Dream cars come and dream cars go but Harley Earl’s Firebird III lives on. This is another Retrofuture original from 1999.
In the recent hit film Minority Report, Tom Cruise drives a nifty Lexus sports car designed by conceptual artist Herald Belker. Belker’s dream machine is making a splash on the car show circuit but, for all its sleek zoomy-ness, its technological achievements don’t hold a candle to the original retro-rocket: Harley Earl’s Firebird III.
With seven aerodynamic fins and a double-canopy cockpit, the Firebird III was 1958′s “car of the future.” Over four decades later, the car’sconceptual underpinnings are still radically ahead-of-their-time.
The Firebird III was chock full of space-age innovations: special drag brakes which emerged from flat panels to slow the car at high speeds, an “ultra-sonic” key which signaled the body panel (i.e., the doors) to swing open, an automated guidance system to avoid accidents and “no hold” steering.
Created under the auspices of Harley Earl (pictured left), the Firebird prototypes represented the pinnacle of automotive styling during the golden age of General Motors.
Earl was greatly influenced by the advances in aerospace engineering. The so-called “father of the tail fin” was convinced the future of car design must incorporate aerodynamic principles. Dazzled by Lockheed’s cutting-edge P-38 (below), Earl assembled a group of go-for-broke engineers and mandated they conjure up something spectacular.
One of these prototypes, the Firebird III, was the apotheosis of the concept car. With its sleek projectile appearance, the Firebird III pushed the outer limits of what was then possible.
Designed by a team that included Bob McLean (who later worked on the infamous DeLorean), Norm James, and Bill Porter, the revved-up Bat-like car conveyed an unrivalled sense of speed.
Underneath the hood there were some truly revolutionary ideas. One was Unicontrol, a mouse-like instrument which substituted for steering-wheel, transmission, throttle and brake (shifting it left turned the car left, shifting it right turned the car right, back applied the brakes and forward put the car into reverse).
Another innovation was “Autoglide,” an automated guidance system which took in the event of human error. In theory (it was never actually constructed) a low frequency-powered cable underneath “highways of the future” provided remote guidance; using antennas to sense signals, the Firebird III’s position on the highway could be programmed to avoid accidents.
Just in case there was one last safety measure: a TV camera mounted on the rear of the Firebird III transmitted live pictures to small screens visible to the driver.
Before utility won the day, Harley Earl created a new frontier in aerodynamic car design. This aesthetic, reawakened, shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. These days, even your pedestrian grocery-getter sports some kind of whoosh. They all owe a debt to Earl.
Tags: dream cars, firebird III, harley earl
Thank you for the nice comments. Stefan Habsburg and I worked for Bob McLean and followed Harley Earl’s “vision” in designing the Firebird III. Bill Porter joined Research Studio after the FB3 was completed. It was a great program, running about a year and a half.
The bird did not have a TV rear vision system when it was first built. Either such a system was attributed from some later concept car or, because they do drive it now, they may have added a system recently, since the technology is now available.
I’m not positive, but the drive by wire system was built and, I believe, tested on a conventional car around a Tech Center course and the hardware installed on the Firebird III. I wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t use it on the Firebird III.
When I left Styling in 1963 I worked at the GM Defense Research Labs in Santa Barbara on lunar roving vehicles before the won the contract for the ones that went to the moon. I left GM in 1967 to work for Sundberg-Ferar in Burbank on the L-1011. I moved to San Diego in 1974 and have worked mostly in aerospace; semi-retired in 2000, I’m still working in R&D Advanced Design: on gas turbine engine nacelles and thrust reversers.