By Eric J. Savitz, editor-in-chief, GM News
For nearly two decades in the mid-20th century, General Motors made a determined effort to bring cutting-edge science and technology to the American heartland through a program called the Parade of Progress.
Basically a large mobile science museum, the Parade of Progress barnstormed cities across the country with exhibits on automotive technology, urban engineering, farming, leisure pursuits and other topics. The Parade of Progress made the case for American innovation and industry, evoking a sense of spunky can-do optimism and possibility. It was the era of Mr. Wizard and chemistry sets, of rapid social and technological progress, a time when science seemed capable of anything.
And nothing personified that spirit more than the shiny red-and-chrome 1940 GM Futurliner.
Appliances of tomorrow
This story starts with the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, more formally called “A Century of Progress International Exposition.” GM was the single-largest private exhibitor at the fair, with a 120,000-square-foot exhibit space that included a 177-foot-high tower with “GM” in neon lights that could be seen from miles away. There were exhibits from GM automotive brands – including Pontiac and LaSalle – and a display from GM’s Frigidaire division called “Appliances of Tomorrow.” Also on view: a working Chevrolet assembly line.
Charles Kettering, GM’s legendary research director, an inventor who held 186 patents, led the project to extend the spotlight on American ingenuity beyond the fair. creating the Parade of Progress. The first of these elaborate caravans rolled out in 1936, highlighted by 8 specially modified 35-foot-long GMC Streamliner buses. They included some of the more popular World’s Fair exhibits, along with “new wonders,” like an oscillograph, used “for studying body squeaks and exhaust noises” in automobiles.
The caravan also included nine tractor trailers carrying booths, additional exhibits, lamps, generators and other gear, as well as 1936 models of all of GM’s cars, including Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Buicks, LaSalles, and Cadillacs. Promotional materials from the time say the caravan stretched two miles on the road. Over four years, this first edition of the caravan visited more than 220 cities and was viewed by about 10 million people.
“We should all be concerned about the future,” Kettering once said, “because we will have to spend the rest of lives there.”
Behold the future
It was for the second Parade of Progress, which hit the road in 1941, that GM created Futurliners to display exhibits and host events.
GM produced 12 of these space-agey marvels on a bus assembly line in Pontiac, Michigan, with a specialized design not related to any other vehicles. Starting in early 1941, GM took the Futurliners on the road for the second version of the Parade of Progress, once again with a large cast of other supporting trucks and show cars.
The Futurliner was a behemoth, 33 feet long, 9 feet wide and more than 11 feet tall, weighing 15 tons. Sporting eight spiffy white-wall tires, the Futurliner had a maximum speed as stated at 55 mph, although some materials suggest they couldn’t top 40. But they sure looked speedy, giving off a Buck Rogers vibe. With a backlit stylized art deco GM logo on the nose, they looked like… the future.
The Futurliners also had 16-foot-long clam shell doors on either side to form stages and display areas. The driver sat way above the ground level – reaching the glass-enclosed cockpit required climbing a set of spiral stairs. Also part of the experience was a portable tent – which GM called “the Aer-O-Dome”– that could seat up to 1,500 people, without any internal supporting poles, for lectures and demos of the latest scientific wonders. GM called it “the tent of tomorrow.”
Showing strength
This second Parade of Progress came with war already underway in Europe, which shifted the way GM described it. “New materials, new methods, new techniques, new ways of doing this are ever in process of development,” GM President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., wrote at the time. “The General Motors Parade of Progress…is designed to show how industrial research and constantly advancing industrial techniques contribute to the vigor and to the strength of the nation.”
This edition of the Parade was a geek’s delight. There were displays of televisions – still exotic in 1941 – black light, an early microwave oven and stereophonic sound. It was a huge hit, with over 3 million visitors in 43 cities in less than a year. But the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 – and the subsequent U.S. declaration of war – led GM to cut the tour short. The Futurliners were put into storage.
There was a third Parade of Progress, which started in 1953, in refurbished Futurliners, which among other things added air conditioning for the driver, and automatic transmissions. There were new or revised exhibits, and cutting-edge cars along for the ride, like the first two-seat 1953 Corvette. But audiences were smaller than for the first two, and in 1956, GM shut down the Parade for good, eventually selling off the Futurliners.
Only a handful of restored Futurliners remain.
For now, the only one on public display is in the National Auto & Truck Museum, in Auburn, Indiana, a little north of Fort Wayne. Known as Futurliner No. 10, that one originally had a 3-dimensional sound exhibit on one side, and on the other a rotation of an exhibit called “Opportunity for Youth,” which was intended to inspire aspiring car designers, and a display about the All-American Soap Box Derby. After the Parade ended, GM sold No. 10 to the now-defunct Goebel Brewing of Detroit, which rechristened it the Goebel Land Cruiser. It was later acquired by the homebuilder Pulte Construction; and then by a Detroit-area Cadillac dealer, which used it as a billboard. No. 10 was eventually donated by automotive collector Joe Bortz to the museum, which spent about seven years refurbishing it.
