You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

Special Order Paint: Jubilee Gold.

[Lee Stewart]

Buick Y-Job (1939) The Y-Job wasn’t the world’s first concept car; it wasn’t (the Volvo-backed Venus Bilo got there in 1933), but it did put ace stylist Harley Earl, head of General Motors design, on the map. Undeniably forward-thinking, the Y-Job featured hidden headlights, electric windows and a powered roof, concealed under a hard tonneau.

[Lee Stewart]

Buick Le Sabre (1951) Had the Second World War not happened, we would have probably seen a bunch of interesting concept cars in the 1940s, but it did, so we had to wait until 1951 for the next notable one. The Le Sabre was another by Harley Earl (pictured), who used this as his everyday car once it was redundant on the show circuit. There was electric operation of the doors and windows along with a hard top that automatically raised itself in the event of rain.

[Lee Stewart]

Lincoln XL500 (1953) With push-button automatic transmission the XL-500 was supposed to provide effortless driving. The goldfish bowl problem presented by all that glass would be resolved by the then highly important emerging technology of air conditioning that it featured. Standard equipment also included a telephone and built-in jacks in the event of a puncture.

[Lee Stewart]

De Soto Adventurer II Coupé (1954) The brief with this one was to come up with something super-slippery rather than ostentatious. As a result the Adventurer’s clean and elegant almost-Italian lines are very understated but those afterburner-inspired tail lights give a hint of what was to come from later Chrysler concepts.