The incredible first transparent car made in the USA

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The images we see could perfectly pass as current, but in reality they are from 1939, the year in which the Pontiac Deluxe Six Plexiglas, also known as the first fully transparent car made in America. A real beauty for the view.

Its official presentation took place during the Highways and Horizons exhibition of the 1939 New York World’s Fair of General Motors, a vehicle that left everyone present with their mouths open as it was a transparent car built with acrylic plastic (a milestone at that time) that made many parts of the model visible.

The so-called “ghost car” appeared a year later at the World’s Fair in 1940 with a redesigned front end. Then it became known that the chassis was the fruit of a collaboration with Rohm & Haas, the cochemical company that had developed sayentemente Plexiglas, the world’s first clear acrylic sheet product.

In this way, Rohm & Haas “borrowed” the sketches for the four-door Pontiac Touring Sedan and built an exact replica body using Plexiglas instead of the exterior sheet metal. The structural metal underneath received a copper wash and all hardware, including the dash, fue chrome. AdemFurthermore, the rubber moldings were made in white, as were the car tires. A construction that cost around $ 25,000 at the time, a figure monstruosa for those times.

The idea behind the model was to show everything that goes into making a car at a time when the auto industry was thriving. According to the 1939 General Motors press release:

A see-through car, the first built in America, is the most striking of the Fisher Body Division exhibits at GM’s Highway and Skyline Building at the New York World’s Fair. Created to showcase rigid interior bracing and other features complete with raised and lowered windows, openable doors. The only missing material is the insulation that is normally applied to the interior surface working with a new material, a transparent synthetic plastic.

They say that after its appearance at the World’s Fair, the Smithsonian Institution kept the car on display at the Second World War, from 1942 to 1947. However, in the late 1940s, the car’s styling was viewed by the viewing public as old and outdated and the display was changed.

Years later, the show car was resold to various Pontiac dealers, eventually reaching a car collector named Don Barlup after an auction where it fetched $ 308,000 in 2011.

Be that as it may, the images of the vehicle from more than eight decades are still as shocking as then. [[YouTube, The Design Boom]

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