Another Futurliner, restored by the owners of Connecticut-based Peter Pan Bus Lines, was sold in 2024 to a private Los Angeles-based entrepreneur who owns the “Caretakers Collection,” which also includes 65 cars, 30 motorcycles, and a dozen go-karts. The collector, who prefers to remain anonymous, spent $925,000 on the Futurliner, which he found via a Facebook Marketplace advertisement. He’s since spent about $1 million more on renovations, effectively undoing a 1990s-era restoration and starting from scratch, both inside and out. The collector plans to put his fully restored Futurliner on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles starting in December 2025.
The GM Heritage Center and Archive, which has a huge collection of GM memorabilia, documentation, and vehicles, doesn’t own a Futurliner, but it still has what is believed to be the only surviving exhibit, which was called “Our American Crossroads.” (At one point GM provided the exhibit to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry; you can get a feel for it in the embedded video on this page.) The exhibit was an automated diorama showing the evolution from small towns to modern suburbia.
VIDEO HERE
Caption for video: This GM-produced video highlighted “Our American Crossroads,” an exhibit that was part of the Parade of Progress, which was later installed in Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. The only surviving Futurliner exhibit, it is now owned by GM.
Technology remains a keystone of the GM story, with electric vehicles, home energy products, and rich vehicle infotainment systems. We’re collaborating with Nvidia on the application of AI manufacturing and other applications. And the company is betting big on driver-assistance and autonomous driving technology.
But we live in a new, more jaded age. The Futurliner and the Parade of Progress, born out of the desperation of the Great Depression and the determination of World War II, told the story of American innovation in way that inspired millions. Maybe we should do it all again.
Editor’s note: Retro Rides highlights noteworthy vehicles from the long history of General Motors. Over more than a century, GM has produced a huge variety of cars, trucks, SUVs, vans, station wagons, and even buses, some fondly remembered and sought after by collectors, others largely forgotten but worthy of rediscovery. With Retro Rides, we’re casting a fresh spotlight on some of GM’s great design, engineering and technology ideas of the past. Big thanks to the GM Heritage Center and Archives for making this series possible. If there’s a GM vehicle you think we should revisit, reach out to news@gm.com.
For nearly two decades in the mid-20th century, General Motors made a determined effort to bring cutting-edge science and technology to the American heartland through a program called the Parade of Progress.
Basically a large mobile science museum, the Parade of Progress barnstormed cities across the country with exhibits on automotive technology, urban engineering, farming, leisure pursuits and other topics. The Parade of Progress made the case for American innovation and industry, evoking a sense of spunky can-do optimism and possibility. It was the era of Mr. Wizard and chemistry sets, of rapid social and technological progress, a time when science seemed capable of anything.
And nothing personified that spirit more than the shiny red-and-chrome 1940 GM Futurliner.
Appliances of tomorrow
This story starts with the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, more formally called “A Century of Progress International Exposition.” GM was the single-largest private exhibitor at the fair, with a 120,000-square-foot exhibit space that included a 177-foot-high tower with “GM” in neon lights that could be seen from miles away. There were exhibits from GM automotive brands – including Pontiac and LaSalle – and a display from GM’s Frigidaire division called “Appliances of Tomorrow.” Also on view: a working Chevrolet assembly line.
Charles Kettering, GM’s legendary research director, an inventor who held 186 patents, led the project to extend the spotlight on American ingenuity beyond the fair, creating the Parade of Progress. The first of these elaborate caravans rolled out in 1936, highlighted by 8 specially modified 35-foot-long GMC Streamliner buses. They included some of the more popular World’s Fair exhibits, along with “new wonders,” like an oscillograph, used “for studying body squeaks and exhaust noises” in automobiles.
The caravan also included nine tractor trailers carrying booths, additional exhibits, lamps, generators and other gear, as well as 1936 models of all of GM’s cars, including Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Buicks, LaSalles, and Cadillacs. Promotional materials from the time say the caravan stretched two miles on the road. Over four years, this first edition of the caravan visited more than 220 cities and was viewed by about 10 million people.
“We should all be concerned about the future,” Kettering once said, “because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.”
Behold the future
It was for the second Parade of Progress, which hit the road in 1941, that GM created Futurliners to display exhibits and host events.
GM produced 12 of these space-agey marvels on a bus assembly line in Pontiac, Michigan, with a specialized design not related to any other vehicles. Starting in early 1941, GM took the Futurliners on the road for the second version of the Parade of Progress, once again with a large cast of other supporting trucks and show cars.
