The most original, unrestored General Motors Motorama show car in existence is, without a doubt, the 1954 Pontiac Bonneville Special. The car carries still carries its original hand-applied bronze metallic lacquer paint finish, interior, engine and drivetrain. The fiberglass body is nearing 70 years old and carries the right amount of patina to validate its originality while retaining its show-car “wow” factor.
The accompanying photo-shoot was done nearly a decade ago at a location near Highland Park, Ill., that overlooks Lake Michigan, yet the car looks exactly the same today. With its scenic background overlooking the lake, it’s one of owner Joe Bortz’s favorite locations. Amazingly, Bortz drove the Bonneville Special about a mile from his collection to the lake-side location and acted as my “turn-style operator” when it was time to change the car’s position for the photo-shoot. However, it wasn’t the first time the Bonneville Special had been rotated for the cameras.
An exciting new Pontiac
The Pontiac Bonneville Special concept car (aka “dream car”) was unveiled at the traveling GM Motorama show in 1954. The GM Motorama was held from 1953 to 1961 and grew out of the 1949 GM Transportation Unlimited and 1950 Mid-Century Motorama shows, each launched by GM in conjunction with the annual New York Auto Show traditionally held the first week of January. At these events that preceded the GM Motorama, prototype GM cars, such as the forthcoming 1949 two-door hardtops and specially trimmed and painted production cars, were displayed alongside the production cars available to the public.
During 1951 and 1952, GM showed its prototypes and show cars at auto shows held in various cities across North America, but did not conduct its own shows due to curbed automobile production during the Korean War. The GM show cars that appeared at the 1951 and ’52 multi-make shows included the Buick XP-300 and the GM Le Sabre concept cars, both of which caused a stir that likely encouraged GM to field a much larger array of show cars at its own GM Motorama shows featuring only GM cars. Featured at the GM Motoramas were additional specially trimmed production vehicles as well as new futuristic concept cars with innovative design features intended to test public reaction and with experimental mechanical features that might just make it onto future GM vehicles.
For 1953, GM pulled out all the stops by hosting its GM Motorama at seven cities with six concept cars from its divisions. The thrill continued into 1954 at six stops with 13 new concept show cars—and that figure doesn’t include the specially modified production cars built into show cars! Among the concept cars displayed at the 1954 GM Motorama was the bronze Bonneville Special owned since the 1980s by Joe Bortz.
Building the Bonneville Special
The Bonneville Special is the first two-seat sports car prototype GM’s Pontiac division had ever produced. Reportedly conceived by the legendary Harley J. Earl, GM Vice President of Styling, and designed by Homer C. LaGassey and Pontiac’s chief designer, Paul Gillan, the Bonneville Special was a grand touring sport coupé that incorporated innovative styling features such as a Plexiglas canopy with gull-wing windows on a sleek fiberglass body.
The name “Bonneville” was meant to convey high performance, a new concept to GM’s Pontiac brand which had been known for building staid, reliable cars. The name was inspired by a trip Earl had taken to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to observe speed trials there. The 1954 Bonneville Special was the first GM vehicle to carry the Bonneville name, which was subsequently given to the division’s full-size performance production car starting in 1957 and was then continuously used by Pontiac for 47 years on a multitude of body designs.
“The story goes that Harley Earl went to the Bonneville Salt Flats to watch the cars race and was so impressed that he decided to design a concept/dream car for the General Motors Motorama named after the Bonneville Salt Flat races, and decided to give it to the Pontiac Division,” Bortz says. Earl even requested that the state of Utah create “GM 000” license plates for the Bonneville Special.
Although named for a parcel of land hallowed by racers, the Bonneville Special design was actually borne from the air.
“One of the elements that was in play in the early 1950s was the fact that airplanes were now powered by jet engines rather than rotary-prop engines,” Bortz says. “Harley Earl designed the 1954 Bonneville Special to have it use many of the styling cues of a jet plane, including a realistic dome cockpit with wing doors and a back end… that mimicked the back end of the jet-plane fuselage with a spare tire cover that looks like the back end of a jet plane, and hubcaps that look like the insides of the jet turbine of a jet engine. Then the headlights were covered to make the car appear more aerodynamic. The instrumentation and even the floor mats were reminiscent of what would be the appearance of the cockpit of a jet-engine-powered plane.”
Two Bonneville Special prototypes were built; the first Bonneville Special was painted metallic bronze and the second an emerald green. The metallic bronze car debuted at the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, the first stop on the 1954 GM Motorama.
