The Space Age Hits the Road: Visionary Car Designs in America

1956 Pontiac Club de Mer “safety harness”

At a time when seatbelts came as optional accessories on most cars, the Club de Mer’s sales brochure boasted “safety harnesses” as a standard feature. Both the presence of the seatbelts and the marketing angle taken by Pontiac in promoting them reveal how extensively the aviation aesthetic permeated automobile design at this time. With its bubble-like windshield, exaggerated rear fin, and transmission controls located between the two seats, the Club de Mer appears to have taken design cues from a rival concept car, the 1955 Lincoln Futura.

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