110+ Years’ Worth of General Motors Cars – All in ONE Showroom. 1hr Walkthrough!

[Music] so what's up guys larry chun here welcome to another episode of hoonigan autofocus today i'm actually at the gm heritage center this place is absolutely insane it's uh quite a few cars i think they said 160 or so cars but uh in the collection overall i think it's over 700 cars but we're gonna take a tour today they were gracious enough to open their doors for us just today so i hope you guys enjoy the video hi peggy hi hi so uh we're gonna take a socially distanced tour of this place all right so you actually uh work here and you do a lot of events here during normal times but unfortunately right now there's no events going on but at least you guys were nice enough to let me in to have this kind of tour i'm excited let's uh i guess go around so what are what are some of the normal day-to-day operations that you normally do here during normal times well the gm heritage center has three purposes for the for the company one is to serve as the repository for the archival information so we have you know quite a um it's like a library in the business office and a very robust data database of information in this room this is the showroom and we serve as a as a storage facility for many of the vehicles in the gm collection our third function is to serve as a conferencing center so we do things like meetings and seminars and conferences black tie dinners galas so we do our fair share almost 275 to 300 a year so we're very busy on a daily basis the gm collection is almost 700 vehicles we only have room for about 160 of them every vehicle in the gm collection is in the collection for a reason each one represents some milestone or innovation in general motors or automotive history we have pulled from the collection what we feel are some of the most important the most iconic the vehicles that are in the best collect best condition and those that we know our enthusiasts want to see so that's how they make it onto the floor here so how many of these are original or new or untouched versus like completely restored they didn't decide to make this collection until the late 1990s and so what they did is they made a list of all the important milestones they looked at what general motors had been saving and they saw what they needed to go after and get so most of the production vehicles have been on the road and we purchased them either in restored state or then we restored them so most of the production vehicles have miles on them and and have been restored there are a few that are first off the line or last off the line when they knew that they had a winner of some type they would save that so there's a lot of first or less those would have very minimal miles on it and probably would not be restored then of course we also have a collection many of the vehicles in the collection are concept vehicles experimental vehicles that were never on the road and those depending on their show life and the original purpose they might have restorations or reiterations so how many people work here to kind of keep this place an extremely small staff we have a maintenance staff and they are responsible for keeping the vehicles lint free clean the floors the walls the they keep the lighting going and and then we have a me the event coordinator and a manager that's off-site so like for example like all of these cars do they all have the batteries out of them or are they all actually ready to drive at any moment most of them are drivable we do disconnect the batteries and keep extremely low amount of gas in them we do move them quite often a lot of people ask how often do you start them just in the course of business we end up moving a lot of the vehicles if the cars have to be moved we try to start every one of them rather than push them there are a few that we won't start just because it's more difficult on the vehicle and the staff and we have fumes and we're inside a building and there's fumes so okay the ones that you don't want to start all startups for you guys [Laughter] we've i've never seen the 1911 started and that is where is the 1911 these days okay that big white one oh okay that's the most valuable production piece in the collection i've never seen that started for instance if we ever have to move it we push it got it so let's start about let's start talking about cadillac cadillac was founded by henry leland he grew up in the gun industry and had a firm believer that interchangeability of parts would win wars and he also and then he he applied that to cadillac he felt that every vehicle should have parts that were consistent and within certain very tight tolerances and so began the company with a very um with with the credo that it still follows quality precision technology innovation this only three cadillacs were built in its first year all three were taken to uh the new york auto show in 1903 and sold and then they took orders for thousands more so we're not sure we're pretty sure the documentation on this is is not um is inconsistent we're not sure if this is the original prototype or if it was one made from spare parts but this is what an original early cadillac would look like yes the tires are white because they're they're the rubber is actually white right and then they added i think charcoal later to strengthen the tires that's pretty cool and you can see this is just