Getting to the Detroit Historical Society’s reserve collection almost sounds like the beginning of a sci-fi conspiracy novel. I am given directions to a remote storage facility that I’m asked to keep secret. Their nondescript front office hides a door to a vast warehouse where footsteps echo past visible light. It’s filled with rows of machines sealed away in their own plastic pods, each with a layer of dust that makes it feel like a forgotten secrets.
Scared? Nope. I’m too excited about being let into the world of these treasures. Occasionally stories about this place come out because it’s home to a few priceless prototypes, but it turns out there are a lot more stories waiting to burst out of Detroit’s secret “bubble” cars.
It might be easy to overlook a Lincoln Continental Mark V, but the one here was Lee Iacocca’s personal car. It’s also likely one of his last company products before getting the boot from Ford. The legend is Iacocca went down the assembly line with the car and chose the components he wanted for the coupe, just as the rest of us built our high school cafeteria lunches.
Sitting in the same row as a 1963 Mustang II concept is what is quite possible the first AMC Pacer ever built. And if that wasn’t kitschy-cool enough, it still has a Burl Ives 8-track sitting on the passenger seat... READ MORE
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