(first posted 12/13/2016) Stumbling into this picture of one of Chrysler’s pavilions at the 1964-1965 NYC World Fair reminds me that the Niedermeyers never made it to all of the Big Three exhibits, having worn ourselves out waiting in lines under the hot August sun at the GM and Ford pavilions. I’d totally forgotten that this is what Chrysler did there, along with a number of their cars seeming to skim the surface of that moat. Looks like they got the plug wiring wrong, among other things. Here’s some other shots of it and the other Chrysler structure, which is even less faithful to reality.
Its sign says “1,000,000 HP”. Is that gross or net?
The other Chrysler structure is this cartoonish coupe, with six headlights. Who authorized this? Virgil Exner was gone by then.
Now I’m not feeling so bad about missing the Chrysler exhibit. This is ugly. Bill Mitchell would never have let GM do anything like this.
Neat to see the Simca 1000 on display in photo #2.
Complete with white walls. Popular import of the day?.
Hardly. both of them sold were in the scrap yard 3 years later.
Did the giant headlights flash? The bottom unit of the three appears to be white in the upper photo and orange in the lower.
It also appears to have portholes. And a louvered windshield. WTF. Fins in ’64? And triple unit taillamps–was this some sort of belated Desoto homage? How very odd.
Probably both engine and cartoon car are the work of an outsourced graphic designer.
THANK YOU Paul ! .
.
I was there but wasn’t allowed to look at anything Transportation related….
.
That still burns lo these many decades later .
.
-Nate
I was there also ,my dad had no patience for long lines so we rushed through . I do remember the heat and humidity
In our case, being a Chevrolet dealer we had tickets for two days, back-to-back at the GM pavilion. Which meant that an hour before opening, while the crowds were lining up, we got to do the pavilion ride.
Otherwise, dad’s unwillingness to wait in line meant we saw the Chrysler exhibit, didn’t go to Ford’s (that would have been treasonous in our family), and I only ended up seeing all the small international exhibits, which had no lines. And no crowds. OK, we saw all the international exhibits that weren’t Eastern Bloc (Czechoslovakia was the exception) because my folks weren’t interesting in seeing anything the Commies had to offer.
And dad wasn’t into souvenir buying either. All in all, I remember it as a VERY disappointing vacation.
Yep ;
_very_ disappointing indeed .
.
The lines were never the problem it was making sure I didn’t ” waste time ” doing/looking at anything I enjoyed .
.
Same deal when I visited the Smithsonian ~ spent a couple days looking at crap I didn’t give a rat’s patoot about .
.
-Nate
Hmm… no visible road draft tube on that motor.
I’m sorry, that was one ugly display – even for the time. So dowdy compared to GM and Ford. Looks like cheap high school homecoming floats!
I Hope those cars had good rustproofing.
Rustproofing? 60s Chryslers? Those cars were never even removed from the fountain, they just dissolved into it by the end of the fair. 🙂
’64-’65 indeed—the moat cars in pic № 1 are ’64 models; the ones in pic № 3 are ’65s.
1964 and 1965 Dodge Polaras, Dodge Darts, and Chrysler Newports (or 300s?) and Simca.
“1,000,000 HP, gross or net?! ”
Definitely gross! Was that a theme pavilion or a giant public restroom?
If I could go back in time, catching one of these classic World’s Fairs would be high on my list. While they still occur, they are apparently more like technology conventions, and lack the fair atmosphere.
Apparently, Walt Disney himself was behind the efforts of some of the corporate exhibits, which does a lot to explain why this looks rather like Disney World – which was well into planning stages by the time the ’64 Fair was in progress. To a degree, you can revisit the Fair seeing attractions such as “The Carousel of Progress” or “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln,” which were lifted from the Fair and moved to Orlando. I was nerd enough to drag my family through these in 2006. My history buff kid was the only one that “got it.” She actually asked to see Mr. Lincoln, and my wife diverted the other kids while we took it in.
I didn’t get to live the cultural extensions of the NY World’s Fair at the time, but evidence did pop up occasionally. The owner’s manual to my 1965 Buick Riviera featured a drawing of the GM Pavilion on the cover.
As alluded to above, it probably crossed the minds of more than a few visitors to the Chrysler Pavilion that the car caricature looked a bit too much like the street legal cars Chrysler was building and losing market share with just a few years earlier. While Chrysler was about to experience a great leap forward with their new ’65 models, it is just so Chrysler to at least stub its toe a little in the process.
To really make that Chrysler engine display complete, I hope they had a recording of a Highland Park Hummingbird playing periodically over a PA.
