Today's 'concept cars' are more con than concept, cynical distractions designed to drag the buyer's attention to something you're bringing out next year, and away from a competitor's product that's out now. Well, that's my view of them anyway.

Luckily, it wasn't always that way. The concept cars of the 1950s were wild, fantastical beasts, richly imaginative creations that were utterly unaffected by the demands of commercial reality.

Remarkably, when you consider what's come out of there in the last couple of decades, almost all of the best concepts of the Fifties and Sixties came from the USA. The outpouring of creativity was a reaction to years of austerity. The Allies had just won World War 2, polishing off the Nazis just before some rather sexy (and potentially quite nasty) jet bombers like the Horten 229 (pictured right) came on stream. Those post-war reparation years were exactly the right time to nick all that tasty jet turbine technology and put it to good use.

But instead of that, GM chose to stick a turbine up a car. Up to that point, all the jet action was happening thousands of feet up in the air, where bone-melting exhaust temperatures were only a problem to passing geese. You would have thought that the possibility of tying your shoelace on Main Street USA and then standing up to find that all your hair had been burnt off might have presented itself as a potential cause for concern, but risk assessments hadn't been invented back then, so General Motors steamed in (almost literally) with something jaw-droppingly radical. Enter, smoking gently, GM's 1954 Firebird 1 XP-21.

There had been other 'concepts' before this, but they were usually existing cars that had daringly had their roofs removed (ooh!) or some strips of fake wood jauntily nailed onto the side (ahh!). The Firebird was genuinely bonkers, a single-seat, bubble-topped aeroplane on wheels. Its 'XP' handle gave it a thrillingly experimental aura, while the '21' bit made you think they'd developed twenty more prototypes before it. Which of course they hadn't. This was the spiritual daddy of a slew of mad motors that would flow out of the States over the following 20 years.

For the '50s American public, fire was a fun concept - most of them hadn't experienced it first hand, unlike many Europeans - so even the Firebird's engine had an excitingly fiery name. The Whirlfire GT-302 was a screamingly loud gas turbine that operated at a toasty 1250 degrees F. It was just the job for drying your hands - or indeed your entire vascular system - if you accidentally stepped into its vapour trail on your way out of the gas station bogs.

GM engineers sincerely believed that the gas turbine would inevitably supercede the piston engine so, convinced they were on a roll, they brought out a successor two years later. The Firebird 2 (pictured right) carried four people in a 'world-first' titanium body. Stylistically, it was a horrid misuse of such a rare lightweight metal. Compared to the satanic heat of the first car's turbine, Firebird 2's regenerative Whirlfire GT-304 engine operated at a relatively balmy 300 degrees. Twin fuel tanks hung from the rear end like haemorrhoids. It needed those twin tanks, too: even though it produced an unspectacular 200bhp (that year's Chevrolet Bel-Air V8 chugged out a relaxed 225bhp), the howling Firebird drank kerosene and avgas at a fearsome rate.

Still, 200bhp was enough to power up not just the air conditioning that would have been essential in that goldfish-bowl cabin but also, astonishingly, the electronic guidance system. Lucky Firebirders had snack tables between their seats so that they could enjoy the ride while a Fat Highway Controller guided them automatically to their destination. Door sections lifted away for passenger access when a magnetic key was inserted. This was the ultimate concept car: barmy, and yet strangely visionary.

It seems incredible now, but in 1956 GM's Technical Center was staffed by over 5000 scientists, engineers, designers and technicians, all dedicated to the task of automotive research. They looked at everything, meddling with electricity, hot air, and even nuclear power. In the maelstrom of activity, gas turbines seemed relatively simple. By 1958 the Firebird was in its third iteration (pictured right), and was powered by a newer development of the Whirlfire gas turbine called the GT-305, but it still only produced 225bhp.

Turbo-Cruiser buses, Turbo-Titan trucks and other one-offs actively flew GM's turbine flag well into the 1960s/early 1970s. Indeed, it is said that GM never officially stopped its turbine programme. If that's true, and they're still serious, they'll need to develop an engine that runs on something none of us wants or needs, and which also likes to run under a fluctuating load - the big drawback of gas turbines. Meantime, rumour has it that all three Firebird concepts are still gathering dust somewhere, either in a General Motors' Area 51-style storage facility or perhaps more dubiously in an ex-employee's garage.

The Firebird was penned by GM design guru, Corvette creator and father of the tailfin, Harley Earl. His earlier 1951 Le Sabre concept was 'an experimental laboratory on wheels' with built-in wheel jacks, the world's first wraparound windscreen and a rain sensor which automatically raised the roof and windows if you'd left them down while you were wolfing down short stacks in the diner.

Chrysler's Virgil Exner was another 'Detroit da Vinci'. He enthusiastically followed Harley Earl's lead on fins, which was a pity in many ways as some of his earlier designs had a pleasing simplicity about them. Exner's Ghia-built '53/'54 Dodge Firearrow (pictured right) would look good on any 2009 road.

