According to Automotive News, January 4, 1988, GM’s ‘Image’ Cars (Buick Sceptre/Lucerne, Pontiac Banshee, Chevrolet Venture, SRV-1, GMC Centaur, and Cadillac Voyage) were to be featured at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (like the Motoramas of old) in a show entitled, “GM Teamwork and Technology for Today and Tomorrow.” In the Automotive News article (you can download the entire article in PDF format here or at the bottom of this post), this show was intended to polish a badly tarnished image and silence criticism of the corporation. These image cars became Chuck Jordan’s number one priority when he became Vice-president on October 1, 1986. The article is an interesting read with quotes from Chuck Jordan, Design Staff VP; Lloyd Reuss, executive VP of North American car operations; Phil Garcia, chief designer of Advanced Studio 1 (Buick Lucerne); Allen Young, chief designer of Advanced Studio 4 (Cadillac Voyage); Don Lasky, chief designer of Chevy 1 studio and designer Bob Munson (Chevrolet Venture); Dave North, chief designer of Olds 2 studio (Olds Aerotech); Jim Brinkerhoff, interior designer of the Centuar; and Clark Lincoln, chief designer of Advanced 2 Studio (SRV-1).

The automotive industry is in a mess right now for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is decades of government intervention. But corporate thinking was also often part of the reason why things are like they are now. This article in Automotive News sheds some light on what the thinking was like in the ’80s. Sometimes you have to break some rules to come up with something new. But sometimes something even newer can emerge from staying within the rules and solving old problems in more creative ways. That’s tougher, though.

Pontiac Banshee

The Banshee is a futuristic Trans Am. “The Trans Am is the personification of what a Pontiac is. The car exhibits Pontiac’s requirements of being exciting and performance-oriented through aggressive use of materials and shapes,” stated Chuck Jordan. Again glass is used as sheet metal. Tom Peters designed the Banshee.

I’m probably going to get into trouble here. The Banshee and SRV1 influenced the ’92 Camaro/Firebird designs. That helps explain why the production cars looked the way they did and why perhaps they weren’t as successful in the marketplace as they could have been. The SRV1 was essentially a mid-engine design, and the Banshee was a three-dimensional sketch with no visual clues as to where the engine might be. With the base of the windshield so far forward, it also looked like a mid-engine car. The ’92 F-cars had a similar “cab-forward,” mid-engine look about them. I have no issue with mid-engine designs. But the familiar and popular F-car package consists of a front engined, rear wheel drive package with a long dash to axle, long hood, short deck, and 2+2 seating. They are wheel oriented cars with great stance. In the ’60s they developed a racing heritage in SCCA’s Trans Am series. That’s the car. Always has been. An appropriate design for an F-car will reinforce the architecture for all it’s worth. But the ’92 F-cars had the center of the windshield over the center of the engine! Why force a mid-engine design to work on a front engine car? Don’t get me wrong. A 4th generation Camaro SS will still turn my head, but there is something fundamentally dishonest about the design. And they are a pain to work on with the back half of the motor under the windshield structure. In contrast, Mustangs in those years still looked like Pony cars.

SRV1 (Stealth)

According to Automotive News, the SRV-1 loosely represented Group Lotus. Clark Lincoln, chief designer of Advanced Studio 2, said that it was known internally as the Stealth and designed to be the ultimate advanced two-seater sports vehicle. The car was proposed to have all sorts of electronic gadgetry, including sticks to steer the car, doubling as a shifters (somehow). Communications systems, voice-activated controls, heads-up display, and night vision. Whew. I’m missing the last page of the article so there might be more, I don’t know. The car is a really beautifully executed styling exercise, and influenced the design of the ’92 Camaro. Let’s just let it go at that. I do remember a fiberglass scale model of the car on display in the production studio hallway for quite a while. Like somehow it was supposed to inspire new frontiers in taillight bezel design. Nonetheless it was a gorgeous sculpture.

Buick Wildcat

The Wildcat brochure (you can download the PDF here or at the bottom of the post) explains the features of this running car. It is interesting that even with all of the valve train and fuel delivery sophistication, the DOHC 3.8 litre V-6 developed a modest 230 horsepower and 245 lbs. ft. of torque at 4,000 RPM. Just a few years later the pushrod Buick Turbo V-6 installed in the Grand Nationals and 1989 Pontiac Turbo Trans Am would put out closer to 300 horsepower and 340 lbs. ft. of torque at a stump pulling 2800 RPM. The drive train of the Wildcat was interesting. All wheel drive with the transmission in front of the engine. I don’t remember ever seeing the car at GM or anywhere else.

