Back in the Old Days, When GM Built the Future
Back in the Old Days, When GM Built the Future Back in the old days—sometime between chrome bumpers and cassette decks—there was a moment when General Motors didn’t just build cars. No sir. GM built dreams on wheels. People still talk about the “GM-TI Train,” though nobody seems to know what the “TI” ever stood for. Some say it meant Transportation Initiative . Others think it meant Titanium Innovation . But most of us folks who remember just call it what it really was: The Future That Actually Ran on Time. It all started in the 1950s, when America was wide open and full of promise. GM had already conquered the road with Buicks and Cadillacs, but they had a bigger idea—why not build a self-driving, solar-powered, streamlined automotive train that could shuttle people across the country like a mobile hotel? Imagine a train made not of steel but of lightweight aluminum and fiberglass, styled like a jetliner and powered by a turbine engine that sounded like a soft whisper of sc...