Episode 4: The Ghia Gilda, A Jet-Powered Concept Car From 1955 That Still Looks Futuristic Today

The year 1955. James Dean dies in his “little b*stard”, his Porsche 550 Spider. A dramatic crash at the 24 hours of Le Mans race kills 85 people - the most severe accident ever in motorsport history. Stirling Moss finishes the Mille Miglia in 10:07:48.0 hours, a record that’s still standing 63 years later. Volkswagen celebrates the millionth Beetle (with 20.5 million still to come until the end of production in 2003), and Fiat is hoping for success with their brand-new 600.

And then there’s the Ghia Gilda, the undisputed star of the 1955 Turin Auto Show. The concept car was so extreme that it immediately attracted attention, despite being surrounded by over 100 other impressive and unique cars. A flat thing with UFO-like styling and spectacular tail fins, appearing as if it came from another galaxy and had just landed on planet earth. Yes, landed - the wheels look as if they were about to fold in under the low-slung body. Initiator of this staggering concept car was Virgil Exner, which proves that back then, America was really at the forefront of the automotive future - it’s been a long time.

Today, the car belongs to Scott Grundfor, a Mercedes restorer and 300-SL-specialist from Arroyo Grande in California who also collects American concept cars. “A car is nothing more than metal and rubber. It’s the story and the people behind it that make it interesting”, he once said in an interview. Scott knows a lot about Gilda, for example that the car was named after the eponymous movie from 1946, starring Rita Hayworth as the main character. Not a coincidence: Ali Khan had ordered a bespoke Ghia Cadillac in 1953, which he then gave to his wife - Rita Hayworth. It’s also rumored that Ghia manager Luigi Segre was secretly in love with the actress, but there’s no evidence to be found for this theory. Ghia resorted to calling the concept “Streamline X”, but at the Turin Auto Show, everybody was talking about the “Gilda” within seconds of its reveal.

The Gilda’s effusive lines were styled by Ghia’s head of design, Giovanni Savonuzzi, who - unsurprisingly - once worked as an airplane designer. He managed to realize the striking dreams of his friend Virgil Exner, nicknamed “Mr. Tailfin”, who completely turned around American car design in 1955 with his forward look.

Exner loved tail fins, not only because he thought they looked extremely cool. He also appreciated their aerodynamic purposes, which would give the cars more stability at high speeds. That was one of the many guidelines for Savonuzzi, and so the Gilda was tested several times at the wind tunnel of the polytechnic university of Turin. With a front resembling a flying saucer and razor sharp tail fins, the Ghia reached a drag coefficient of only 0.20 (for comparison: a Citroën 2CV from the same era had a drag coefficient of 0.51).

The drag coefficient was sensational - but it didn’t help much, as Ghia showcased the car without a powertrain. At some point the car was tested with a tiny OSCA four cylinder engine, but that had since been removed again. Chrysler saw the Gilda as a concept car, and after being shown on several auto shows in the United States and Italy, it spent most of its life in museums or private collections.

Gilda had many fans, until Scott Grundfor hit the scene. “I was eight years old when the Gilda was revealed in Turin, and it looked exactly like my toy cars”. When he saw that the car was for sale in 2005, he had to buy it. “The car found me”, he said in an interview. But the Gilda without an engine? That was too boring for his taste. “She looks as if she was about to fly to the moon. And I’m supposed to push her?!”

It cost him over $100,000 to retrofit a powertrain - the low-slung streamlined body wasn’t made for a big block V8. The sound was also something that wouldn’t have matched the car, and so Scott decided to go for a turbine, as it was originally planned in 1955. After all, it was a car from the future.

Scott found a compact turbine that was made in the 1950s. It only produces 70 horsepower, but according to some calculations by the California Polytechnic State University, that should be enough to get the low-slung, 550 kg (1200 lbs) Ghia Gilda up to 250 km/h (155 mph). Theoretically - Scott didn’t try it out yet. “I don’t have the nerves to do that”, he says. It makes sense, considering that nobody knows how the Gilda’s ancient rear beam axle will react at such high speeds. But that’s not too much of a deal anyways - Scott just felt like he had to finish off the Gilda.

The startup of the Gilda is insane. Even when idling (at 55,000 rpm!) , the turbine sounds as if a jet fighter was about to take off in your neighbor’s driveway. “When I started it for the first time, I thought it was about to explode”, Scott remembers. You might be expecting flames to shoot out of the giant exhaust, but that’s not how the drivetrain works - instead of being pushed forwards by the blowback like a jet fighter, the turbine is hooked up to a single-speed hydro transmission powering the rear wheels.

Still, driving the Gilda is an unusual experience. Scott has to fill up with kerosene, and instead of pedals, the power is controlled by a thrust lever in the center console. Push it forward and the car accelerates, pull it back and the car automatically applies the brakes. Pull it back even further and you are in reverse - although backing up this car is rather difficult. The front wheels only turn a couple of inches, and to fully turn the car around, Scott would have to manoeuver it forwards and backwards twelve times in a row. But the car is too good for everyday traffic anyways - “Creating such a beautiful car from sheet metal was an incredible achievement”, Scott says.

Parts of the body even still have their original paintjob, like the dark blue underbody for example - but as the Gilda has only once ever been driven in the rain and has less than 100 km (57 miles, to be exact) on the clock, that’s not much of a surprise.

Even 63 years after its reveal in Turin, the Gilda is still an extremely futuristic looking car. Jet engines however never really (bad pun incoming) took off in cars - they were too loud, too expensive and too inefficient. And the era of huge tail fins also came to an end 3 or four years later. Still, the design of Savonuzzi’s masterpiece has made a huge impact on car design. Bruno Sacco for example saw the Gilda at the Turin Auto Show in 1955, which lead him to abort his engineering studies and to become a car designer instead - and as we all know, he came to Mercedes in 1953 and later was their head of design for 24 years. “The Gilda”, he keeps saying until today, “is the most beautiful automotive sculpture ever made”.

Additional images:

I hope you guys enjoyed this post - I will try to make this a more frequent series, as my “CARTOON” series will sadly have to come to an end on Sunday. Feel free to check out Episode 1 and Episode 2 of this series if you haven’t already - Episode 3 is also about a really interesting car, but as I was asked to remove most of the images it only consists of text, which is rather dull.

What do you think of the Ghia Gilda? And have you heard about it before? Comment below!
Tobi aka The Stig’s German Cousin