Daydreaming about finding a valuable classic car forgotten in a barn has almost become a hobby for some enthusiasts, but few likely dream of what one New York collector found. In 2024, Josh Quick found a binder of decades-old General Motors design drawings that show the automaker’s big plans from the summer of 1940.
Quick found the binder while shopping for antique tractor parts at an estate sale near Rochester, New York. The drawings were piled in with the parts, so Quick threw it in with everything else and forgot about it for a few days.
When he finally opened the book, Quick found almost 80 pages of hand-drawn Buicks, all of which date to the summer of 1940. The drawings depict GM’s vision of Buick cars from the then-future year of 1942. None of the cars in the book made it to production, but the artists went on to influence design decisions at GM and other automakers, including Ned Nickles, who became a Buick designer later on. Other artists went on to design Corvettes, Cadillacs, and the excellent Buick Riviera.
The binder came from the Detroit Institute of Automobile Styling, a school operated by GM focused on car design. The Institute started in the late 1930s with two goals: Train the next generation of car designers and recruit the best and brightest to work at General Motors. While all of the drawings appear to come from a single semester at the Institute, they become more elaborate and advanced through the pages.
While the cars are mostly fantasy, some of the design elements became part of automotive design at GM and other automakers, including large grilles and Art Deco accents. That said, many of the cars in the binder are wildly futuristic.
There’s still a mystery around how the binder made its way to a barn in New York, but the images are now safe at GM’s design headquarters in Warren, Michigan. Quick contacted the automaker once he realized what he had, and each page has now been digitized.
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