The exterior design of the sporty Bonneville Specials mated a Space Age, twin-blade jet-plane tail with a sloping, Corvette-esque nose. As Bortz notes, the rounded front-end featured curved lenses covering the Bonneville Special’s recessed headlamps, which were integrated into front fenders that rose over the wheels and then fell back to the beltline. Six vertical chrome strips decorated the bottom of the grille opening. The rectangular, undecorated grille opening fed air to the radiator and formed the starting point for twin Pontiac “Silver Streaks” that ran over the hood to a pair of low air scoops near the cowl. The Silver Streaks were a body detail unique to Pontiacs manufactured from 1935 to 1956 where bright metal bands ran down the middle of the hood and, early on, the decklid. Born in the Art Deco style of the mid 1930s, the Silver Streaks were meant as a visual cue to help distinguish Pontiacs from their competitors, and to create the illusion of speed. On the Bonneville Special, a pair were used, which was the second time that two ribbed Silver Streaks appeared on a Pontiac; the first time was on the 1953 Parisienne, another Motorama concept car incidentally also owned by Bortz. In 1957, Pontiac discontinued the Silver Streaks.
The Bonneville Special’s rear fenders likewise rose over the wheels, then fell even with the beltline to form the rear blade-type rear fenders that Bortz notes were inspired by jets. Fully integrated between the rear fender blades was the covered rear spare tire with an exposed turbine-looking aluminum wheel matching the other four wheels. Large, round taillamps were incorporated into the back edge of the bladed rear fenders in a fashion similar to production Pontiacs in the only exterior clue that the Bonneville Special had come from Pontiac.
Body-side ornamentation on the Bonneville Special’s fiberglass body was relatively minimal. There were two aluminum ornaments machined to appear to be oil coolers behind each front wheel opening. The thin vertical front bumpers followed the rounded leading edge of the fender tip much like the Corvette bumperettes of the period, although the Bonneville Specials’ bumperettes lacked the horizontal component of the Corvette’s front bumperettes. At the back, the only semblance of a bumper was chrome built into the bottom of the rear tips of the bladed fenders.
Bortz’s unrestored Bonneville Special is amazingly well preserved, and sitting in the once-futuristic concept car is a trip back in time. It wouldn’t be accurate to say the bronze leather upholstery and chrome-trimmed interior show their age; rather, they have mellowed with time and to ever consider restoring them would be downright shameful. Upon settling into the driver’s seat, the details of the cockpit become more evident, such as the recessed door panels that increase elbow room and the car’s many jet-plane influences, from the instrument panel to the console.
The cockpit of the Bonneville Special features bucket seats split by a full-length console with a brushed surface extending from another ribbed oil cooler trim piece to beneath the full-width instrument panel. A small automatic gearshift handle, two vent controls and the ignition lock are centrally placed within the console. Instruments are laid out with a large speedometer in front of the driver and six more aircraft-type gauges horizontally spread across the instrument panel to in front of the passenger seat. A racing-style three-spoke steering wheel suggests Salt Flats-type performance—and predicted the steering wheel that would appear on 1956 Corvettes.
Entry to the Bonneville Special’s cabin was through conventionally hinged frameless doors and gull-winged Plexiglas panels integrated into its see-through canopy. A dramatically curved rear window completes the “bubble top” in back and provides excellent rearward visibility.
Design carry-overs from the Bonneville Special quickly made it into the next year’s production models, and in those to follow. Most conspicuous were the dual Silver Streaks, which appeared on the hood and rear fender tops of 1955 and ’56 Pontiacs, as well as Pontiac’s 1956 Club de Mer concept car. The Bonneville Special’s scoops were designed to channel cool air into the driver’s compartment from the front of the car and also appeared on the Club de Mer.
Like many GM concept cars of the era, the Bonneville Special was a fully functioning vehicle. Pontiac reportedly planned to fit it with its new V-8 engine, but the V-type powerplant wasn’t ready in time for production cars and so the Bonneville Special made do with Pontiac’s aged straight-eight, although with modifications. The most notable changes to the Bonneville Special’s high-output straight-eight was a quartet of side-draft carburetors, a long-duration cam and a chrome-plated cylinder head. These and other undisclosed engine modifications reportedly raised the engine’s original 122 hp to what Pontiac claimed was 230 hp. Sharing the “Silver Streak” name used for the flathead straight-eight that powered production cars, it was Pontiac’s most powerful engine to date. Painted bright red and detailed in chrome, the engine was coupled to a four-speed Hydra-Matic automatic transmission.
