Straight from the Atomic Age comes the Ford design studio’s nuclear-powered pipe dream, the 1958 Nucleon. Here’s the story behind this implausible but fascinating concept car. 

In the 1950s, the Motor City’s automotive design studios were led by think-big, larger-than-life personalities: Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell at General Motors, Virgil Exner at Chrysler, and George Walker at Ford. An enthusiastic futurist and visionary, Walker liked to give his Ford design staff opportunities to stretch out and exercise their imaginations occasionally with forward-looking, far-out projects. And it’s difficult to imagine a vehicle more far out than the 1958 Nucleon, a theoretical atomic-powered car designed by first-year Ford stylist Jim Powers.

The Nucleon model gets some final touches in the Ford styling paint studio. 

No working version of the Nucleon was ever built, it might go without saying, nor even a full-sized mockup. Instead, two scale models were reportedly constructed, one in plaster and one in fiberglass. If you study the period photos you can see some evolution in the design—versions of the model with and without tail fins (compare the two photos above) and with and without the contrasting, metal-colored roof panel.

Rear view of the Ford Nucleon showing the modular atomic power cell.

The Nucleon’s central design concept was a removable power module (Power Cell, in Ford lingo) between the rear wheels, which would presumably house the nuclear reactor, steam turbine, transmission, and final drive unit. Ford theorized that a driver could adjust the reactor output and thus tailor the power available, and that the nuclear power cell could be replaced and refreshed every 5000 miles.

However, Ford simply overlooked the tons and tons of lead required to shield the occupants and community from the radioactive reactor core. Even 60 years later, these and other technical obstacles have yet to be overcome. Ford created several more hypothetically atomic-powered dream cars, including La Galaxie by L. David Ash and the Alex Tremulis-designed Seattle-ite XXI, and like the Nucleon, they were more fantasy than reality.

Oh, well. It was all a lark anyway, a highly idealized look at an atomic-powered future that would never come to pass. Jim Powers went on to a highly successful career in automotive and industrial design—his credits include the truly advanced 1961 Thunderbird. Below, William Clay Ford Sr., the grandson of Henry Ford and the father of Ford chairman Bill Ford Jr, poses with the Nucleon. The surviving Nucleon model now resides at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.