By the mid 1980s I had the great fortune of acquiring some wonderful 1950s American concept cars including the 1954 Pontiac Bonneville Special and the 1953 Buick Wildcat I all Motorama cars. Most people consider the most valuable of all concept cars to be Harley Earl’s 1950’s and 1960’s General Motors Motorama concept cars.
In the mid 1980s my son Marc had just graduated high school and was accepted to Emory University in Atlanta. While at Emory during his second year I got a call from Marc and he said one of the fellow students who lived in Atlanta said that their neighbor had a General Motors Motorama car. It was a Buick but he didn’t know much more about it. Coming from a young college student that obviously didn’t know much about concept cars, I assumed that it was just another car that was customized in the early 1950s or 1960s and would not be an actual GM concept car. I asked my son not to spend much time on it but to check out the lead “just in case”; but the “just in case” started to uncover something that maybe was going to prove to be very interesting.
The car was described further by the fellow college student to Marc as a four door sedan with a padded top and while it didn’t look like a convertible, the rear part of the padded top had a cut line in it that seemed very unusual. With that I asked my son Marc to personally go and see the car and get pictures of the car and unbelievably it turned out to be a real Buick General Motors Motorama concept car.
Now before I tell you more about this car, I should explain that basically there are two types of General Motors Motorama concept cars. There are ones that are designed and developed from a complete blank sheet of papers and then there are ones that are actually production cars taken off the “line” and “sliced and diced” into a GM concept car. In general the ones that are totally unique and designed from scratch are considered the most desirable and valuable and the ones that are “sliced and diced” are not quite as valuable.
Well it turns out that the car that my son had found was a Buick 4-door Roadmaster that Harley Earl had taken off the production line and made into the 1954 Buick Landau sedan concept car. Landau means that the rear quarter roof is a convertible but the rest of the car has a solid hard top padded roof. This Landau style convertible top was usually used for presidential cars so that the rear portion of the top can go down and expose a president or dignitary of a country and can be quickly put up for weather protection, etc.
So to make a long story a little shorter I ended up purchasing the 1954 Buick Landau and found out all its unique features. After it was used for the show purposes in 1954 as one of the Buick Motorama concept show cars, it was than later used by the GM Tech Center as a livery transport for GM executives for travel to the Detroit airport and back for several years.
One of the most interesting things that I found in the concept car was a small log book that was used to record any important people who were transported and also used to record and log any repairs or maintenance.
I have never seen such a detailed log accounting of a concept car that was made after a concept car served its show purposes like the one for this Buick Landau.
Another interesting feature on the Buick Landau, it came with a drink shaker and shot glasses in the rear seat center arm rest so that the passengers could be mixing up their own drinks while they were being chauffeured. It also had a glass separation partition window between the chauffer compartment and the rear passenger seating. Truly a great and memorable GM concept car.
Unfortunately in the 1990s I lost this car as part of a divorce and but fortunately this car eventually ended up with Bill Warner of the Amelia Island Concours who gave it a wonderful restoration. Later the car went to a gentleman name Coker and he had the car fully detailed out which is something that personally made me happy to find out that the car was still being well cared for and now the car resides in a large museum in New Orleans.
I am attaching pictures of this car, some of which have not been seen in recent times, for the enjoyment of the readers to see what one of the lessor known Motorama cars looks like.
Keeping in mind there is no question that there are still many rare concept cars from various American manufacturers that are still tucked away and have been hidden for decades and are yet to be found. If you happen to come across a lead on one I would love to follow up on it, my cell is 847-668-2004. As always you can view some of our cars www.BortzAutoCollections.com or you can always reach me on my cell phone 847-668-2004 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.
I certainly enjoy writing these almost monthly articles for the Bortz Report and have enjoyed many of the reader’s comments that have been sent to
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