Buick Centurion Concept

The Buick Centurion Concept, project code XP-301, was a two-plus-two grand touring concept car that Buick, a General Motors division, showed at the 1956 General Motors Motorama. Chuck Jordan designed it under General Motors design chief Harley Earl. It sat on the chassis and drivetrain of the second-generation 1954 Buick Century but wore a futuristic fibreglass body shaped by the jet age and the gas-turbine cars then fashionable, with a form inspired by the manta ray and a panoramic bubble-shaped glass cockpit. Power came from a 5.3 litre V8 of 325 horsepower with four side-mounted twin-barrel carburettors. The car appeared in the 1956 promotional short film Design for Dreaming, which showed a house of the future and the General Motors cars of the Motorama. Buick reused the Centurion name for a 1971 production model. The concept survives in the collection of the Sloan Museum in Flint, Michigan.