PRESS RELEASE:

Automobile design ideas of the future, so advanced that they formerly have been seen only in Ford styling studios, were unveiled in March 1954 at the Chicago Auto Show by Ford Division in a "dream car," the Ford FX-Atmos.

The car was designed by Ford Motor Company Engineering Staff's Styling Studio in collaboration with Ford Division's planning and programming office. The initials "FX" stand for "future experimental." Atmos has been taken from "atmosphere," and connotes free and unlimited creative thinking.

L. D. Crusoe, Vice President, Ford Motor Company, and general manager of Ford Division, has pointed out that the FX-Atmos "represents one of many avenues which styling could take in the future"

"It is not proposed as a future production vehicle," he said, "and for that reason, no engineering considerations have been involved in its development. But it is not fantastic. Some of its features are within reasonable reach in terms of today's technology."

The pearlescent white body of the plastic model is accented by broad bands of red on the front luggage compartment lid, and along the rear lower half of the wheel housings. From windshield to rear stabilizer fins, the upper sides of the car are ice blue.

Wheelbase is 105 inches; length, 220.58 inches; height, 48.1 inches; and the car is 79.7 inches wide.

While the FX-Atmos never will be built as an operating car, the styling concepts it presents could well appear on Ford cars ----some of them within a few years, according to Mr. Crusoe.