Paul was interested in cars for as long as he can remember. One day the shop manager at a local Pontiac dealership let him drive his beautiful MG TC home to show his mother in hopes of getting one for his High School graduation, but that didn’t happen. So the first thing Paul spent his money on while in the Army was a MG TD. He attended many sports car races in the east, including the Sebring 12-hour International race.

Paul graduated from Pratt Institute in June, 1954 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Design. He was hired by GM Styling after being interviewed by Bill Mitchell, and began his career in the Orientation Studio, then was moved to Pontiac Studio under Paul Gillan and worked on the Strato Star show car.

Strato Star Show Car

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The Army interrupted his career. Paul was inducted into the Army in December, 1954 at Fort Dix. He was transferred to Ft. Knox and served as battalion photographer, in the 339 Corps of Engineers unit. He went through training at Ft. Eustis for Project Dewline West (Alaska and Canada), where he served as instruction cadre in cargo registration. On return from the arctic, Paul made a plaster scale model of the future site of the Jamboree at Valley Forge that they were to build. He served on a survey crew, as a photographer, and as a company orderly. Paul was discharged in December, 1956.

Paul returned to Styling in January, 1957 to orientation studio for short period. There he worked on Stingray proposals. Then back to Pontiac studio under Paul Gillan and later under Joe Schemanski, and worked on the ’59 Pontiac. He contributed to the front and side spear, wheel discs, and rear quarter treatment. Upon transfer to Pontiac, Paul quickly sold his MG TD and moved into a new 1957 Corvette.

In late ’57 Paul was transferred to Chevrolet under Claire MacKichan. He worked on ’60–’63 Chevrolets, contributing to new fronts, side, and rear end treatments, front end panels and décor for the Corvair, and minor Corvette grille changes. He was credited for the ’61 front, the ’62 rear, and the ’61 Corvair front.

Paul’s photos from Sebring, 1957

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In ’61 Paul moved to Buick under Bernie Smith. There he contributed to the ’63 Electras, LeSabres, and the compact Buick Skylark. Buick studio was taken over by Dave Holls. Paul also contributed to Riviera, Electra LeSabre, and the new Skylark designs.

Paul was promoted to Asistant Chief Designer in ’62 and transferred into Pontiac Studio under Jack Humbert for the ’64–’67 programs, including the new GTO option for LeMans, the B-body Catalina, the Grand Prix, the A-body LeMans, and the X-400 show car

He was again transferred to Moved to Buick in 1965, as Assistant to Dave Holls. He worked on the new Electra, LeSabre, Wildcat, Skylark, and GS models. Buick Studio was taken over by Don Lasky. Paul was moved to Studio X for a while to work on the ’67 Firebird lead-in.

On to Truck Studio in ’68 as Assistant to Bill Lange, and contributed to the birth of the Blazer and Jimmy, development of Chevrolet and GMC pickups, RTX and city bus, the El Camino for Chevrolet and GMC, and the Astro Cab (aluminum tilt) heavy-duty and medium duty front ends. Mike Lathers took over from Bill Lange as Truck Studio Chief. During that time the GMC Motor Home, medium and heavy-duty trucks, the  General and G.M.C. STS bus were developed.

In ’70 Paul went down to Advanced Chevrolet under Dave Clark to help develop the new A-body sedan.

Paul was moved with Dave Clark in ’73 to run Buick Two Studio when Buick Studio was split. There he helped productionize the new Riviera. Paul also worked on the new Skylark FWD X-body and A-body platforms (Regal and Riveria show car).

Paul was moved into the Multipurpose Studio from ‘75–’78 where he worked on the LUV truck, the S-10 pickups, Blazer, the A-body wagon, and the Astro/Safari M-vans.

Paul spent ’79–’85 in Advanced 4 Studio under Kip Wasenko and worked on the last C-body RWD Cadillac, the new Pontiac F-body, and the Lotus Sport.

From ’86–’92 Paul was with Tom Peters in the Advanced Corvette Studio. ’92–’95 was spent with Jim Bieck in Advanced Chevrolet developing the ’04 Mote Carlo. Paul spent ’96 in the Advanced Truck Think Tank.

When I was at GM, Paul was always great to be around. Encouraging and uplifting with a great sense of humor. Thanks, Paul, for providing the content for this post, and your friendship.

