In 1959, Cadillac was already famous for tailfins, chrome and excess. Then it built something that looked less like a luxury car and more like transportation for an astronaut. The Cadillac Cyclone XP-74 sat just 44 inches tall, wore a silver-tinted bubble canopy, used electrically operated sliding doors and carried twin pointed nose cones that looked as though they belonged on a missile. It was one of the final dream cars developed under legendary GM design chief Harley Earl, and it may have been his most futuristic yet. It’s a piece of Cadillac history certainly worth revisiting.
The Cyclone was not merely a styling exercise. Under its dramatic body sat a 390-cubic-inch Cadillac V8 making about 325 horsepower, a rear-mounted automatic transaxle and fully independent suspension. The exhaust exited ahead of the front wheels, while the transparent canopy could be removed and stored in the rear of the car. GM even coated the canopy with a thin layer of silver to help reduce the sun’s heat inside the cabin.
But the strangest technology was hidden inside those two black cones at the front. They contained radar equipment designed to detect objects in the Cadillac’s path and warn the driver before a collision. Decades before adaptive cruise control and forward-collision warnings became common, Cadillac was already experimenting with the idea of a car that could electronically watch the road ahead.
Those Nose Cones Were Actually Radar Sensors
The Cadillac Cyclone’s radar system was intended to scan the road ahead and alert the driver when another vehicle or obstacle became dangerously close. GM described a warning system using both lights and sound, with the alert becoming more urgent as the distance closed. What looked like decorative Jet Age styling was therefore functional: the pointed front nacelles housed the technology.
GM’s ideas went beyond collision warnings. The Cyclone also experimented with a form of automated highway guidance. A sensor beneath the front of the car could follow a wire embedded in the roadway, allowing the car to steer itself along a specially equipped route. GM reportedly constructed a test loop at its proving grounds to demonstrate the concept. Engineers in the 1950s envisioned future superhighways containing electronic guidance systems that would reduce the amount of work required from drivers on long trips.
That vision was very different from today’s autonomous-driving approach, which attempts to make the car understand ordinary roads. GM instead imagined building intelligent roads for intelligent cars. Yet the goal sounds remarkably familiar: let electronics handle some of the driving while technology watches for danger. The Cyclone was exploring those ideas more than half a century before radar sensors began disappearing behind the grilles of everyday vehicles.
Harley Earl Went Out With One of His Wildest Cars
The Cyclone arrived at the end of Harley Earl’s remarkable career at General Motors. Earl had helped turn automobile styling into a major part of the car business, overseen vehicles ranging from the Buick Y-Job to some of Cadillac’s most extravagant designs and helped popularize the tailfin. The Cyclone debuted around the inaugural Daytona 500 festivities in 1959, shortly after Earl retired from GM. Its combination of aircraft styling and experimental technology made it a fitting finale.
The car itself continued evolving after Earl left. New GM design chief Bill Mitchell eventually altered its appearance, reducing its towering rear fins, revising the paint and changing other details as GM moved away from the most extreme styling of the 1950s. That is why photographs of the Cyclone from different periods do not always show exactly the same car. The surviving XP-74 is now part of GM’s historic collection.
Today the Cadillac Cyclone concept car looks wonderfully excessive, but the technology inside it is what makes the car especially remarkable. Radar-based collision warnings are now available on ordinary family cars. Driver-assistance systems can control speed, apply brakes and help keep a vehicle in its lane. Cadillac was nowhere near building those modern systems in 1959, but its engineers were already asking the same basic question: what if the car could recognize danger before the driver did? More than 65 years ago, they hid the answer inside the nose of a Cadillac that looked like a rocket ship.
