May 29, 2015

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Published by The Bee Publishing Company, Newtown, Connecticut

INDEXES ON
PAGES 36 & 37

Dream Cars
Innovative Design, Visionary Ideas

BY JAMES D. BALESTRIERI
INDIANAPOLIS, IND. Once upon a time, the
future was a bright, highly polished thing, sleek
with speed, speed that flew at the speed of thought.
We would zip around in flying cars from homes that
cleaned themselves to work that did itself to play in
fields where our senses and dreams mixed and mingled until the boundaries between them fell away.
The smallest thing, the atom, would get us there.
Unless it killed us first.
Small things rule now, some even smaller than
atoms: electrons; viruses both kinds; amino acids.
We are still here, but the future has taken on the
weaponized patina of the apocalypse. Now, the
future, as we envisioned it once upon a time, is
revivified in Dream Cars: Innovative Design,
Visionary Ideas, on view at the Indianapolis
Museum of Art through August 23.
The show is part of our past, a thing for which we
are nostalgic. The exhibition is brought to life by
some pretty nifty state-of-the-art micro/nanotech,
courtesy of the Net tech that the dream car
designers of the 1940s and 1950s could just about
imagine. In the fashion of Disneys Test Track at
Epcot, visitors can design their own cars, virtually,
and test them, replicating in minutes what once

took months when the dream teams at Detroits

General Motors, Torinos Pininfarina and others
sculpted models out of clay and subjected them to
wind tunnel tests with jets of ink marking the
movement of air over the bodies of cars. To add even
more to the exhibition, a tablet app allows visitors to
explore features inside the cars that would otherwise be inaccessible. So, how we experience the
exhibition is part of what the exhibition is about.
Todays microtechnology facilitates our appreciation
of yesterdays whiz-bang macro vision of today.
Nevertheless, it is the cars that captivate their
long lines and low silhouettes, the graceful, swooping fenders on some, and the functional, spare,
Space Age simplicity that characterizes others.
Those of us who grew up on dream cars drew
dream cars. Drawing dream cars in the margins of
textbooks and the pages of our wide-ruled spiral
notebooks sometimes roused the wrath of our teachers. But the long nose and high spoiler on the
Plymouth Superbird? Excaliburs 1970s revival of
low-slung, growling, 1930s roadster style? The Blue
Flame going for the land speed record on the
Bonneville Salt Flats? The Snake and the
Mongoose? (I will leave you the pleasure of looking
up those two.) The gull-wing DeLorean in the Back

to the Future movies? They wanted you to draw

them, to weld your own imagination onto them and
send your nuclear-powered turbine hybrids into
outer space.
What is amazing about the Dream Cars in
Indianapolis, apart from their beauty and style, is
the sheer number of what were then futuristic gadgets that are now standard features on automobiles.
As examples, the seats in the 1936 Stout Scarab, a
proto-minivan, could be reconfigured and even positioned around a table, the 1951 GM Le Sabre XP-8
boasted heated seats and could run on either gas or
ethanol, and the 1956 Buick Centurion XP-301 did
away with rearview mirror in favor of a closed-circuit TV camera mounted above the tail cone that
displayed traffic behind you on a 4-by-6-inch monitor on the dashboard. Moisture sensors in seats
closed the tops on dream car convertibles in the
event of rain. For security, built-in intercoms
allowed those inside to communicate with anyone
outside without opening a door or window. The 1942
LOeuf lectrique, built as a response to the gas
shortages in Paris during the German Occupation,
looks like todays Smart Car, with its wraparound
( continued on page 30 )

Above: Bugatti Type 57 Comptition Coup Aerolithe recreation, 1935, designed by Jean Bugatti and Joseph Walter;
made by the Guild of Automotive Restorers. Courtesy of Christopher Ohrstrom. Joe Wiecha photo

Chrysler Thunderbolt, 1941, designed by Ralph Roberts and Alex Tremulis. Courtesy of Roger Willbanks, Denver, Colo. Michael Furman photo

30 Antiques and The Arts Weekly May 29, 2015

Cadillac Cyclone XP-74, 1959, designed by

Harley J. Earl and Carl Renner. Courtesy of
General Motors Heritage Center, Warren,
Mich.
Peter Harholdt photo

Stout Scarab, 1936, designed by William B. Stout. Courtesy of

Larry Smith.
Michael Furman photo

Voisin C-25 Arodyne, 1934, designed by Gabriel Voisin. Courtesy of Merle

and Peter Mullin, Brentwood, Calif.
Michael Furman photo

Tasco, 1948, designed by Gordon M.

Buehrig. Courtesy of the Auburn Cord
Duesenberg
Automobile
Museum,
Auburn, Ind.
Peter Harholdt photo

General Motors Firebird I XP-21, 1953, designed by Harley J. Earl, Robert

F. Bob McLean and GM Styling Section staff. Courtesy General Motors
Heritage Center.
Michael Furman photo

Dream Cars
Innovative Design, Visionary Ideas
( continued from page 1C )

Norman Timbs Special, 1947, designed by Norman Timbs. Courtesy of

Gary and Diane Cerveny.
Peter Harholdt photo

Plexiglas windshield. The catalog does

not say, but where did he get that Plexi,
and how, especially during the war, did he
shape it to fit the car?
Even more amazing are the experimental features on some of these cars that are
still down the road, in the future, for us.
The huge nose cones on the 1959 Cadillac
Cyclone XP-74 (called Dagmars, after the
screen name of a well-endowed 1950s starlet) contained proximity sensors to let
drivers prevent accidents (this technology
is only now entering the market) and to
allow for driverless driving on smart
roads of the future theirs and ours.
Designers and design studios of the
Dream Car era were stars. Norman
Timbs, Syd Mead, Ettore Bugatti, Gordon
Buehrig: these are just a few of artists
and tinkerers who built cars on their
own, in their spare time, just to see if they
could. They built cars that looked like
rockets, and teardrops, and fish, mimicking and challenging nature. From the
1930s through the 1950s, GM largely
under the direction of Harley Earl, who,
while not a designer himself, seemed to
have the ability to inspire designers
threw lavish Motoramas at the WaldorfAstoria Hotel in New York, complete with
dancers in outfits designed to match the
cars and home design for the forwardthinking consumer: 1956, for example,
featured the popular Kitchen of