Studio artwork by Paul Deesen

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Russ had a stellar career with 40 years as a designer with General Motors Design from 1955-1995. He graduated from Pratt Institute in 1954, and won the 1st national Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild award in 1949. Be sure to check out the first post featuring Elia Russinoff’s design work.

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I think in the back of every car designer’s mind there is this desire to build a car entirely of their own design with no constraints from a studio chief, engineering package, or market survey to guide them. That itch for me was what got me into car design in the first place. As a kid I built Soap Box Racers, then as a young teen went on to design and build contest models for the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild. A win in the Guild helped me land that dream job at GM. Even after working in the fabulous Corvette studio for years, the itch was still there.

I started to scratch that itch, innocently enough, by entering a Revell model motorcycle contest. I won the custom division with my 1/8 scale three-wheel design. This was back in 1973-74 when there were long gas lines and cars were only getting 12-15 mpg. I thought my sleek cycle car design would probably get double or even triple that in mileage. So the lure of possibly starting my own little car company became bigger than staying at GM Styling.

At that same time, I was working on the XP-898 experimental foam chassis car that Chevrolet Engineering was experimenting with. The concept was simple—basically build a top and bottom car sandwich chassis/body design like a surfboard and fill it with rigid foam. The Chevy prototype worked great and even had great crash protection. My light bulb went on, and I saw this as the method that a small manufacturer (me) could use to build cars without the multi-million dollar tooling costs. Chevrolet’s VP John Delorean’s light bulb also went on and he saw this same idea as a concept he could use for the car he was secretly planning. (Be sure to read a prior post on the XP-898, “Chevrolet XP-898: Inspiration for two unique designs.”)

I had also been working at the GM Tech Center’s Harrison Wind Tunnel on Chevy designs to lower their drag coefficients. So my next step was to do the same with my three wheel design. It was shaped like a wing, so I was a little afraid that it might try to fly at higher speeds. Also, I needed to find a place to locate a radiator. The first Honda Gold Wing water cooled 4-cylinder touring bike had just been introduced, so that was my engine of choice. I built a much larger 3/8 scale model this time. The guys running the tunnel were excited to run something different and ran it after hours. They even modified the tunnel base to accept a three wheel design. The results were all positive. It didn’t lift, the radiator would cool in the back of the fender, and our Cd was .31—not great, but not bad either.

At this point I made my big life change. After 10 years at GM design, I quit to follow my dream. I got married to Pat, someone who could put up with all of my car nonsense. I bought a duplex with a three-car garage in Costa Mesa, California and even convinced my brother and his wife to come out and help me. With the great help of my brother Lee, we applied almost every step that I had learned in the design process at GM to the three wheeler, that we now called The Phantom. This name must have stuck in my head for years, because later I saw a photo of me at about age 8 with a car I built with buggy wheels that looked like it came from a Little Rascals movie. On the side was painted a lightning bolt and the name Phantom Flash.

Using the 3/8 scale wind tunnel model as a guide, we scaled up full size drawings and made a full size three-dimensional buck to check entry, exit, vision, wheel turn and jounce, engine access, and basic appearance. Next came the buck for the full size clay model. For all these processes we used the identical rail and upright measuring systems used at GM for keeping accuracy from side to side. Costa Mesa was the perfect spot to do this project. There were race car builders, fiberglass shops, upholstery shops and classic car restoration businesses all within a few minutes of our three-car garage shop. It was easy to find people to help us make molds from the clay and cast our first body. This being a prototype, all the foam had to be fit into the body, shaped and then fiber-glassed to form the sandwich body design.

The fabrication included a widened VW suspension with disc brakes added and a 2-inch-thick sandwich steel firewall that separated the passenger compartment from engine, fuel, battery etc. This strong but lightweight wall also served as the roll bar. The steering wheel and instruments lifted up with the canopy top when it is raised. A heavy duty flex cable connected the steering wheel to the rack and pinion steering gear. Another unique feature was the covered headlights. The headlights were fixed in the body pointing straight up. The underside of the lids are mirrors, so when raised to 45 degrees they will project the beam forward. I also wanted skirts on the front wheels, but I also wanted as wide a track as possible. So, I put a Teflon strip inside the skirt bottom and hinges on the top. When the wheels turn, the tire lifts the skirt allowing the tire to turn outside the body width.

A great help came from Rich Straman, a fellow student from IIT (Institute of Design in Chicago). He graciously painted the Phantom Porsche Silver (twice) from his classic car restoration business in Newport Beach.