But pleasing simplicity wasn't what post-war US motorists wanted. They wanted big, glitzy, 'statement' cars that would make the neighbours green with envy. Commercially, it was a self-propelling dream that American car companies were only too happy to make real. In the early Sixties, Exner derided the new generation of finless cars as 'plucked chickens' and was sacked for his trouble. It was a poor reward for the financial turnround which Exner designs like the Chrysler 300 had brought about in the mid-Fifties when they made it to production.

The rarefied atmosphere in the 1950s concept car studios seemed to have been imported directly from 30,000 feet up. Feverish excitement greeted any car that looked like it was streamlined enough to fly, if only it could get up enough speed. Ford fully subscribed to this 'up, up and away' styling philosophy. Its 1954 FX Atmos kicked off a glorious decade of fabulous - not to mention completely unworkable - Ford concepts. The Atmos's McLaren F1-style seating gave the centrally-positioned driver access (via joysticks) to a vague power source that, er, could have been atomic. Frontal spike-aerials allowed Atmos-man to tune into a radio-controlled traffic distancing system that was backed up by a 'Roadarscope' radar screen.

Ford's followup '55 Ford Mystere (pictured right) promised a radio telephone, a flip-over steering wheel that allowed it to be driven from either of the swivelling front seats, and a gas turbine engine under the rear deck. This would be replaced three years later by a 'small nuclear reactor' in the extraordinary Ford Nucleon. The idea of fan-powered levitating cars was aired in the '58 Volante and taken to a suitably loony conclusion in the hilariously unlikely '500mph' 1959 Ford Levacar. What's that? My turn to drive? No, no, after you Claude.

Oldsmobile's 1956 Golden Rocket merrily hopped onto this bandwagon of Jetsons automotive design, as did Ghia's 1955 Gilda, whose flanks were interestingly reminiscent of the Citroën DS launched in the same year. Ghia's Turin rivals Boano conspired with Lincoln in 1955 to create the Indianapolis Exclusive Study (pictured right), which sounds more like an overdecorated room in a network newscaster's house than a bulbous (and yet somehow strangely appealing) two-door coupé.

Its paint was Dodgem Orange, and like most concepts it would have been murder to keep clean, festooned as it was with knuckle-skinning nooks and nacelles. Compare the venting details of Aston Martin's new, one-million-quid One-77 for confirmation that there's nothing new under the sun. The dash and instrumentation design would drop straight into an '09 cutie-car too.

Design studios like Ghia and Boano were bringing a European flavour to American concepts - but what were the European manufacturers doing? Alfa Romeo's Bertone-built BAT 5, 7 and 9 (pictured right) are the best-known and probably most successful examples of the 'aerodynamics at any cost' breed of concept car.

Based on the Alfa 1900 Sprint chassis and running gear, the BAT programme (standing for Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica, not the fact that the cars looked like bats) was no passing fancy: it ran from 1953 to 1955 and brought a touch of Euro-realism to Stateside's excess. The first BAT 5 weighed 1100kg and topped out at 125mph, pretty decent for a 90bhp car.

Citroën's 1956 Cocinelle C10 ('beetle' or 'drop of water') took its inspiration from aircraft construction and design techniques. It was also proof that you still needed a drop of good old-fashioned styling if you wanted a car to achieve commercial success. The C10 was so vile it was summarily abandoned in favour of the hardly less unattractive Ami 6.

Not all Fifties concepts were barmy, though. Some were tragically ahead of their time. The 1959 Charles Townabout was an electric car based on a Volkswagen's Karmann Ghia coupé.

Motors on each rear wheel were powered by four 12-volt batteries: lightweight fibreglass and aluminium replaced the VW's heavy steel body. The Townabout's easy-driving character was well received by contemporary journalists, and its claimed 80-mile range would be seen as acceptable even now. It could have reshaped the future of the world, not just of motoring, if it hadn't been hamstrung by its high price of $2895 (competing conventional cars were about $1000 cheaper) and by the failure of the US government to give electric cars a break. Shame.

Next time in Concept Corner we'll be in the Sixties: era of the Beatles, the Cold War - and gyroscopic two-wheeled cars.

1951 Buick LeSabre	1951 Buick Lesabre
1951 Buick Lesabre	1951 Buick Lesabre
1951 Buick Lesabre	1954 Ford FX Atmos
1955 Gaylord	1955 Ghia Gilda
1955 Ghia Gilda	1955 Lincoln Futura
1956 Citroen Cocinelle	1955 Lincoln Futura
1957 Gaylord	1957 Gaylord
1957 Gaylord	1958 Ford LaTosca
1958 Ford Nucleon	1958 Ford Nucleon
1958 Ford Volante	1958 Ford X1000
1958 Ford X1000	1958 Dual Ghia 400
1959 Ford Levacar