The Stunning Art Deco GM Futurliner Is The Coolest Bus On Earth And Nothing Else Comes Close

We talk a lot about ‘Holy Grails’ here, but it’s rare that we run into something that would fit the more traditional meaning of the term. Well, here’s a bus to rule them all. This 1939 GM Futurliner is an icon unlike any other bus that has come before or since. Forget the iconic GM New Look bus because the Futurliner and its eight tires is the coolest bus ever put on the world’s roads and nothing else even comes close. Oh, and did I say that you could buy it?

That’s right, if you have about a million dollars, you can bring this real 1939 GM Futurliner home. Yes, that’s a ton of money, but this is an outrageously rare piece of history. General Motors built just 12 of these Art Deco masterpieces for its Parade of Progress, a traveling exhibition of future technology. One was destroyed and it’s unknown where some of the others are. The GM Futurliner is so rare, and there’s a non-zero chance you will never see another one of these for sale again.

This bus isn’t just something so pretty that you can lose an entire day just staring at it, but General Motors used this bus for a practical purpose.

An Educational Tool

General Motors doesn’t say anything about the Futurliner on its pages. If you were to search GM’s domain for “Futurliner” you get just a single result and it’s a flyer for a car show. This is a bit weird because the Futurliner was the vehicle for a grand idea that only a company like GM could have pulled off nearly a century ago.

For over two centuries, the best way to learn about current and future technologies was to visit a world exposition or World’s Fair. These expositions would often focus on new inventions as well as breakthroughs in science, industry, and technology. The expositions have been held at different sites all over the world including New York City, Chicago, Seattle, Milan, Nashville, Johannesburg, Brussels, and so many more. Go to these cities and you’ll find artifacts from the fairs such as the Unisphere and the New York State Pavilion in New York or Seattle’s iconic Space Needle.

Like many historical GM stories, this one links back to Charles F. Kettering, the man who wore many inventor hats from leading diesel development to working on a bit of everything from electric starters, the Copper-Cooled Chevrolet, leaded gasoline, enamel paints, and even a sort of guided flying torpedo. In this case, Kettering went to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair and found a problem he wanted to solve. As Hagerty writes, Kettering liked how these fairs educated people, but didn’t like how they were static. Kettering wanted to take a world’s fair on the road to educate more young Americans on science and engineering.

GM has a small footnote about this on its website:

The General Motors “Parade of Progress” was a large, multi-faceted road show that began touring across America in 1936. The idea of Charles Kettering, the Parade of Progress sought to highlight technological progress and interest young people in science and engineering. Three distinct parades occurred over a 20-year period during which a caravan of specially designed buses took the educational exhibit across the U.S., Canada and Mexico sharing GM’s vision with more than 20 million people attending.

At first, General Motors started its Parade of Progress with eight Streamliner buses housing unique exhibits (above) that showed how science and technology have improved the American way of life. These buses were modified to have the exhibits stored in an expansive space behind the cabs and a large side hatch would lift up and out, revealing the exhibit inside. The subjects were as varied as agricultural implements and newfangled future consumer products like the television to a peek into aviation’s future with the jet engine.

In 1940, General Motors took the Parade of Progress a step further. Gone were the Streamliner buses and in their place were fantastic Art Deco buses styled by none other than Harley Earl. The Futurliners, as GM called them, had bodies by Fisher and a chassis by GM-owned bus builder Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company.

To give you a sense of scale, each Futurliner was 33 feet long, had a 20.6-foot wheelbase, was eight feet wide, was over 11 feet tall, and weighed 33,000 pounds. These vehicles were so heavy that they required dual wheels not just in the rear, but on the front axle as well.

According to an article by National Bus Trader, the Futurliners were so heavy and the front wheels were so hard to turn that they had power assist in an era when buses commonly had manual steering. Reportedly, the power steering wasn’t enough and pumps often failed under the extreme loads of the dual tires.

Early Futurliners were fitted with Detroit Diesel 4-71 4.7-liter four-cylinder diesel engines. These were rated for just 160 HP and gave the Futurliners a leisurely top speed of around 40 mph. Remember, these Futurliners weighed as much as a modern transit bus but didn’t even have half of the power. They didn’t have air-conditioning either.

GM built 12 Futurliners and debuted them at the 1939 New York World’s Fair before sending them on tour in the Parade of Progress. Instead of passenger accommodations (beyond a pair of jump seats), each Futurliner had a stage with an exhibit, lighting, and speaker system. The Futurliners didn’t have room for all of the people involved in the Parade of Progress, so staff rode along in what the National Automotive & Truck Museum says were 24 trucks, 11 cars, and three station wagons.

