Not Mopar related but a big part of Auto History

[mr. fix it]

I got this in the History Vehicle association new letter yesterday.

Cool read about the 1951 Buick LeSabre concept car.

DriveHistory Profiles: 1951 GM Le Sabre - Historic Vehicle Association (HVA)

 

[1978 NYB]

Cool looking car!

 

[BigblueC]

I don't like the cyclops look, but otherwise that's a pretty cool looking car.

 

[BigblueC]

I don't have time to read the article right now but I think I can feel the blast coming from that jet-like rear end.

 

[mrfury68]

Harley Earl and his design staff sure had some great imagination and vision when it came to thinking what cars should look like.

 

[mr. fix it]

I don't like the cyclops look, but otherwise that's a pretty cool looking car.

Here's the front with the headlights covered.

 

[Old Mike]

I got this in the History Vehicle association new letter yesterday.

Cool read about the 1951 Buick LeSabre concept car.

DriveHistory Profiles: 1951 GM Le Sabre - Historic Vehicle Association (HVA)

Great ‘50s dream car. Gotta be close to 25ft long, 2 1/2 tons at least, looks like its doing 120 standing still, and it seats 2. Showing the rest of the world we’re the biggest and the best. Love it. An epic time in automotive history.

 

[saforwardlook]

It is an interesting design effort for the future, but I have felt that somehow, Harley Earl never had the knack that Virgil Exner had at getting automobiles to look perfect. Did designers all have dorkey first names back in those days? Must be a sign of greatness! Harley, Virgil, Elwood, etc.....................

 

[Old Mike]

Harley Earl’s longer, lower, wider look in the early ‘50s gave American cars the look and feel of the big solid highway cruisers made for the country’s wide open spaces. But Virgil Exner caught the rest of the industry flat footed with the forward look. The fins and stylish grille works just looked right. We’ll never see that kind creativity again.

 

[tbm3fan]

That nose gives me Edsel flashbacks...

 

[Carmine]

It is an interesting design effort for the future, but I have felt that somehow, Harley Earl never had the knack that Virgil Exner had at getting automobiles to look perfect. Did designers all have dorkey first names back in those days? Must be a sign of greatness! Harley, Virgil, Elwood, etc.....................

 

[amazinblue82]

i dig it ... thanks. oh, it had a hemispherical heads, supercharged, and ran on gas and methanol.

Source: https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2014/04/25/cars-of-futures-past-1951-gm-le-sabre-concept/

Chayne’s choice was a newly designed cast-aluminum 215-cu.in. V-8, which was also fitted to the Le Sabre’s sister car, the Buick XP-300. For duty beneath the Le Sabre’s front fenders, the engine received a rather unique dual-carburetor setup; one would feed gasoline, supplying power for steady-state cruising, while the second would add methanol to the mix to enhance output during hard acceleration. To further increase the power, the engine (which utilized cast-aluminum hemispherical cylinder heads) also incorporated a Roots-type supercharger pushing 18.2 PSI of boost, and the result was an impressive 335 horsepower and 381 pound-feet of torque.

Underneath, the car was just as advanced. For reasons of packaging, Chayne moved the transmission (originally a Buick Dynaflow, but later a GM Hydra-Matic) to the rear of the car, also improving weight distribution. The De Dion rear was suspended via a transverse leaf spring and shock absorber arrangement, but the front suspension used a rather unconventional setup. Instead of coil springs and dampers or even torsion bars, the Le Sabre used a pivot rod embedded in a solid rubber cylinder, encased in steel. The rubber acted as a spring, and the motion was controlled with the use of conventional shock absorbers. The setup worked reasonably well, until the rubber inside the cylinder began to dry and crack; at that point Chayne substituted a more conventional torsion bar front suspension in the Le Sabre​

 

[tbm3fan]

It also reminds me of this very quickly... a blind mole