General Motors Futurliner Pavilion, 1950s

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General Motors Futurliner Pavilion, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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General Motors Futurliner Pavilion, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1953–1958

AA-2026-674247

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General Motors brought its Parade of Progress to the Canadian National Exhibition in the 1950s, parking a Futurliner — the bus-sized rolling showroom that GM had decided was the correct way to explain the future to the public — alongside a Euclid earthmover and a scale model of something that was almost certainly a missile, because missiles were what serious corporations displayed in 1955 to signal they were thinking ahead. The crowd moved through the outdoor exhibit in their Sunday clothes, the women in wool skirts, the men in slacks, none of them running, none of them late, because this was exactly where a family was supposed to be on a weekday afternoon at the fair. GM's theory, which it held with great confidence throughout this decade, was that the American — and Canadian — future would be designed in Detroit and delivered on four wheels, or possibly on a rocket, but certainly by General Motors. The Futurliner itself would be retired within a few years, auctioned off, left to rust in lots across the continent, and eventually rescued by collectors who found them more interesting as artifacts than GM had found them as transportation.

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