Disney’s EPCOT, GM’s World of Motion, and Pres Bruning

Disney’s EPCOT, GM’s World of Motion, and Pres Bruning.

By David Rodríguez Sánchez

Photos: General Motors, Dan Sims, Bruning family

 

Designers are tasked with creating practical solutions to real-world needs. They are also asked to predict future trends by exploring reaching and often fantastic ideas. They push the boundaries of what’s currently possible.

A place of particular interest for dreamers is Disney’s EPCOT Center in Florida. Opened in 1982, the “World of Motion” pavilion was sponsored and co-developed by General Motors.

This is a short history of EPCOT, along with a biography/profile of GM designer Pres Bruning, a major contributor to concepts displayed at the “World of Motion” pavilion.

EPCOT had been the unfulfilled dream of a future-world experimental colony conceived by Walt Disney in 1966. EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) was designed as a ground-breaking habitat intended to bring solutions to the many mounting problems of current urban environments. The idea for EPCOT lingered long after Disney’s death on December 15, 1966.

The EPCOT concept of a technological and humanistic future world was far ahead of its time. Walt’s vision eventually evolved into a leisure theme park, which opened in 1982. GM’s “World of Motion” exhibit within EPCOT was the result of a partnership between GM and Disney in 1977, and materialized during the next four years under the coordination of GM’s industrial design chief Don Schwarz and deputy studio chief Dale Sheeley. “World of Motion” was one of five main themes within EPCOT (Spaceship Earth, Universe of Energy, Journey into Imagination, and The Land were the others).

“World of Motion” featured life-size, animated dioramas. Visitors, comfortably seated on open train cars (designed by GM’s overseas studio) with two rows of three seats, were able to follow the historical evolution of transportation from the beginning to the present day and beyond. The main exhibit area of “World of Motion” occupied the largest room in the purpose-built, wheel-shaped building. It was 65 feet tall, 320 feet in diameter, and was paneled with avant-garde stainless steel. This exceptionally rich and well thought-out constant-speed journey through time evoked memories of past exhibits from the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair, Disney-Ford’s “Magic Skyways,” and GM’s “Futurama Ride II.”

At the end of the 12-minute ride through the upper lever of the circular building, visitors (up to 3,200 persons per hour) were ushered into a display area fully devoted to GM’s car universe called “Transcenter” which featured the “Concept to Reality display.”

Taking the most part of the ground level, the marketing needs of the present and the utopias of the future went hand in hand to fascinate crowds and attract them to GM’s products and services. This was to be the place where, surrounded by production vehicles in a dealer-showroom arrangement, recent concept cars from Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile or Cadillac would be displayed for periods of time after their auto-show presentation tours.

As the tour continued, visitors were shown future GM concepts in the “Concept-Design 2000” area of GM’s “Transcenter.” The featured design was a full-size fiberglass model of the slippery Aero 2000 coupe designed by Gray Counts—an early 1980s concept car. (Gray’s fine art here.)

The “Concept-Design 2000” display also included a number of items related to the design process behind the creation of the Aero 2000; from sketch, to an operating wind-tunnel testing of a scale model, to skeleton mock-ups, to the finished design.

Throughout the ten year contract between GM and Disney for the World of Motion building operation (starting in 1982), many different regular models were displayed within Transcenter, for the literally millions of EPCOT visitors to see and experience. Displayed were many concept cars, including the 1988 Pontiac Banshee, 1989 Olds Aerotech II, 1990 GM Micro, 1990 Pontiac Sunfire, 1991 Geo Track, 1992 Pontiac Salsa, and the 1992 GM Ultralite. Chevrolet Lumina NASCAR race cars were also displayed.

The entire Aero 2000 display was replaced in 1988 with a display focused around the more aggressive and extreme SRV-1 sports car concept designed GM designers Clark Lincoln and Ken Okuyama. Also displayed at the “From Concept to Reality” section on the center turn-table was the Aero 2004.

