Candy-colored floors, bright white Eames-ish work stands, and a “punched card” holding all your car’s pertinent information: that’s the “Auto Service Center of Tomorrow” presented in United Delco’s ad for its exhibit at the ’64 World’s Fair. Your mechanic (is that him in the nosecone, dressed in antiseptic white?) takes the card, pops it into the computer and, boom, your automotive problems are solved. IBM cards have gone the way of the dodo bird and garages are as greasy as ever, but the predicted marriage of cars and computers was right on the money—even if they missed the part about how the onboard computer itself is often the very expensive problem. Click through for a closer look at Delco’s vision of tomorrow’s garage.
