Brett Hatfield

Originally pitched as an economy car that wound up being a sports car, albeit after lots of growing pains, the Pontiac Fiero finally achieved greatness just before it died. In the early 1970s, the stock market experienced the worst crash since the Great Depression. Add to that the energy crisis and gasoline rationing, along with big power American cars that hadn’t cared one whit about being efficient, and you had a perfect storm that screamed out for a gas-sipping economy car.

General Motors debuted several different concept cars at their 1954 GM Motorama, held at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. One of those fantastic concepts was the Pontiac Bonneville Special, built on the Chevy Corvette platform. The personal luxury coupe with a performance bent was conceived by GM Styling and Design head Harley J. Earl. Split frameless doors had Plexiglas top halves that opened like gullwing doors, seamlessly fitting into the Plexiglas bubble roof.

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email Print After GM had completed building innumerable items for World War II, they returned to building cars. The new line of Chevy trucks was called the Advance Design series, whilst GMC called its series the New Design. Light Duty pickups benefited from a design that was cleaner, more refined, and more robust than the previous AK series trucks. The GMC New Design and Chevy’s Advance Design were applied to pickups, cabovers, panel trucks, and Suburbans.