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 science fiction. It glided along special electro-magnetic tracks GM installed along old rail lines, recharging at solar stations shaped like giant glass blossoms.
Inside, it was all plush carpet, bubble-top windows, and little televisions in every seat (yes, in the 1950s!). You could eat your dinner on fine plastic china while watching the Rockies roll by, and the steward would bring you a milkshake or a Manhattan, depending on your mood and your manners.
They didn’t just go from Chicago to L.A. — no, they stopped at towns nobody had ever heard of just to say hello. It was more than transport. It was an event. A parade of the future that just happened to have a dining car and a dance floor.
People dressed up just to ride it. Kids would press their noses to the windows and swear they saw robots in the engine room. Maybe they did. The engineers wore lab coats, and nobody was quite sure where the control room was. Some said it didn’t have a driver—it just knew where to go.
It only ran for a decade or so. Too expensive, they said. Too far ahead of its time. But those who rode the GM-TI train swear to this day it was the smoothest ride they ever had—and the closest they ever got to flying without leaving the ground.
These days, you can still find pieces of it. A train car turned into a diner in Nevada. A lounge chair from the observation deck upcycled into a throne in someone's man cave. But the memory? That rides on forever.
Because once upon a time, GM didn’t just make cars.
They made the future.
And they put it on rails.
