Model photos courtesy Wright Auctions.
GM’s Firebird III concept car envisioned plenty of far-flung futuristic technologies, from turbine drivetrains to automotive autonomy, but the process used to design and build the concept car relied on tried-and-true methods, as we can see from the two-foot-long resin model that GM’s design staff used in developing the concept car, which will come up for auction later this year.
Long before CAD, holograms, 3D printing, and other rapid prototyping technologies made their way into Detroit’s design studios, the staff at General Motors needed a way to envision all the canards, fins, bubbletops, and other surface elements of the 1958 Firebird III, a car never intended for production, rather for showing off GM’s technical capabilities in the jet-age and gewgaw-obsessed Fifties.
According to the auction description for the 24-inch-long, eight-inch-wide, and 6-1/4-inch-high model, GM design staff had it built in 1957 and lacquered in all black to study the highlights of the form “and to facilitate surface development”; it may also have been used during presentations to management. It accommodates canopies in four different shades: matte amber, transparent amber, opaque black and clear. A subsequent full-size model was later built, also in black, to finalize the car’s shape before construction of the actual concept car.
GM reportedly presented the model as a retirement gift to an unnamed employee, who sold it to the current owner. According to Wright, the auction house handling the sale of the model, it’s the only Firebird III developmental model to have ever come up for auction.
Photo courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives.
The third (though not final) in a line of gas-turbine concept cars from GM, the two-seater Firebird III, also designated XP-73, Shop Order 90238, was intended as a sort of sports-car Firebird—a middle ground between the racy single-seat Firebird I and the family-minded four-place Firebird II. It showcased a myriad of wild design cues (no less than seven tailfins, for example) as well as GM’s latest iteration of its regenerative gas turbine engine, the 225-hp Whirlfire GT-305, mounted as a unit with the transmission and differential behind the passenger compartment. And in keeping with the times, it had plenty of gadgets to boast of, including joystick control, the Firebird II’s Autoguide autonomous technology, an early form of cruise control, and a keyless remote system.
After it debuted in August 1958, it remained on the show circuit until 1961 and then went on display at The Henry Ford, before eventually returning to GM’s Heritage Collection, where it remains today.
Wright, which two years ago sold a styling studio model of the Gyron for $40,000, has put a pre-auction estimate of $20,000 to $30,000 on the Firebird III model. It will cross the block at Wright’s Important Design auction in Chicago, scheduled for December 11. For more information, visit Wright20.com.
UPDATE (12.December 2014): The Firebird III model sold for $27,500.