the following year they learn to accessorize very quickly you can see that we have we've added brass lights we've had a more decorative steering wheel we've got a horn now we've got an optional seat we've got more color we've got the badge more badging yeah so like there's not even a badge on that huh correct oh that's pretty cool this is like where you first see the ducks yes that's awesome that is um uh taken from the original crust of uh uh the mouth cadillac family with whom you know that's who leland named the company after the explorer who um settled the city of detroit so this is a significant piece in the collection this is a 1912 cadillac it's the first year for electric starter it sort of embodies what cadillac is all about when henry leland's friend was injured on belle isle he was helping a woman who could not start her car crank starting was getting very difficult you can see in just 10 years the cars got much bigger and harder to crank start and so it was electric or i'm sorry gasoline cars are becoming more unreliable and difficult to start when charles cuttering debuted the or showed him the the electric starter henry leland jumped at the cl at the chance to be the first one to use it and so in this 1912 you notice that we have an electric starter we have a redundant system this would have been the crank but we have a redundant system we have we do not have standardization of left or right hand drive yet that doesn't come until a few years later we don't have an automotive designer yet so the design of the vehicle was at the whim of the engineer and so we have things like the spare tire hanging off the side door so um a lot this this changes a lot we won the dewar cup this year because of the integrity of the interchangeable parts they could they took apart three of them and they were all able to be reassembled and in running condition and so that earned it the uh the war cup so this is a significant piece in our collection 1915 is another breakthrough it's the first year for the mass produced engine and this one i do think you're going to look at this is the 1931 v16 it's a 16 cylinder vehicle and we're going to see this vehicle later in the 2003-16 its concept car in 2003 to give homage to the past of cadillac's history of producing a 16-cylinder you're going to see that the engine compartments were designed to be identical so this was a very opulent car in 1931 most families were suffering the depression 6500 i'll take it yes it was sold to the general motors collection for one dollar by the original owner augusto little was a teenager in 1931 and like i said we're in the throes of the depression and she inherits a large sum of money and she buys herself this vehicle and a plane and has them both painted satan red this has been restored it was always red but we a previous administration did a two-tone they also chromed the venting what a beautiful car like this is a cadillac just i mean the way it looks the way it presents itself just uh really impressive we've had things like night vision where when you drive the car the lights follow that happens in 1931 but it's mechanical oh that's what this is so that that's not just down here oh okay right here so if i turn the wheel you're gonna see those things turn and don't tell anyone i'm touching the car okay oh wow see how they turn yeah that is something else so augusta kept this all her life and sold it to her it sold it to us not long before she died her son was embarrassed to be picked up in school from school in this the 1940s we start the early iterations of the cadillac's vertical lighting system harley earl starts as the designer and he is and he is enthralled with the age of aviation and so you're going to see he starts taking styling cues from the p-38s and you're going to see that vertical lighting system start as early as 1942. we can't visit the heritage center without pointing out this vehicle and i tried to make very sure when we we laid this vehicle these these cars out that this was at the end of the row so you can see it um it's a 1959 cadillac it's the pinnacle of the thin ear era you're going to see that that fin is um the tallest um produced fin um it's something like 22 feet long and still um only fits five people i just i just looking at this like i just couldn't imagine driving this on the road today it's just you couldn't even fit anywhere really how many how many garages can fit something that long yeah it's it like takes uh the space of two cars pretty much now you know it's so cool but i mean yeah like you said the rocket styling yep like it's like a jet engine yep unbelievable we're going to start a much more modern era now harley earl retires in 1958 and in 1959 bill mitchell takes over and he's a completely different guy he's very flamboyant and styling changes immediately you're going to see that things become more crisp he's also influential in new designs think stingray and because those are heavily influenced by bill mitchell and so here we have a more modern look for sure to the cadillacs you can see the the long front end the vertical lighting has started um this long engine bay um was originally designed to have a v12 um the the engine program was canceled so there's plenty of room for the v8 that's in there do you guys have a beast here like the presidential no this is the this is our representation of it oh okay all right we just have