Oldsmobile Aerotech

The Oldsmobile Aerotechs were a series of experimental high-speed vehicles created between 1987 and 1992 incorporating the latest in performance technology with the intention of breaking multiple automobile speed records. The first such car was driven by four-time Indy 500 winner A.J. Foyt to a world closed-course speed record of 257.123 mph (413.788 km/h) on 27 August 1987 at the 7.712-mile (12.411 km) test track near Fort Stockton Texas. Prior to this, on 26 August 1987, the car had posted a top speed over a mile of 267.88 mph (431.10 km/h). The car consisted of a March Indycar single seat chassis enclosed in an extremely efficient aerodynamic body shell. It was powered by a highly turbo-charged version of the 2-litre Oldsmobile Quad 4 engine. The Aerotech body was designed by GM Design staff and was one of the sleekest vehicles ever developed for use on a high speed track. The design of the Aerotech included the capability of adjusting underbody sections to control the distribution of downforce, front to rear. Oldsmobile produced three versions of the original Aerotech to prove the capabilities of the company’s Quad4 engine. Two were short-tailed (ST) versions and one was long-tailed (LT).

Subsequently, between December 6–14, 1992, another version of the Aerotech, this time powered by a 4.0 litre Oldsmobile Aurora V8 engine and fitted with lights, broke 47 speed endurance records including the 10,000 and 25,000 kilometre world speed records. Other national and international speed records ranging from 10 kilometres to 24 hours were accomplished by a team of drivers working 24 hours a day for 8 days. These records were also set at the Fort Stockton test track.

I was in Olds 2 Studio when the project was started, and saw it being tested at the wind tunnel.

According to Dave North, “The premise of the Aerotech was an engineering project more than a design exercise. Form followed function more than usual because the car had an assignment…to run as fast as we could.” Dave continued, “We have a car in the studio now…it is a replacement for a production car for the 1990s. You can see some of the Aerotech in it…the areo influence and the smooth, integrated shape—one shape being the whole design of the car, not with pieces tacked on.” I was in the studio at the time, or had just been transferred to Cadillac. The only car I think of that fits his description is the 1992 Olds Achieva SCX Coupe.

Olds Aerotech Video

Video of the 1987 Olds Aerotech concept car driven by racing legend A.J. Foyt at the Fort Stockton Test Center in Texas. Turn your sound off. The background music is awful. But the video is interesting. Ed Welburn is in the tape.

Aero 2002 (Epcot Car)

Gray Counts designed the Epcot Car, so named because it was created for GM’s Epcot display at Disney World in Florida. In the gallery there is a magazine ad that featured the car and the words, “We’re the best GM ever.” The Epcot car, called the Aero 2002 in the ad, was an experiment in low drag aerodynamics. Quite a departure from the Bill Mitchell days.

Cadillac Voyage

The Voyage was originally envisioned as a future Seville, and designed to take the division a step beyond where it is now. Originally designed to have a V-12, the car appeared at the New York show with a V-8. “It’s a question with Cadillac: Is it time to leave all the past behind and join the world? Cadillac has a wonderful heritage but the Voyage was designed to put it into a worldwide arena. We weren’t just doing it for someone in Kansas. This isn’t the mainstay. This is the lead car,” said Jordan. So how do you differentiate the lead car and put the car in a worldwide arena? Glass. Allen Young, Chief Designer of Advanced Studio 4, states,”One of the main design features of the voyage is the use of glass which covers the top of the car. We did things the glass companies didn’t think they could do in the past. We treated the glass more like sheet metal. The use of glass says that Cadillac is a more expensive car and that there are things we can do with glass that Oldsmobile and Buick can’t do.” Apparently Mercedes and BMW thought differently.

GMC Centaur

The Centaur is a mid-engine truck concept with room for five plus a traditional bed in the back. According to Jim Brinkerhoff, the interior designer for the Centaur, the interior design has large buttons and switches making them easily accessible so the driver doesn’t have to take his eyes off the road. This is before cell phones and text messaging. I read once that some state was banning the use of cell phone use in cars. Drivers asked what they were supposed to do with their extra hand.

