Hemmings Daily Daniel Strohl Jan 24th, 2012

Not two years after the Petersen Motorama was thrilling crowds with all manner of transportation – including a number of cars using the then-new technology of fiberglass for body construction – General Motors appropriated the Motorama name for its traveling extravaganzas filled with concept cars, show cars and other exhibitions designed to put the buying public into a new General Motors automobile.

The GM Motoramas traveled all over the country, making stops in New York, Boston, Miami, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, as we see from these photos of the 1956 edition of the Motorama at the USC Library’s online photo archive. Specifically, the L.A. stop took place in early March 1956 at the Pan-Pacific Auditorium – the same venue that hosted the Petersen Motorama. These photos are rather interesting because they show and identify not just the cars, but also the booth professionals with the cars, starting with Louise Hyde, above, standing by the Oldsmobile Golden Rocket. The latter was new for the 1956 Motorama and featured a number of aids for ingress and egress, including roof panels that opened with the doors, bucket seats that rose and swiveled outward, and a steering wheel that tilted out of the way.

With the Firebird II, another Motorama addition for 1956, we see Betty Bridgers. One of GM’s experimental (and operational) gas turbine cars of the 1950s, the Firebird II was ostensibly designed to be operated on an electronic “highway of the future” that took control of the car’s steering and throttle via a metallic strip embedded in the highway. It’s currently in the GM Heritage Center’s collection.

Among the series of photos were a few interior shots. On the right, we see Peggy Leonard in an unidentified Cadillac that featured a built-in snack counter, refrigerator and hot and cold running water; we see that Cadillac built a number of show cars in 1956, including the Eldorado Brougham XP-48 four-door hardtop, the Eldorado Brougham Town Car, the Castilian, the Gala, the Palomino, and the Maharani, but this doesn’t appear to be any of the above and is likely to be a Fleetwood Seventy-Five limousine with those added appointments.

In the center, Barbara Anne Rolf sits in a Chevrolet Bel Air cutaway, while on the right, Melissa Weston sits in the Buick Centurion, another 1956 Motorama car, this one with an all-glass roof much like the bubbletop cars of a few years hence, along with a cantilevered steering wheel and an in-dash mounted rearview display that was meant to eliminate the traditional rearview mirror. The Centurion is currently in the collection of the Sloan Museum.

By the way, the GM Motoramas weren’t all about concept cars. GM also showed off a kitchen of the future – with plenty of Frigidaire products, natch – as well as some heavy equipment not meant for passenger cars, as we see from these two shots. On the left, Pamela Rank and a variety of models of trucks, dozers, cranes and whatnot powered by GM diesel engines; on the right, Sue Murray and Doris Du Shane with a Euclid 50-ton dump truck turned into a swimming pool. Why? Because dump truck, that’s why.

Finally, an overview of the show floor. We see the Pontiac Club de Mer, The Golden Rocket and the aforementioned Cadillac Eldorado Brougham concepts. What else do the eagle-eyed among you see here?