these um they are highly protective and from a security perspective so we just have the models the art and science collection vehicles this is where they decide to write themselves with a market and meld technology with an edgy new diamond cut look but still stay true to their heritage and dna and so we start with the evoque which was a concept car you can see that you know the fact that it's a two-seater they're going after a newer market the younger market 1999. this is just full of new technologies it has a 1999 night vision auto auto and auto park system it has internet connectivity i remember when this came out and said why would a car need connectivity you know you're supposed to be driving well you know that this is a prelude to things like onstar and all the things that we need now connectivity for but you know they were you know concept cars think 20 years ahead and they were definitely um on target with this the converge comes in 2009 it is a cadillac's version of electric vehicle it borrows technology from the volt and it certainly incorporated a beautiful design it was only produced for two years but on the road it was a beautiful production vehicle it looks almost identical to this concept car and of course now the new cadillacs the el mirage the escala much more modern iterations you're going to see the ct6 come from this of course i mentioned that 2003-16 this is the 2003 16. oh cylinder vehicle the hood hinges in the center just like it did in the in that 1931 to mimic and to give homage to the history the wheels are huge yes 24s of course there's a bulgari clock in there there's solid crystal um those are solid crystal um logos i like the no b pillar too that is super cool that you just there's just that and then it just it gives you a feeling of fluidity of luxury of of rest of peace i used to see these driving around town in la growing up really yeah a lot of them this is actually the impact this is the experimental this is the concept car for the ev-1 program it's called the impact it was a very controversial program but the ev-1 program was an experimental program they leased out these early electric vehicles and when the program was done they gathered them up and destroyed them to the dismay of a lot of the people who leased them they loved them but it was um it was a cooperative program an experimental program where they were trying to see what what were the what were the needs going to be for not only the consumer but the the infrastructure of the city of from the power companies how is this going to change transportation and so very important program in the development of electric vehicles yeah i mean talk about ahead of its time exactly like that is just now we're seeing electric vehicles on the streets but this was uh back in 1990. if you go to this vehicle here this is from 1966 and this is a first our first modern battery-operated car so this too is um the front has batteries in them um and so later on i'll have the guys lift the hood for you on that one this is our first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle from 1966 so um everyone thinks that the future is hydrogen fuel cell but you know you can see that we were experimenting with this many many many many years ago um i'm going to show you it's a good-looking van too scooby-doo [Laughter] so if you want to look back here you can see that it actually carried the tanks um so every time this was ever driven you wouldn't see it on camera but they had fire suppression equipment like a fire engine behind it firebird one two and three this is firebird two these are um a really important vehicle firebird one isn't here today the firebird program was an experimental program in the 1950s experimenting with gas turbine vehicles but this car in firebird 3 took it a step further so they were thinking about highways of tomorrow and so that cars were going to be highways were going to be so safe that cars could almost drive themselves and so maybe all we would have to do is press a button and cars would be programmed and could go to the location we would just have to press a button for directions and to make hotel reservations and things like that and so this is firebird 2 and you can see the button is on the roof here you can see the button up there oh okay sort of like an early onstar right so this is from um auto oh it has autopilot yeah controls yes exactly and there's no steering wheel just uh uh joysticks and you can see the that those white things are their screens their navigation screens display screens and so you would just talk to the control tower and they would beam down to you the coordinates yeah and then back then when people saw this they're like sure buddy this is never gonna happen you know and now you can actually yeah you can actually program where you're going and it'll take you the car will take you there firebird one looked like a rocket and it was a single it was for a single driver it was it was really experimenting with that with a gas turbine and and the exhaust system was so hot that it was it could only be driven on a track um but with just you know just a few years they learned how to process that heat and so they decided we could go with a family car now and so that's why this is a four-seater how many gas turbine cars are here in this collection in the collection um well there'd be firebird one two and three and then there's