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.

[Show as slideshow]

When I first went into Pontiac production studio in the winter of 1959 I had just come from over a year’s experience in Bob McLean’s Styling Research Studio, working alongside Norm James and Stefan Hapsburg, a couple of creative geniuses. They had been responsible for the turbine powered Firebird show cars. Norm designed the Firebirds II and III. Incidentally, his book Of Firebirds and Moonmen is a remarkable chronicle of this work and an insightful personal journey into the GM Styling world of the 1950s.

Bill Porter’s 1961 Pontiac Sedan vs. Streamliner in Indigo Blue Prismacolor pencil on vellum.

I was obviously totally infused with the kind of Research Studio thinking that prevailed in these last days of the Harley Earl era. We were working on high speed automated highway systems, New York City taxis, and other projects which applied the latest technological thinking to problems of significant social import. It was a very idealistic, if admittedly ivory tower, atmosphere. The clay models in the platforms in Pontiac Studio seemed very conservative and almost backward to my naive eyes. To vent my feelings along these lines I did a number of sketches of what I conceived to be advanced streamlined sedans shown alongside the brand new 1961 Pontiac fiberglass model sitting in the studio. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the looks of the new Pontiac—the all-new ’61 body being a great improvement on the bulkier ‘59s and ‘60s, in my mind. But as the sketch shows, it belonged to another, much more conservative genre than my vision of what a modern car should be.

If I recall correctly, and my memory banks aren’t what they used to be, I had seen some high-tail Porsche race cars and was interested in sweeping up the undersurface of the tail of the car to produce a low pressure area that would not only hold the tail down at 100+mph speeds, but would help suck air under the fully panned underbelly. Looking back at this sketch now, some 50 years later, I can see clearly that it needs a bump to clear the differential (the transverse fwd layout was still 25 years in the future) and the car is far too wide, even for Pontiac’s newly created “wide track” stance. Nevertheless, I am glad this sketch survived because it illustrates the vast difference within the GM corporation between the idealistic thinking of the researchers and the production studio realities. These coexisted briefly at the beginning of what are coming to be thought of as the Golden Years of the American automobile industry.

Jack Humbert, the greatly respected Pontiac studio chief in those years, was very tolerant of my naiveté. He didn’t put me down at all, bless him. Gradually, in the next few weeks I descended back to this earth and brought with me another aesthetic aspect of aerodynamics which occupied my youthful vision, ”area rule,” the newly developed fuselage shape for supersonic jets. I began sketching around the “coke bottle” shaped body side idea, which eventually found its way, although timidly, into the 1963 Pontiac line. Other designers picked up this idea and it and its sister theme, the “monocoque” cross section influenced many of the later cars that I had a hand in (1968 GTO, 1970 Firebird, 1995 Riviera, for example) as well as a number of cars from GM and other manufacturers.

This is one of only two of this series of my early Pontiac Studio sketches that have survived. The other, in reverse photostat form (white on black), is in the exhibition “Designing an Icon” (see Upcoming Events page for details). It shows a side view of a related streamliner next to the same ’61 Pontiac Star Chief fiberglass model. Designing an Icon is scheduled to open at the University of Houston on September 24th, 2009, then moves to the Peoria, Illinois Art Association in April, 2010.

Bill Porter, copyright 6/9/2009

I found a couple of my old Pontiac Studio sketches from the late ’50s–early ’60s era that were not selected for the Designing an Icon show that will be opening at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture, University of Houston on September 24, 2009. I believe the show will run for about 6 weeks, then it goes to the Peoria, IL Art Association in early 2010. Further info about its Houston venue should be available soon on the College’s website under Exhibits. Gary is contacting them about posting it here on Dean’s Garage too. Anyone interested in drawing and rendering techniques should enjoy this show, made up of 100 designer sketches and renderings, both exteriors and interiors from the Musclecar era the 1960s and early 1970s. Most of the sketches are from GM designers, but there are a number from Ford and Chrysler designers as well. All the various mediums and techniques of the era are represented. 

1963 Pontiac Bonneville sketch on newsprint with 352 Pluvius pencil by Bill Porter. Dated October 1960.

Newsprint pads, the same stuff your newspaper is printed on, were far cheaper than other sketch pads and were very popular at Pratt Institute where I did my graduate work in Industrial Design in 1957–58. While Conté crayons work well on newsprint, an even more refined technique consisted of 352 Pluvius pencil (a wonderful inky black graphite pencil no longer available) on smooth newsprint. These old Pontiac sketches were done in that technique. I liked the feel, the pull of the pencil on that creamy newsprint surface, but with GM paying for all of the materials used in the studio, the cheapness of newsprint was no longer a factor and I finally abandoned it in favor of vellum. Vellum has many advantages: translucency so you can do a rough, then overlay it for the final, you can work the back side of vellum for more subtle effects, and you can easily achieve full color effects with pastel and marking pens. Putting color on newsprint was not really satisfactory because pastel didn’t take at full strength and tempera (gouache) wrinkled the cheap, absorbent surface. Nevertheless, the creamy color and character of newsprint combined with the wonderful black tones attainable with Pluvius pencil do have a certain restrained—almost Old Master grace. Also, I was interested in a sort of black & white photo-realism at the time, and this technique lent itself to that.

The Bonneville sketch was done in October 1960 as a proposal for the ’63 (note license plate) Bonneville. Evidently I dusted a little magenta pastel across the drawing to give it a hint of color, sort of like an old tinted photograph. The red in the tail lamps is probably red Prismacolor pencil because we didn’t have marking pens then. The newsprint has yellowed down a little from its original bright cream color. Eventually, if exposed to light, it will turn paper bag color and ultimately disintegrate. The tannic acid in the relatively raw wood pulp is highly destructive. Newsprint is about as far from archival paper as you can get. But nobody thought of these sketches as “art” at the time. Actually, I did secretly, but I am sure management did not.

Get a load of that rear overhang! As I recall, the Bonneville was seven inches longer than the Catalina, most of it in the tail. The skinny tires and flat side glass sure do date it, don’t they?  Oops, I forgot to draw in the tail pipes.

Pontiac LeMans front end sketch on newsprint with 352 Pluvius pencil by Bill Porter.

This sketch was done around 1964 for a Pontiac Le Mans front end. Shaded areas such as the hood show quite a bit of paper grain even though this was the smooth grade of newsprint, but the crisp blacks give both the sheet metal and chrome areas a fine snap. Pontiacs, especially the up-line models in the sixties, had a bit of glamour that this technique favored. But I must have been daydreaming that afternoon because I meant to put an elegant script “Pontiac” in the lower right corner of the sketch and was startled when I realized that I had begun to spell my own name instead! Pluvius pencil, once it was burned in on Newsprint, did not erase well, so I guess I just stopped right there and abandoned the sketch.  It’s just as well because a nearly identical design was on the full size clay model at the time. Bill Mitchell, our legendary VP of Design, came in just before lunch. Standing in front of the car, he looked at it and said (profanity deleted), “Porter, that front looks like if you opened the hood…pigeons would fly out!” So much for that design.

The approach of this LeMans sketch, where a lot is left to the imagination, dates from Art Deco Style ads and fashion illustrations of the ’20s and ’30s. By the 1960s when this piece was done it was actually a retro style of presentation.