Television! Jet planes, stereo sound, atomic power, pocket transistor radios, and space rockets! A nonstop parade of innovations convinced postwar consumers that the future would bring unending new wonders. Bubble-topped, jet powered cars that steered themselves down automated highways seemed inevitable.

The automobile was the quintessential icon of a consumer-driven age and thus freighted with significance far beyond its functional aspects. Detroit executives saw that prototype show cars presented an ideal opportunity to test public reaction to future styling ideas while shedding a halo glow around production models.

Car customizers caught dream car fever and produced a dazzling array of futuristic show cars. Though built from scavenged parts in cramped garages on limited budgets, their creations rivaled those from the major manufacturers.

Plastics manufacturers caught the buzz and produced model kits that sold in the millions to kids excited by their wild designs. Demand for these kits grew so rapidly that makers commissioned custom car builders to produce show cars so they could be reproduced as scale plastic model kits.

Narrow, crowded streets, depressed post war economies and punitive fuel prices forced Europeans to think of cars in strictly pragmatic terms but American optimism, cheap fuel and a sprawling new interstate highway system challenged manufacturers to produce cars that lived up to soaring expectations. American cars evolved to symbolize freedom and progress while projecting drivers' public images. During the mid-twentieth century, as never before or since, Americans projected dreams onto their automobiles. Car builders shared their longings and built futuristic prototypes that put dreams on wheels. European coachbuilders followed soon after, producing gorgeous show cars in order to attract business. Later still, Japanese manufacturers began to produce amazing concept cars that rivaled the best in the world.

Concept cars are still being shown but their impact is much less today. Sleek prototypes are trucked around to shows where glamorous spokes models explain their features to small groups that stare open-mouthed then shuffle home and forget the whole thing. But dream cars were once avatars of a beautiful future that seemed inevitable. Today tweens spend their cash on video games instead of on dream car model kits. Cars of the future are not used as advertising icons, nor reproduced as toys, nor featured in television shows and movies, nor do small town body shops spend months cobbling together their own futuristic cruisers. The yawning gap between their place in American society then and now dramatically illustrates the change in American society over the intervening decades.

An argument could be made that in a consumerist society, industrial designers are the most culturally impacful artists. This was especially true during the mid-twentieth century when corporations spent vast funds developing dream cars with no promise of direct profit. These "blue sky" prototypes, styled as pure artistic exercises unfettered by practical production concerns, reflected the collective unconscious. Other successful cultures have directed capital, energy and creativity towards expressing mythical icons in concrete form. Medieval Europeans built cathedrals, ancient Egyptians built elaborate tombs, and Mayans dotted Central America with temple complexes. Is it a stretch to compare such cultural obsessions with the dream car fever that gripped mid-twentieth century Americans?