the there's one more that i know of um in that that we've had on the floor the express is not here today but it was a turban this is firebird three um this is our the actual vehicle isn't here today but this is the um the chassis for it um it is our first autonomous driving vehicle wow this is that's the steering wheel yes it's so futuristic so we have a traditional motor that controlled things like air conditioning things like that then we have the gas turbine engine but today we also really emphasize its autonomous driving so this is the mechanism that allowed it to be autonomous driving the idea was that there would be a wire in the road and that this would follow the wire in the road and this is the control of the relay control unit that allowed that to happen the joystick gave you forward back and braking very important um in in the development of where we are today but back then you know it was just an experimental vehicle this is a 1953 is a centerpiece for the buick anniversary it's this is the skylark it's a magnificent vehicle it was um i like the color yeah it is it's it has a racy um appearance it was restored and one of the things i like to point out about this vehicle in a restoration there's always different attitudes do you restore it to way to be the way it should be or do you restore it to be the way it really was and so you're going to see things like the side sweep here it doesn't match it doesn't quite line up but that's the way it was oh because yeah it doesn't match up with that yeah i think i think it's one of those things where a lot of like uh muscle cars from like the 70s and late 60s but when they restore it correctly you have to like make sure you do the over spray in in a way on certain parts of the car so it actually looks like it the way it left from the factory but but that's pretty cool that that makes sense that they would just keep that alignment this is the first riviera i've ever seen that's not modified in stock really you know among restoration people and vintage car owners um the rivieras are becoming more popular the chevelles and the um the novas and um the corvettes those are all almost all taken you know so now the rivieras are are becoming the new value and you can get parts uh there's a lot of interchangeability of parts you can get parts and they're beautiful vehicles so you're gonna see more and more of it yeah i mean i've shot so many of these where like everything's shaved you know door handles are shaved it's completely slammed to the ground you know maybe with a little bit of a low rider flare it's pretty cool to see one in in stock farms they're beautiful vehicles they really are this this is one of the few that i've driven a gina gsx yeah gsx which i know these are so special we could do the the 70 gsx so we could do the 70 chevelle they're so iconic in that muscle car era yeah they all have that fastback look you can see that the early the early beginnings of muscle car starts in the mid 62 63 64. actually the 1964 gto is considered the the you know the the first muscle car but here you can see a 64 grand sport they have that that stance of a racy stance it's a light car with a big engine and you can see that within just a couple years they learn to get to add in that aerodynamic fastback so this is a gnx and so it's a turbo yeah and i think the story is they made one for every single dealer and then some gm execs were like oh i want one too so they made just a couple more so but but it's it's just so cool to see one in this condition it's a this is vin one for the gnx's oh this is the first one yeah okay you can see the interior treatment has the gnx logo on it that's unique to a gnx the the blacked out venting the turbo hump the blacked out grill the the the badging for it the flared out the flared the window flare or the wheel flares yeah it was so ahead of its time back then but like now so many performance cars are turbo and you know they may not have a eight-cylinder motor but they're still making so much power but this is like kind of like the first this is crazy 1985 this is like a bubble you know we just got this um about two three weeks ago and i've not even this is my first time seeing it myself it's a concept car called the buick wildcat we don't even have a wheel stand for it i haven't done the research on it yet well you know it's serious when there's a panel called command module [Laughter] and emergency canopy release that's pretty cool so these are all cute cars the interior is amazing this is a 1976 chevette it was a early entry into our small car market we were trying to combat imports at the time so in 1976 the united states was celebrating its bicentennial and so if you look at the interior you're going to see that this is our bicentennial optional fabric and this is the liberty you can see the liberty i can't believe that this says dealer cover like so this this was this vehicle was never sold so it said in a dealer's lad it was never sold the dealer kept it for years and then sold it to us so it's never been registered it was never sold so this is it it's never been on the road i would drive this is what all the early first first first car buyers would buy this is a 1971 vega this is our first built it one car of the year that year [Music] the vega went to market very quickly something like 24 months and so during its production it was going through constant production