Dream cars. Concepts. Show cars. Pull-aheads. Whatever they’re called, gearheads have a fascination with them. Here’s a big photo gallery featuring the rare, the weird, and the wonderful in prototype automobiles.
What is it about dream cars? There’s a powerful mystique in an automobile when we know it’s one of one, unique in all the world. Even when we know that in reality, the dream was more of a nightmare, we’re still drawn to these special vehicles.
Readers of Mac’s Motor City Garage.com include some of the sharpest, most hardcore car people around, so it’s not likely we’re going to surprise you with many of the vehicles in the gallery below. There are some familiar favorites here and some relative oddballs as well. How many can you recognize? Score yourself at home.
Do you have a personal favorite or two among these cars? Are there others that make your eyes hurt? As always, comments, corrections, and additions are encouraged.
I think that in most cases they made the right decision by not producing these cars. Several of the Fords/Mercurys look like they would have been very nice though. That Jeep concept would have been fun in the ’70s but it likely wouldn’t have stayed in production beyond four years. For some reason, that AMX/Gremlin hybrid really appeals to me.
Wow, another great post at the Garage! All of these cars light my fire but the Scimitar (I’d prefer the two-door), the Chrylser Plainsman and FC Van are my favorites. The FC Van in particular could have been a very successful production vehicle. Did I mention that it was designed by Brooks Stevens? For that matter, so was the Scimitar.
I wish my Rambler Marlin had kept the proportions of that Tarpon. That Buick Centurion, tho…it’s always on the highlight reel for Chuck Jordan’s stuff and I always go “ugh, someone should have dialed that back two or three notches.”
Coming soon: Dreams and Nightmares, the all-clay edition. However, you might not want to eat for six hours beforehand.
The Caddy Lemans looks suspicously like my old ’56 Caddy DeVille convert, made by whacking 16″ out of the rear doors of Sedan DeVille, pruning the top off, and chopping the windshield 3″. I’d never seen this particular car before, thanks for the memories!
I should follow up by saying that I was inspired by the ’50’s “dream-cars” I remember so well, and that as hacked up as it sounds, the Caddy really looked nice. I foolishly traded it for a Harley Panhead, and when I sold that, though briefly about getting another early ’50’s Cad and doing the same thing. Ended up with the Diamond T instead, but, what might have been…
Brian
There were four Cadillac LeMans cars built. (Fiberglass, encouraging duplication.) One, sold to a private party in Florida, later came back to GM and was updated with quad headlamps, ’57-style tailfins, and a ’60 drivetrain. This car is now in the GM Heritage Collection and there is a photo in the “Cadillac at 110” feature right here at Motor City Garage. Link: https://macsmotorcitygarage.com/2012/08/23/cadillac-at-110/
That Ford Cougar II looks like the kind of car-of-the-future that I used to draw on the cover of my notebooks in 6th grade. I coulda been a contender!
A lot of those cars did arrive in some way. So were real cars and at least in part practical. Some are comic book concepts and some are dream cars that could be made.