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1958 Ford La Galaxie — an amazing vehicle!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 03, 2014 2:43 pm    Post subject: 1958 Ford La Galaxie — an amazing vehicle! Reply with quote

One the less well-known concept cars of the 1950s was the 1958 Ford La Galaxie. For years I could only find one picture of it -- this one. (Click on the picture to see more images of it in Future Cars from the Past - part 2.)



In the years since I first found this picture and the others I traced down for 1950s and 1960s concept cars, the amount of info on the internet has increased dramatically, and now you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a few dozen pictures of the good old La Galaxie.

I came across the picture of that eye-popping dashboard just a few days ago. I have no idea what some of the more interesting features do, so this thread is for the discussion of those features -- their aesthetic appeal, their functions, and the designer's decisions to arrange them in such a unique manner.

And to help you folks illustrate your posts about specific features, here's gallery of close-ups you can select from to paste a picture of a specific feature you wish to discuss.

The picture below is linked to a 2,048px ?? 1,536px version on a site called Old Concept Carts (oldconceptcars.com) so can zoom in for a clearer view of any part of the dashboard.

The detail of the image is stunning! Shocked



Please help us figure out what some of these gizmos are for! Most of them are fairly obvious -- but others look like devices that came from the Krell lab! Shocked

Look closely at each picture and you'll come up with at least six questions that I'm sure we'd all like the answers to. (Example: The plexiglass spheres are complex as hell . . . and they're different! What are they?)























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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 03, 2014 4:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My parents bought a 1963 Mercury Monterey, which had a reverse-slanted rear window like the Ford La Galaxie. The Mercury's rear window would slide up and down, which was a key component of their "Breezeway" feature.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/coconv/6030751175/

The owner's manual made a point of being sure to open the front air vents when lowering the rear window in order to insure that exhaust gases didn't enter through the rear window. Maybe the two louvered gizmoes in front of the driver and passenger seats above the dash on the La Galaxie are the front air vents for the same purpose.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 03, 2014 6:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey, good point! I wasn't too sure about the idea that they were air vents when you suggested it in the other post, precisely because they didn't seem to be connected to ducts and a fan under the dash board.

But the fact that they extend out onto the hood might mean they were designed to scoop up the air flowing across the hood, and send it into the car just as you described.

The lower air pressure in the region behind the rear window would pull air out of the car if air was allowed to flow in through the front, as you said.

The two objects on the dash don't look a bit like air vents -- until you realize that they have filters to prevent bugs from shooting out of those air vents and putting somebody's eye out in the front seat! Shocked



And the "scoops" on the hood don't look like scoops -- until you realize that they, too, have filters to keep bugs traveling 60 mph from doing a kamikaze right into them and splattering all over the face of the imperialistic yankee dog America driver behind the wheel of this magnificent automobile!

If you study the pictures below you can see that the front of the two convex shapes on the hood seem to have a concave area right in front of them, and an opening right behind that.







So, they really are scoops.

Bravo! I think you solved Mystery #1 of the Amazing La Galaxie Dashboard! Very Happy

And here's Johnny Olson to tell you what you've won, Wayne.

"Your prize is that beautiful a new car![/i][/b]"



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 03, 2014 6:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just in case those aren't scoop inlets at the front of the ducts, it looks like the ducts could be making a dive down to the front of the car, where the air inlets could be concealed behind the grille.

What does puzzle me about the "louvers", however, is that they appear to be covered by a clear plastic faceplate, on which the "louvers" are numbered vertically outward from the middle. The numbers even cast shadows on the "louvers".



But there seems to be a lot more going on between those "louvered" extensions and the dashboard below them, judging by the reflections in the chromed area under the "louvers". It could be that the "louvers" aren't the actual openings, but indicator lights that show how much the vents are open underneath(?) the extensions. If the openings are on the underside, it would keep the air from blasting in the faces of the front seat occupants.

I'm also seeing in the printing on the mystery transparent sphere, the words "NORM", "HOT", and what looks like "DIS" (facing the driver) and "TEMPERATURE" on the left side. The word "NORM" could also be "BOTH".



Supposing the air vents to have cooling and heating functions, the transparent spheres could be temperature setting/indicating devices. The numbering on the "louvers" might indicate whether the vents were set for cooling or heating.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2014 12:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

__________________________

Great piece of observation and deduction. I hadn't noticed the things your pointed out. I'll have to abandon the appealing idea that the face of the object was where the air came out.

I love the look of it, though. Took me a while to realize what it reminded me of.



I'm still pretty sure the forward part of the long humps on the hood were air intakes, though. Scoops were big back in the 1950s, like on a few of the T-Birds for example.

That left plexiglass sphere does indeed have a wealth of clues to suggest it was an important part of the climate control.

I wish we knew what it actually did and what all the shiny components inside it where. It doesn't look much like a control mechanism, more like an indicator. The little squarish gray "paddle" hanging down from the curved metal arm probably rotated back and forth inside the sphere and pointed to some of the settings you deciphered, but that certainly doesn't answer all our questions.

And what the heck was the right-hand sphere? I don't think it's supposed to be open the way we see it in the picture, and the little four-prong object inside looks like one of the "jacks" kids played with years ago.



I suppose the best guess for it would be that it's a compass. If the compass "needles" were color coded they would show the driver which way North, South, East, and West were.

Can you make out anything on the sphere to support this idea, Wayne?

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2014 1:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
And what the heck was the right-hand sphere? I don't think it's supposed to be open the way we see it in the picture...

Can you make out anything on the sphere to support this idea, Wayne?



My first thought on that sphere was also that it looks like it popped open around its equator, leaving the top hemisphere sitting askew on the bottom half.

