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When I was about 6 years old, my dad took me to the General Motors Motorama, a huge production featuring the introduction of new cars for that year, 1958. I think that was the first time I looked at cars as something really cool and more than just a way to go from one place to another.
There were all of these beautiful new cars on slowly revolving turntables and elevated platforms that were slowly lowered as they were introduced. ...I've never seen anything like that since then. I was excited to see that one of the featured cars was one like my parents had, a 1958 Pontiac Chieftain like the one pictured below minus those wheel covers. The only difference was that the interior had upgraded materials far and beyond what came with our standard model.
Oh yeah, that was the first car I ever drove. We kept it until 1965 and that's when I turned 13 and big enough to drive...with one of my parents in the car, of course.
That was in San Francisco at the Civic Center. Anybody ever hear of that show in Seattle or remember going to it?
The GM Motorama was a terrific show. A lot of GM cars were shown to the public for the first time. Did you watch Barrett-Jackson a couple of years back when one of the Motorman busses went for some extraordinary price?
To my knowledge the Motorman never came to Seattle. The annual auto show for us was held in the Seattle Armory - later to become the Food Circus during the world's Fair. (Remember the bubbleator?)
Once the Coliseum (now Key Arena) became available, the annual Seattle Auto Show moved there. I was in the business during the 70's and had the Alfa Romeo both all to myself, pretty much, and, later had displayed a new Ferrari 246GTS Dino spyder. Pretty pricy though since I didn't sell any. I guess the $18K price sorta' scared people away. Nice car though.
A few more auto shows later and I became weary of guarding the gear ***** and cigarette lighters in the cars and handing out brochures to people trying to fill their plastic "Toyota" bags. Of course, back then we were not allowed to actually sell cars during the show.
11-13-2014, 05:01 PM