Lean Machine

The Lean Machine is not in the Automotive News feature article, but is a very significant vehicle nonetheless and needs to be mentioned. It was a great idea that perhaps wasn’t a product for General Motors directly, but GM possibly should have done something with it. The concept has been successfully copied by several companies. Included in the post are two PDFs that can be downloaded either here or at the bottom of the post. One is an Epcot brochure, and the other an article from Road & Track magazine.

Buick Lucerne

First called Riviera, the Lucerne was an attempt to capture the essence of Buick. Jordan stated in the Automotive News article, “The image words for Buick are substantial, massive, substance, graceful, muscular grace. But that doesn’t mean Buick’s got to be a big lump. Buick in its heyday had substance and power, but it had flair, and Buick is going to have flair.” What is flair? Not sure, but that would be the challenge for the designer at the artboard. See if you can come up with something that is recognizable as flare to those that are responsible for defining the term. There are more photos of the Buick Lucerne in the post entitled, “GM Design Photos from the early ’90s, Part 3.”

Chevrolet Venture

The Venture was smaller than the Caprice but larger than the Celebrity and fit in with the division’s mission of being entry level but providing more than the customer expects. “The other part of our mission statement is to make sure we don’t do any boring cars, that whatever we do is exciting and youthful,” said Don Lasky, chief designer of Chevy 1 Studio. “The Venture embodies that new spirit of exciting, youthful design.” Complete with removable glass roof. You know, there needed to be more communication between engineering and design. Air conditioning engineers were planning to make A/C compressors smaller. Those big 40-pound A/C compressors installed in ’66 Buicks were going away along with the R-12 refrigerant that made them work so well. All of that glass looks great, but what we really needed was less glass and thicker roofs with more insulation to compensate for the deteriorating A/C performance. I live near Phoenix, Arizona so that may influence my thinking.

Photo Gallery

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Acrobat brochure files

Click on a cover to download the PDF file.

That’s Gray Counts. Be sure to review his gallery of fine art on Dean’s Garage.

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I ended up with a box of slides from a major Buick-Oldsmobile show previewing the 1977 Buick and Oldsmobile models. The show included Riveria and Toronado models that never saw the light of day. Also in the gallery are shots of Olds and Buick J-coupes that were never produced. The show probably took place in 1975. In the background on the above image above the deck lid to the left of the door is a Gray Counts rendering.

Click on any thumbnail to open the gallery of images.

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Someone in the studio was usually responsible enough to throw out any left over coffee and to shut off the coffee maker at quitting time. What was left in the bottom of the pot was pretty manly. For some reason he’d holler out, “Anybody want the rest of this coffee?” From somewhere in the studio you’d hear, “I’ll take it.” That would be Gray. He’d walk out to the car with a styrofoam cup in his hand with this stinky black stuff in it. Somehow the styrofoam cup could resist the corrosive nature of its contents. Gray spent several years in the Navy and I always assumed he had learned to tolerate anything that remotely resembled coffee.

Gray developed a reputation for his renderings and was often asked to create artwork for some special project. He painted a rendering of the Dave Holl’s Bugatti design that is the subject of the post entitled, Ron Kellogg’s Bugatti Type 57/59 Roadster Special.

A Gallery of Gray’s Paintings

Gray has Giclée prints available of his artwork. Please contact Gray Counts by email or phone (248-620-2693) to order a print.

1928 Packard Dual Cowl Phaeton, oil on canvas


1929 Auburn, oil on canvas

1956 Mercedes 500SL Gullwing, oil on canvas

1931 Rolls Royce, oil on canvas; 1932 Glaser Right Hand Drive Cadiallac, acrylic on masonite

1933 Lincoln, oil on canvas

1937 Cord 810 Speedster, watercolor

1930s Marschal Headlamp, and 1929 Bentley, acrylic on masonite

1939 Ford Model A, oil in canvas

1929 Weyman Bodied Bentley, acrylic on masonite

1937 540 with 1928 SSK Mercedes, and 1932 Murphy bodied Lincoln, acrylic on masonite

1928 Packard, acrylic on masonite

1912 Stutz, acrylic on masonite

1930 Packard Sedan, oil in canvas

1932 Lincoln, acrylic on masonite

1931 Cadillac with Ferrari P4, and Bugatti Royale, acrylic on masonite

Gray’s rendering of Dave Holls’ Bugatti design. See the post about how the car finally got finished.

