Cars Of The Future from 1948

Three plug-ugly cars which never got beyond the prototype stage. The first one, a 1948 Davis Divan, looks like a cross between a bedroom slipper and a steam iron. It might also pass as a Bob Clampett cartoon character. Supposedly it could hold four people across, or two people from 2017 in a tight pinch. I saw someone on YouTube (Jay Leno - see video below - I found it finally) try to drive a reconstruction, and he complained it kept tipping over.

The second one is oh, oh, my God, just horrible to contemplate, as lumpy as the Elephant Man, an airstream trailer with a horrible disease. I guess it sort of looks like someone's idea of a futuristic rocket, but it somehow does not get off the ground. 

The third one commits the sin of being merely dull. It's a kind of '40s  race-car-type-thing, but why the wheels are encased like that puzzles me. Wouldn't that make them more susceptible to damage? 

There were hundreds of "futuristic" designs like these, and in many cases the designers found backers, pocketed the money, then got out of town fast. 

Abandoned Edsels

A bad idea whose time has come

By now you might have guessed that I like making "giffs", as they're called by us tekkies. Until I was sternly reprimanded by Sheldon of The Big Bang Theory, I always used to called them G. I. F.'s, sort of like T. H. E. Cat (my favorite show ever). At any rate, I have a tendency to make these late at night, losing track of time until I am too tired to even feel it any more. On my giffinator site, it says I can now "reverse and append", and this worked out nicely with my homage to my favorite automobile (next to the one in My Mother the Car). . .

THE EDSEL!

The Edsel, while plug-ugly, expensive and prone to breaking down, was pushed as the Next Great Thing in lugg-zhurry cars, in 1956 or whenever it was. It had that stretched-out powerboat look that stayed around until well into the '70s, vestigial fins, and something like a toilet seat stuck on the front (also described by critics as a horsecollar, a sewer drain and a metallic cunt). Never mind! The Ford company was sure this was going to be "it", the best thing to chug along the turnpike since the Model T.

Uh.

Didn't happen.

Yes. This is about as far as the Edsel got.

If you just wanted to drive it up and down your driveway and never go anywhere, it might work out OK, but if you got halfway down the street, the neighbors might start to talk.

- Oh Lor', what IS that plug-ugly thing?

- Is that a - no, is that a - a -

- A metallic - 

However, this clip demonstrates the Edsel would probably be pretty efficient at running over your neighbor if you didn't like him.

What I love most about the Edsel is that it's self-aware. It knows where it's going. It knows its own future, in fact. How many of us can say that of ourselves? Can we look into the mists of the unknown and realize what Fate has in store for us?

The Edsel knows. Uh-uh.