A magnificent display for truly a myriad of daring concept ideas was in the so-called “Dreamer’s Workshop” at Transcenter. It was here where GM lifted the veil of secrecy of their designers’ most crazy and vanguard ideas for transportation vehicles. Several Advanced Design studios contributed the majority of the concepts.

Designer Pres Bruning

Designer Pres Bruning was one of the many GM designers involved in the EPCOT effort, and his extraordinary creations stand out as the principal imaginer. He’s responsible for the creation of the Chameleon, Asterisk, Hinge-Car, and the GMC Centaur (a pick-up truck that became a full-size concept-car displayed at the Detroit International Auto Show in 1987). He also created the Lean Machine—a cambering vehicle that made a striking appearance in Sylvester Stallone’s 1993 movie “Demolition Man,” driven by Wesley Snipes’ evil character Simon Phoenix.

There were there many other design ideas by Bruning, in scale model and sketch form: freighter aero-trucks with interchangeable containerized cargos; ring-winged and futuristic turbo-prop freighter airplanes (“Containair”); a twin-boom crane and carrier utility zeppelin; high-speed conventional railway train; a maglev (magnetic levitation) ultra-fast “Magliner;” large “Hovair” surface shuttle; multi-wheeled wilderness exploration vehicles; a giant snow caterpillar-powered platform (“Arctic Explorer”) with vertical take-off and landing decks for aircraft; and a mammoth hydroplane luxury liner.

Beyond the concept vehicles themselves, Bruning contributed largely to the general layout of Transcenter with a valuable number of architectural settings and interior decoration designs.

Other featured designers included Bruning’s good friend Elia Russinoff with his “Egg-Car” and “TPC-100 miles per gallon” concepts. Jim Lima’s crazy “Hyper-Ski” was also displayed.

About Pres Bruning

Press was born in 1937 at Providence, Rhode Island. His father was a Navy Lieutenant Commander and doctor, and his mother a house wife. Pres was the oldest of their three sons. He was that kind of kid that spent his free time building model airplanes and submarines, drawing, and learning to play both violin and piano by ear. He grew up in the small town of Millburn, New Jersey.

In his High School years, mechanical drawing and art classes were the ones of his particular predilection. Cars and vehicle “contraptions” began to become his favorite drawing subjects, filling every clean square inch of his school books with doodles. He disdained car racing or other types of sports. Instead, he devoured science fiction, airplane, and hobby magazines.

He liked Sci-Fi milestones like “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, “War of the Worlds“, “The Thing from Another World”, and Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers serials.

“After graduating from Millburn High School in 1955, I went to Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania with the idea of getting an Aeronautical Engineering degree. After two years, I transferred to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, pursuing instead a degree in Industrial Design. Luckily, I had some scholarships and won some awards that helped me pay partly for my college education, with my parents’ contributing to pay for the rest.

“I will never forget the drawing classes we got there from Rowena Reed Kostellow (See Dean’s Garage post featuring Norm James). In 1960 at Pratt Institute, I became the First Prize Winner by the Sterling Silversmiths Guild of America for my design and fabrication of the “Combination Tea and Coffee Server.“ I got my Bachelors Degree in 1961. I loved rendering techniques the most, but I was well skilled in sketching and modeling too.

“During my four years there I applied for summer employment as a designer of automobiles at General Motors and I stayed with them ever since. In 1963 I was interviewed by Stan Parker and was hired permanently. From 1961 to 1963 I got my Masters Degree in Industrial Design at Syracuse University. There I met my future wife. We were married in June 1963, and moved to Royal Oak, Michigan.

“I started my career at GM as an automotive designer. Not wanting to have anything to do with regular production vehicles from the onset (designing the next model year cars), I worked initially on the Operating Research Vehicle (coded XP-791) and remember building the wood framed mock-up vehicle myself.”
The Operating Research Vehicle was destined to feature at the 1964 New York Worlds’ Fair, but designs from GM’s Advanced Studios were in the end prevented by GM’s board from being shown publicly there.