We first just made the body and painted it with no windows or engine—just a one piece body. This is what we took to the Chicago auto show. In Stage Two we opened the top and put in windows and interior. You could sit in it, but no engine yet. We showed this at the LA Auto show. Finally in Stage Three we put the engine in and all the mechanicals to make it a running vehicle. It still needs a Stage Four to make it more finished in many areas. The new heavy duty disc brakes were part of that. There is a Phantom II in Ann Arbor Michigan. I sold the original mold on eBay when I left New Jersey. Someone made a body and is putting it over a tube frame Chassis.

The paint was barely dry when we were asked to participate in a government test of various three-wheel car designs. They wanted to know if these new lightweight efficient vehicles would be safe to drive on the road. The dynamic driving tests were held at the Edwards Air Force Base in California on the space shuttle landing strip. Against a dozen other cars, we came out on top, with excellent handling, and stability, generating more cornering G-forces than many four-wheel cars.

After showing the car at both Los Angeles and Chicago auto shows, we started to get publicity in a few magazines. This led to a call from an ad agency that wanted to put the Phantom in a Texaco commercial with Bob Hope. The tag line of the commercial was that, “Someday your high-mileage car will be made of lightweight plastics made from oil.” The car was to break out of a giant oil drum, then drive across the desert and next to Bob Hope where the driver would turn out to be a beautiful girl in a silver space suit-like outfit. The catch was, they were worried the girl would drive over Bob Hope, so they wanted me to drive up to Bob. For this I would have to don a blond wig and silver space suit. When the car stopped, we switched places and the beautiful model would open the door. That was my 15 minutes of fame, suited up in drag.

The Jet Fighter design was started after the Phantom, but we realized that we had bitten off more than we could chew. It goes back to the original simple tube frame construction that we should have done in the first place. Had we done that, we might have actually had a little car company. We made a full-size space buck of this model and had a 1/8 scale model. But at this point we were all out of money and I had to find a real job. Subaru.

The Government testing was done by Paul Van Valkenberg. Paul worked for Chevrolet on their racing enterprises, and has written several books on race car suspension and handling. He wanted to test all the possible variations of three-wheel cars, but there were no front drive three-wheelers, so he made one out of a Honda Civic by replacing the back wheels with one in the middle. A real odd duck to see it driving around.

A group of execs left Subaru to try and start another car company based in China. They wanted to do the same thing: import a new car to the U.S. I got the job of designing the car, made up proposals, and got 50,000 shares of the new company for my effort. So what happened? GM bought the Chinese company and took over production. We were left out in the cold.

Today the Phantom is in my Arizona garage waiting for me to finish the restoration necessary to get it back into running condition. Perhaps this time it will be painted a Cadillac Pearl Red.

People who see it today can’t believe that it is almost 40 years old.

Thanks Ron, for graciously supplying photos and the history of this very significant car.

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Stage One photos, 1976

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Hemmings Blog has been posting installments of Michael Lamm’s Auto Biography. His fascinating account of his fixation with the automobile took Michael from Texas, to Portland, to New York and eventually to California. Few examples from the automotive spectrum of the day escaped his gravitational field.

This post features an excerpt, photo, and a link to the full stories found on Hemmings Blog. You’re going to want to collect the entire set.

Chapter One was featured on Dean’s Garage. It told the story of why hot rodding a ’32 Chevy wasn’t the greatest idea.

Chapter Two—Michael’s Favorite Hot Rod

You have to understand that I ran something like an automotive orphanage during those four years, 1950-’54, and while I know this sounds naïve and slightly crazy, my motivation had to do with rescuing cars whose fates were one step away from the wrecking yard. Without me, they would, each and every one, have been parted out and lost forever. So I was saving—or at least trying to save—these cars the way a missionary saves souls. It became something of a crusade. I realized early on that if I didn’t rescue these cars, no one else would. And to save them, I had to own them.

One of my absolute all-time favorite cars was a hot rod I somehow lucked into in 1951, when I was 15. One day it just showed up like a stray puppy: this real, genuine hot rod, not the botched job I’d made of my 1932 Chevy coupe. When I got it, the car consisted of a 1931 Model A roadster body mounted on a 1932 Ford frame. The owner/builder had Z’d the frame just ahead of the rear kickup. Fortunately for me, the car did come with 1940 Ford hydraulic brakes, 1934 Ford 17-inch wire wheels and a 1932 grille shell (but no radiator). The gas tank and battery stood in the trunk. The instrument panel came out of a 1941 Ford pickup, the steering wheel from a 1949 Nash and the veed windshield from a motor-boat.

