Car Of The Week: 1953 Pontiac Parisienne Concept Car

In 1953, Joe Bortz gazed upon the new Pontiac Parisienne dream car parked on the GM Motorama showfloor at the International Amphitheater on the south side of Chicago. Since the 1980s, he’s seen that very same show car parked in his garage on the north side of
Chicago. For Bortz, a collector of concept dream cars, it’s a dream car come true.

 “When I was 12 years old, I went to the International Amphitheater and I saw the car, and it burnt into my memory from 1953,” he says.

General Motors launched a flurry of memorable dream cars for that first traveling GM Motorama, which visited six cities and displayed numerous show cars to 1.5 million visitors. The dream car concepts displayed at the 1953 GM Motorama included the Buick Wildcat convertible, Buick XP-300 convertible, Oldsmobile Starfire X-P Rocket convertible, Cadillac Le Mans convertible, GM Le Sabre convertible, the Chevrolet Corvette, the Cadillac Orleans four-door hardtop and the Pontiac Parisienne town car. 

Mood cars — production-based GM cars fitted with unique interior and exterior trim features — were sprinkled in each GM marque’s respective display at the Motorama, adding to the show car overload. If that still wasn’t enough, also included in the 1953 GM Motorama were three special convertibles that looked like their maker’s top-of-the-line convertibles, but were heavily modified to look sportier with lowered beltlines, windshields and bodies: the Fiesta from Oldsmobile, the Eldorado from Cadillac and the Skylark from Buick. Among these three convertibles, only the Fiesta and Eldorado sported new wrap-around windshield designs as seen on all of the concept cars. 

Of all of the concept/dream cars, mood cars and special convertibles displayed at the 1953 GM Motorama, only the Fiesta, Eldorado, Skylark and Corvette could be purchased at a local GM dealership. Due to their untested nature, GM never planned for its other experimental dream car concepts to ever make it into public hands — they were merely attention-getting displays intended to test the reaction to new design and technology ideas. However, a few concepts eventually floated into museums and wandered into the public’s hands, including the 1953 Pontiac Parisienne.

How exactly the Parisienne slipped out GM’s doors has been lost to time, but historian Don Keefe believes the car went to a GM executive a few years after it was on the show circuit, then to a man in Michigan. That owner sold it to Leroy Herbert, from whom Joe Bortz bought it in the 1980s.

“You know, I never saw the car when I bought it,” Bortz recalled. “The guy who had it (Herbert) was in New York, and I made arrangements to fly to LaGuardia airport, and he met me there. I just assumed he was gonna take me and drive me over to show me the car. And he said, ‘Oh, no, no. I just wanted to meet you here, because I don’t have time to go over and show you the car. You already got all these pictures of it.’ And so I decided, sight-unseen, to buy the car. So I literally flew to LaGuardia, gave him a check and flew back. That’s how I bought that car.”

The Parisienne is an interesting GM show car that, at a glance, appears to fit somewhere between the dream car concepts and the special “Motorama convertibles” (Skylark, Eldorado and Fiesta). Like the Motorama convertibles, it had a body based on a production car — the 1953 Chieftain Deluxe Eight — plus a wrap-around windshield, lowered body and cut-down beltline. However, instead of being a sporty convertible, the Parisienne was fashioned into a aristocratic two-door town car.

However, there’s more to the Parisienne than meets the eye, and GM included it as a dream car in at least one ad headlined “Dreams – on wheels” with the Buick Wildcat, Cadillac LeMans, Chevrolet Corvette and Oldsmobile Starfire concept cars 

“Our General Motors engineers are practical men,” stated the ad. “But they have dreams, too — dreams of exciting new cars that some day might be built with new processes, new materials and new techniques now being developed. And, because you can’t tell about pet ideas until you try them, we gave our staff the go-ahead.

“Here are the results — five glamorous hand-built ‘running’ models, fabricated of steel and Fiberglas and plastic. All combine many never-seen-before advances, all are different. More than a million people have already acclaimed them at our recent Motorama Shows from coast to coast.

“We feel these dream cars serve a useful purpose. By finding out which features you, the public, like best in these far-in-advance models, we can set our sights on the long task of including them on production cars….”

Once one studies the Parisienne, it becomes evident that the Parisienne is not just an eight-cylinder Chieftain two-door convertible that’s been slightly de-chromed and had a top fitted over the rear seat. For starters, production 1953 Pontiacs had a slightly curved windshield, but the Parisienne has a full wrap-around windshield like the other dream cars. Unique wind wings were then fitted to the Parisienne’s windshield frame in place of the standard door vent windows.

The wrap-around windshield required the cowl to be modified, so while they were at it, the team run by Harley Earl, then GM Vice-President of Design, cut down the height of the cowl to make the Parisienne altogether lower. Reducing the height of the cowl, and installing a lower wrap-around windshield, brought the Parisienne’s overall height to just 56 inches, making it 7 inches shorter than a standard 1953 Pontiac. (The body was presumably sectioned to further obtain this drastic overall lowering.)

