The AMAZING WORLD’S FAIR of POWER
NAVY and Air Force guided cruise missiles next to dream cars by Harley Earl. Who would have ever thought they were closely connected?
GM’s over-the-top POWERAMA told the story of industrial genius in a fascinating manner on the Chicago waterfront, next to Soldier Field, starting August 31, 1955 where over 2,218,000 attended the event during a 26-day period. This was another powerific and free creation brought to you by Mr. Dream Car himself: Harley J. Earl. Clearly recognizing consumers wanted it all, America’s renowned “Dreamer-In-Chief” delivered a spectacular array of modern products. Before, Harley was used to having his dream cars only being spotlighted in front of jam-packed audiences at GM’s traveling Motorama Shows. But, the POWERAMA introduced dream cars alongside everything else Harley Earl and GM’s dream team had been working on for decades! Wide-eyed boys and rival automakers the world over got GM’s message: Don’t mess with General Motors. It’s got rockets.
Intermingling GM’s dream cars with dream tractors, dream trains and U.S. Army dream tanks and outrageous U.S.A.F. dream planes was another masterstroke of Detroit’s “Chairman-Of-Change. Mr. Earl had GM promote the radical new event as “The World’s First Technological Circus” and people were amazed seeing a dream atomic cannon or modern guided missiles (unarmed of course) touted with the most sophisticated computer guidance systems in the world near GM’s motoramic works of art and engineering.
All these new products shown together also put the focus on GM’s exciting “diesel dream products” which were carefully studded all-around the other eye-popping products.
This GM POWERAMA link is to a color film showing everything mentioned above, and more! Here’s the headline to a Aug., 31, 1955 NYTimes article entitled, “25,000 PREVIEW G.M. POWERAMA; $10,000,000 Exhibit to Open Today.”
Go to the following link to see many different internet portals on, the WORLD’S FAIR of POWER. Finally, the Powerama brochure (front and back covers shown below) billed the event as, General Motors presents The World’s First Technological Circus – “MORE POWER FOR YOU.”
What was never revealed was the secrecy that went into the cutting-edge-technology GM introduced from the 1920s through the entire 1950s. In other words, the modern business world along with the masses were simply not allowed to know what Harley and GM’s mid-century dream team leaders were truly up to and how they were able to keep all the important workings of their story under the radar. “That’s why the narrative arc behind America’s greatest business team has been languishing on the back burner of time, flavor developing” as Richard Earl likes to say, “for the last 60 odd years now.”
Typical “front page news” featured below on Sept., 10, 1955. Notice what Billboard describes from this news story: “And GM is picking up a whopping tab, for besides the show itself the corporation went all out in advance with a large scale and intensive campaign not only in newspapers but over, TV, radio and outdoors. All of Chicago’s dailies carried fat advertising-heavy “Powerama” special sections.” This of course was the exact way GM put on all their lavish “annual introduction” shows that Harley Earl and his team had been pulling off since the very first expensive, but highly successful, GM Motorama Show in New York City during January, 1953.