Chapter Three—Back-row Classic

Whenever my auto buddy J.D. Cole and I drove over to the next town, Harlingen, Texas, we’d always go by Elliff Motors, a used-car lot whose back row recycled a steady stream of older, slightly offbeat makes and models. Mr. Elliff had an interest in scruffy cars, and he occasionally picked up strays that weren’t running but that he felt were too nice to part out. Those he’d park behind the back-row fence, out of sight to casual passersby but not to hardened car lookie-loos like J.D. and me.

One day I happened to be driving past Elliff’s alone. I stopped and walked onto the lot, checked out the back row and then strolled past the fence to revisit a homemade Model A boattail speedster that had been there the last time I’d visited. Sure enough, the speedster was still hunkered down in the weeds, but what caught my eye was a new addition, an apparition that, for an instant, I couldn’t believe I was seeing. Here, also knee deep in weeds, stood this huge, magnificent, extremely graceful sedan with long clamshell fenders and dull black paint and, thanks to the ads I’d razored out of old Fortune magazines, I immediately recognized it as a 1932 Cadillac. And there on the radiator stood this deal-changing emblem that proclaimed V-16!

Chapter Four—A Freebie ’34 Buick 

The Buick intrigued me. It was basically all there and, beneath that mantle of dust, looked good. I asked James whether he thought his dad might want to sell it. James had no idea, but he suggested we ask. So we walked directly from the shed into J.C. Dunn’s private office in the main building. I don’t believe Mr. Dunn had a secretary, but the man himself generously invited James and me to come in, and what impressed me was the size of his office and the fact that it looked so uncluttered and modern, totally unlike the Dunn junkyard and hodgepodge storage sheds.

I came to the point straightaway and asked Mr. Dunn whether he’d consider selling me the Buick. He drew a blank at first, but then he remembered the car, and he drawled, very slowly, “No, I won’t sell it to you, Mike, but I’ll give it to you if you can make it run. I put it in there during the war, and if you can drive the Buick out of that shed, you can have it.”

Chapter Five—’54 Hudson

Then one sunny afternoon in early September 1953, about a week before new-car announcement time, my high-school buddy, Larry Myers, came to me in study hall and told me he’d already seen next year’s Hudson, the 1954 model. “This one really is all new and different,” Larry assured me. Larry was Lloyd Lafond’s nephew, so he had the inside track.

I asked him, “Where’d you see it?” Behind Lloyd Lafond’s house, came the answer, in Lloyd’s private garage. “Okay, let’s go check it out right now,” I pleaded. This was serious, jumping-up-and-down business.

So after school, Larry and I went to Lloyd Lafond’s home, walked around back, and Larry flung open the garage doors. There it stood, this big, blue-and-cream, brand-new sedan, facing inward. My first view was of the rear. So far not so good. The car looked fat and finless. Fins were important in 1954. This new model had wimpy, after-thought fins on a broad-beamed backside, with a Ford-like, squared-off bustle.

Larry and I walked around to the front of the car. Ohmigosh, the front was even uglier than the rear. Hudson had again tried to copy Oldsmobile’s “fishmouth” grille, but this time it lacked any semblance of grace. It looked amateurish. And on each side of the new car, the stainless-steel fender slashes had Ford written all over them. If I hadn’t been such a macho, stoic high-school senior, I would have burst out in tears.

Chapter Six—From Hudsons to Beetles

I loved my Beetle, partly because it was so totally different from anything I’d owned before: air-cooled aluminum engine in the rear, four-speed transaxle, all-independent torsion suspension, quick steering, responsive handling, good gas mileage, and what I really admired was how well it was put together. Build quality was every bit as good as Cadillac’s, this at a time when Cadillac really was the standard of the world. Okay, so the Veedub had only 36 horsepower, but it was so willing and maneuverable that it actually felt peppy. I named my car Gregor Samsa, after the large bug in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (see how literary I’d become?).

Another thing that appealed to me was that the VW radiated the Reedian sort of anti-establishment counterculture. One thing Reed tried to pour into our spongy brains was not to accept the status quo; to question authority and society and to come to our own conclusions—not a bad pursuit even today.

