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Grand AM Development from How Stuff Works

The 1973 Pontiac Grand Am started out in the development stages as a GTO. But the muscle era was drawing to a close and, very much aware of that, Pontiac decided to change the car’s character. Instead of continuing to make the GTO a stoplight drag star, the next iteration was to be more European — more along the lines of a luxury sport sedan. With that in mind, Pontiac designers and engineers examined Mercedes, BMW, Audi, and Volvo as likely targets.

To backtrack a little, the Grand Am concept originated in the Pontiac styling studio. At that time, all Pontiacs were designed in one studio under the direction of William L. (Bill) Porter. Working with him were his assistant, Wayne Vieira, plus senior designers Ted Schroeder, Charley Gatewood, and Geza Loczi. Dennis Barnes was a young modeler in the studio.

Porter, who retired as chief designer for the Buick LeSabre, Park Avenue, and Riviera, recalls that the notion for the 1973 Grand Am’s soft front end evolved from the GTO’s “Endura” bumper/grille, GM’s revolutionary body-color nose, which Pontiac introduced for 1968. Wanting to take that idea one step further, Porter and his staff did some collective brainstorming, while still thinking in terms of the next GTO. As a result of that session, Porter and Gatewood got together to sketch what ended up being the Grand Am front end, with its peaked prow flanked by “catwalk” grilles, plus quad headlights, an integrated bumper, and sharp fender end caps.

One of the givens in the then-GTO program—which subsequently spilled over into the Grand Am—was that the car had to be based on GM’s new 1973 A-body, i.e., Pontiac’s LeMans. Among other things, the GTO/Grand Am would have to use the new LeMans hood, which was already locked up. Because this had a raised center section, the Grand Am prow-nose seemed a natural.

Gatewood worked out the rest of the graphics and, being a superb artist, made a full-size rendering of the front end. Porter hung it on the wall opposite the studio entrance. The idea was to impress GM design vice president William L. (Bill) Mitchell when he next walked in. After all, Mitchell would be instrumental in selling the design and the soft-nose concept to Pontiac management.

Wayne Vieira, who would become chief designer for GM’s Saturn small-car subsidiary, confirms that “Charley Gatewood was the designer who came up with the original front-end sketch. Charley’s a very modest person, and he would tend to say something like, ‘Oh, actually . . . I remembered an old sketch that Ted Schroeder did years ago. All I did was to do Ted’s sketch over again.’ But it was Charley who sold the idea.”

Vieira continues, “And to help sell the design to Bill Mitchell, Charley did this full-size air-brush rendering . . . a white rendering with black grille slots. It really stood out from across the room. In fact, when Bill Mitchell walked in, all he said was, ‘Jeeeeeeezus Christ!’ And we were off and running. He brought people in to see it, and it was really quite exciting. The graphics on the front were so strong and unique compared to what was on the road at the time,” Vieira recalls. “In fact, we all felt that when the car came out for 1973, it had by far the best front end of anything in the industry.”

The technology needed to engineer the Grand Am’s soft front end wasn’t fully developed when the initial soft-nose designs were proposed. But a 174-day strike during 1972 gave GM extra time to make the soft front end feasible. “This was one of our first attempts to do a full plastic front,” Vieira told us. “The technology hadn’t yet caught up, and the car would have been very complicated and expensive to build [with the technology at the concept's beginning]. The division at first felt that they wouldn’t have a competitive, quality car for the price. But now that we had more time to work on it—due to the strike—they told us to take another crack at it, and this started the process of a new design.”

Source: 1973-75 Pontiac Grand Am from How Stuff Works

By the time I got to General Motors Design Staff in March of 1973, they were placing new hires directly into studios instead of through an orientation program like Design Development. I was placed into Advanced Chevrolet. Ron Hill was the Studio Chief, and Geza Loczi the Assistant Chief Designer. Geza must have recently been transferred from Pontiac Two studio where these renderings were done. I was given a three months to get orientated on my own, a daunting prospect. After a three month review I was transferred to Pontiac Two production studio.

Chalk and marker rendering by Tom Semple

The day Tom Semple and I nearly did each other in.

