At The Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, one expects to see the most pristine examples of the restorer's art, or, perhaps, cars in close to perfect original condition. This year, things will be different with the concours debut of the Chevrolet Biscayne, a Motorama car that has been brought back from an ignominious fate by Joe Bortz, a legendary figure in collector circles. Bortz has spent years accumulating and, in some cases, resurrecting concepts that have been cast off by their progenitors. The Biscayne, a star of the 1955 Motorama, will be displayed at Pebble Beach in a condition that can only be described as rough.
The Biscayne's story is one of tragedy and triumph: The Chevrolet dream car, along with 1955's La Salle II roadster, also headed for Pebble, was lying in a pile of pieces at Warhoops Auto Parts, a wrecking yard just up the road from Warren. GM had ordered many of its concept cars destroyed so the vehicles wouldn't be on the corporation's books as taxable corporate assets, as well as to dispatch liability issues. The Biscayne was sent to Warhoops for crushing a couple days before Christmas in 1959. The employee who brought it there was in a rush to get home for the holiday and didn't stick around to witness the car's demolition. In lieu of crushing, the Biscayne was cut into pieces and stacked in the yard.
Flash forward to 1988, the dream cars having spent some thirty years exposed to the elements. Mark Bortz, Joe's son, happens upon the rubble. "The Biscayne was just a pile of fiberglass lying in the mud," says the elder Bortz of the discovery. The roof and the doors had been cut off, the frame was MIA, and the remains of the body had warped over the years. It took Bortz's team of fabricators three years to put the pieces back together and mount them onto a replica frame. Bortz had found archival photos of the chassis and used those as a guide. The windshield, a huge expanse of glass that wraps around and up, was a particular challenge; four were molded before an acceptable one was created.
Back at the Tech Center, four of the five dream cars are in place when a transporter rumbles in. The Biscayne is aboard, and the anticipation for its return to GM after an absence of forty-nine years is palpable. The trailer's side doors swing open; the Biscayne is first seen in profile - it's slung low, and the paint, while green as originally shown, seems hand brushed and doesn't match from panel to panel. And then the unexpected happens - its small-block V-8 fires up, and the Biscayne rolls off the transporter under its own power. It's driven into the setting, taking its rightful place among its more coddled brethren.
Bortz is determined to complete the restoration, but even in its current state, the Biscayne is a design of distinction, especially airy for a '50s confection. It's smaller, lower, and more delicate than one would expect. The rear deck foreshadows the simple and elegant first-generation Corvair; the car's side scoop design predicts the '56 Corvette's; and the distinctive C-pillar treatment found its way onto production Cadillacs and top-of-the line Buicks. The toothy front end, a Corvette reference, is a bit overstated, but as a whole, the Biscayne is the most real-world of all the dream cars onsite.
When the dream cars were crafted, it was an article of faith that the future was something to anticipate with optimism, rather than dread. The Motorama indicated the kind of thinking that would have you believe that possibility is limited only by imagination. The world of tomorrow was once a wonderful thing to contemplate. Let's hope that experiencing these cars again will catalyze that positive thought. We certainly could use a dose of that kind of future right about now. ...next page >>