Well, here y’go, you are there! Would you like snarking or non? (I strongly recommend a seat in the snarking section)
Anaheim, likely, considering the year. Also, ” Small World”.
“FASTEST SHOW AT THE FAIR”
To pass through?
It’s fun to look at in a campy sort of way, it reminds me of the kind of half assed attractions you’d see portrayed in Springfield in an early Simpsons episode. Everything looks like it was crafted out of industrial drums welded together. The 1,000,000 horsepower engine doesn’t even look like an OHV shape with the drum “valve covers” mounted to the engine block, and would it have killed them to run the spark plug wires to a fake distributor? (they could have used a trash can for the shape of it!) Even a modern day car idiot would know the plugs aren’t just connected together like that, let alone back when points and plug changes were in the realm of familiarity to non-mechanic car owners.
A twin spark plug V4? Still doesn’t explain the how the current gets there though..
Actually, that car structure reminds me of the Talbot that Pierre Levegh almost won LeMans with.
Chrysler owned the Talbot name for a period, so not 100% unrealistic? The back 2/3rds of the structure reminds me of a Trabant, and I have no far fetched explanation for that.
It’s not a Hemi!
Nor, the vaunted and reliable Slant 6, which I would have preferred as MOPAR’s readily identifiable powerplant.
Pretty restrictive looking exhaust manifold on that engine.
Chrysler had not been all that flush in 1962-63 when this was being planned, so it is not surprising that the “engine” building has a bit of a cost-cutter vibe about it. I agree, the architects were clearly not mechanical engineers. And really, how many people were as tough as this crowd? Most folks probably thought it was a pretty clever building.
The description of the Chrysler Autofare in the Official 1965 New York World’s Fair Guide Book sheds some light as to why Chrysler chose the aesthetics they did:
“The exhibit was designed especially for children, with a puppet show, a giant car, and other exhibits set on islands in a large man-made lake.
Various aspects of the automotive world come to life in whimsical animated models. Chairs around the lake encourage visitors to relax and enjoy the Fair.
PUPPET SHOW. This 20-minute exercise in musical whimsey was designed by puppeteer Bil Baird. It is continuously performed on a novel revolving stage.
WALK-IN ENGINE. Dominating the display is a giant “one-million horsepower” engine through which visitors walk. Its crankshaft is a fearsome dragon with snapping jaws. The real world is represented by a turbine engine and a montage of power plants of the future.
AIRBORNE RIDE. Seated in car bodies, visitors travel through the air along a simulated assembly line. Mechanical men wielding huge instruments “check” each auto for imperfections. Nearby is a metallic “zoo” where creatures made of auto parts cavort.
AN ANTIC AUTO. Guests walk through a capriciously designed mammoth car to examine its antic accessories and giant components.”
Here is a picture of the assembly line ride, and of all things, Simcas make an appearance again as the cars the passengers rode in!
Missed that part of the exhibit, no doubt there was a line waiting to get on.
Thanks for the explanation. The engine and car do look like the popular kiddie-style graphics of the time.
I wonder if they were real Simca bodies. If so it made sense to maybe use factory rejects rather than melt them back down. But we will probably never know the whole story.
Pretty sure they were real 1000 bodies.64-65 were peak Chrysler International years, before reality set in, especially in the UK.
I remember riding in a Simca body on the “assembly line” during one of the 4 times I visited the Fair. It looked like more fun to my 7 or 8 year old self than it actually was.
Pretty sure the spark plug wires are supposed to look like eyes; look closely and there’s a smiley face on the engine.
I’ve had a fascination with the fair for as long as I can remember, even though I was nowhere near born when it took place. Arcadia Publishing has several books about the fair, and the following website is a fun diversion if you’re interested in such things.
http://www.nywf64.com/
Wow.
Wish I could have gone to the NY Worlds Fair. Our family did visit Expo ’67 in Montreal. Same problems as mentioned — hot, humid, crowded, with loooooong lines in August.
The NY Fair site is still a very nice park today. The Unisphere is still resplendent, and the fountains surrounding it were recently refurbished and turned back on in the warmer months. The NY State Pavilion is the only other fair building still standing, in quite a derelict condition.
The NYC building is still there as the Queens Museum of Art and still has the Panarama, the model of the entire City of New York, every building in all five boroughs at 1 in equals 100 ft. This building actually dates back to the 1939 Worlds Fair.
You are correct about that, and the Panorama is a sight to behold. Because the museum is on the periphery of the present-day park, I didn’t think of it as part of the fairgrounds.
