Concept cars, aka "dream cars", were built by vehicle manufacturers to explore and test design and engineering ideas for future production cars. The more successful ideas incorporated on concept cars would usually be tried on production cars in the immediate future, but occasionally, it would take a few years or even a decade for them to appear.
After too many years had passed, what was once a new idea would grow stale and become forgotten. However, one dream car's styling remained so handsome, it was still relevant enough to influence a production car 50 years after it was built.
"The front end became the front end on the 2005 Chrysler 300," says famed concept car collector Joe Bortz, longtime owner of the 1955 Chrysler Falcon concept car pictured here. "They used a very similar front end to what was on this car. And the way he put the taillights vertically into the bumpers, it's absolutely gorgeous."
Indeed, if you compare the shape of the quarter panels and the front-end design of the 2005 Chrysler 300 — admittedly a retro design — to the 1955 Chrysler Falcon, you can see the influence of the 20th century Falcon show car in the 21st century 300 production car, right down to its long-hood and short-rear-deck proportions. However, the two-passenger Chrysler Falcon wasn't intended to test ideas for a future Chrysler 300 model, which debuted the same year as a production car, but as a possible Thunderbird killer. Ironically, Chrysler's new C-300 killed the idea of building a Thunderbird fighter, as Chrysler considered the C-300 to already be a T-Bird competitor.
