The extreme length of the Delage D-8 chassis gave coachbuilders the freedom to create streamlined cars with fashionably long hoods. The Aerosport was designed by Letourneur et Marchand of Paris and featured pillarless “hardtop” styling and a fin on the trunk. The styling was so highly regarded that an Aerosport was one of a pair of Delages chosen to represent the French government at the automotive display at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Discovered in a barn in France during the early 1990s, this Delage received a meticulous restoration and is painted its original colors. It was awarded the French Cup at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in 1999.
The Margie and Robert E. Petersen Collection
The 1955 Dodge Firebomb show car by Ghia so impressed entrepreneur Eugene Casaroll that he purchased from Chrysler Corporation the rights to produce an automobile based on that prototype. Casaroll called his limited-edition luxury car the Dual-Ghia, and based it on a performance-oriented Dodge D-500 chassis with a Dodge Hemi engine. Ghia, the same Italian firm that produced the Firebomb, built the body. A total of 104 Dual-Ghias were built, 102 convertibles and two hardtops. Owned by “Rat Pack” members like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, the Dual-Ghia was so exclusive that aficionados were known to say: “a Rolls-Royce was what one settled for if one could not get a Dual-Ghia.”
The Margie and Robert E. Petersen Collection
Parade Convertible
Formerly used by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
This imposing four-door convertible was the official parade car of Nikita Khrushchev during the final years of his regime. Premier of the USSR from 1958 through 1964, Khrushchev had two of these cars built to order, one of which he gave as to the Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to travel in space. Upon Gagarin’s death in 1968, both cars were given to Hungarian President Janos Kadar and remained in Hungary until the collapse of communism in 1989, after which they were exported to the United States. Its name meaning “Seagull”, the Chaika was built in the former Soviet Union by GAZ, a firm originally established to manufacture Ford vehicles. Though Chaikas bear a strong resemblance to the 1955 and 1956 Packard and were powered by large, American style V-8 engines, they were produced with no involvement from any American firm.
The Margie and Robert E. Petersen Collection
Ron Courtney, an auto shop employee in McMinnville, Oregon, built the X-51 during the mid-1950s. Preferring to call his work “restyling” rather than “customizing”, he sectioned the body five inches, shaved the door handles and exterior trim, and modified the front fenders to accept 1956 Oldsmobile headlights. But the most prominent modification was the vehicle’s extremely large fins and custom taillights. The X-51was powered by a 265-cubic inch Chevrolet equipped with a McCulloch supercharger. It received several awards at the 1957 Portland Roadster Show and appeared on the cover of Hot Rod magazine, which dubbed it “the Ford of the future.”
Loaned by Rene Page in memory of Bob Page
Today fins are remembered as the outward expression of American automotive design prowess during the height of postwar optimism. But they were first used far earlier than most would imagine. This exhibit, opening February 23, will feature more than a dozen vehicles ranging from icons like the 1959 Cadillac and Exner-designed Chrysler to the impossibly Art Deco 1937 Delage Aerosport and wild 1952 Spohn Palos. Together, they speak to a period of automotive history during which the public craved chrome-laden dream machines and imagination was the stylist’s only limit.