uh production changes as as they would find hiccups or or innovations they would they would implement implement them on a rolling change so what how it was produced in january wasn't going to be the same as how it was produced in september so it was constantly changing that affected its reputation so later on vegas were known to rust out things like that but in its in its infancy this was a hallmark car because it was it's from 1971 so it's actually five years older than that vehicle and so it was very important in going to market against those imports it got high fuel economy this is one of those cars you asked me about you know it's untouched as well this is the 1969 corvair we purchased it from a avid collector named pinky randall he's from houghton lake michigan and pinky ran pinky drove it home from the dealer and parked it into his garage or his basement and kept it there until we purchased it um and so it has something like 44 miles on it he when he sold it to us it had 37 miles on it so every year we have the corvair club come for their national convention and they visit this car because it's not been it's not been altered it's not been restored this is probably the only brand new one though i've never even seen the the hood up or the the roof up i've always seen it in convertible state this um well i bet you the the leather or is it leather or is it i think it's vinyl the vinyl it's probably fused together you probably can't take it apart now and you can see the headrests are a little bit different color than the rust and i believe a lot of that is because people touch it [Music] so that's this goes to show you what oil can do it does look pretty it has like that metallic yes it does doesn't it yeah we're in chevy land at this point so um this is another pinky randall car this is i the way we have it we don't we don't have the ability to go in rows chronically but this is uh the last built 1996 impala ss this is the last built i mentioned to you earlier pinky randall he's an avid collector and we made sure that he was able to purchase the last one and a few years later he sold it back to us so it's got very few miles on it but it is the last built in pallet ss just last year when we um produced the last impala pinky randall got that as well what what do you think is the most popular car here or what's the one that everybody just goes crazy over the 16 the 59 cadillac from the chevy area they like that 409 a lot of people like the 66 impala so like for example this row these are all our muscle cars are like our iconic muscle cars you know everyone um it's undisputed to me that the the 1970s chevelle ss is the pinnacle of the muscle car era and it is a popular vehicle this one was actually the engine was removed and an ls7 engine was put in in that and it was shown at sema so um i think this is just a beautiful vehicle people love it the nova the maintenance guys tell me that this will beat anything off the line this is probably the fastest car in the um in the in the showroom floor other people dispute that but some people say it it's true the 66 impala is it's got i want to make sure i'm right here it's got the 427 engine in it it's a beautiful vehicle and hot rodders and and racing and speedsters love this vehicle but it was at the end of the era because the muscle car era went to the mid mid-sized vehicles instead of the full-size vehicles right after this the 1962 chevrolet bel air is um this song the the vehicle that the beach boys sing about my 409 she's so fine my four nine this is it people expect it to look a little different than this but again it's it precedes the the true muscle car era but again it's you know a a high output engine and a in a very light vehicle what i like about it um as the x logo um a librarian is the 1962 badging on it if you look um it's got that cloisonne look that is on the the new badge chevrolet's current badge the 1959 el camino very iconic vehicle this is the first year for the el camino half car half truck attitudes were changing towards trucks people were understanding that there was value in hall ability the ability to haul but at the same time they wanted to be able to go to church in the car and they wanted to look good in their vehicle so they came out with the el camino it features the gull wing very unique to chevrolet if you notice the vehicle is a two-tone green with a matching plant interior it's not by mistake harley earl had hired an a design team an all-female design team because he recognized the importance of females in the family decision as what vehicle they're going to buy so so this is the this would have been a good example of the work of the damsels of design so two-toned two-tone paint matching plaid interior you're gonna see that again in in this one this is this is the um first year for impala you're gonna see the same thing you're gonna see very bright colors i think there's something like 13 different colors available a matching matching interior we have images in the archive of when you open up the trunks of some of these they actually had matching luggage as well so do you know what this thing is what is that yeah um i forgot what it's called um but it is it reflects up it is it reflects up into so you can see what the light is if it's red green yellow traffic light because the the windshields are very vertical and so so you didn't have to do this you just looked