I became interested in motocross motorcycles in the ’70s, and rode in the woods with several GM designers and sculptors including Larry Brinker and Bernie Smith. One Saturday several of us met up around Mt. Grampian ski area in Oxford, Michigan. There was a challenging, single-track loop about a half mile long that had hills, banked berms, and woods. Because it made a big loop, you could get to know the course, and each lap became faster than the last one. There were a couple of spots where you could get launched pretty good and get some air. And there were many blind turns. So for safety reasons, it was strictly one way. Tom Semple showed up with his Bultaco. I don’t remember who was going the wrong way, but Tom and I met in mid air, missing each other by inches. That was the day Tom and I nearly killed each other.

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This exhibition highlights the creativity of the American automobile designers of the  1960s and 70s, a period that stressed exotic styling and high performance. The exhibition opens Thursday, September 24, 2009. There will be a lecture in the Theater on opening night by Bill Porter, former head of the GM Advanced Design Studio.

The Exhibition will be open from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and run until November 21, 2009. For further information: call 713-743-2400 or go to www.arch.uh.edu.

Photo Gallery courtesy Louisville Visual Art Association. This is the third showing of the exhibition.

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Print of artwork by Ken Okuyama. There is a studio photo of the design being worked out in scale and full-size clay models on a post entitled GM Design Photos from the Early ’90s, Part 3.

Detail of “The Essence of Buick Poster” artwork by Andy Hanzel.

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This lithe concept mounted a 180-horse Wankel transversely, driving a new automatic transaxle being developed for the forthcoming X-body Citation. Designed by GM’s Experimental Studio and built on a modified Porsche 914 chassis by Pininfarina, the 2-Rotor made its debut at the 1973 Frankfurt show.

Mitchell had the car crushed.

Ron Will recalls this about the car: “Bill Mitchell absolutely hated the 2-Rotor and was very verbal about it calling it all kinds of nasty four letter words. I think he hated it because it was not his Corvette image of a big powerful sports car. Plus he had no input in the design. He also hated Porsches and thought this was in the Porsche class of Sports cars. Not long after it was shipped to the U.S. for review, I believe Mitchell had it crushed. He didn’t want anyone to get the idea that this could ever be a Corvette. That’s why you don’t see it at any of the retro show car gatherings.”

Or did he?

This is from Remarkable Corvettes: Tom Falconer now owns this little Corvette. That story began with a strange phone call from Tom’s friend, Geoff Lawson, the late Jaguar design chief, who in 1982 was head of styling at Bedford Trucks in Luton. He called to tell that the next day they were going to crush a Corvette that had a steel body. Tom instantly knew that this was no ordinary Corvette but the mythical two-rotor show car, supposedly lost in a fire in California in 1977.

Having begged Lawson not to crush the car straight away, Tom rang the head of GM styling, Chuck Jordan, who he had come to know while writing a book about the Cadillac Seville, and a meeting was arranged at the GM Tech Center in Detroit to discuss the future of the orphan prototype. Jordan soon explained the reason for the two-rotor Corvette’s death sentence: it was a shameful embarrassment, a painful reminder of the expensive Wankel interlude and an ideological dead end; no Corvette, as far as he was concerned, would ever have a steel body or a mid-mounted engine.

Tom pleaded for the car’s life and convinced Jordan that he should be allowed to take it into protective custody. Since 1997 it has been fitted with a Mazda 13B rotary unit (much more in the spirit of the original concept) matched to a Cadillac front-wheel drive automatic gearbox so that everything lines up. With a respray in its original Candy Apple red (the paint in the door shuts is original), Tom “relaunched” the two-rotor at the National Corvette Restorers’ Society Flight 2000 event six years ago. “I quite often get Americans coming in wanting to see it; they can’t believe it’s here,” he says.

American Racing Vector Wheels

I remember Tom Covert telling me that he designed the wheels for the 2-Rotor Corvette, and that American Racing Wheels copied or perhaps was involved in the tooling for the prototype wheels and decided to put them into production as the American Racing Vector. I don’t know the actual story.

Thanks to Wayne Ellwood of Corvette Articles and Photos, Kip Wasenko, and General Motors Corporation for the photos.

