In 1938, Henry Ford’s son, Edsel, came home from a trip to Europe eager to drive an American-made car with continental flair. Within an hour, Bob Gregorie, Ford stylist and former yacht designer, had a sketch. By the time Edsel was ready for his winter drive to Florida, so was his car, which was such a hit among the Palm Beach set that Edsel called back to Dearborn, Mich., and said he could sell 1,000 of them. The company actually sold twice that many.

Though Ford got off to a rousing start with its 1953 X100, a three-ton, fully operational coupe packed with far-sighted features including built-in electric jacks, seat warmers and a telephone, its commitment to dream cars soon lagged behind General Motors. While many GM prototypes appeared to represent vehicles soon to appear in showrooms, Ford dream cars were, for the most part, inoperable fantasy models called rollers due to the fact they had to be manually pushed onto display stands. Most Ford prototypes were modeled at 3/8 scale. The X100 clearly set a design style that carried the Ford Motor Company through the 50's into the early 60's in both concepts as well as production cars.

This wild, circa 1950s-chic, one-off design study was built by Carrozzeria Boano. First shown at the 1955 Turin auto show, the car was intended to lure Ford Motor Co. into a similar arrangement to the one Ghia enjoyed with Chrysler. Henry Ford II was reportedly so taken with the car, he bought it before the show closed. Ford subsequently offered Boano a contract to open an exclusive Ford design studio, but it all came to naught when Boano instead signed a deal with Fiat. In 2001, the car won Postwar Custom Coachwork Best in Class at the Pebble Beach Concours. It has also won awards at the Amelia Island concours, the Bethlehem concours and the Greenwich concours. This car sold for $1,375,000 at the Gooding Pebble Beach auction on Sunday, August 20, 2006 to an unknown bidder.

In advance of the 1970 round of auto shows that kicked off in Detroit in November 1969, Lincoln created  a concept car from its Continental Mark III personal coupe that recalled the look  of the dual-cowl pheatons of the Classic Era. In fact, it was called the Dual-Cowl Pheaton. An aggressive variation of the production cars central grille was designed to tuck under under the car. Hidden headlamps were retained from the showroom models, but the Pheaton's opened to reveal predictive rectangular lamps. Bladelike projections extended the front fenders four inchs forward, and the look was repeated at the rear of the car. Special " Mirror Flake Silver " paint, highlighted by plum pinstripes adorned the extrerior. The interior, with its secondary windscreen, was draped in leather and corduroy accents. The location of this car is not know to this website at this time. Another one-off  concept car lost to vastness of time? To see more of this car click here.