So far the only characters I can make out are the numbers 3(?), 4, 5, 6(?), 7(?), 8, 9, 10(?) from left to right just above the equator.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2014 12:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

_________________________________________

After staring at that little sphere until my eyes crossed I noticed that the horizontal rod was shifted slightly to the left at the bottom.

At the base of the rod is a silver disk that is apparently supposed to sit squarely on (or hang directly above) a similar disk below it. But the upper disk is slightly to the left of the lower disk, and the rod it tilted because of this.

The silver object inside the sphere must have been attached at the top (or just held by a pin in a hole), so that it could turn freely. The disk at the low end of the rod probably had a point at the center on the bottom, and this would rest on the upper side of the disk below, creating very little friction when the compass rotated.

You know, sort of like those gyroscopes we played with as kids.



But some bozo bumped the gizmo and knocked the upper half of the sphere askew.





All this seems to indicate that the device was a compass. But there would have to be some way of telling which way was north. Ah, but I think I figured that out, too. Very Happy

Barely visible is a little rod (marked with a red line above it) that runs horizontally from the vertical rod to the gray rectangle against the inside of the sphere. You'll have to zoom in close to see it. If seems to be angled slightly upward, which is why the red line I drew doesn't line up with the rod and it's knob on the opposite side of the vertical shaft.



Did the rotating compass shaft swing that little gray rectangle around to show which way was north? There doesn't seem to be a little horizontal bar with a knob in that direction, so perhaps the gray rectangle was the "north" end of the compass needle, so to speak.

What do you think, Dr. Orzel?

But I still can't figure out what the little rod above the sphere was for. Any ideas?

And since you're the code breaker of this team, does this version of the other sphere with high contrast and the colors inverted help? I still can't make out the words you haven't had any luck with yet.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2014 1:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If I'm seeing the same thing you're interpreting as a rod, Bud, what I'm seeing is the far rim of that shallow chrome cup the sphere is sitting in.

What I see that's holding up the gray rectangle is a narrow, curved arm the same gray shade as the rectangle, extending below it, running parallel to the curve of the sphere.

As for the rod sticking up out of the top of the sphere, I would guess it's a handle for rotating something inside the sphere to line up with whatever the innards are indicating. If it's really a compass, the rod might be for rotating the scales to read the bearing. In any case, the pair of disks you pointed out at the bottom of the sphere are duplicated at the top. If those disks are actually cupped in opposite directions, they might be magnetic bearings to suspend the central shaft frictionlessly. (I don't know if that would work with a compass.) The rod sticking out the top might then be a handle to rotate the markings on the upper hemisphere so you don't get fingerprints all over the clear plastic. OR it may be purely decorative to match the other sphere, for which the top rod does have a practical purpose.

I tried sharpening the image of the right sphere to improve the legibility of the markings. It's only marginally better. I think I see the word "DOME" on the lower hemisphere.



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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2014 7:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Hot damn, you got me! Fooled by a simple optical illusion! Why, they'll revoke my artistic license if word of this gets out. Curses . . .

Although I couldn't get the red oval to match up perfectly with the chrome ring under the sphere, it's close enough to confirm your hippopotamus, Professor, that my alleged "bar" was actually one them thar "obstacle allusions". Rolling Eyes

I marked your curved gray structure in green just because it was fun and because Christmas is right around the corner.



But your keen observation shoots my compass theory right between the eyes, because now we don't have a "needle" to point north. The pale curved structure you discovered probably does support the rectangle, but it certainly does not seem to connect to the center shaft so it could turn with it and indicate north.

In the immortal words of Albert Einstein, "Dammit, I was sure D = MC2. Must have forgotten to carry the one."

That leaves us with the perplexing absence of a fourth prong on the "jack". I pasted in one on the second picture below, just to give us an idea of what we're NOT seeing in reality (a questionable endeavor on my part, but hey -- I'm retired, and that's what I do all day. Very Happy)

Here's what we're seeing in the photograph, which doesn't show a prong on the right side.



What we should be seeing if there were four knobbed prongs on this cool whatever-it-is would be this version I made, adding the missing prong on the right.



Actually, I was a little glad that we haven't solved all the mysteries yet. I was afraid I'd have to find us another car for us to analyze!
Shocked
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2014 9:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Say, Bud... Do you hear crickets chirping? Sorta like there's only the two of us here?
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2014 11:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's okay. With so few members and so few posts on our new version of the board, things are bound to be slow.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Pye-Rate
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2014 12:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

While trying to find a better photo of the dash I came across this.

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Krel
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2014 1:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pye-Rate wrote:
While trying to find a better photo of the dash I came across this./

The Ford FX-Atmos, I love that design. I especially love the pedestrian skewers on the front of the car.

I am also loving this thread. I have never seen most of these photos.

Another car to consider is the Bobby Darin Dream Car, the Didia 150. It is a concept car that Bobby Darin fell in love with, and later bought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiDia_150
http://www.conceptcarz.com/z18215/Di-Dia-150.aspx

I love the old concept car designs.

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2014 3:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pye-rate: Love that article about the Atmos! Good gosh, I wish every one of the concept cars ever made had a write-up as good as the one in that article.

Amazing!

____________________________

Krel: I completely agree, David. I'm really glad you're a fellow "future car" fan.

Please fell free to start a discussion about Darren's Dream Car in this forum. Design concepts like these are definitely "science". If you don't have an image hosting account, I'll provide you with pictures.

This one is for you, sir! (And more when you start that thread. Very Happy)

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Pye-Rate
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 06, 2014 11:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Those aren't pedestrian skewers, they're working radar antennas. Distance to objects in front of you were displayed on a screen in the dash.

The Booby Darin car is Glorious!
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