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The Career of Richard Nesbitt, Part Two

Book Illustrations

After a move to the Dallas/Ft.Worth area, I have been a vehicle and industrial design consultant for a wide variety of clients. From 1980 on, I have authored and illustrated several styling related articles for various automotive magazine publishers and I was commissioned to both author and illustrate a book title for Publications International, American Automobile Design  1930–1980, which was published and released for distribution in 1985.

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Peterbilt

From 1996 to 1999, I worked with Peterbilt Motors in Denton, Texas on  the exterior and interior design of the all-new 387 Aerotruck series and a planned successor to the iconic, legendary 379 traditional series, the all-new 479.

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Magazine Illustrations

1952 “Hot Rod Lincoln”

In 1952, Ford released all-new bodies for Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln. Ford and Mercury were once again sharing body shells and Lincoln was on its own, but there was a strong family resemblance to all three that established the “FoMoCo Look” for much of the 1950s. From 1949 to 1951 there were two Lincoln series—the smaller version was based on the Mercury body shell.

For 1952, however, Ford dropped the smaller Mercury-based Lincoln option, and missed-out on an opportunity to compete head-on with Oldsmobile’s hot small-body OHV V-8 “88” from 1949 and Chrysler’s hot small-body “Hemi” V-8 Saratoga from 1951.

In 1952, along with the new “big” Lincoln, Ford had everything they needed to get it just right. Lincoln had a brand new large-displacement OHV V-8 that would have had Oldsmobile and Chrysler really up against it with a lighter, smaller Mercury body version. Ford and Mercury were still flathead V-8s in 1952, and would not have smaller, lower-powered OHV V-8s until 1954.

FoMoCo’s modern, trim new styling in 1952 combined with the smaller, lighter Mercury body and Lincoln’s big OHV V-8 would have been a very appealing low-cost-to-create alternative to the older GM and Chrysler models.

I authored and illustrated a feature on this concept for Collectible Automobile magazine on how this “Mercury-Lincoln” might have looked had it been built in 1952, including an illustration of the 1952 Lincoln Cosmopolitan.

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The 1992 Riviera illustration is from a Publications International Forecast 1995 magazine feature, and the Silverado and Fiesta Illustrations are from the Forecast 1999 feature.

The Career of Richard Nesbitt, Part One

Of the many and varied professional opportunities available in the automotive industry, the role of the designer (or stylist) has probably captured the imagination of more young men and auto enthusiasts around the world than any other. Yet, as in a professional sports career, only a comparatively small number of people actually become successful automotive designers. The following is my background and experience in the pursuit of an automotive design career.

I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 18, 1946. We moved around quite a bit, as my father was a radio sportscaster then, and he would receive better opportunities from time to time in other major markets around the country. From New York City and then Chicago, we moved first to St. Paul, and later Minneapolis, Minnesota, where my father became very successful as a television sportscaster.

I was 11 years old in 1957, and by then, my interest was almost totally dominated by things automotive. I had a consuming desire to draw cars wherever and whenever possible including, of course, any class time I could get away with. And I collected car dealer “promo” models and built every plastic model car kit available. New car showroom literature was highly prized and treasured, especially for the wonderful rendered illustration techniques. As the new car magazines appeared each month, I would conceal my copies in notebooks at school and dream up variations and “improvements” of the various new cars featured in each issue.

From my 11 year old point of view in 1957, car styling fell into just a few basic categories. Anything with a “wraparound” or “panoramic” windshield (basically 1955 and up) was a modern car. Curved one-piece non-wraparound windshield models were older cars, and anything with a center divided windshield and flat glass was positively ancient. Although my father had told me otherwise, I was convinced that anything made before World War II couldn’t possibly have ever been a “new” car. I was sure these vehicles came into the world looking as forlorn and worn out as they appeared in the world of 1957.

At 12 years old, I was able to draw cars well in perspective, much to the amazement of many classmates, and I could draw most recent production cars from memory. I had no idea that people were paid to illustrate and design cars for a living, and my father, a former pro-football player in the 1930′s with the Chicago Bears, and later a successful, well-known television sportscaster for KSTP Television in Minneapolis/St.Paul Minnesota, was very concerned I wasn’t giving enough thought to some form of “conventional” employment.

Very little was featured in car magazines about the automotive design profession, but when infrequent articles did appear in Motor Trend, Car Life, or Road and Track, they always made reference to a design college in Los Angeles, California called the Art Center School. The College was established specifically to prepare qualified individuals for acceptance and success in professional design, illustration, and advertising careers.