Driving a VW in the late 1950s meant you were countercultural at best and a hippie degenerate at worst, and yet we owners observed a certain etiquette. For example, we’d wave to each other out on the road, a symbolic gesture that acknowledged a fellow counterculturalist. By waving, we were also congratulating ourselves for being, we thought, ahead of the curve – trendy, smart, cool, correct in our choice of automobiles and going a bit against the establishment grain. We were a cult, a self-selected select group, and being part of that group made us feel superior… I think there’s no other word for it.

Chapter Seven—First Dibs

I occasionally tuck my business card under the wiper blade of a car I’d like to buy. On the back of the card, I’ll scribble something like, “When you get ready to sell this car, please give me first dibs. Hang onto this card.”

Over the years, I’ve had three owners respond, one of whom was a little old lady here in Stockton. She’d bought a cranberry-colored 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook convertible new, and she’d taken meticulously good care of it until her nephew challenged a lamp pole at a local mall parking lot.

I’d left my card on her windshield five years earlier, in 1970. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have given a 1953 Plymouth a second thought, but this convertible was so nice. It had the continental kit and just about every other option and accessory available that year, so I thought, What the heck; I’ll leave my card. Can’t hurt.

Nothing for five years, and then one Sunday morning in 1975, she called. “Do you remember that Plymouth convertible you left your card on some years back?” (No.) “Well, you wanted to buy the car back then, and now I’m ready to sell it, but there’s a slight problem. The car hit a lamp pole and crumpled the front end. Would you still be interested?”

Chapter Eight—Chrome Yellow Nash-Healey

My first problem with the Nash-Healey was the lean misfire. The twin Carter YH sidedraft carburetors just didn’t want to accept a lot of gas. So I had to get up as much speed as possible on downgrades and then feather the accelerator on the other side. Traffic behind me wasn’t thrilled.

That’s when I started to smell coolant. The temp needle hadn’t budged, which, to me, meant the gauge wasn’t working. But no matter, the engine was definitely heating up. About halfway between Fairfield and Rio Vista, the engine started to sputter, and then it simply quit. I knew there was plenty of gas in the tank.

I settled onto the shoulder just where Route 113 crosses Highway 12 and sat there for a few minutes, listening. I could hear steam rumbling inside the block, but no hissing. I got out and lifted the hood, and it was like opening an oven. The heat slapped me right in the face.

It was then that I noticed, for the first time, the wooden clothespin attached to the fuel line. That made it obvious that the Nash-Healey had suffered vapor lock before. Why people put clothespins on fuel lines to ward off vapor lock I have no idea, but it’s a common “cure” that’s never worked for me. Nothing to do, but sit with the hood open and wait for things to cool.

Read the rest of the excerpts on Hemmings Blog. Courtesy of Michael Lamm.

Our designer friend and colleague, Elia ‘Russ’ Russinoff, has provided a portfolio of his work to feature on Dean’s Garage, shown on behalf of the Automotive Designers Guild and The League of Retired Automotive Designers, of which Russ is a fellow member.

Included among the 40+ sketches/photos is an image of a gold-colored 3/8ths scale model, called Illusion with the greenhouse sculpturally integrated into the form of the vehicle body, created in celebration of GM’s having worked with Libby-Owens-Ford (LOF) on vehicle glass development for 50 years. The cartoon in the portfolio, by Stan Parker, depicts several designers, modelers, and tech stylists with Russ seated in the vehicle. The illustration showing a dramatic 3/4 rear perspective of a pointy advanced car design demonstrates Russ’s out-of-the-box thinking. The Mead-like rendering of a couple of hovering, wheelless vehicles, was used along with other futuristic renderings by other designers for a presentation by Bill Mitchell on automotive design. Other images shown are from Russ’s work in Advanced Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, and Chevrolet Studios, the Aero Studio, and Advanced Vehicle Concepts Studio.

It’s been my good fortune to have known Russ for over 40 years, and I enjoyed working with him during my early days at GM Styling, in the Advanced Pontiac Studio, where he was a creative inspiration to all of us who worked with him. We’ve remained good friends for all these years, and I can truthfully say that while the years have passed, his enthusiasm, love, and passion for good car design is as sharp as it was back in the late 1960s when we worked together. His concept contributions as one of the founding members of the League of Retired Automotive Designers, at the various venues the League has exhibited its members designs at in recent years are exciting and forward thinking. Russ was also 1st Place Sr. National Winner in the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild Model Car Competition in 1949, and has been active in Guild Events over the years since, including the 2004 Guild Reunion held at GM Design, and the Eyes On Design concours event that year.