Lowering the cowl necessitated lowering the height of the hood and the deck lid, both of which then hovered much closer to the fender tops. The beltline was thus altered to match the new body line that crossed from the hood to deck lid, and this area was trimmed with a special brightwork piece that appeared to give the sides of the passenger compartment a Darrin dip. Meanwhile, the hood received unique Silver Streaks that were recessed into the hood, instead of being bolted atop it. The standard rear Silver Streak trim piece was removed from the Parisienne’s deck lid altogether. 

The 1953 Pontiac Indianhead hood ornament was replaced on the Parisienne with a jet-style hood ornament similar to what would debut on the 1955 Pontiac. Also foretelling 1955 were three stars on each of the Parisienne’s body sides. These stars were the only side trim that appeared below the beltline on the Parisienne.

The beltline trim and chrome stars may have been the lone body-side brightwork, but the Parisienne was additionally embellished subtly in the bodywork. The rear wheel openings were enlarged and given lips, and Cadillac-style vertical faux vents were incorporated at the forward edge of each rear fender. Initial GM photos show the Parisienne with production-style bright stainless headlamp bezels, but by show time, they had been replaced with unique hooded bezels painted pure black to match the rest of the body (the taillamp bezels were likewise hooded). Even the wheel covers were modified, given chrome-plated vanes for a vented wheel appearance.

Under the hood, several engine components were specially chrome-plated, and Bortz believes the standard straight-eight Pontiac engine was given a hotter cam.

“I was told that the car did have a hopped-up cam in it, and, of course, it runs the Hydra-Matic four-speed automatic, so it pulls very nicely, pretty much like a 1953-’54 Pontiac straight-eight,” Bortz says. “They have tons of torque, but they’re not going to do 0 to 60 in 8 seconds, but they are kind of peppy.”

And then there’s that unique fiberglass half-roof. While most of the other 1953 Motorama cars were convertibles with sports car appeal, the Parisienne brought Old World elegance by reintroducing the town car body style — with a twist. While nearly all other town cars were four-doors with open fronts for chauffeurs and enclosed rear compartments for the owners, the open-front Parisienne was a two-door lacking back doors for rear-seat passengers. To accommodate the owners of this novel take on the town car, the Parisienne was fitted with special front bucket seats — perhaps a first in a three-plus passenger car. The passenger-side bucket seat, presumably for a footman, was hydro-electrically powered to fold all the way forward to the instrument panel, thus providing maximum rear seat access for madame and masseur. The front bucket seats were trimmed with pink cowhide while the rear seat was intended to be more elegant with trimming in button-tufted nylon in beige and black. The headliner of the fiberglass half-roof was pleated in the lighter color, and the lush carpet beneath the passengers’ feet was made of lamb’s wool. Entry and exit from the Parisienne was via pushbuttons inside and out.

If the nature and name of the Parisienne wasn’t enough to imply the car’s French inspiration, the Parisienne was sometimes shown with blue-tinted French poodles!

Besides being displayed with man’s best friend, the Parisienne has at least one other unique aspect that separates it from other concept dream cars.

“I can’t think of another concept car that General Motors had where they… literally changed it from one year to the next,” Bortz says. “In 1954, they changed it to a kind of dull silver with a blue tint, and they put on the ’54 Pontiac front grille and bumper, and the ’54 rear bumper, so it was different.” 

When Bortz bought the Parisienne in the 1980s, it was in the midst of restoration. The 1954 silver-blue paint was weathered enough that the car required a repaint, and the seller was apparently trying to decide whether to keep it in its 1954 configuration or return it to its original 1953 Motorama presentation.

“He had already started painting it black,” Bortz said.

“Basically, most of the paint work was done. I got all the chrome back on it, and the back seat was done very nicely. Everything’s back to ’53.”

After the restoration was completed, Bortz started showing the Parisienne at all manner of car shows, as he does with his other concept cars. One special invitation to display the Parisienne provided him with a surprising detail that allowed him to truly restore the car back to 1953. 

“Years later, after I had the car, I brought it out to GM’s new $100 million Tech Center,” Bortz said. “GM designer Dave Holls had me bring out five or six GM concept cars to put on the lawn for the big press release opening of the new Tech Center. When I was there, Dave said to me, ‘Joe, did you get the Plexiglas clear roof for it?’ I never knew there was one, and I didn’t get it. And I never saw a picture of it. He said, ‘Well, the reason for that is that when they put the Plexiglas roof on, somebody said, “Hey, Ford’s already got a production car coming out that is a two-door hardtop with a Plexiglas half-roof.” So they just sent it out without the Plexiglas roof panel. And besides, it was really a town car, and a town car doesn’t have Plexiglas for a roof. So Dave and I went up to the lunchroom and he drew a picture on a napkin exactly the way he remembered the Plexiglas top.”

Bortz initially shelved the drawing, but years later, he had Mel Francis, an expert fiberglass worker, recreate the Plexiglas roof panel for the Parisienne.

Even though a Plexiglas roof has been remade for the 1953 Pontiac Parisienne dream car, Bortz still prefers to show it topless, just as GM did during its Motorama shows. It can currently be seen without its Plexiglas top at the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Mich., where it is on display as part of the exhibition “GM Motorama Marvels from the Joe Bortz Collection,” which runs into 2027. Learn more at gilmorecarmuseum.org

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