In responding to an item in HCC Lost and Found, Chet Kelley sent me a copy of an old Fred Horsley book from 1953 titled, simply, “Dream Cars.” It’s a bit tattered, but it was still worth flipping through for more than just the content that he directed me to. Inside, it’s chock full of the most cracked-out, pie-in-the-sky, don’t-tell-me-this-can’t-be-done automotive ideas up to that time, and not just from Detroit, where we typically think so-called dream cars originate. Instead, the book’s full of home restylings, home re-engineerings, ventures that tried to enter production and ideas floated by atomic age teenagers blissfully sure that the jetpack future was just around the corner.
So, in other words, exactly my kinda stuff.
And exactly the kinda stuff that some of our readers dig. Say, Myron , what do you make of the car in the above photo? The only thing the book mentions about it is that it’s “another car with a look of tomorrow… with a supercharged  Porsche engine.”
And for Geoff Hacker, this photo of a Vaughan-Singer 1500 special, “an example of how a few are following up the experimental development of plastic bodies.” Looks like a Glasspar to me, and indeed, with a little poking around, I see that Bill Tritt did indeed adapt a Glasspar G2 body to a Singer 1500 chassis.
You wouldn’t think I’d pass up an opportunity to post another photo of the Mathis VL 333, would you? According to the caption, the photo was taken at the 1946 Paris auto show. There’s some substantial differences in the window frames between this car and the black VL 333 I posted a year and a half ago, but the most interesting thing about this photo is the width of the front end, something not real evident in other photos.
Finally, I found this photo of a wide-eyed young gentleman in his triple-headlamp three-wheeler, but no accompanying information either in the text or in the photo’s caption. I think those grille vents are off a LaSalle.
I may very well post more photos from this book.
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