Foreshadowing of 1969: 1968 Chicago Auto Show
(first posted 2/26/2014) Picking up where I left off Monday, I’ll begin the second installment of pictures from my visit to the ’68 Chicago Auto Show with this concept, which previews many elements of the 1969 Mustang.
Carryover butt: 1968 Chicago Auto Show
We revisited that car on Saturday and many of its styling elements are plainly visible here, combined with a spoiler reminiscent of the ‘68 Shelby’s.
Gurney Eagle open wheeler: 1968 Chicago Auto Show
Dan Gurney was building some beautiful open wheelers at that time. This is probably a USAC Indy car. The lack of chin spoilers and rear wings is refreshing, but would soon change.
DeTomaso Mangusta – Hasn’t Aged A Bit! 1969 Chicago Auto Show
The DeTomaso Mangusta was beautiful then and remains so today.
Nice ass! 1969 Chicago Auto Show
The Mangusta was designed by Giugiaro while he was at Ghia. 401 Mangustas were built from 1967-71.
Mercury concept car: 1969 Chicago Auto Show
I’m not sure what the concept was (JPC, help me here): other than maybe to see how big a car could built that only accommodated two people, maybe four. Pearl paints were a big deal back in ‘69, but have long since ceased to be special. My wife’s Forester has a pearl paint job. Man, when a Subaru comes with pearl paint as a no cost option you know it’s not going to raise many eyebrows
Wait, is that a Pontiac emblem on the nose? 1969 Chicago Auto Show
No, this is not a Stingray styling concept. It’s a Pontiac Cirrus. It was a re-nosed 1964 GM-X Stiletto.
LEDs? 1969 Chicago Auto Show
I don’t think LED headlights were even a concept in 1969, although they were invented by Oleg Losev in the USSR in 1927. This would look right in place in a current Audi showroom.
1968 Buick Riviera, 1968 Chicago Auto Show
I’m not sure why I shot this Riviera, maybe because of the high-zoot orange paint job. The whitewalls aren’t show car specials, you can find them in the 1968 Riviera brochure.
More to come on Friday.
I remember that there was a 1/25th scale model kit (AMT or MPC) of that Mustang concept which I think was called the Mach 1 that I buit (badly!) when I was a car model crazed boy.
Another great set of photos. As for that Mercury, I’ve got your back, KM.
It took a bit of digging but it was the 1969 Mercury Cyclone Super Spoiler. Here is another view.
Rear
Thanks JP! I knew that you were the man for Mercurys.
Wow, it was Cyclone based. From the nose I thought it was some sort of custom Mod Marquis convertible.
More nice pics. Those Gurneys had the prettiest noses. If Zora Arkus Duntov had won the Mangusta in a sweepstakes, how do you think he would have gotten rid of that splitty rear window? Just wondering.
Great pics. I’m fascinated by the Riviera. I went to just about all the Chicago Auto Shows during the ’60s, I just don’t remember this Riviera. I guess since it wasn’t a concept it just didn’t make a huge impression on me. It’s beautiful
The Mustang’s growth was truly sad. Yes I know that an early 70s Mustang is “light” compared to the modern steed but compared to the 1965 and the 1967 “refresh” the stallion named for the wild horse of the American West became a Clydesdale as the cliche says.
In my humble (and totally biased) opinion, the 1967 was dead perfect size wise both inside and out for the intended mission of the car.
Ford didn’t have much choice when GM made their ponycars able to take a big-block V8 from inception. The Mustang (and the rest of the ponycars) might have stayed small if not for the big-block mania that was sweeping the auto industry in the late sixties.
It makes you wonder how differently things might have turned out if not for Delorean and the success of the GTO.
Yeah but even the 67-68 models that were roughly 2 in longer and 2 in wider could take the 390 through 428 engines. How much bigger do you need?
At least most of us will now admit that the big blocks were useless for anything but drag racing. If you wanted a real balanced sports car the small blocks were the way to go with Mustang and Camaro.
The engines had little to do with the external bloat, reshaping the shock towers was all that was really done to fit them. The bloat was inevitable
Bracket creep. Current BMW 3 series approx. same dimensions as E12 5 series.
I would’ve thought the current 3-series would be bigger than the E12.
Cursory glance at dimensions. Does the 1 coupe strike you as the same size as the neue klasse 02s?
My recollection is that Ford was the first to announce that it was going to put a bigger engine in the pony cars. I’m pretty sure the Camaro’s biggest engine option was originally supposed to be the 350. Then Ford announced the 390 Mustang, Pontiac got approval to use the 400 in the Firebird, and Chevrolet demanded permission to use the 396 in the Camaro. I think that was the sequence of it.
In any case, the decision to start making the Mustang bigger was made much earlier than that, probably around the time the original debuted. The engineering package for a new car was typically determined at least two and generally three years before production — you can compress that time somewhat, but it will cost you a bundle in overtime and probably quality issues.
Since the Pontiac V8 had the same external dimensions from 326 to 455 cubic inches (and therefore looked the same) no modifications had to be made to accommodate a larger engine. There was no “small block” or “big block,” though the 421-428-455 family had larger main journals. A 455 will bolt in where a 326 originally resided. The later 265’s and 301’s had a shorter deck so they were actually a little smaller.
