David North with Jay Leno’s 1966 Toronado
Dave North was Studio Chief in the mid 1980s when I was in Oldsmobile II Studio, and Ed Welburn his assistant. Dave was involved with the design of the 1966 Tornado. One example of this car that has gotten a lot of attention is the one that Jay Leno restored. Actually the car is a resto-mod. Looks stock on the outside—but there stock abruptly ends.
According to Dave, “Jay got a hold of me and invited my son and me to the NBC studios and a day at his “Big Dog” garage in Burbank. He has a very spectacular collection of cars. He had a wall of photos of me working on the Toro that he got from Ed Welburn. He is a real enthusiast and nice guy.”
David North with Jay Leno
David North with Jay Leno
David North in Oldsmobile Studio in the early ’60s.
This isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile.
Here is another video with David North and Lay Leno— this one is about the origins of Cadillac Tail Fins. It’s really good.
The second video is fun, but the accounts I’ve heard, in Bill Mitchell’s 1985 interview with Dave Crippen, indicate that the building-up-the-other-fin trick was something that Mitchell did to Jack Gordon on the original ’48 Cadillac design, not the ’59s. Mitchell said:
“Well, Gordon never liked them, and he’d sit in the wastebasket in the studio, and he was head of Cadillac, and Cole was chief engineer. Cole and I wanted to raise him, and we pulled a trick on him. We took the drawing, and instead of saying we’d raise the other drawing every day, and it looked like we were lowering it. And, Gordon heard of that later. He said, ‘You bastards you.’”
(http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Design/Mitchell/mitchellinterview.htm)
I wonder which version is true….