The Museum of Science (former Hall of Science) and the Terrace on the Park (former Port Authority Heliport and Restaurant) also still exist – across the Grand Central in what was the Transportation Zone for both the 1939-40 and 1964-65 fairs. There’s also the World’s Fair Marina on the waterfront, and the Lewis Armstrong Tennis Stadium was built as the Singer Bowl for the fair.
There was also an underground home that appeared a few years ago on a urbex web site, same for the sky towers. I don’t know if they still exist though as both were pretty dilapidated (although the home apparently had had vagrants living in it.)
Neighbors did the “Expo 67”. Went in their brand new “Plymouth” I believe.
Very nice – Wish they would have replaced the six headlight abomination with a blow up of the beautiful new 64 Imperial – better yet the 65 with the glass headlight covers…
That giant ‘engine’ reminds me of those plastic covers many carmakers today use to hide the engine.
Happy Motoring, Mark
What a weird idea, to poke fun at yourself, or your industry with cartoonish artifacts. And all those cars in the water – what was up with that? Hopefully those were all scrapped rather than being resold.
Here’s a shot of a turbine prototype on display, but strangely tucked well away from prying eyes, behind the behemoth car.
Why? They were on platform islands amidst what I have to think is fresh (not salt) water, and those fountains are spraying away from them. At worst they got the kind of light sprinkling they might encounter driving down the road on a mildly rainy day.
(They weren’t poking fun at themselves or their industry. They were celebrating themselves and their industry, at a time and place and event where that was the whole idea.)
Nossir. The upper four are headlamps; the lower ones are amber turn signals.
The fan doesn’t look like it could move much air…
Awful, Exner would have had a shit fit at that travesty, if asked. I was there at age 15 and don’t remember this monstrosity, thankfully, but do remember the GM and Ford pavilions: the GM had dinosaurs and a city of he future! Ford had Mustang,s but we got a Galaxie XL convertible instead.
Went to the “1982 W/F” in Knoxville TN. Remember seeing a lot but don’t recall much “car related”. As I do recall, the “China pavillion” was high on everyone’s list of things to see.
That big “glass ball in the sky” thing ((even parodied on the “The Simpsons”)) was a must see too.
Went to “Kings Island”, in Ohio, on way home too.
Like the “Dart” in pic #3. Real “timepiece” is the “Simca” in pic #2. Forgot all about them.
I as well….wouldn’t have gone to Knoxville (since I didn’t live nearby) except I was in graduate school at Clemson at the time, and most of us were from other places, we rented a B body wagon and drove through the Smokey Mountains one weekend. Most weekends we were issued a full sized Dodge Van which we drove around but we felt Knoxville a bit far to extend the mileage so we rented our own vehicle.
Was at the ’64 Worlds Fair as well…we were living in Catonsville then, and my Grandparents were in NEPA, so it wasn’t far….remember riding the monorail, but not the car exhibits (I was a bit young and my parents weren’t into cars). I had a “visible V8” model I built a few years later (or maybe my Dad mostly built?) tht it took a bit for me to appreciate what was going on with it, but eventually “got it”…the big V8 reminds me of those days.
For the trifecta, we also went to Expo ’67, which also wasn’t much of an effort, as by then we’d moved from Catonsville to Burlington, Vt. (in his younger days my Dad moved around quite a bit in his job, this was his first stint up there, moved away 5 years then moved us back (to Shelburne, but he still worked in Essex Jct). Don’t remember much about it except it was the first time I ever ate Chicken Kiev, must have been at the Ukrainian pavilion (again, no automotive connection).
Those are the only 3 World’s fairs I’ve ever been to…do they still have them?
I remember riding in a Simca body on the “assembly line” during one of the 4 times I visited the Fair. It looked like more fun to my 7 or 8 year old self than it actually was.
Youth isn’t always wasted on the young.
I’m embarrassed to admit the only exhibition I remember from the Fair is “It’s a Small World,” and that’s only because we saw it again at Disneyland in ’68–but then, I was not quite 5. I connect molded plastic dinosaurs & Sinclair Oil with the Fair, too, and eating Kellogg’s cereal in the little boxes at our hotel near my great aunt’s apt in Forest Hills.
The only exhibit I really recall was Ford, which had new Ford vehicles on a chained track that visitors rode in through the exhibit. Our family got a red Galaxie 500 convertible.
I’m reminded of this photo of then-Congressman Gerald Ford, with his wife Betty and children Steve and Susan, on Ford’s (the Motor Company’s, not the future President’s) “Magic Skyway” at the World’s Fair.
This would be around the same time that Ford served on the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of JFK.