Via Coop, it’s the 1956 GMC Firebird II. It’d be so rad if cars today — i.e., The Future — had tail fins and some sort of rocket booster looking things on the back.

From the conceptcarz.com writeup:

The Firebird II, which was a highlight of General Motor’s 1956 Motorama, is the family firebird. A four-seater with a titanium body, the Firebird II features a 200-horsepower Whirlfire GT-304 gas turbine engine, all-power accessories and a fully integrated air conditioning system, similar to current systems found in cars today. The Firebird II was GM’s attempt to make a luxury turbine powered vehicle with acceptable performance and fuel economy.

I think Coop sums things up pretty well:

I’m still disappointed that we didn’t get the chrome-plated, tailfin-encrusted future we were promised by the hyper-optimistic postwar propaganda of the American military-industrial-consumer complex.

Word.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 8:53 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.