The Futurliner was a behemoth, 33 feet long, 9 feet wide and more than 11 feet tall, weighing 15 tons. Sporting eight spiffy white-wall tires, the Futurliner had a maximum speed as stated at 55 mph, although some materials suggest they couldn’t top 40. But they sure looked speedy, giving off a Buck Rogers vibe. With a backlit stylized art deco GM logo on the nose, they looked like… the future.
The Futurliners also had 16-foot-long clam shell doors on either side to form stages and display areas. The driver sat way above the ground level – reaching the glass-enclosed cockpit required climbing a set of spiral stairs. Also part of the experience was a portable tent – which GM called “the Aer-O-Dome”– that could seat up to 1,500 people, without any internal supporting poles, for lectures and demos of the latest scientific wonders. GM called it “the tent of tomorrow.”
The program for the first edition of the GM Parade of Progress. (download pdf)
Showing strength
This second Parade of Progress came with war already underway in Europe, which shifted the way GM described it. “New materials, new methods, new techniques, new ways of doing this are ever in process of development,” GM President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., wrote at the time. “The General Motors Parade of Progress…is designed to show how industrial research and constantly advancing industrial techniques contribute to the vigor and to the strength of the nation.”
This edition of the Parade was a geek’s delight. There were displays of televisions – still exotic in 1941 – black light, an early microwave oven and stereophonic sound. It was a huge hit, with over 3 million visitors in 43 cities in less than a year. But the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 – and the subsequent U.S. declaration of war – led GM to cut the tour short. The Futurliners were put into storage.
There was a third Parade of Progress, which started in 1953, in refurbished Futurliners, which among other things added air conditioning for the driver, and automatic transmissions. There were new or revised exhibits, and cutting-edge cars along for the ride, like the first two-seat 1953 Corvette. But audiences were smaller than for the first two, and in 1956, GM shut down the Parade for good, eventually selling off the Futurliners.
Only a handful of restored Futurliners remain.
For now, the only one on public display is in the National Auto & Truck Museum, in Auburn, Indiana, a little north of Fort Wayne. Known as Futurliner No. 10, that one originally had a 3-dimensional sound exhibit on one side, and on the other a rotation of an exhibit called “Opportunity for Youth,” which was intended to inspire aspiring car designers, and a display about the All-American Soap Box Derby. After the Parade ended, GM sold No. 10 to the now-defunct Goebel Brewing of Detroit, which rechristened it the Goebel Land Cruiser. It was later acquired by the homebuilder Pulte Construction; and then by a Detroit-area Cadillac dealer, which used it as a billboard. No. 10 was eventually donated by automotive collector Joe Bortz to the museum, which spent about seven years refurbishing it.
Another Futurliner, restored by the owners of Massachusetts-based Peter Pan Bus Lines, was sold in 2024 to a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur who owns the “Caretakers Collection,” which also includes 65 cars, 30 motorcycles, and a dozen go-karts. The collector, who prefers to remain anonymous, spent $925,000 on the Futurliner, which he found via a Facebook Marketplace advertisement. He’s since spent about $1 million more on renovations, effectively undoing a 1990s-era restoration and starting from scratch, both inside and out. The collector plans to put his fully restored Futurliner on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles starting in December 2025.
The GM Heritage Center and Archive, which has a huge collection of GM memorabilia, documentation, and vehicles, doesn’t own a Futurliner, but it still has what is believed to be the only surviving exhibit, which was called “Our American Crossroads.” (At one point GM provided the exhibit to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry; you can get a feel for it in the embedded video on this page.) The exhibit was an automated diorama showing the evolution from small towns to modern suburbia.
This GM-produced video highlighted “Our American Crossroads,” an exhibit that was part of the Parade of Progress, which was later installed in Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. The only surviving Futurliner exhibit, it is now owned by GM.
Technology remains a keystone of the GM story, with electric vehicles, home energy products, and rich vehicle infotainment systems. We’re collaborating with Nvidia on the application of AI manufacturing and other applications. And the company is betting big on driver-assistance and autonomous driving technology.
But we live in a new, more jaded age. The Futurliner and the Parade of Progress, born out of the desperation of the Great Depression and the determination of World War II, told the story of American innovation in way that inspired millions. Maybe we should do it all again.
Editor’s note: Retro Rides highlights noteworthy vehicles from the long history of General Motors. Over more than a century, GM has produced a huge variety of cars, trucks, SUVs, vans, station wagons, and even buses, some fondly remembered and sought after by collectors, others largely forgotten but worthy of rediscovery. With Retro Rides, we’re casting a fresh spotlight on some of GM’s great design, engineering and technology ideas of the past. Big thanks to the GM Heritage Center and Archives for making this series possible. If there’s a GM vehicle you think we should revisit, reach out to news@gm.com.