Harley Earl, creator of General Motors’ Art & Colour Section, took an early interest in Art Center College as an excellent potential source of talented future car designers. Earl worked closely with the College in the 1930s to develop a specific automotive design education program within the school’s industrial design department. Art Center became the prime, almost singular contributor of qualified graduate auto designers from the 1930s on, and is now located in a beautiful facility in Pasadena, California. I decided I wanted to attend Art Center College during my senior year in high school. Three years later, I submitted my application to the College, now officially the Art Center College of Design, and received a notice of acceptance for admission beginning in the fall of 1967.

I bought a red and white 1958 Buick Special “Estate Wagon” (really!) for $250.00, loaded up my  belongings, and then headed for Route 66 west to Los Angeles. This was the psychedelic era of “Flower Power” and the “Summer of Love”, and at long last, now 21, I was finally on my way!

The College was then located in an older section of Los Angeles called Hancock Park and did not have dormitory or student housing facilities. Most of the houses in the immediate area were large English Tudor or Spanish style mansions, many with separate chauffeur’s quarters. I was able to rent a chauffeur’s quarters adjoining a garage for $35.00 a month.

It soon became apparent why Art Center didn’t generally take students right out of high school. To say the full-time program was rigorous would be the height of understatement. When I first walked into the College, I was overwhelmed by the quality of the upper semester student’s work from various majors on display in the lobby/gallery area. I was convinced I had made a serious mistake as I was sure I wasn’t capable of the superb ability demonstrated by the upperclassmen. The pace, quality, and amount of work required was phenomenal and I was constantly working on projects until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning seven days a week. Having grown up in the conservative midwest, I had always heard anything could happen in California, and my experience came during the first semester at school.

I had moved to a larger chauffeur’s quarters closer to the College on January 1, 1968, located on McCadden Street, just a block and a half behind Art Center, and within easy walking distance. The elderly lady owner of the house passed on a few months later, and the mansion was taken over by her son. The family was very wealthy, and put the property up for sale through a real estate agency they owned on Wilshire Boulevard. I was asked to stay on as a caretaker until the house sold, so I had complete use of the Spanish style mansion rent-free and all to myself for a year and a half until new owners were found.

The residence had been built in the 1920s and had been left very much as it was, in immaculate condition inside and out during the early 1940s and on by the last owners. The asking price for the 14 room mansion through 1968 was $100,000. It didn’t sell during the year and a half I was there for that amount, and was finally sold in 1969 for $90,000. The same property on today’s super-inflated California real estate market would  bring several million dollars!

By the third semester, I had covered a lot of ground. It was also the first chance during third semester that a student would be considered for a scholarship application through the school. Only a few scholarships were granted and it was a significant honor to receive one. A friend talked me into submitting a portfolio for scholarship consideration and it was the thrill of a lifetime when I was notified I had been awarded a full-tuition scholarship sponsored by the Ford Motor Company for my remaining five semesters.

I believe Art Center’s strength was founded in both the eminence of the automotive design instructors like Strother MacMinn and the incredible quality of student talent the college attracted. Detroit auto design leaders such as Bill Mitchell, Gene Bordinat, Elwood Engle, and Dick Teague visited Art Center often, and were always recruiting new designers from each graduating class.

I received a Bachelor of Science Degree in industrial design and graduated with honors in May of 1970. In 1971 I was hired by the Ford Motor Company and started work at the Ford Design Center in Dearborn, Michigan.

Lincoln-Mercury

My first assignment in 1971 as a new-hire designer in a Lincoln-Mercury production studio, was, not surprisingly, an ornamentation job. My assignment was to create a very refined jewel-like stand-up hood ornament for the new Montego based 1974 Cougar to enhance its upscale luxury image. This area of design was a new experience to me, so I thought long and hard for various sources of inspiration. One that came to me was in the form of an 1880s vintage Elgin pocket watch my father had given me when I was 11 years old. This watch had a thick, crowned outer ring shape with a series of fine ribbed serrations surrounding the dial lens face area. Of the many concept illustrations I did for this project during November 1971, the proposal most like my treasured pocket watch was selected as the final design and was produced as I had designed it for three years from 1974, 1975 and 1976. I incorporated a clear lens effect, much like the watch lens, and designed a floating cougar figure into the clear area. I was very surprised to learn that my hood ornament design played an important part in the marketing strategy for the direction of Cougar’s new image for 1974, and this is the first time it’s true origin has ever been revealed!

