The Bortz Report

1954 Buick Landau Sedan - Send your kid to college and find a concept car!
My son Marc had just graduated high school and was accepted to Emory University in Atlanta. 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.
1956 Club DeMer - Harley Earl’s Grandson Gets A Traffic Ticket Driving a Concept Car In 1956
An interesting piece of collecting history that became part of the Bortz Auto Collection is that in 1956 a famous Pontiac Dream Car was called the Club de Mer.
GM’s “Other Corvettes”
Many General Motors concept cars in the Bortz Auto Collection were the source for many recognizable styling cues that were to come on GM production cars.
1956 Cadillac 60 Special Fleetwood - Everything But The Kitchen Sink
After WWII, General Motors was the largest corporation in the world. The pipelines were just flowing with massive amounts of money and profits.
Kennedy Presidential Lincoln Clones
Some of us old timers, we can remember just where we were the moment that President Kennedy had been assassinated. For all Americans, it was a national heart breaking experience that was never forgotten.
The Grumpy Old Man Mistake
Back in the mid-‘60s one of my old favorite car magazines was just getting its start and at the time there were no pictures in it.
The AMC Am Van, the unknown concept car
Few collectors would think that American Motors had anything to do with concept cars in the early decades after the war.
Leo Gephart: Historical icon and a founding father in the world of car collecting
It seems impossible that a man who was been affiliated with so many large businesses is not a household name in the hobby.
Harley Earl’s Secret Weapon
We have all heard the expression “behind every great man there is a great woman”…in the case of Harley Earl, there was a great person behind Harley Earl but it was not a woman but a gentleman named Carl Renner.
Futurliner - Chainsaw Confidentials
It was in the later 80’s when my high school friend Al Gartzman said he was sure that he found a lead on a gentleman who owned one of the Futurliner busses.
The 1955 Chevrolet Biscayne: A Super Star
The 1955 Chevrolet Biscayne began life as a super star to showcase the new Chevy 265 cubic inch V-8 engine and was featured at the 1955 Motorama where it wowed the world with its futuristic design and styling cues.
1954 Plymouth Ghia Explorer Concept Car
It was during the early 1980s when I was engrossed in collecting pre-war classic cars that I began to realize the 1950s dream cars/concept cars that had been written about in books and magazines as being destroyed after they met their show purposes.
Trilogy of Corvette Calamity
When I was a boy in Chicago in 1956, my dad bought a used 1955 Corvette. He brought the car home, and was extremely proud of it.
George Barris: Memory Of An Icon
Personally, I have found that one of the privileges getting old is that I have been around long enough to know and be friends with many of the pillars of the car collecting community.
5 Lessons In Owning a Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing
In 1972, I purchased a 1955 black 300 SL Gullwing from the original owner in Los Angeles and paid the exorbitant price of $12,000.00.
General Motor's Ultimate Motorama Dream: 1953 Buick Wildcat I Concept Car
My English 101 teacher said every good story needs a memorable beginning as well as a surprise ending, and we will begin this story just before World War II.
The Super Rare 1950 Fitzpatrick
When I first saw the 1950 Fitzpatrick custom in the early 1980s, it was in a parking lot at a Pennsylvania shopping center, I was absolutely stunned. I searched for the owner, but could not find him.
Somebody Up There Likes Me!
They were of course the: (all part of the Bortz Auto Collection) 1954 Bonneville Special, 1955 LaSalle Roadster and the 1964 DeLorean Pontiac XP-833 Banshee.
The Light Bulb Story
I started to realize that that light bulb was extremely unusual, as I had never seen another one like it anywhere. So one day I decided to find a ladder and replace it with a frosted light bulb.