The Astra-Gnome is a

concept car A concept car (also known as a concept vehicle, show vehicle or prototype) is a car made to showcase new styling and/or new technology. They are often exhibited at motor shows to gauge customer reaction to new and radical designs which may or ...

by industrial designer Richard Arbib using a 1955

Nash Metropolitan The Nash Metropolitan is an American automobile that was assembled in England and marketed from 1953 until 1961. It conforms to two classes of vehicle: economy car and subcompact car. In today's US terminology the Metropolitan is a “subcompac ...

chassis. Described as a "Time and Space Car", it features themes influenced by the space travel forms that were popular during the 1950s. The vehicle represented Arbib's vision of what an automobile would look like in the year 2000.

Design

American Motors Corporation commissioned Richard Arbib, a leading industrial designer of the 1950s, to develop a futuristic concept car. Built in four months, the Astra-Gnome represented the work of product stylists to create "new and exciting shapes, textures and colors in a functional car." Arbib had the wheels and tires hidden behind full

fender skirts Fender skirts, known in Australia and the United Kingdom as spats, are pieces of bodywork on the fender that cover the upper portions of the tires of an automobile. They are usually used on rear wheels only, but some models have them on all ...

to achieve "a floating special quality" and to suggest a

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to fly in outer space. A type of artificial satellite, spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, p ...

or hovercraft. The objective was to build excitement "about the cool stuff the 21st century was going to hold." The vehicle was featured on the 3 September 1956 cover of ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...

'' magazine and was a highlight at the 1956

New York International Auto Show The New York International Auto Show is an annual auto show that is held in Manhattan in late March or early April. It is held at the Jacob Javits Convention Center. It usually opens on or just before Easter weekend and closes on the first S ...

. About 1,000 questionnaire cards were distributed to viewers at the auto show, with results indicating an 80% favorable response to the prototype. Numerous photos were made of the car with Arbib, most often accompanied by attractive female models who explained to the media that the concept was never intended for production. Despite a 25% increase in size over the original Metropolitan body, the total weight remains under . About of

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It ha ...

castings and extrusions were used, including fluted

side panels that had been

anodized Anodizing is an electrolytic passivation process used to increase the thickness of the natural oxide layer on the surface of metal parts. The process is called ''anodizing'' because the part to be treated forms the anode electrode of an electr ...

in different blending colors. The

bubble canopy A bubble canopy is an aircraft canopy constructed without bracing, for the purpose of providing a wider unobstructed field of view to the pilot, often providing 360° all-round visibility. The designs of bubble canopies can drastically vary; s ...

provides an unobstructed vision all around; this covered the passengers, but could be raised to allow walk-in entry and exit. The Nash Metropolitan features the body work by Andrew Mazzara of New York. Among its many features is a

Hamilton Hamilton may refer to: People * Hamilton (name), a common British surname and occasional given name, usually of Scottish origin, including a list of persons with the surname ** The Duke of Hamilton, the premier peer of Scotland ** Lord Hamilt ...

"celestial time-zone clock permitting actual flight-type navigation." The

acrylic glass Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) belongs to a group of materials called engineering plastics. It is a transparent thermoplastic. PMMA is also known as acrylic, acrylic glass, as well as by the trade names and brands Crylux, Plexiglas, Acrylite ...

bubble canopy also served as a sound chamber for the car's high fidelity radio and

record player A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

. The car included

air conditioning Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C or AC, is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior environment (sometimes referred to as 'comfort cooling') and in some cases also strictly controlling ...

and wrap-around bumper protection that was matched to the height of full-sized car bumpers. The width of the concept car was much greater than contemporary passenger automobiles and allowed for extra interior room, as well as storage and luggage spaces that included six pieces of matched integrated luggage. The concept car "disappeared into oblivion" to be recovered from New York City in 1980. The car is restored and can be seen in a California museum.

Notes

{{American Motors Concept cars 1950s cars

Design

See also

Notes