Loaded with more than 50 futuristic gimmicks and gadgets, the 1953 X-100 was.the Ford Motor Company’s first full-fledged dream car.  

Originally conceived back in around 1949, the Ford X-100 was created partly as response to the fabulous show cars then in the works at rival General Motors, projects that would appear a few years later as the GM LeSabre and the Buick XP-300. Of course, the term “concept car” did not yet exist, so Ford adopted the phrase “laboratory on wheels” to convey the X-100’s design mission. Along with its futuristic styling, the X-100 featured a long list of imaginative accessories, more than 50 in all, from a built-in hydraulic jacking system to an electric shaver in the glove compartment.

A production 1952 Lincoln chassis with 123-inch wheelbase formed the basis of the X-100, with dramatic styling by a Ford advanced design team that included Joe Oros, John Najjar, and Elwood Engel. As the license plate and rear quarter badge in this early photo (above) will attest, the car was originally named the Continental Nineteen-Fifty-X. But when William Clay Ford decided on a more classical direction for his new Continental Division, the project was repurposed as the Ford X-100. It’s an easy guess that the bold jet-exhaust tail lamps were the probable inspiration for the production 1961-63 Thunderbird.

The sleek cockpit included an instrument panel with gauges tightly clustered around the driver and a row of dash controls that mimicked the throttles on a multi-engine aircraft. A clear plexiglass half-roof (shown here in the deployed position) slipped in and out of a pocket in the top’s rear section, operating automatically via an electric motor and rain sensor. While the X-100 was more than 220 inches long and 81 inches wide, the cozy seating offered room for just two passengers.

The Lincoln V8, normally displacing 317.5 cubic inches and rated at 160 hp, was boosted to 300 hp via the traditional hot rod techniques, including free-flowing exhaust manifolds and dual-remote canister air cleaners. One high-performance fad of the early ’50s tried on a number of V8s was the five-carburetor intake manifold, as shown above. On this example, which Ford dubbed “Multi-Plex,” a standard teapot-style Holley two-barrel resided in the central stock position, with four additional Ford model 94 two-barrels deployed around it, each one centered over an intake port pair. It was a logical-enough setup offering decent mixture distribution, but it failed to catch on with the performance community. With a curb weight of more than 6,000 lbs, nearly a ton more than a production Lincoln, the X-100 probably needed all the help it could get, we expect.

As part of its European show tour in 1953, the X-100 appeared in a cover feature for the French magazine Paris Match. In the photo sequence above, a Ford representative demonstrates, from left, the built-in dictaphone, electric shaver, and telephone built into the center console.

The dream car included more than 50 of these far-out features. Some, like the heated seats and built-in hydraulic jacks, seem useful, even forward-looking. Others seem more whimsical and zany, as though they could be the inventions of Inspector Gadget, the beloved Saturday morning cartoon character. But that’s what dream cars are all about, we suppose: stretching the limits of the imagination.

A fully functional, road-going prototype, the Ford X-100 did the full tour of the American and European car show circuits in 1953 as part of the automaker’s 50th anniversary celebration. (The Ford Motor Company was officially incorporated on June 16, 1903.) The car also had a walk-on, or shall we say roll-on, in the 1954 20th Century Fox movie A Woman’s World, a marital melodrama starring Lauren Bacall and Fred MacMurray. As the X-100’s novelty wore off, it was eventually retired from the promotional circuit and in 1958 the car was donated to the Henry Ford Museum, where it lives to this day.  Photos courtesy of the Henry Ford Museum and Ford Motor Company.