By: Chris Perkins, Senior Writer and Editor, GM News By: Chris Perkins, Senior Writer and Editor, GM News If you didnât know, youâd never guess the Buick Y-Job was unveiled in 1938. With its curvaceous integrated fenders, hidden headlights, waterfall grille, and long, low, wide proportions, the Y-Job looks like a car born two decades later. That was exactly the point. Today, The Y-Job is what we recognize as the industryâs very first example of a concept car, a prototype vehicle created by automotive designers to showcase their vision of the future. âBorn in 1938 to give the stylist a tool for advanced research comparable to the laboratory and the proving ground used by the scientist and engineer, the dream car has become a world famous symbol of the American publicâs ever growing fascination with the life it can expect in the future,â GM noted in a 1956 press release. IMAGE CAPTION: Harley Earl with the Buick Y-Job. âIt was the first concept car ever,â says Andrew Smith, GM Executive Director of Design, Global Advanced Design. âIt was developed very much as a testbed for new design technologies and features.â The Y-Job started a practice that has become nearly universal in the auto industry. Carmakers all over the globe continue to create concept cars to showcase their visions of future designs and technologies â and to show customers what they might be able to look forward to in tomorrowâs showrooms. The Y-Job, and the concept car tradition that it began, could only have come from GM. In 1927, Alfred Sloan, then president of GM, hired a Californian named Harley Earl to create the first dedicated design division within a major automaker. (Up until that point, mainstream cars wore bodywork designed simply to cover up passengers and mechanical components.) Earl had