Tomorrow exhibit by Frigidaire, then

owned by GM.
There were rivalries among designers
as well. In the early 1970s Ferrari and
Lancia contended to see who could build
the sports car with the lowest practical
silhouette. How low can you go?
Carrozzeria Bertones design for Lancia,
the Stratos HF Zero, stood 33 inches high
at its highest, 313/16 inches lower than
Ferraris 512S Modulo. Thin-wedge cars
like these continue to dominate our idea
of a high performance sports car and they
are emulated around the world.
The most recent entry in the exhibition,
the 2001 BMW Gina, bridges past and
present notions of design. Looking like an
updated 1930s roadster, the car is constructed of a skin of Spandex fitted over a
flexible carbon frame that can be adjusted by the driver to conform to changing
road conditions: The deployable rear
spoiler [for example] could grow taller to
increase down force, enhancing tire grip
at high speeds. And in a very sexy twist,
the hood unzips to reveal and access the
engine.
An exhibition like this begs you to name
your favorites and to argue for yours in
favor of everyone elses (the book alone
caused a stir in my house). I have a soft
spot for the 1936 Bugatti Aerolithe, with
its steampunk rivets, sweptback fenders
and teardrop windows. The Chinatown
lines of the 1941 Chrysler Thunderbolt
and the exaggerated film noir curves of

BMW Gina Light Visionary Model, 2001, designed by Christopher Bangle.

BMW AG

General Motors Le Sabre XP-8, 1951, designed by Harley J. Earl and GM Styling Section staff. Courtesy of General Motors Heritage Center, Warren, Mich.
Michael Furman photo

May 29, 2015 Antiques and The Arts Weekly 31

Dreaming Of Futures Past

Buick Centurion XP-301, 1956, designed by Harley J. Earl and

Charles Chuck Jordan. Courtesy of Sloan Museum, Flint, Mich.
Michael Furman photo

the 1948 Norman Timbs Special make me

want to don my fedora and take a case.
And the 1953 Firebird I XP-21, a car I
must have seen but do not recall, calls to
mind all the rocket cars I drew as a kid.
But, when all is said and done, I would
take the 1955 Chrysler (Ghia) Streamline
X, nicknamed Gilda after the 1946 film
noir that starred Rita Hayworth in the
title role. Designed by Carrozzeria Ghia
in Italy, the Gildas bullet shape and gas
turbine engine (originally intended but
never installed, until recently), its low
profile and prominent fins, make it the
ideal car for the would-be private eyeslash-superhero.
Dream cars like these are highly collectible. They are also exceedingly rare.
Many were scavenged and recycled into
other projects. Once in awhile, however,
someone finds one of these wonders, rusting away in a field or languishing in some
forgotten garage or shed. Treasures like
these, even in the most dilapidated condition, bring small fortunes and great
acclaim.
Today, the dream awakens. A renewed
interest in automobile design is emerging.
The focus, for the present, building on the
BMW in the exhibition, is on alternative
fuels, economy and materials (I am thinking of Tesla and the three-wheeled Elio),
but the driverless car and the smart road
are on the horizon, bringing us full circle
back to the Cadillac Cyclone. The move to

cheap fossil fuels fueled the first revolution in automobiles. The move away from
fossil fuels may well ignite a new revolution in personal transportation. With the
rapid strides that have been and continue
to be made in computer design software,
can a new aesthetic be far behind?
Microtech drives macro vision.
I have caught my son drawing cars at
times lately, when he should be doing his
homework. Wrath? No chance. I sit down
beside him and draw my own gyroscopic,
plasma-powered, roadster/camper dream
ride, and show him a few old tricks, tricks
he is free to ignore. Once upon a time, it
seemed like it might be time for a road trip
to Indianapolis. But not in the minivan.

Edsel Ford Model 40 Special Speedster, 1934, designed by Edsel Ford

and Eugene T. Bob Gregorie. Courtesy of the Edsel and Eleanor Ford
House, Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich.

Dream Cars: Innovative Design,

Visionary Ideas was organized by the
Indianapolis Museum of Art in conjunction with the High Museum of Art in
Atlanta, and curated by Sarah
Schleuning, curator of decorative arts and
design at the High Museum of Art, in consultation with award-winning automotive
writer and IMA guest curator Ken Gross.
The exhibition premiered at the High
Museum of Art in May 2014.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art is at
4000 Michigan Road. For information,
317-923-1331 or www.imamuseum.org.
Jim Balestrieri is the director of J.N.
Bartfield Galleries in New York City. He is
also a playwright and author and writes
frequently about the arts.

LOeuf lectrique, 1942, designed and fabricated by Paul Arzens. Courtesy

Muse des Arts et Mtiers, Paris. Michel Zumbrunn and Urs Schmid photo

At The Indianapolis Museum Of Art Through August 23

Chrysler (Ghia) Streamline X Gilda, 1955, designed by Giovanni Savonuzzi and Virgil Exner. Courtesy of Scott Grundfor and Kathleen Redmond.
Michael Furman photo