The car which can be considered to be one of the ancestors of the American hot rod was created more than half a century ago. Being beautiful in all senses, like a woman of the Renaissance, it won the hearts of the audience with its design from the moment they saw it. The most amazing feature in the history of this rare and unique super car is its destiny. Buick Streamliner appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared in a similar fashion. Not only did it shield from the public eye. It dropped out of view of experts and collectors, who could dig the continents over in search of this masterpiece. One of the most elegant cars was forgotten for more than half a century.
However, the American genius had time to engage in his own project. The project named the Buick Streamliner is considered to be one of the most unusual ones both half a century ago and nowadays. But why Buick? It’s simple. After handcrafting the wooden chassis, Timbs mounted the engine from the Buick Super 8.
The wooden frame of the future automobile.
How was it possible to handcraft a luxurious car like that in the 1940s? The car which resembles the lines and curves of the body of a beautiful young woman. Timbs used aircraft quality aluminium — he hand-moulded the parts which were later welded together. The length of the car was 3.6 m with the wheelbase of 297 cm.
No printers at that time, no laser cutters and no plotters either. Just a pencil, a ruler, and hands. However, we can now face the fact that back in 1948 on one hot Los Angeles day the world saw the car codenamed the Buick Streamliner. Norman spent two and a half years and 10 thousand dollars to create this beauty. The newspapers compared the car either to a whale or a turtle but none of those comparisons contained as much seduction as the curves of the American beauties. The Buick Streamliner had a unique wave-shaped bodyshell which could delight both its contemporaries and today’s car enthusiasts. The sexuality of that car was equal to the power of the engine mounted behind the seats. This hot rod was ‘split’ in halves to provide access to the engine, the fuel tank and the spare wheel. A large one-piece rear panel opened hydraulically. The luggage compartment was located in the front part of the car. Wheel steering, braking system and other details were borrowed from the Mercury. Headlights from the 1939 Ford were utilised. The car turned out to be rather road-hugging — 99 cm without the windshield and 120 cm with it. In 1949 the Mechanix Illusrated magazine published an article about Timbs’ Streamliner where it was given the price of $10,000 which would be equal to $95,500 nowadays.
On the Avus GP track in Berlin that car was able to reach the speed of 400 km/h which is fantastic even nowadays. It was powered by the eight-cylinder inline Super-8 engine.
In 1949 Buick Streamliner was also spotted on the pages of the Motor Trend magazine and in 1954 it was found in the Motor Life magazine. By that time the car had already changed the owner. Jim Davis, a military pilot from California, painted it white. For some reason the article used the name of Larry Timm, a former aviation engineer, as the car’s designer. It was said that Davis bought a car from him in 1952 and was the first one to register it as a street-legal vehicle.
After that came the time of oblivion. And all automobile collectors thought it would last forever. The car was “lost from the radars” till the year 2000. It seemed to be spotted in one of the episodes of “Gone in Sixty Seconds” with Nicolas Cage (though many people still claim they couldn’t find those episodes in the movie). It turned out that Streamliner had spent all those years in the backyard of some abandoned industrial building. Surprisingly, the car was pretty much intact and the experts say it was about 90% original. Two years later, it was sold at an auction at a price of $17,600 to the collector Gary Cerveny.
Gary Cerveny performed his own car restoration works.
But soon Gary Cerveny passed the car to the Custom Auto studio located in the city with the imposing name of Loveland, Colorado. The photo of the Streamliner in the Custom Auto studio in Colorado.
According to other sources, Buick Streamliner was found in 2002 in a desert! Chances are, it was travelling all over the world, ran out of fuel and it was just abandoned there. But how can you leave a car like that dying alone in the sands and winds? It is one of the most rare and lucky discoveries. The forgotten and intact Buick was eventually bought and renovated by David Kraus for the Concours d’Elegance competition. The first appearance of the renovated beauty was in 2010. Ever since the car participates in various prestigious motor shows where it is always highly awarded.
It is unlikely you can ever see this car on the road. And quite probably this car will never be put up for auction. It’s too valuable and too beautiful for its owner to part with it. After many years the Buick Streamliner has become the legend in the world of classic cars. And again, like 65 years ago, it remains the star of the best motor shows.
Sources: zillamag.com, supercars.net, kustomrama.com, barrett-jackson.com
