History
The creation of show cars dates back to at least the 1920s, but reached its zenith in the United States in the 1950s, when most of the major U.S. automakers began to exhibit wild, fanciful dream cars. The preeminent dream car maker was GM, which displayed its work at a series of traveling Motorama shows, mounted at tremendous expense, but with considerable value in publicity. In the 1960s American show cars became substantially more mundane, slight variations on typical production models (with a few exceptions, like Chevrolet's Mako Shark prototype), and the practice of building them fell on hard times during the 1970s, when automotive whimsy was a low priority compared to safety, emissions control, and fuel economy. The practice was revived in the 1980s, and remains strong today both in the U.S. and abroad.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
““And now this is the way in which the history of your former life has reached my ears!” As he said this he held out in his hand the fatal letter.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)