Encyclopedia Hoonatica: Fiberglass Concept Cars

By Peter Tanshanomi Aug 24, 2015

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In the 1978 flick The Buddy Holley Story, young Buddy’s new-found success leads him to a Cadillac dealer, where a swanky two-seat roadster fills the roll of Anonymous Rich-Man’s Trophy Car. Wait, what? There would have been no such car in a Cadillac dealership in 1959. Ah, Hollywood, always eager to muck about with our reality.
I was aware, watching the scene, that the car was actually one of the four Caddy LeMans concept cars built in 1953. What I did not know is that 1) the example shown was updated in 1959 with the quad headlights, NACA-like ducts and more swept fins that captured the zeitgeist of The Day The Music Died perfectly, and 2) the LeMans concept was easily restyled because the body was fiberglass.  That’s right, a glass and resin-bodied Caddy — as unlikely in a ’59 Caddy showroom as a two-seater.
Which leads me to today’s Hoonatica inquiry: fiberglass bodied concept cars. Since one-off bodies are much more easily and efficiently produced in fiberglass than metal, and because fiberglass was a somewhat sexy material for much of the 20th century (at least from a marketing standpoint), there have been lots and lots of futuristic concept cars and manufacturers’ dream cars that had bodies of glass threads and glue. Your job is to list as many of them as the Hooniverse hivemind can come up with.
Difficulty: Easy. Super easy. Like taking broccoli from a baby.
How This Works: Read the comments first and don’t post duplicates. Bonus points for adding photos. Remember, you can simply paste in the raw image URL now, thanks to the magic of Disqus.
Image Source: The Internet Movie Cars Database…where else?

By Peter Tanshanomi

Tanshanomi is Japanese [単車のみ] for "motorcycle(s) only." Though primarily tasked with creating two-wheel oriented content for Hooniverse, Pete is a lover of all sorts of motorized vehicles.

23 thoughts on “Encyclopedia Hoonatica: Fiberglass Concept Cars”
  1. The 1954
    Cadillac El Camino concept was a driveable, two-seat show car first
    shown at the 1954 GM Motorama. It had a fiberglass body and a brushed
    stainless …

  2. Duroplast is, by all means, at least a close relative to fiberglass. Prepare for a Trabant onslaught!
    P50 prototype/show car (the later P50 would look different):
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/P_50.jpg
    Hatching new ideas mid-run:
    http://www.autosoviet.altervista.org/TRABI-HATCH2.JPG
    …and trying to save what is going down in 1988:
    http://www.rene.pw-serve.de/canon-galerie/kfz/ifa_fahrzeuge/images/Trabant%201.1.3%20%28Prototyp%20Bj.%201988%29.jpg

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