at that and it reflected the oh how neat is that yeah then of course the 57 chevy you know um very iconic part of the tri-five recognizable with this aluminized panel here so like in my opinion this section is like the restoration section right this is the section where i've actually been able to see a lot of these cars in similar condition you know because people these are the ones unlike uh that uh what was that one called over there the the omni or the chevette on the left the brand new one yeah yeah so like um people if they bought something like that potentially they wouldn't restore it you know because it's not super special like these it's uh pretty cool to see that you guys kind of highlighted them yeah that we did that yep yep we have our camaro story here we are z28 or 74 didn't fit so we had to put them here but these are all our camaros obviously came out to counteract you know the ford first year for camaro is a 67 it was chosen to be a pace car just two years later we have a new generation and it too was used to pace so you can see that camaro was always designed for the youthful driver driving for excitement kind of thing um we stopped production of camaro in 2002 and but we started listening to our people and they really wanted the name plate back so you're going to see 2011 we we bring back yeah you can't drive anywhere without seeing the new camaros yeah so the the 2006 concept camaro went to market almost identically to its concept and then you can see that then they came out with a convertible so that's that's the vehicle that's the only vehicle i've driven actually driven this one yep where did you drive it at the race at the indy 500 well in um into the detroit area every august we have a thing called the woodward dream cruise and over a million people come and so i drove this um in the woodward down woodward it's a week-long it used to be just on saturday um and now it's it's quite elongated it's almost a week of activity and um that week we were celebrating the 100th anniversary chevrolet so we drove 100 vehicles down woodward and and i drove this one oh i'm sure a lot of people volunteered right away this is our corvette section is there one corvette that you'd like to talk about because they're all cool definitely i think we need to talk about the 63 yeah and the 53 first definitely the race car is cool so is this a replica no this is it oh this is an actual race car wow they would have more than one but this is one of them no i know i know yeah i've had a chance to i really don't know that much about this one so i don't want to go on camera on that one but you can yeah i could talk a little bit about it i've photographed these quite a bit i've had a chance to photograph them in france at le mans as well as you know at sebring 12 hours and daytona rolex 24 hour when you talk about corvettes you need to talk about the beginning the 1953 corvette the first year for production for corvette it's also our first use of fiberglass only a little over 300 were made they were almost hand produced in a factory in flint and all of them were white with a red interior if you look none of them had door knobs you had to reach in to open the vehicle we were very selective on who we allowed to purchase the 1953 corvette we wanted to position it right in the market so we wanted to make sure what people who bought it were what we now call influencers and so very iconic vehicle beginning of of history for corvette i really think we need to talk about this one the 1963 corvette yeah this is uh this is the one so every time corvette changes its um body style it gets a new badging and it becomes a second another generation so this is the first year for the second generation of corvette huge style difference again harley earl has retired and bill mitchell has come in and he names this the stingray this is a very collectible vehicle because it's a 63 it's the only only year for the split window exactly exactly you can see the name is stingray two separate words capital r that's going to change it later becomes a stingray one word but this is a very important vehicle only year for split window because it caused an obstructed view and so much to the dismay of some of the designers and and arcus done arches on top they they they made it a solid window after that you may i don't i'm not a real good i'm not real strong on these vehicles but they're that's a mid-engine um uh experimental aerovet so um it really gives credibility and i mean that's probably like the yeah the preview of what that the c8 you know yes exactly within general motors there was a push to do a mid engine do a mid engine and for one reason or another it didn't happen until the c8 so but you can see the evidence of that internal drive so after you saw that 1953 corvette you can see this one this is a 1961 concept car called the mako shark like i said bill mitchell starts it starts as head of design in 1959 he's an avid fisherman and so he designs a vehicle with those passions in mind you can see that it's got an unusual paint it looks like the body of the fish itself you can see how it's gradated into almost like the body of the fish it's got what looks like gulls gills rather i'm sorry oh yeah it looks like gills for the lights exactly the cornering lights and then the badge is really cool exactly um this was used to preview um what was to come um you know they knew that