Stumbling into this picture of one of Chrysler’s pavilions at the 1964-1965 NYC World Fair reminds me that the Niedermeyers never made it to all of the Big Three exhibits, having worn ourselves out waiting in lines under the hot August sun at the GM and Ford pavilions. I’d totally forgotten that this is what Chrysler did there, along with a number of their cars seeming to skim the surface of that moat. Looks like they got the plug wiring wrong, among other things. Here’s some other shots of it and the other Chrysler structure, which is even less faithful to reality.
Its sign says “1,000,000 HP”. Is that gross or net?
The other Chrysler structure is this cartoonish coupe, with six headlights. Who authorized this? Virgil Exner was gone by then.
Now I’m not feeling so bad about missing the Chrysler exhibit. This is ugly. Bill Mitchell would never have let GM do anything like this.
Neat to see the Simca 1000 on display in photo #2.
Complete with white walls. Popular import of the day?.
Did the giant headlights flash? The bottom unit of the three appears to be white in the upper photo and orange in the lower.
It also appears to have portholes. And a louvered windshield. WTF. Fins in ’64? And triple unit taillamps–was this some sort of belated Desoto homage? How very odd.
Probably both engine and cartoon car are the work of an outsourced graphic designer.
THANK YOU Paul ! .
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I was there but wasn’t allowed to look at anything Transportation related….
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That still burns lo these many decades later .
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-Nate
I was there also ,my dad had no patience for long lines so we rushed through . I do remember the heat and humidity
In our case, being a Chevrolet dealer we had tickets for two days, back-to-back at the GM pavilion. Which meant that an hour before opening, while the crowds were lining up, we got to do the pavilion ride.
Otherwise, dad’s unwillingness to wait in line meant we saw the Chrysler exhibit, didn’t go to Ford’s (that would have been treasonous in our family), and I only ended up seeing all the small international exhibits, which had no lines. And no crowds. OK, we saw all the international exhibits that weren’t Eastern Bloc (Czechoslovakia was the exception) because my folks weren’t interesting in seeing anything the Commies had to offer.
And dad wasn’t into souvenir buying either. All in all, I remember it as a VERY disappointing vacation.
Yep ;
_very_ disappointing indeed .
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The lines were never the problem it was making sure I didn’t ” waste time ” doing/looking at anything I enjoyed .
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Same deal when I visited the Smithsonian ~ spent a couple days looking at crap I didn’t give a rat’s patoot about .
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-Nate
Hmm… no visible road draft tube on that motor.
I’m sorry, that was one ugly display – even for the time. So dowdy compared to GM and Ford. Looks like cheap high school homecoming floats!
I Hope those cars had good rustproofing.
Rustproofing? 60s Chryslers? Those cars were never even removed from the fountain, they just dissolved into it by the end of the fair. 🙂
’64-’65 indeed—the moat cars in pic № 1 are ’64 models; the ones in pic № 3 are ’65s.
1964 and 1965 Dodge Polaras, Dodge Darts, and Chrysler Newports (or 300s?) and Simca.
“1,000,000 HP, gross or net?! ”
Definitely gross! Was that a theme pavilion or a giant public restroom?
If I could go back in time, catching one of these classic World’s Fairs would be high on my list. While they still occur, they are apparently more like technology conventions, and lack the fair atmosphere.
Apparently, Walt Disney himself was behind the efforts of some of the corporate exhibits, which does a lot to explain why this looks rather like Disney World – which was well into planning stages by the time the ’64 Fair was in progress. To a degree, you can revisit the Fair seeing attractions such as “The Carousel of Progress” or “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln,” which were lifted from the Fair and moved to Orlando. I was nerd enough to drag my family through these in 2006. My history buff kid was the only one that “got it.” She actually asked to see Mr. Lincoln, and my wife diverted the other kids while we took it in.
I didn’t get to live the cultural extensions of the NY World’s Fair at the time, but evidence did pop up occasionally. The owner’s manual to my 1965 Buick Riviera featured a drawing of the GM Pavilion on the cover.
As alluded to above, it probably crossed the minds of more than a few visitors to the Chrysler Pavilion that the car caricature looked a bit too much like the street legal cars Chrysler was building and losing market share with just a few years earlier. While Chrysler was about to experience a great leap forward with their new ’65 models, it is just so Chrysler to at least stub its toe a little in the process.
To really make that Chrysler engine display complete, I hope they had a recording of a Highland Park Hummingbird playing periodically over a PA.
Well, here y’go, you are there! Would you like snarking or non? (I strongly recommend a seat in the snarking section)
Anaheim, likely, considering the year. Also, ” Small World”.
“FASTEST SHOW AT THE FAIR”
To pass through?