Elia (Russ) Russinoff
1955-1995 Asst. Chief Designer, GM Design
1960s Contributed to styling of several production Pontiacs and advanced aero projects
1955 Contributed to styling of Cadillac Town & Country show car
1954 Pratt Institute Graduate
1949 Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild 1st, Nat’l Sr. Award

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The Derelicts

The Derelicts a short film by eGarage from eGarage on Vimeo.

The Pagani Huayra Story

The Inverted Bike Shop

The Inverted Bike Shop from Show Love on Vimeo.

Amongst the multitude of bike shops across Manhattan and Brooklyn, 718 Cyclery (www.718c.com) stands out for their unique approach to the business. This is the “inverted bike shop.”

Created by Show Love (www.showloveworld.com). Contact Peter or Chauncey at showlove@showloveworld.com. Music by The Album Leaf

What’s this all about? Read an earlier post on Dean’s Garage describing the car and stories from the ’70s. The thrill of victory—the agony of defeat.

Mike Parks bought this old C3 Corvette race car. What he bought was the original chassis, two small block racing engines, some spares, and a coupe body that was so bad there was no fiberglass that could be reused.

Race cars have logbooks. And in that logbook was the history of the car, it’s builder, it’s first driver, and all of the owners that came afterward. So Mike Parks, the current owner, was able to track down the driver, Ron Weaver, the builder, Pete Klain, and through Pete, myself, who crewed on the car in the ’70s, but more importantly, created the graphics. Mike, who lives near San Francisco, wanted me to recreate the paint scheme. What a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

Brighton Ranch Paint and Body in Scottsdale, Arizona was recommended by a friend who is the curator of a car collection. In March of 2011 Mike came to Phoenix and met with myself and Jay Lewton, manager of the shop, to discuss the project. In September Mike trailered the car down and left it in my care at Brighton. Jay, by the way, was great to work with and very professional.

Recreating the graphics transported me back 36 years. It had me scratching my head more than once trying to figure out how I did it the first time. Man, this is complicated! But it was a great experience. These kinds of paint schemes aren’t in vogue any longer. I suppose the design is a throwback to graphic styles from the ’70s. The idea behind it is to create shapes on the car that complement and exaggerate the car’s form, lines, and surfaces, suggesting motion and speed.

The Klain Corvette is a very memorable car to many race fans from the period because of the paint scheme. The treatment was unique. One of the reasons it stood out was because no other competitor was foolhardy enough to spend so much effort on body decoration for a car likely as not to be damaged on the race course. But I was a designer at General Motors and thought I knew a thing or two about race car graphics. Pete gave me free reign, so his garage became my studio. This final paint scheme was the fourth version and most together version of the car’s graphics.

There are a lot of photos in the gallery showing the process of recreating the paint scheme, many with captions describing the action. The car came out great. It was never this shiny in 1977!

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Click for a gallery of scanned slides of the Klain Corvette from 1975 through 1978.

The actual top surgery didn’t take long, just an hour or two. I ripped out the headliner, lowered the windows and began torching. I left the windshield header intact but cut through the metal roof section just behind it, door to door, then proceeded around to the pillars, quarter panels and the section below the rear window.

What I hadn’t realized was that Chevys of that day contained an inordinate amount of wood in their body structure, and I kept having to put out little fires as my torch moved through various wooden parts that connected the roof to the main body. And that brought home another big difference between Fords and Chevys of that period: Fords used mostly steel body framing and Chevys (in fact, all GM cars) used wood, which made Chevy bodies considerably weaker than those of Fords.

Well, right after I cut and lifted the top off my 1932 Chevy, I jumped behind the wheel, started the engine, and began backing down the concrete apron in front of Miller’s Garage. As it happened, the car had been parked on the apron at an angle, so when the rear wheels rolled down into the street, I could sense the body torque slightly, and I thought to myself, “Uh-oh, that doesn’t feel good.”

Read the entire post on Hemmings Auto Blog.

“The Brief was simple—a monument to the automotive age in the middle of Las Vegas. Ostentatious? Certainly. Over the top? A must. The project tested the world’s leading visionaries and this is the plan that came out on top.” Published in Top Gear Magazine. Photos in gallery are captioned with the original text. Thanks, Stan.

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