Curbside Caption Update: Bubbles – AMC Astra-Gnome

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– Posted on February 11, 2012

Here’s a nice cross-section of fifties city people. Look at each one, from the old guy at one end to the kid at the other. (Click to enlarge.) Besides “WTF”, what are they thinking? And what was this thing?

UPDATE follows…..

This wild thing is the Astra-Gnome, a 1956 AMC concept car. Wikipedia says, “Industrial designer Richard Arbib designed the Astra-Gnome “Time and Space Car”, a concept that was featured on the September 3, 1956 cover of Newsweek magazine and exhibited at the 1956 International Auto Show in New York. Arbib modified a 1955 Nash Metropolitan and it was his vision of what an automobile would look like in the year 2000. The car is restored and kept at a museum in California.”

Note the covered wheel wells and the Metropolitan’s belt-line dip at sides. Here’s a video of the fully restored Astra-Gnome, with operating bubble-top, from the Metropolitan Pit Stop museum in Hollywood.

I found it at MrJynx.