“I was now able to lead a normal life by joining the Army National Guard for six years (this was during the Vietnam war). During that time we had a baby girl, Erika in 1968. I have enjoyed 38 years of creative and fun designing futuristic transportation projects, like the Lean Machine. I also designed the current thrill ride vehicle at the GM Test Track in the formerly named “World of Motion” GM pavilion at the EPCOT Center, plus a whole lot of other projects that were exhibited there before the conversion from “World of Motion” (closed in 1996) to “GM Test Track” (opened in 1999).

“Besides my regular job at GM, I taught Automotive Design at the College for Creative Studies from 1980 to 1990. From 1990 to my retirement in 2000 I was Chief Designer of Advanced Vehicle Concepts at GM. I have since done some teaching demos for students at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit since my retirement from GM in 2000. I also have some history as a flying model airplane designer, builder and competitor. Many of my model airplane plan drawings were published in magazines like Model Builder. These flying airplane models I made with balsa wood and tissue paper, and were powered by rubber bands. This was a hobby he was always very passionate about.”

A partial resume of the GM projects in which Pres Bruning was involved was recently found by his daughter Erika. Covering only from 1976 to 1980, some other presumably written pages preceding and succeeding this one are lost. Complementing the already mentioned, first person, in the paper written by Pres Bruning years ago that we have transcribed in the previous paragraph, it reads as follows:

1976: Designed and built model of pedestrian shuttle bus for Transportation Systems Division.

1977: Designed vehicle for Transportation Systems Division electric bus program and electric car prototype.

1978: Worked on designs for “Aero” truck program #1, electric bus program for G.M.C., and “Aero” truck program #2. Worked on designs for a lightweight plastic car program for Manufacturing Development Staff.

1979: Worked on design ideas for EPCOT Disney World Project. Designed the running prototype “Aero Astro” tractor trailer truck. Designed the wind tunnel models for the “Aero Astro” program.

1980: Designed full-size, running prototype of Engineering Staff’s one-passenger, high-mileage vehicle. Worked on designs for Design Staff’s high mileage vehicle. Worked on designs for 1986 new truck cab program.

A long-term memory issues does not permit Pres Bruning to further detail these or the many projects that preceded the ones mentioned.

Some words about Pres Bruning from her daughter Erika LeBarre, an accomplished artist and teacher herself, are ideal to close our feature on him.

“Dad’s work was always innovative, creative, and sometimes playful, often reflecting his light hearted nature. He came up with vehicle designs that were “way out there” as people sometimes would say of them. He drew classically with markers, chalk pastels, pens and pencils, but he also did large to full scale tape drawings of specific vehicles when the designs were to go to clay models.

“He also enjoyed creating three-dimensional models using balsa wood and/or foam core (similar to some photos in your articles), usually in skeleton form to show their structure, engineering and function. The models were made with ease by Dad as he was also an avid flying model airplane builder, a hobby he loved very much for most of his life.

“Dad has always been a humble man and never was one to brag about his work or seek out being published, which is why I think he is a designer that has been below the radar.”

To fellow designer William Quan, Pres once declared: “I was always too misunderstood and crazy to be in a Production Studio, so my whole career was spent in the Advanced Studios located in the basement of the GM Design Center.”

Bruning designed Blade-Runner-esque vehicle for the “World of Motion’s” replacement, the “GM Test Track”, a detailed description of which lies beyond the scope of this article. By 1999 “World of Motion” belonged to the past, as well as the “GM Test Track,” which closed in June 2024.

Back in September 2023, Disney announced that “GM Test Track” would be re-imagined again as “Test Track 3.0”, announcing that “imaginers along with teams from Chevrolet are reaching back into history for inspiration—from the original “World of Motion”—and bringing that spirit of optimism to the next iteration of the “Test Track” attraction.” We are sure they have plenty of resources from which to borrow inspiration!

Acknowledgments: Pres Bruning, Erika LeBarre, Christo Datini, Larry Kinsel, William Quan, Clark Lincoln, Dick Ruzzin, George Anderson, Sung Paik, and Dan Sims.

Edited by Gary Smith