ABSTRACT
In 1933 two aesthetic visions of America's machine civilization were unveiled in the industrial heartland, reflecting the contested solutions to the nation's economic problems. At the Chicago World's Fair, whose theme was “A Century of Progress,” corporate exhibitors offered a bright vision of a technological Utopia, a not-too-distant future in which the scientific application of machinery would bring order and abundance to all. Reflecting this theme, automakers exhibited the first “dream cars,” design prototypes giving the public a “glimpse into the future” of automotive evolution. The most innovative offered futuristic diversions by adopting the design idiom of streamlining pioneered by the technologically advanced aeronautics industry. Ford, for example, displayed the Briggs Dreamcar, a teardrop-shaped, rear-engined car with a periscope and unitized body construction. Even more spectacularly aeronautical was the Silver Arrow prototype produced by Pierce-Arrow, whose body resembled an airplane fuselage. These streamlined cars were part of an aesthetic vision that covered over the deprivations of America's Fordist system with the promise of a future of material abundance, achieved through the scientific invention of technological wonders like the airplane. 1
