GM Futurliner

The GM Futurliners were a group of custom vehicles, styled in the 1940s by Harley Earl for General Motors, and integral to the company's Parade of Progress—a North American traveling exhibition promoting future cars and technologies. Having earlier used eight custom Streamliners from 1936 to 1940, GM sponsored the Parade of Progress and the Futurliners from 1940 to 1941 and again from 1953 to 1956.

At 33 feet long, 8 feet wide, more than 11 feet tall, and weighing more than 12 tons, each Futurliner featured heavily stylized art deco, streamlined bodywork, deep red side and white roof paint, large articulated chrome side panels, a military-grade 302 cubic inch GMC straight-six gasoline engine and automatic transmission, whitewall tires and a prominent, high-mounted, centrally located driver command position with a panoramic windshield. A rarely seen technical feature was that the front wheels, in addition to rear wheels, were also dual wheels.

Of the twelve original Futurliners, one was destroyed in a 1956 accident, and nine were known to survive as of 2007. The status and location of several are unknown.

In 2014, Futurliner #10 was nominated for inclusion in the National Historic Vehicle Register.

Parade of Progress
Originally manufactured for the 1939 New York World's Fair, the Futurliners were later featured in GM's Parade of Progress, a promotional caravan travelling a 150-stop route across the United States and Canada. The Futurliners, along with 32 support vehicles, were driven by 50 college graduates, who also staffed the exhibitions along the route.

Typically arranged at each stop around a large tent and an information kiosk, each Futurliner featured a self-contained stage as well as a prominent deployable light tower, and each vehicle carried an exhibit featuring a single theme. The mobile exhibition covered such topics as jet engine technology, agriculture, traffic engineering, stereophonic sound, microwave ovens, television and other innovations.

Interrupted by World War II, the vehicles were refurbished by GM and the Parade of Progress resumed in 1953. The 1953 Parade started in April 1953 with rehearsals in Lexington and Frankfort, Kentucky, followed by the premiere in Dayton, Ohio. It included 44 vehicles in total: the 12 Futurliners, 14 trucks, and 18 cars. In 1955 a miniature automobile assembly line display named A Car Is Born was constructed for one of the Futurliners. A display titled Our American Crossroads was also used in 1955. This display was narrated by Parker Fennelly and featured a complicated animated diorama that transformed to show progress in road and infrastructure improvements from 1902 to 1953. The reborn parade was discontinued in 1956 for the last time, displaced by increasing popularity of network television—one of the very technologies the Futurliners themselves had once promoted.

Mechanical
The original powertrain for the Futurliners was a four-cylinder diesel coupled to a four-speed manual transmission, giving the vehicles a top speed of approximately 40 mph.

When the Parade of Progress resumed in 1953, the Futurliners were refurbished by fitting a six-cylinder, 302 cubic-inch engine, along with a four-speed automatic transmission and gear splitter; a metal roof was added to the glass cabin and air conditioning was fitted to reduce heat. The air conditioning units were manufactured by Frigidaire.

The driver's seat is centrally mounted at the front of the cab, with the driver's eyes at approximately 10 ft above road level, and the cab has room for two passengers. The 302 cuin six cylinder gasoline engine refitted in 1953 had a rated output of 145 hp and 262 lbft of torque at 1,400 RPM, with a compression ratio of 7.5:1.

List of Futurliners
The following table lists the original displays and the current status of the units. The three vehicles listed as unknown under Fate does not mean that they no longer exist but rather that the identity of some of the existing Futurliners has not been matched to their original display. Changes in some of the displays also makes it difficult to trace the lineage of some of the buses.

There are still two Futurliners unaccounted for.