Mustang II

Shortly after the Cougar project, an unusual program for this studio was released. We were to participate in presenting a proposal for the all-new and considerably down-sized Mustang II ,with several other studios submitting proposals as well. Even though it was obvious there was no place for the ground-pounding Mach-1 Cobra Jet 428s and high-revving Boss 302s of the recent past, Iacocca still liked the idea of a strong performance image for some versions of the new Mustang II and he actively encouraged the development of my “Ram-Air Boss” sketch theme, as it came to be called by the studio staff. The final design our studio submitted was a fastback proposal created by staff designer Howard “Buck” Mook, and our design was selected by company President Lee Iacocca over all the other studio efforts.

This design went on to an extensive series of consumer “clinics” throughout the United States, and in San Francisco, many young women wanted a traditional coupe version. As a result, we received instructions at our L-M studio to create a notchback coupe version as soon as possible. One of my design themes was selected, and I was instructed to direct it’s development into a full-size clay model followed by a finished fiberglass model.

Later, I was assigned to the Pinto-Maverick-Mustang Interior Design Studio, where I developed several Mustang II “Ghia” trim proposals.

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Ford Carrousel

When I was assigned to the Light Truck and Tractor Studio , we received a product planning directive to develop a derivative of the upcoming new Ford Econoline Van, code named “Nantucket” and due for release in 1975. The derivative was code named “Carrousel” and was intended to attract  station wagon buyers with more car-like styling combined with the added appeal of van utility. From hundreds of concept sketches created by staff designers in this studio during 1972, one of mine was selected by Hal Sperlich, Director of Product Planning, and Lee Iacocca as the approved design direction. I directed the construction of a full-size clay model, and the vehicle received a great deal of interest from Henry Ford II. Unfortunately, the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 halted further development after a drivable, fabricated metal prototype had been built. The Carrousel was specifically designed as a “Garagable Family Van” alternative to the traditional station wagon market segment. This concept later became one of the most successful and enduring product innovations ever created when Hal Sperlich and Lee Iacocca launched the Plymouth Voyager/Dodge Caravan in 1984.

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Ford Bronco

Another program I participated in during this time in the Light Truck Studio was the development of a new “Bronco” based on the same format as the Chevrolet “Blazer” pickup truck derivative. This program was code named “Shorthorn.” Ford wanted to use the new “F” series truck doors without modification. This door combined the window frame area and the lower door as a one-piece formed part. Ford’s decision to use the complete door assembly required a permanently fixed steel roof for the driver/front passenger area, although it would have a removable top for the area behind the doors. I proposed a design sketch incorporating a “Targa” style roof band. The built-in roof band helped visually separate the permanent front roof area from the removable fiberglass rear roof section. This design feature became a Bronco “trademark” styling theme from 1978 to 1986. This Bronco was intended for introduction in 1974, but the OPEC oil embargo postponed the release date to 1978.

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Lincoln Continental

For most of the year 1973, I was assigned to the Lincoln Continental Advanced Design Studio. During mid-year 1973, I received an assignment to create a series of new “full-size/ down-size” Ford, Mercury, Continental, and Mark-V styling proposals to be reviewed by Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca for a special presentation at the Ford Motor Company Strategy and Advanced Planning Conference in Boca Raton, Florida.

This presentation was later followed by the development of the “Panther” platform, launching the all-new Ford LTD and Mercury Marquis for 1979, and the Lincoln Continental/Mark VI for 1980. It was an honor to be selected for this assignment.

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Ford Fox Program

I received recognition for my contribution to the “full-size/down-size” program and a promotion to the International Special Vehicles Design Studio, where I was involved with several design projects coordinated with Ford’s Ghia studios in Italy and the presentation of concept illustrations for the initial “World Car” and FOX program. The ever-expanding FOX platform launched the Ford Fairmont/Mercury Zephyr in 1978, followed by the all-new Mustang/Capri in 1979 with many variations to follow.

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