they were working on a production a new production vehicle and so he used this to preview what they knew was going to be coming in for the new generation next he comes out with the mako shark ii that gets re-badged that's not unusual for the show life of a vehicle it gets re-badged and remade a little bit and now it's called the manta ray and so this previews the next generation the third generation corvette and you can see that wave i love the back again you know the paint job is it looks like the fish but think of a manta ray and how it has that beautiful flowing would you call that a dorsal fin but you can see that's reflected in the design here so many switches that's incredible s15 that's yeah it's a it's it's just like the the chevy okay it's called the s15 i like that it's just crazy how much simpler the interiors were for the trucks back then like this this is this is a cool crew isn't it beautiful it's so cool that's another vehicle if gmc came out with a typhoon or an or a cyclone right now i think that would be pretty cool what's significant about the 1955 suburban pickup is that it's the first year for a new body style and it's um it's recognizing the change in attitude towards trucks that people are now using trucks for double duty for personal transportation as well as cargo and so this is like what they call the gentleman's truck it's it's fully designed um to look good um and so you're gonna see things like um an interior that wasn't just basic anymore um you're gonna see that they've they've increased the size of the bed and and they've put the wheels on the outside rather than on the inside so now the the bed is smooth and and more designed it's a beautiful truck it's just it's very similar to the chevrolet cameo and it was extremely popular it's got the wrap around a wraparound windshield and glass in large class area they it's a bigger seat it's a taller cab they had they had talked with uh their customers and and found out what they wanted and so this truck gave them what they wanted they they wanted more ventilation so they've got a vent window they've got the the the wrap-around windshield it's just a very beautiful truck i want to talk a little bit about the 1977 gmc motorhome gmc was always a via a company that built trucks and heavy-duty equipment it responded to a growing segment of the market called the recreational vehicle market so this vehicle was extremely well designed it uses an oldsmobile ozone vehicle front wheel drive engine um it has automatic leveling it it was it it still is the benchmark for luxury and quality in the rv market but timing is everything and so not long after they started producing motorhomes the oil embargo hit the united states and this vehicle gets about six to eight miles per gallon and so the rv market really tanked and this was also altered at times to to use for mass transportation think of like in airports you know a shuttle bus those kind of things and they had hoped that this would be used for the chassis for ambulances but again the industry went in a whole different direction with the with the oil embargo and the um sudden increase in gas are we able to go inside we can if they have it locked if they don't have it locked there's only one door there's no passenger door and there's no driver door it's it's so nice i mean like this is like this is cool because it's it doesn't look like the inside of a rv no it looks like the inside of a car yes it's got things like um on board vacuuming it's got a microwave um it's sleepy this is 1977. exactly i got my first microwave in 1983. so and this be this steel be this this aluminum beam here is actually a drop down uh awning it's very beautiful i'm going to plug it in and see if i can get the lights on in there for you okay it even has air conditioning huh oh yeah and it's automatic leveling we also we we sometimes have to start it up and just and re re put air in it again because it automatic levels my husband's um uncle was the head engineer on this and holds the patent for that this is incredible daytime seating is ample and then at night this table folds down to form a bed and this couch scissors open to form another bed ample storage it's got a four burner stove it's got freezer refrigerator full bath we back here we have another table and that also folds down for sleeping so this sleeps technically sticks oh this is it's got a microwave it's got on-board vacuum these are all attributes of a luxury home especially back in 1977 and then it like i said it had it has an oldsmobile front-wheel drive engine so that there's no transaxle going all the way through the body easy to drive condo drive every brand had their version of a muscle car and so here is the oldsmobile cutlass 442 again it's it's got the rally stripes it's it's when we start this we actually um don't start it very often because it is so loud it shakes the rafters and literally we have to clean every car in here afterwards because all the dust comes down that's some throaty vehicle yeah that's something else shakes the building this vehicle is the 1911 olds limited it was a luxurious car back in its day when most cars cost 300 this cost between five and seven thousand dollars so it was a very luxurious vehicle it would have been maintained by a staff you can see the brass alone would have been difficult to maintain it's got very high 42-inch wheels and there's a reason