The National Automotive & Truck Museum also notes that exhibits included a Ping-Pong game played in stereo sound, an exhibit demonstrating how a microwave worked, and an exhibit showing how sound can travel through light. The Futurliners were mothballed when America joined World War II, and the Futurliners were stored for a dozen years.

In 1953, the Futurliners were put back onto the road after updates, which included air-conditioning and swapping the diesel engines out for GMC 145 HP 302 cubic-inch straight-six engines. Sadly, the new power didn’t make the buses any faster, but the Futurliners did get four-speed Hydramatic automatic transmissions.

Reportedly, General Motors also found the atmosphere to be different in the 1950s. Americans now had television to teach them new things and the Parade of Progress didn’t quite have the impact it used to. GM called it quits in 1956. By then, one of the Futureliners had been rear-ended in a crash, but the 11 others were still operational. GM gave two examples to the Michigan State Police and the rest were sold off. When all was said and done, it was estimated that around 13 million people across 300 cities got to learn something new from GM’s Parade of Progress.

This Futurliner

The stories of the 11 Futurliners get pretty fuzzy post-General Motors. Depending on who you ask, either half or most of the Futurliners are accounted for. Around three of them are in Germany, one is in Sweden, and the rest appear to be in America, with two in museums and the rest apparently in private collections.

Peter Pan Bus Lines in Springfield, Massachusetts had two Futurliners. According to the Drive, one of them was a rusty hulk that likely belonged to televangelist Oral Roberts in decades past. That Futurliner was believed to be number 11, though another Futurliner is also believed to be number 11.

Anyway, this Futurliner is likely number 7, but this is also disputed. It used to be painted in Peter Pan Bus Lines’ colors, as shown above.

The reason why the numbers aren’t certain is that it’s extremely difficult to tell which Futurliner is which. GM used license plates and the exhibits to track the Futurliners, but those were removed when the Parade of Progress ended. Otherwise, each surviving example was visually the same. It is believed the restored Peter Pan Futurliner served as a GM exhibit for “Out of the City Muddle” which focused on road congestion in the years before Interstate highways. However, the owner of a different Futurliner says his was covered in number 7s, possibly indicating that his was the number 7. The National Auto & Truck Museum thinks Peter Pan might have number 6, which hosted an exhibit for “Energy & Man” and another for “High Compression Power & Energy.”

Regardless of number, this Futurliner somehow found its way into Chicago by way of someone who wanted to turn a bunch of them into food trucks, according to The Drive. That never happened, and Chicago area car collector Joe Bortz picked up Futureliners. Bortz then sold five of them, with one going to Sweden, one going to the National Automotive & Truck Museum, one going to Canada, and one going to Utah.

It’s not known exactly where the fifth went, but former Peter Pan CEO Peter L. Picknelly picked this example up in the Chicago area in 1998. It’s not known exactly who the seller was, but it’s possible that Bortz was an owner of this Futurliner at some point in its past.

Peter Holderith, formerly of the Drive, got to drive this Futurliner back in 2021 and his driving notes make this sound a lot like a truck or a bus from the era. The Futurliner has a huge steering wheel and turns easily, but there’s a lot of slop in the steering and no real feedback. The pedals apparently didn’t offer much response, either, just like a bus.

This Futurliner was originally fitted with one of the 302 straight-six gas engines from GM, but it has been repowered with a Detroit Diesel 4-71 and an Allison automatic transmission during its restoration. Apparently, this one does have better performance than stock with a top speed of over 50 mph. But, if you want that true Futurliner experience, Peter Pan will toss in the slower gas engine for free. The old power steering system was tossed out for an upgraded steering assist system. In other words, this is basically as close as you’ll get to an original Futurliner, but even better.

The price for all of this is $998,900, or about a thousand bucks cheaper than what Peter Pan wanted for it in 2021. Frankly, when you’re spending a million dollars, I’m not sure a $1,100 discount matters that much. It’s also significantly cheaper than what other Futurliners have sold for, so it’s technically a deal and a half.

Either way, this is one of those pieces of history that is such a holy grail that there’s a chance you may never see one for sale again. This is a vehicle so rare that you may never even see one in real life. One thing is for sure: The Futurliner is easily the best truck or bus thing ever built and I’m not sure there’s anything else that even comes close.