In 1940, General Motors sent out a fleet of Flash Gordon like space cruisers to show America the way to utopia.

In an era when GM reigned supreme, the Parade of Progress was its way of bringing its view of the future to the hinterlands.

One dozen identical streamlined, red and silver, behemoths (shaped something like prewar toasters) called "Futurliners" caravanned across the country with fifty spiffy, young and articulate GM executives in order to preach the gospel of the marvels of atomic power, jet propulsion, stereophonic records, microwave ovens and television.

While they stumped for the acceptance of television, the Parade was a product of the pre-TV age. When television became more than a tantalizing miracle and GM could reach more people with one episode of Dinah Shore than the Parade could touch in a year, the Futurliners were permanently parked.

After a few years in General Motors possession, the once proud Futurliners, harbingers of our destiny, were sold off to free up storage space. They ended up in various roles; working for a brewery, a tool company, a touring vaudeville company and as a Michigan Police department's mobile anti-drunk driving movie theater. Some were left in a farmer’s field in Illinois. Others found a future in Southern California junkyards. Motivated by the same missionary zeal that prompted the original Parade push, a later day futurist named Don Mayton, a retired GM Plant Manager convinced NATMUS (National Automotive & Truck Museum of the United States, Inc.) to help him restore a Futurliner in their collection. Joe Bortz, head of the Bortz Auto Collection, had donated his dilapidated Futurliner to NATMUS but they didn’t the money or time to restore it.