for that because they really did go over the river and through the woods to see grandmother there weren't roads back in 1911 and so if you compare this to other early runabouts you can see that this heavy duty chassis the the extra long extra tall tires really got them where they needed to go had the strength and then integrity to do that again we don't have standardization of left or right hand drive and you can see the seating how small people were back then there's some optional jump seats that we would see later on in some of our pickups i love these these are yes these would fold down and you can see they would fold away and give luxury here this was your blanket rack this is where you would put your blanket it's very beautiful vehicle really is yeah so this is the most valuable production piece on the in the collection we know that a few years ago across barrett-jackson there was a barn find 1911. it went for over a million so we know that this is because it's already been restored it's been in our repossession you know we possess we've had it since the 1930s and it's been indoors it's gone it's had a show life but for the most part it's been well taken care of since then i'm sure you get asked this question all the time is there an estimate about how much this collection potentially could be worth so um the production the production portion of it i've been told it's 60 million um um and i'm sure it goes up and down and it's not including the specialty vehicles you know something like the y job or the le saver or all those specialty cars are probably they're they're priceless you know we couldn't we couldn't give a price for those and that's that that number isn't including the specialty cars we talked so much about the muscle car era i did want to point out this 1964 pontiac tempest le mans dto this is the car that is credited with ushering in the muscle car era because it had that optional gto package on it oh i love these i love that they came with a jacket right [Laughter] so um the thing that's um i i see a lot when if somebody has one in good condition you know they like to proudly display their jacket exactly exactly it's a beautiful car and then next to it is a 69 trans am first year for trans am coincides with the first year for camaro as well and then of course we have here the smoky and the bandit car that's what people call it the fire chicken the sling yes we should call the screaming chicken yeah so this is the make and model that was used in the movie smoking the bandit this has had quite a show life has the cbd yeah of course it has to have that the snowflake wheels the gold trim the oversized bird i love the when you have the high beams on and all four lights are on it just looks really really good this is the pegasus it's a concept car it was a design study that combined elements of ferrari with pontiac so you're going to see a ferrari five-speed transmission um four four-wheel disc brakes from corvette um i see mufflers instrument panel that's why it's called a pegasus because it's like uh a horse flying horse yep yep the red the the the color is just magnificent in in the right light it's it's a beautiful vehicle it's a one-off just a it's just a design study and this one is a holden from australia a gm executive brought it back with him and we keep it it's one of our only nods to non-north american vehicles but it's if you look at it to me it looks just like a 55 yeah especially like just this design like 7 8 scale you know it's just a little modern well thank you so much for taking us around the collection i i'm sorry it took so much time no it's okay that's okay there's a lot to go through and the crazy thing to me is what you're saying that this is not the entire collection because it rotates and then like you said i'm sure there's so many uh that are out of the collection just around the us and potentially elsewhere that are just on display right but i mean like having something like this is so important for the heritage aspect of it but also the fact that so many enthusiasts get to enjoy these in person i can only imagine what it's like when this place is filled and everyone's like oh my god i can't believe it was you know cars were like this or this feature so many people that come here say oh my god i read magazine stories about this when i was little i can't believe i'm seeing the actual vehicle the the real firebird too i'm seeing the real one you know they're just amazed at it that that it's still here it's it's it's visible it's real it's in 3d it's not just a picture yeah yeah i mean potentially even to the point where like you you stick your head in some of these cars and it smells like of that era right yeah well thank you so much you're welcome all right well that's it for our tour i'm gonna go around i'm gonna try to take as many uh detail shots as possible if you guys want to support hoonigan autofocus definitely check out my etsy store every single print comes with a larry chen peeker sticker [Music] [Music] [Music] me

Channel: Hoonigan AutoFocus

Views: 173,685

Rating: 4.9073954 out of 5

Keywords: GM Heritage Center, GM museum, Chevy museum, Buick Museum, GM car collection, GM showroom, GM headquarters, Corvette, concept cars, secret cars, Chevrolet history, GM history, Cadillac, Cadillac history

Id: g0AEKfRx78k

Length: 56min 45sec (3405 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021