Here’s a stunning piece of automotive history: 1939 Pontiac Plexiglas Deluxe Six “Ghost Car”.
One of the best ways to make a solution understandable to everybody is to make it visual, to dramatize it.
The 1939 World’s Fair attraction, Futurama, was intended to predict the future of transportation with its scale models of highways, cities, and futuristic cars. Five million people saw the Futurama of the General Motors Highways and Horizons “a dramatization of future highway progress” exhibit.
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For the 1939 New York World’s Fair, General Motors collaborated with Rohm & Haas, the maker of Plexiglas, to make a “Ghost Car”, a 1939 (later updated to 1940 styling) Pontiac Six with a see- through body made of the chemical company’s new product, Plexiglas acrylic sheet, to showcase the details of a car’s construction. It was the first transparent car ever built in America.
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Hundreds of thousands and perhaps more spectators saw the transparent Pontiac at the 1939 and 1940 fairs, and thousands more saw it when it was on a promotional tour to Pontiac dealers across the country.
The Ghost Car’s Plexiglas body offered a view of its chrome, steel, and iron innards. It also features white-colored rubber moldings and tires.
This car featured a 223 cubic inch, 85-horsepower L-head inline-six engine mated with three-speed manual transmission.
Unlike most cutaways and similar display cars, the “Ghost Car” is fully operational, though it has only 86 miles on the odometer.
The car is in remarkable condition when you consider the state of the art of plastics in the 1930s. Some of the panels are cracked, and the hood is badly crazed with spider cracks, but for the most parts the Ghost Car is intact.
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