I love these old buses. These were like the pinnacle of Art Deco design in vehicles. We got a guy that comes to a alot of the Autoshows out here with one of the Futureliners converted into an RV camper.

I really miss the whole Progress and Futurisim stuff from the late 30s-60s... What ever happened to the drive and obsession of progress into the future?

It all went into the game fallout. We got left with the boring stuff.

LOL that may be why I like the Fallout games and Batman so much. I really wish "Dieselpunk" became bigger than the whole steampunk thing, that takes industrial art-deco to the extreme.

"What ever happened to the drive and obsession of progress into the future?"
America won the Cold War.
No, really. That's what happened. All that progress and LOOK TO THE FUTURE stuff was done to show up the Commies and this includes landing men on the moon. No other reason. But when the Soviet Empire vanished in a puff of Russian democracy, the sole engine for that whole show vanished as well, and America got back to pursuing what she really wanted: comfort and ease, safety and security.

Well, with all the saber rattling going on lately, cold war 2 may be starting up... Maybe "Fins" will make a comeback.

Lots of people want the 1950s to return, but only the ugly parts.
I've been told that car designers have been wanting to do fins again for years. And if you look closely at the new Chrysler 300s and Caddies in general, you might see the first hints of their return.

I'd love to see that return... Most American cars, and cars in general now, are so bland and boring...

I'd also like to see COLORS make a comeback... It seems every car on the road now is white, silver, black, or sometimes red.

"You can have my car in any color so long as it's black."
--Henry Ford, close to a century ago.
Colors *are* making a comeback, but since the great majority now view automobiles as Personnel Transport Modules and not as any kind of bold personal statement, the stand-out paint jobs are an acute minority of units purchased. Nowadays, folks will drive their lookalike econobox down to stand in line to pay top dollar for the latest i-thing. THAT'S where status is displayed now. No longer with cars.
Also, look at how decorative the interiors have become since the turn of the century! 90s interiors were terribly monochrome and un-engaging in design. Now all the fun stuff is coming back: not just polychromes but pallets, chrome, fake-ass wood, and now with LED all that clever interior ambient lighting at night. And there are arresting shapes and contours all over the dashes and door panels, with even the door latches getting all shapely and artsy and shit. Inside and out.

It's not entirely the fault of the end of the Cold War. If you look at some of the things that were predicted for what technology would do, many of them either happened, but differently than predicted, or they are things that turned out to be short-circuited by social changes (the image of the happy housewife pulling items out of hideaway food storage to prepare dinner for her family), by a lack of desire for the technology in that form (sturdy dishware that would dissolve and flush down the drain instead of being washed), or we found out that the actual technology was more complex than we imagined (a practical flying car being ten years away for several decades now). Look at work, for example; predictions were that work would become so automated that everyone would have large amounts of leisure time, with urban design incorporating space for all of the leisure activities that would result. Convenience went off in a different direction than what had been predicted in the '20s and '50s, and it took technology out along lines that no one predicted.

A most insightful post. Someone has given more than a passing thought to this issue.
Also, for this:
"a practical flying car being ten years away for several decades now"
You get a big cookie. With icing and sprinkles.

Frankly, the idea of flying cars -- without a large amount of automation restricting what people can do with them -- terrifies me. All the stupidity I see from people on the road, and then you add an entire extra dimension to be poorly-controlled in? Brrrrr.

Practically speaking, the first few gens of flying cars will be as exotic and expensive as the first cars were over a hundred years ago. And the eventual qualifications to operate such vehicles will of-course be on par with operating a private aircraft. Personal flying cars were never presented as the final panacea to personal transportation, but rather as a greater democratization of personal aircraft in general.
Maybe some day a century after practical flying cars are perfected and presented for sale, they might become as common as automobiles are today. And it will take equally as long for the general population to get used to them.

We got away from striving for the common good and into radical individualism. Progress lost importance to profit.

What is funny about the individualism thing is that is spawned hipsters that are all the same, lol.

This might be the one I got to sit in a couple years ago. Very cool experience.

Back when vehicles were considered a work of Art.

Reminds me of the doomed Land Titanic of New New York

Did it have the cut away turbo fan engine display inside it?

I would love to see one of the remaining futureliner's in person.

I wonder if this was the one shown being restored at that shop on the cable channel.

Good ol' futuristic '30s nostalgia. It's funny how they were about streamlined, sleek "future" look of things in the 30s, and a few decades later, everything became more sharp and boxy shaped.

Of course, it wasn't just cars, it was radios, toasters, and all manner of householdery items.