During the New York World's Fair in 1940, General Motors stunned the world with a truly peculiar car model: a transparent Pontiac. The Plexiglas Six DeLuxe of 1939, advertised in style as the first completely transparent full-size car manufactured in the world.
To prepare the transparent chassis of this unique vehicle, GM had the collaboration of Rohm
It was a transparent and very robust plastic. Proof of this is that it was one of the leading materials in World War II, used to protect fighter and bomber pilots.
Based on the design drawings of the four-door Pontiac Sedan Touring, an exact replica was built in which this transparent material replaced the exterior sheet metal.
The metal underside of the chassis received a copper wash, while the instrument panel was bathed in a thin layer of chrome. White was the color chosen for the rubber moldings and tires.
The production of this car cost no less than $25,000, a real fortune in those days (about $500,000 today).
This is how General Motors presented it to the world, with a press release in 1939: "A transparent automobile, the first built in the United States, is the most surprising of the Fisher Body Division exhibits at the GM Highways and Skylines Building in the New York World's Fair.
Created to showcase rigid interior reinforcement and other features complete with windows that can be raised and lowered, doors that can be opened and closed. The only material missing is the insulation that is normally applied to the interior surface working with a new material, a transparent synthetic plastic."
It was quite an event in the city and the press quickly dubbed it The Ghost Car, for obvious reasons.
The idea of mass producing this model was soon abandoned. The reason: Plexiglas was a light and resistant material, but it presented a serious problem: it could not insulate the heat from the engine and turned the car's interior into a real oven.
When the exhibition ended, the Pontiac Plexiglas left its display and went on tour throughout the country, adorning various dealerships on the East Coast of the United States (the public success motivated the construction of a second unit for the Golden Gate Exposition , on Treasure Island, next to San Francisco.
This second unit was based on a Pontiac Torpedo and was destroyed years later. The Pontiac Plexiglas was displayed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where it remained until the end of World War II. It was owned by the company until it was purchased by billionaire Don Barlup in 1973.
Barlup commissioned a partial restoration of the car before selling it to collector Leo Gephart in 1979, whose descendants kept it until 2012, when they decided to auction it for $700,000.
The car has barely 138 kilometers traveled and its current state of conservation is fantastic, in the hands of an American collector.
