Jewels of GM’s Motorama Grace the Petersen Automotive Museum

From 1949-1961, GM’s lavish Motorama shows gave the public a peek inside the company’s design studio and a hint at the future trends that were still years away from production. Chevrolet’s longest-running car nameplate, Corvette, made its debut at Motorama. Unfortunately, not all of the cars built for Motorama were seen as the rolling works of art that they were. Many were cut up, discarded, and forgotten.

Lucky for us, Joe Bortz, an intrepid collector and lover of one-off cars, has spent decades tracking down these special cars. Along with the help of his son, dozens of cars have been saved and either preserved or restored. The six vehicles on display at the Petersen as a part of the exhibit titled GM’s Marvelous Motorama: Dream Cars from the Joe Bortz Collection, show the spectrum.

This pair of LaSalle concepts debuted as GM considered a return of the LaSalle brand as a premium car smaller than Cadillac. Now, the roadster and sedan show the fruits of a painstaking restoration as well as the as-found condition. These were each supposed to be powered by an all-aluminum DOHC V-6 with fuel injection, although the engine program never advanced. Both cars have representations of those engines that lack internals.

1952 Pontiac Parisienne

While most of the Motorama builds were forward-looking concepts, this glamourous Pontiac was a look at the past when town cars and chauffeurs were the norm for luxury cars. It’s powered by Pontiac’s flathead straight-eight for quiet, stately power.

1953 Buick Wildcat

With its sweepspear body line and fender-top ventiports, there’s no mistaking this topless two-door as anything but a Buick. What you might not notice at first is that this sporty roadster features a fiberglass body. The wonder material was famously used in the production Corvette, although GM used the composite to build plenty of Motorama cars as it allowed designers to quickly create complex curves.

1955 Chevrolet Biscayne

This strange concept would pave the way for several GM designs that would debut over the next several years. While none of Chevy’s production models resembled a happy robotic crab like this little suicide-door hardtop, we can see some 1958 Impala in the C-pillar. The “Astra-Dome” windshield previewed the 1959 Chevrolet full-size models and the beltline that wraps around the back showed up in the first-gen Corvair. Joe Bortz restored this car after finding it cut in half and discarded in a scrap yard.

1954 Pontiac Bonneville Special

Before the XP-833, there was another swoopy, two-seat, fiberglass-bodied Pontiac with inline power. The Bonneville Special would give the inline-six-powered Corvette a run for its money thanks to its hot-rodded flathead straight-eight that had a lumpy cam and a quartet of side-draft carbs. It was rated at 240 horsepower, roughly double the output of a standard Pontiac 268 engine. We love the bubble-top, the exposed wheel of the rear-mounted spare, and the gauges that are spread wide across the dash. We also appreciate the Utah license plate that references the Bonneville Salt Flats. This fantastic find is presented in its unrestored state and still looks amazing despite the crackling paint.

If you’d like to see these cars in person, and perhaps venture to the Vault, you can find tickets to the Petersen Automotive Museum here.

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