GMC L’Universelle

Hope you’re ready to brush up on your delivery vans. Not just any weird delivery van, mind you: a weird Motorama delivery van.

It’s important to note that in the United States in the period following the Second World War, the Big Three — Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler were titans of industry. They employed tens of thousands of people around the world. They attracted all of the best designers, engineers, and marketers.

Working at one of the Big Three was, in many ways, the ticket. And nobody thought it’d ever end.

In this context, consider Motorama. 

Motorama was like an Apple keynote, if Apple physically brought its entire line of products into select cities, plus concepts it may or may not actually sell.

And?

Imagine all of Apple’s products were the size of cars.

How many people saw Motorama? 600,000 people visited the General Motors exhibition in its first year alone. 

Actually, in 1955 Motorama had more attendees than the World Cup in 1954 and 1958…combined. In all, attendance is said to have stood at more than 10 million visitors before Motorama ended in 1965.

The L’Universelle concept, let’s dig in.

The idea for L’Universelle, as told by Dave Newell and Robert L. Hauser in a 1982 issue of Special Interest Autos, came from General Motors stylists Harley Earl, Chuck Jordan, and Bill Lange.

In 1954, Jordan was put in charge of an experimental styling group with the goal of developing a totally new delivery truck. The team was quickly assembled, and acquired both a truck-based Chevrolet Suburban Carryall and Volkswagen Type-2 ‘Bus’ for comparison.

(Imagine what L’Universelle would have looked like if GM had been able to find a Citroën HY or TUB!)

With Jackson’s Chevrolet Cameo about to enter production, there was a sense at General Motors that the truck and nascent van market deserved a Motorama show car. 

Earl loved the idea and decided that this special project crew would be assigned vehicle XP-39, a panel delivery dream truck. His other ask? Naturally, that it should have fold-up doors.

The crew took the assignment seriously, with four main priorities: ease of loading, access to the load, “roadability”, and interior comfort.

Eliminating the rear axle to accommodate a low floor meant that the team decided on front-wheel-drive, with the Pontiac V8 engine mounted just behind the passenger compartment, with a prototype running a forward-mounted transmission and drive parts from a General Motors bus!

In those days, the engineering team mainly took its direction from the styling department, with the article in Special Interest Autos saying, 

“They had a lot of practice from other dream-car projects; Styling would send drawings of what it needed and the Staff then worked them out in practical form.”

And, once the project swung into high gear, Carl Bock, chief engineer of GMC and Gil Roddewig, head of experimental engineering were assigned the task of building a running, driving chassis for L’Universelle. Bock had been with GM Truck Corporation since the 1920s, so definitely someone you’d want on the job. As far as I can tell, it was one of his final projects before retirement.

First step on the road to L’Universelle? Buying a Jeep.

Why? The engineering team at GMC were skeptical a front-drive van would work, so Roddewig found a Jeep, disconnected the rear axle, and had his engineers drive it around. Did anyone notice it was front-wheel-drive? Nope.

Even so, the chassis was designed purely for show — the engine was only fed air through an intake on the roof!

Once the fold-up doors were completed and styling had placed their bodywork (and interior, complete with glove box-mounted two-way radio telephone!) on the special GMC chassis, L’Universelle hit the show circuit.

People loved it.