Chevy, on the other hand, had to beef up the front suspension a bit to take the big block. But because the gen1 and gen2 F-body’s front suspension lacked shock towers, just about any engine would fit, so Buick and Oldsmobile engines eventually found their way in there, too.
The 1968 Riviera is really a very good looking car, if only GM made it 20% smaller.
Man that Riviera is gorgeous. I do wish Detroit would return to the days when they made cars with serious style. No mistaking that Riviera or the Mustang concept for a Toyota.
I love the headlights on the Pontiac concept, its looks so future-swank…I can imagine someone driving this to the spaceport for the first leg of their lunar vacation. That Riviera is awesome too, I wonder if the color is a one off for the auto show, sometimes they would paint the turntable cars in special colors with extra metal flake to make them stand out.
It’s Syd Mead’s world, we only dream about it.
So you could get the Riviera with orange-wall tires? They are orange, right?
But I agree, that color is awesome.
Man, that Mustang concept is sweet. Kinda like it more than what actually came out. That front end is nice. And the opera window looks good there. The roofline is just so sleek, the whole thing looks low and mean. Reminds me of the 2015 concept, specially the side scoop treatment and door glass shape a bit.
As to what the color of the whitewalls on the Riviera actually were, who knows? There were a lot of different color temperature lights being used in the displays, some with colored gels. Buick may have been blasting the Riviera with orange lighting/gels to make the paint pop. But if you check out the 1968 Riviera brochure, you will see the three-banded whitewalls. And they could have been dyed/tinted to complement the fantastic paint.
I think that “opera window” on the Mustang is the fuel filler.
I love that Riv too. It reminds me of the Mandarin Orange paint on Seventies Cadillacs.
The Mangusta is stunning,it should have been in a playboy’s garage.
Current pedestrian safety standards make pop-up headlights a no-no. But how about “pop-in” headlights like the Pontiac Cirrus? It looks great, shouldn’t affect ped-safety, and should keep the now ubiquitous plastic headlight lens from yellowing over time.
You could label photos of the first Mustang concept as something done by a customiser in the last 20-30 years and people would believe you.
I think the Mangusta, Cirrus and Riviera are my favorites. Great pictures.
I imagine some suitably groovy 60s instrumental was playing in the background as Kevin was taking these shots. 🙂 Sadly, shopping mall music fodder by the 70s. 🙁
I don’t know how many new vehicles had LED headlights back when this was first posted six years ago but, man, the headlights of that Pontiac Cirrus sure foretold the LED-mania going on today, more than a half century later.
Thinking about that timeframe makes me amazed how rapid that trend spread. I can only think of a handful of cars that had LED running lights 6 years ago, almost all Audi’s. Now I struggle to think of anything that doesn’t.
This Pontiac goes to show how little innovation is actually in the modern car industry. Just more reliable and cost effective ways to feasibility use what already was invented before 1970.
I’m guessing the “LED headlights” were actually fluorescent tubes, which were featured on several 1960s concepts cars. I’m not surprised none made it to production – fluorescent lighting is poorly suited to headlamps since the large glowing surfaces are difficult to focus.
LED’s were becoming more common by 1968 so it’s not impossible they would be used on a concept car. But white LED’s didn’t come out till the nineties, so white lighting would have been created from a combination of red/green/blue LED’s in 1968.
The problem was blue LEDs weren’t available in 1968 either to enable RGB white LEDs to be made; high-brightness blue LEDs didn’t arrive until the nineties either – actually, it was blue LEDs that made white LEDs of the type used for lighting possible, usually by using yellow phosphors that would glow white when combined with a blue LED.
Something I’ve pondered lately is how many late 60 designs were designed with aspirations toward square headlights, and in particular the Mustang. This concept along with numerous Plymouth and a Dodge showcars during this time showcased them, and much of the trend into the 70s was towards boxy or spacepod futurism. The 71 certainly could have used squares, the 73 even used chromed square shaped bezels to pull off a faux look, which carried on through the Mustang II era.
One possible explanation for the use of the illegal square headlights is that it would be an easy and cheap way to differentiate a concept car from the production version, at least that sure seems to be what Ford was doing with the Mustang, all the way back to the original 1963 Mustang II (not the 1974 Pinto-based car). The first Mustang II was essentially the production car but with no front bumper, protruding grille and headlights behind metal grilles and square glass covers.
And the Chicago 1968 Mach 1 sure seems like a production 1969 Mustang with square headlights.
Concept cars aren’t deliberately differentiated, concepts are an expression by the designers to showcase what they could do if untethered by regulation and practical concessions, and I think square/rectangular headlights were a big part of that by the late 60s as European subsidiaries could progress in production models unabated.
We revisited that car on Saturday and many of its styling elements are plainly visible here, combined with a spoiler reminiscent of the ‘68 Shelby’s.
Interestingly in earlier form (November 1966) it had a rear facia more reminiscent of a conventional 1967.