It’s fun to look at in a campy sort of way, it reminds me of the kind of half assed attractions you’d see portrayed in Springfield in an early Simpsons episode. Everything looks like it was crafted out of industrial drums welded together. The 1,000,000 horsepower engine doesn’t even look like an OHV shape with the drum “valve covers” mounted to the engine block, and would it have killed them to run the spark plug wires to a fake distributor? (they could have used a trash can for the shape of it!) Even a modern day car idiot would know the plugs aren’t just connected together like that, let alone back when points and plug changes were in the realm of familiarity to non-mechanic car owners.
Actually, that car structure reminds me of the Talbot that Pierre Levegh almost won LeMans with.
Chrysler owned the Talbot name for a period, so not 100% unrealistic? The back 2/3rds of the structure reminds me of a Trabant, and I have no far fetched explanation for that.
It’s not a Hemi!
Nor, the vaunted and reliable Slant 6, which I would have preferred as MOPAR’s readily identifiable powerplant.
Pretty restrictive looking exhaust manifold on that engine.
Chrysler had not been all that flush in 1962-63 when this was being planned, so it is not surprising that the “engine” building has a bit of a cost-cutter vibe about it. I agree, the architects were clearly not mechanical engineers. And really, how many people were as tough as this crowd? Most folks probably thought it was a pretty clever building.
The description of the Chrysler Autofare in the Official 1965 New York World’s Fair Guide Book sheds some light as to why Chrysler chose the aesthetics they did:
“The exhibit was designed especially for children, with a puppet show, a giant car, and other exhibits set on islands in a large man-made lake.
Various aspects of the automotive world come to life in whimsical animated models. Chairs around the lake encourage visitors to relax and enjoy the Fair.
PUPPET SHOW. This 20-minute exercise in musical whimsey was designed by puppeteer Bil Baird. It is continuously performed on a novel revolving stage.
WALK-IN ENGINE. Dominating the display is a giant “one-million horsepower” engine through which visitors walk. Its crankshaft is a fearsome dragon with snapping jaws. The real world is represented by a turbine engine and a montage of power plants of the future.
AIRBORNE RIDE. Seated in car bodies, visitors travel through the air along a simulated assembly line. Mechanical men wielding huge instruments “check” each auto for imperfections. Nearby is a metallic “zoo” where creatures made of auto parts cavort.
AN ANTIC AUTO. Guests walk through a capriciously designed mammoth car to examine its antic accessories and giant components.”
Here is a picture of the assembly line ride, and of all things, Simcas make an appearance again as the cars the passengers rode in!
Missed that part of the exhibit, no doubt there was a line waiting to get on.
Thanks for the explanation. The engine and car do look like the popular kiddie-style graphics of the time.
I wonder if they were real Simca bodies. If so it made sense to maybe use factory rejects rather than melt them back down. But we will probably never know the whole story.
Pretty sure they were real 1000 bodies.64-65 were peak Chrysler International years, before reality set in, especially in the UK.
I’ve had a fascination with the fair for as long as I can remember, even though I was nowhere near born when it took place. Arcadia Publishing has several books about the fair, and the following website is a fun diversion if you’re interested in such things.
http://www.nywf64.com/
Wow.
Wish I could have gone to the NY Worlds Fair. Our family did visit Expo ’67 in Montreal. Same problems as mentioned — hot, humid, crowded, with loooooong lines in August.
The NY Fair site is still a very nice park today. The Unisphere is still resplendent, and the fountains surrounding it were recently refurbished and turned back on in the warmer months. The NY State Pavilion is the only other fair building still standing, in quite a derelict condition.
The NYC building is still there as the Queens Museum of Art and still has the Panarama, the model of the entire City of New York, every building in all five boroughs at 1 in equals 100 ft. This building actually dates back to the 1939 Worlds Fair.
You are correct about that, and the Panorama is a sight to behold. Because the museum is on the periphery of the present-day park, I didn’t think of it as part of the fairgrounds.
The Museum of Science (former Hall of Science) and the Terrace on the Park (former Port Authority Heliport and Restaurant) also still exist – across the Grand Central in what was the Transportation Zone for both the 1939-40 and 1964-65 fairs. There’s also the World’s Fair Marina on the waterfront, and the Lewis Armstrong Tennis Stadium was built as the Singer Bowl for the fair.
There was also an underground home that appeared a few years ago on a urbex web site, same for the sky towers. I don’t know if they still exist though as both were pretty dilapidated (although the home apparently had had vagrants living in it.)
Very nice – Wish they would have replaced the six headlight abomination with a blow up of the beautiful new 64 Imperial – better yet the 65 with the glass headlight covers…
That giant ‘engine’ reminds me of those plastic covers many carmakers today use to hide the engine.
Happy Motoring, Mark