firebird name reappeared in the sixties, on a Pontiac. The popularity of the experimental turbine cars outlived their namesake and still attracts the crowds whenever GM brings them out to car shows. But don’t stand behind one if they ever fire it up.
Related Items:
 |