Landing the Bonneville Specials
Bortz doesn’t specifically recall seeing the Bonneville Special when it was new, but he was at the GM Motorama’s stop at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago from April 24 to May 2, 1954.
“When I was 12, I went to the International Amphitheatre, and I was there for the GM Motorama,” he says. “I was still kind of short and couldn’t see the cars through the crowd, so I would tap these tall guys and ask if I could get up on their shoulders, and some guys would let me do that. My biggest thrill would have been to get to the front row.
“I do remember being there and seeing the cars, and I kind of have a recollection of [the bronze Bonneville Special] being there on the stand. It was on the highest turn table; the Bonneville Special was their number one show car.”
In 1985, Bortz added the Bonneville Special to his growing concept car collection, which he had begun about five years earlier.
“Fran Roxas called me and he said, ‘Joe, you like those concept cars. Well, I got a story for you,’” Bortz recalled. “‘There was a guy that got a hold of the Motorama Pontiac Bonneville Special and he had it on display at the Detroit Historical Society, and it was on the main floor of their museum from the time he loaned it to them in 1958 until 1985.’
“[The museum] got a new curator and he said, ‘You can’t leave a display up for 30 years, people won’t come back,’” Bortz related. “And the owner said, ‘If you don’t put it back upstairs, we are going to sell the car.’ So Fran Roxas got word on that and I called the guy up and he told me about the car. He said, ‘The car is 100 percent original. Nothing has been touched. Most of the air in the tires is from 1954. [A previous owner] was some low-level GM executive and they signed the car out to him. So I quickly, quickly brought it home. I brought it home with my station wagon and an open trailer!”
The late GM designer Dave Holls, who respected Bortz for saving GM concept cars, researched the Bonneville Special for Bortz and told him GM records showed it was the only example built. Once Bortz’s Bonneville Special started to appear in magazines stating it was the only such car, Bortz received a phone call from the owner of a second Bonneville Special.
“In the late 1980s, I got a call from a guy and he said, ‘Why are you telling everyone you have the only Bonneville Special? I have one, too,’” Bortz recalled. Bortz suspected the caller’s car was a custom that was built to appear like his original Bonneville Special, but once he received a photocopy of a picture of the car, he realized there was, indeed, a second. A couple years later, Bortz bought that originally green Bonneville Special, too.
“The way the second one got built, by the way, was whenever they made a fiberglass concept car, they (GM) made a second body mold to put into storage. The reason was if they cracked up a fender, you could cut it off the spare body mold and glue it on. All of the dealers wanted it in their showroom and there was such a strong demand that somebody said, ‘Make a second one,’ and they did. That was the green one.”
By the time Bortz found the green Bonneville Special, it had been repainted white “with a broom,” he jokes. The car was in need of restoration, and Bortz’s friend, Roger Wilbanks, told Bortz that since he’d never restore it, he should sell it to him. Bortz agreed, and the green Bonneville Special has since been restored to its original green splendor.
The concept of a keeper
Among the many concept cars in his collection, the Bonneville Special remains particularly special to Bortz. Part of the car’s appeal to him is its originality—he’s only had to add air to the tires on a few occasions, so most of the air in its tires is truly from 1954. Last fall, the brake booster and master cylinder failed after 70 years and Bortz had them rebuilt. The original carburetors started acting up years earlier, so Bortz had them rebuilt to factory standards and repainted red, just as they originally were. Of course, the original battery has been replaced and the oil and other fluids have been changed, but the Bonneville Special otherwise remains so original, it’s the most original GM Motorama show car known to remain in existence. Bortz considers himself to be very lucky for owning this car and the many other concept cars in his collection.
“The idea that I could ever touch one, let alone own one, was unimaginable, and then you end up owning a whole lot of them—it’s like the kid winning the lottery,” he says.
The 1954 Pontiac Bonneville Special is currently on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum as part of the display “GM’s Marvelous Motorama: Dream Cars from the Joe Bortz Collection.” The display includes six GM Motorama show cars from the Bortz Collection including the featured 1954 Bonneville Special plus the 1955 LaSalle II Roadster, the 1955 LaSalle II Sedan, the 1953 Pontiac Parisienne, the 1955 Chevrolet Biscayne and the 1953 Buick Wildcat. Learn more at www.petersen.org.
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