Item Info

Media Type: Photographic Prints
Source: Automobile Reference Collection
Notes:

General Motors experimental Firebird III is the first space-age inspired car. Beneath its missile-ilke shape the tools of the space age-translators, computors and electronics-are employed for the first time to give automatic guidance and improved passenger comfort to automobiles.

Firebird III is the first car ever designed around a single stick control system which eliminates the conventional steering wheel, brake pedal and accelerator. It is the easiest-to-drive automobile ever built.

It is the third member of the GM Firebird family which has become a world famed symbol of the auto industry’s continuous search for better transportation tomorrows. The car was conceived and built at the GM Technical Center near Detroit and is here shown under high speed test at the GM Proving Ground near Mesa, Arizona.

The first Firebird, a single seat car, introduced at the GM Motorama of 1954, was the first gas turbine powered automobile built and tested in the United States. Firebird II, a four passenger car introduced at the Motorama of 1956, carried forward gas turbine progress and featured significant advances in passenger comfort.

The second Firebird also presented a concept of a car under automatic guidance on an electronically-controlled highway of tomorrow. The latest Firebird, shown above, carries the concept into reality. Through electronic “sniffers” located beneath the car, it can follow low frequency power in a cable in the highway to automatically guide the car.

Firebird III was designed and built jointly by Harley J. Earl, GM Vice-President in Charge of Styling and Lawrence R. Hafstad, GM Vice President in Charge of Research, and more than 500 specialists from their staffs with assistance from several other staffs and 10 GM divisions.

It has a fiber glass body and is pearlescent silver-gold in color. The car measures 44.8 inches at the top of the bubbles and 57.3 inches at the tip of the dorsal fin.

Firebird III has two engines—an improved 225 horsepower Whirlfire gas turbine engine located in the rear and a new 10 horsepower aluminum engine located in the nose which drives all accessories.

Featuring the most advanced passenger compartment ever designed, the car has the first single dial electronic temperature system. Through electronics it can maintain a single temperature setting even though the car be driven from the North Pole to the Equator. Large gull-wing doors swing diagonally up to offer effortless passenger entry.

New Trub-Al brakes, an improved air-oil suspension system, a lighting system that turns on automatically when daylight turns to darkness, an “ultra-sonic key” which opens the doors by high frequency sound waves and a timer which can be set to start the accessory drive engine prior to passenger entry to pre-condition the temperature are a few of the other features of this revolutionary new automobile.