Some vintage cars barely resemble the vehicles on today's roads. There were steam-powered runabouts, early electric cars, impossibly small homemade machines, and racing monsters that offered almost no protection from the road. These 30 real automobiles, preserved in photographs and historic-vehicle records, show how adventurous car design could be before anything seemed settled.
The teenager who built a pocket-size car
In Washington, D.C., 16-year-old Nelm Clark assembled a tiny automobile from a lawn mower motor and motorcycle gears in 1937. The contemporary caption put its cost at $60 and its weight at 150 pounds. Parking was apparently less intimidating when the entire car was small enough to push out of the way.
Dr. Wiley’s steam car looked like a carriage
Long before the modern dashboard became familiar, Harvey Washington Wiley owned a steam-powered automobile photographed in Washington. The Library of Congress identifies it as his first car and notes that it was the third automobile in the city. The exposed seating makes the line between carriage and car look delightfully thin.
The 1900 Locomobile ran on steam
A 1900 Locomobile Steamer appears in the Library of Congress catalog as an astonishingly open piece of transportation. Steam cars were part of the early automobile market before gasoline vehicles became dominant. Look at the wheels and upright body, and it is easy to see why early cars were called horseless carriages.
Another steamer came with almost no bodywork
The Mobile Steamer, dated 1900 to 1902 in the archive, barely resembles an enclosed automobile. Its early design belongs to a period when engineers were still experimenting with how a car should be powered and arranged. What now looks like an eccentric contraption was one of the real options shoppers encountered.
A two-cylinder Stevens-Duryea from 1904
The Library of Congress catalog identifies this vehicle as a two-cylinder Stevens-Duryea from 1904 or 1905. Its carriage-like proportions belong to the years before automakers settled on the hood, cabin, and trunk arrangement. Nothing about that silhouette suggests the familiar family sedan.
The original Model T was already a strange sight
The 1908 Ford Model T was a decisive step toward everyday motoring, yet its tall stance and exposed wheels look startling today. The Library of Congress preserves an early photograph labeled as a four-cylinder Model T. The irony is that a car designed to make driving ordinary has become visually extraordinary.
Ford parked its earliest car beside a milestone
A 1924 photograph places Ford’s first automobile beside the ten-millionth Ford. The side-by-side comparison is more revealing than any timeline: in a few decades, the basic idea of the car changed enormously. It was an unusually literal way to show how fast motoring had evolved.
Joan Newton Cuneo raced in an open machine
Joan Newton Cuneo was photographed at the wheel of a racing automobile between 1910 and 1917. Her driving position looks exposed by contemporary standards, with little separating the driver from the air and road. The photograph also preserves a pioneering woman’s place in early motor racing.
Louis Chevrolet’s racer had no windshield to hide behind
An archive photograph shows Louis Chevrolet in his open-cockpit race car drinking a Coca-Cola at a 1909 automobile exposition in Atlanta. The driver’s position is almost comically exposed compared with modern racing cars. It is a glimpse of an era when speed and protection developed at very different rates.
The Stutz Weightman Special belonged to another racing age
At the Benning race track, a woman was photographed putting water in the radiator of Stutz Weightman Special No. 26. Its narrow form and visible mechanical details tell the story of how hands-on early racing could be. Even stopping to add water was part of the spectacle.
A Mercedes won the Vanderbilt Cup in 1914
A Bain News Service photograph records Ralph DePalma in the Mercedes that won the 1914 Vanderbilt Cup race. Long and low, the machine belonged to the days of open cockpits and exposed wheels. Its performance may have impressed the crowd, but the shape is what catches a modern eye first.
The Richard Special was all engine and ambition
A photograph from roughly 1915 to 1920 identifies a driver named Delno in the Richard Special. The vehicle’s purpose is unmistakable even without modern aerodynamic bodywork: get moving fast, with little room for anything else. Early race cars often make today’s machines look almost domestic by comparison.
People once played polo with actual automobiles
A Bain News Service photograph from the 1910s shows an auto polo match at Hilltop Park in New York. These are genuine cars being used for a bizarre sporting experiment, not props built for a comedy film. The scene suggests there was still plenty of uncertainty about what people might do with motor vehicles.
A race car challenged an airplane
One archival photograph captures a race between pilot Lincoln Beachey in an airplane and Barney Oldfield in an automobile in 1912. The car’s exposed cockpit makes it look like a cousin of the aircraft rather than an everyday road vehicle. Speed was turning into public entertainment on the ground and in the air.
A 1918 Cadillac went to war
The Historic American Engineering Record documents a 1918 Cadillac Type 57 associated with American service in World War I. Its tall wheels, substantial hood, and open passenger space seem more like a formal carriage than a military support vehicle. Practical transportation could still look remarkably elegant.
