TGIF! Training camps are here. August is nigh! And there’s another season ending injury.

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Today we get two (2) cars that never made it to production, but still became famous.

Lincoln Futura (1955)

This car lived up to its name by looking like a car straight out of the Jetsons. The car was a two-seater with sharklike headlights, long tail fins, and a double bubble windshield that went over the two passengers, so they each sat in their own glass bubble. Turns out, Lincoln went a bit wild with the design because it was never intended for production; it was just to test out some design concepts. Instead, the car was put on the car show circuit to show off its design. The car also appeared in a the movie It Started With A Kiss. After Lincoln was done with the car, they sold it to a custom car maker in California named George Barris. That might have been the last of the car, but it was actually about to get very famous. Barris as hired to design a car for a new TV series called Batman. With only a three week lead time, Barris simply modified the Lincoln Futura with bat-like features and adding the “afterburner” kit on the rear. And that’s how the Batmobile was born.

Chrysler D’Elegance (1952)

Time for a US manufacturer to display more terrible decision making. Chrysler’s lead stylist can up with a design for a two-seat fastback coupe with some elegant curves. In a cost cutting measure, the stylist sent the sketches and a scale model version of the car to Ghia, an auto design firm in Italy to build a full size prototype. After Ghia had completed and returned the prototype, Chrysler didn’t want to spend the money to put it into production due to an ongoing cash crunch at the company. Of course, the following year Chevrolet introduced the Corvette and Ford introduced the Thunderbird. Both cars became huge sellers while Chrysler had nothing to compete with them. As for Ghia, they just so happened to start working with VW on a sports car. And in 1955 VW partnered with Karmann Coachwerks to produce that sports car which got named VW Karmann-Ghia. That car looked nearly identical to the D’Elegance though Ghia claimed it was an all new design and VW went on to sell more than 450,000 Karmann-Ghias through1974. Chrysler eventually got around to building a 2-seat sports car in 1992: The Dodge Viper.

These two once towering domestic manufacturers are still in business, but just barely. And it’s not difficult to see why.

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Enjoy the weekend, folks! Alright, now let’s get to the comments!