Motorized Future

At the rate of 50 a minute, 120,000 people swarmed into Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria last week to inspect General Motors' annual road show, the Motorama for 1955. On display were more than 100 exhibits, and, as usual, the stars were G.M.'s cars of the future. But this time there was a difference. In past years the dream cars were almost all flashy sports models; this year they looked as if they might be next year's production models. Pontiac, for instance, featured the Strato-Star, a six-passenger hardtop; Oldsmobile showed off its Delta, a four-passenger hardtop. Flashiest of the fleet was the LaSalle II sports roadster, a low-slung (42.8-in.-high) model with a reinforced glass-fiber body and an experimental 150-h.p., V-6 engine that G.M. engineers hope will enable them to cut down on engine space in the future.

For hot-rodders' wives, G.M.'s Frigidaire division showed off a "kitchen of tomorrow." At the touch of a button, chopping boards and ovens swing into convenient reach, knives are practically handed to the cook. Cooking surfaces fold back into the wall when not in use, hard-to-reach shelves glide down to shoulder level at the touch of a hand, refrigerators automatically serve cold water, ice cubes or crushed ice. On one side of the kitchen there is a "home-planner's desk" with a TV set that can be tuned so the housewife can peer into the living room and nursery or see who is at the front door.

The telephone has an amplifying unit so that the cook can carry on a conversation from anywhere in the kitchen without touching the phone. Heavy roasts can be moved by nudging a traveling tray that hangs from the ceiling; food can be carried outdoors on a serving cart powered by a battery. With dual-control ovens, a meal can be started in the kitchen and finished from an adjoining patio. For barbecues in the house there is a special gadget that passes charcoal or hickory smoke through the oven.

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