Electric cars were climbing mountains in 1919
A Detroit Electric automobile undertook a promotional trip from Seattle toward Mount Rainier in 1919. The photograph upends the idea that electric cars appeared only in the twenty-first century. Its boxy cabin and upright windows make the technology feel older, and stranger, than most people expect.
A Duesenberg Model J looked impossibly long
The 1930 Duesenberg Model J convertible sedan in Auburn, Indiana, is all sprawling hood, upright cabin, and elaborate presence. Carol M. Highsmith photographed this surviving car at the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum. It captures a moment when luxury could be expressed through sheer physical scale.
Frank Lloyd Wright owned this Cord cabriolet
One 1930 Cord L-29 cabriolet in the Auburn museum was once owned by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Its long, low lines feel closer to an Art Deco drawing than to a practical family car. The museum photograph puts the design in the company of other machines from an exceptionally adventurous period.
The 1932 Cord was literally experimental
Among the museum’s most curious survivors is a car cataloged as the 1932 Cord “experimental.” Even its name advertises that the designers were trying something different. That willingness to experiment is part of what makes 1930s automobile shapes so unexpectedly futuristic.
The 1936 Cord 810 favored a radical profile
The 1936 Cord 810 Westchester sedan now displayed in Auburn offers a dramatically different silhouette from earlier upright cars. Its distinctive front end and smoothed body gave a new interpretation of what an American sedan could look like. The photograph is evidence that bold design did not start with modern concept cars.
The Chrysler Airflow looked ahead in a showroom
A Library of Congress photograph shows a 1937 Chrysler Airflow sedan displayed inside the Chrysler Building in New York City. Its rounded body marked a shift away from the sharper, more upright style of older cars. Seen in the showroom, it feels like a sales pitch for a future that had not fully arrived.
The Tucker prototype rewrote the usual layout
The 1947 Tucker ’48 prototype took a strikingly different approach to American automotive design. A federal historic-vehicle survey documents the rear-engine concept and safety ideas that helped distinguish it from contemporary cars. Whatever its commercial fate, the actual machine remains a reminder of how many futures designers once imagined.
Raymond Loewy’s Jaguar looked like a custom spaceship
Industrial designer Raymond Loewy’s Jaguar was photographed by the Gottscho-Schleisner firm in January 1956. The archive preserves several views of the unusual car, rather than merely a drawing of an idea. The effect is unmistakably midcentury: sleek, personal, and unafraid to stand apart.
The Crosley Hotshot kept sports-car dreams small
The Crosley Hotshot was a postwar American sports car with dimensions that look almost toy-like beside the grand touring machines of its era. Carol M. Highsmith photographed one at the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky. Its appeal came from being a sports car without the size or visual drama of a Duesenberg.
A 1963 Impala became lowrider art
In Tucson, Arizona, Jesse Garcia showed off his shiny, low-slung, two-door 1963 Chevrolet Impala. The car’s stance and finish turned a mass-produced design into something highly personal. The picture demonstrates that an old car can look extraordinary through the choices of its owner, not just its manufacturer.
This Metropolitan barely has a back half
Carol M. Highsmith documented a circa-1958 Nash Metropolitan convertible modified into a front-seat-only vehicle. A compact car was already an unusual sight amid the enormous machines of the late 1950s; this one takes the idea much further. It almost looks like a car cut out of a cartoon.
The Chevrolet Bel Air turned chrome into theater
A surviving vintage Chevrolet Bel Air was photographed in Wickenburg, Arizona, by Carol M. Highsmith. Its ornamentation and bold profile make even a parked car feel like an event. Midcentury American design could turn a daily driver into an exuberant piece of roadside scenery.
The first Meyers Manx looked like a beach toy
Bruce Meyers built the original Meyers Manx dune buggy, known as Old Red, in 1964. Historic American Engineering Record documentation traces how its fiberglass body helped popularize a new kind of recreational car. With its tiny dimensions and playful shape, the original looks more like a dream of California than a conventional automobile.
The Boyle Special was a skinny racing powerhouse
The 1938 Maserati 8.C.T.F. known as the Boyle Special is documented in the Historic American Engineering Record. Its narrow wheels-out profile and single-seat body look perilously spare by contemporary racing standards. The vehicle later became one of the most successful cars in Indianapolis 500 history.
The GM Futurliner looked like tomorrow on wheels
General Motors built Futurliners to bring its Parade of Progress exhibitions to the public during the 1940s and 1950s. The surviving Futurliner documented by the Historic American Engineering Record looks more like a science-fiction transport than a conventional truck. Its monumental body makes a fitting final image for a gallery about the surprising shapes cars once took.
