1970-71 F-body Concept—Advanced Pontiac Studio

by Gary Smith Posted on January 19, 2012
Advanced Pontiac’s 2nd Generation Firebird facelift proposal.

By John Mellberg

I’ve had these photos filed in a brown envelope since leaving GM Styling in 1972. The car in the photos was a Firebird that was underway when I was assigned to the Advanced Pontiac Studio, initially working for Gordy Brown, Studio Chief Designer, and then, when management decided to shuffle the Chiefs around—Jerry Hirshberg became the Studio Chief Designer for Advanced Pontiac and Gordy Brown took over Advanced Buick Studio. It was a great learning experience working with both of these talented design leaders and the Advanced Pontiac team members. We had a lot of creative fun working together, while learning from one another in the process.
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Posted in Car Design, GM Design Staff, John Mellberg, Kip Wasenko | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Chrysler Streamliner Mystery Solved?

by Gary Smith Posted on January 8, 2012

by Michael Lamm

Was this Chrysler model the inspiration for the Falcon in the 1936 movie, Speed?

Back in the early 1970s, I edited and co-owned a magazine called Special-Interest Autos. My partners were the principals of Hemmings Motor News.

As SIA editor, I regularly flew from California to Detroit to research articles and gather photos for future issues. In doing that, I’d typically drop by as many Detroit research facilities as time allowed. They usually included three or four libraries at General Motors (GM had 37 active libraries at the time), the Henry Ford Museum archives, the auto history collection of the Detroit Public Library, the AMA library and the Chrysler archives.

In those days, Detroit’s research facilities were open to just about anyone, and visitors were free to roam and browse at will. I could choose photos, and the car companies would nearly always make dupes for free and mail them to my office—very different from today.
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Posted in Chrysler Design, Really Old Stuff, Stories | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Cyclops Railcars

by Gary Smith Posted on December 13, 2011

Printed in Road & Track, November, 1985. Courtesy of Stan Mott.

Speed, power, cool artwork—what's not to like?

“I am not at liberty to say how fast the rail car was moving when it vaporized the station. But suffice it to say more rational bureaucrats approved the machine for production and service providing none would be driven past railway stations faster than 89 km/h (55 mph). Martini agreed, unless, of course, they were behind schedule. As a result, no Cyclops railcar has ever been run on schedule.”

Relive Cyclops Railcars in PDF format. Thanks very much, Stan.

Gallery of artwork from Cyclops Railcars

Posted in Cartoons, Stan Mott, Stan Mott | Tagged | 2 Comments