Gray has Giclée prints available of his artwork. Please contact Gray Counts by email or phone (248-620-2693) to order a print.

Gray’s Biography

Gray’s work shows a great fascination for the reflection of light on glass and metal as well as an appreciation for the automobile as an object of beauty and rolling sculpture. His award-winning work resides in private collections all over the country.

Gray has been married to Kay for nearly 40 years and is the father of 3 grown daughters and grandfather of 5 lively grandsons. He was born in a rural area of Virginia where he lived for 4 years before his parents moved the family to Michigan during WWII. Gray with his wife Kay live in a log home in Davisburg, Michigan, about half way between Detroit and Flint.

Gray has loved all things mechanical and has been blessed by God with the ability to draw and paint. These two compatible things have motivated him from youth to draw and paint anything that flies, hums, runs or floats. With those interests and that background, Gray decided to study engineering. After a few years of study, the desire to draw and design as well as paint were too strong to resist so he transferred into the field of industrial design, and graduated with a BFA degree.

After a 5 years stint in Uncle Sam’s Navy, Gray attended the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles to pursue further study in the field of Automotive Design. Gray is now retired from General Motors Design Staff where he worked as a Senior Creative Designer.

Several decades ago when I was a young designer at GM, I bought a few acres in Hooterville—I mean Ortonville—Michigan. Owning vast acreage (four) means that there will be weeds to cut and snow to blow. So I anted up and bought a new 16-hp Ariens tractor with a 48-inch mower deck with matching 48-inch, 2-stage snow blower. If the snow was right, it’d arc that white stuff 40 feet in the air. About the same time, my friend Gray Counts decides he needs a tractor for weed whacking and snow clearing on his acreage down near Clarkston. Gray bought a real tractor for his spread—he bought a 1948 Ford 8N. 

I thought I was pretty smart buying a new tractor. But it slowly started to sink in that I had a fold and staple tinfoil tractor. In ten years mine would be scrap and be worth nada and Gray’s would probably be appreciating. Gray had a real tractor. There is a difference. (Right: Gray and his 8N he’s restoring—nearly 30 years later.)


If the snow was right, it’d arc that white stuff 40 feet in the air.

Years go by and I move to Arizona. Acerage out here changes by the minute. One morning you spot a lizard taking a break under the shade of a cactus. The next morning there is a bulldozer where the cactus and the lizard were. Espresso bars and malls sprout quicker than wildflowers. No snow, but weeds sprout in the spring, and my dirt road is always a mess. So I decided to look for a tractor. A real tractor.

There was this guy down in Phoenix who had old Ford tractors for sale. He catered to unsuspecting city folk like me who were willing to take chances. A buddy of his bought them at auctions in the southeast and hauled them to Phoenix where they were “detailed.” That meant they were power washed. I sat on a few, started them up, drove them around a bit. Figuring that there was no way to know their real condition, I bought the best looking one of the bunch, a ’41 Ford 9N. Kinda like buying a horse by looking at his teeth, I suppose. It had a 3-speed transmission, but it also had a 2-speed rear end which was cool if you wanted to get somewhere fast. With this tractor I would be the one going nowhere fast.

My 1941 Ford 9N. Pretty sad. We named it Harold.

By the way, Ford named tractor models thus: The 9N came out in 1939, the 2N came out in 1942, and the 8N came out in 1948. The NAA Jubilee (named after Ford’s 50-year anniversary) came out in 1953 replacing the 8N and were made for two years.

After a while several issues about my 9N began to emerge. For one thing, the Phoenix heat exposed weaknesses in the hydraulic system. At first the hydraulics would lift my scraper or dirt tote OK until the fluid got warm. Phoenix is all about warm. Between the heat and what use I gave it the hydraulics just got weaker. “Maybe it’s the hydraulic fluid,” I thought.  So I drained the old stuff out. It was the color of coffee with too much cream. Water in the hydraulics is bad, but the new stuff without the water didn’t seem to make any difference.

When I went to refill the hydraulic system, I removed the filler plug next to the shifter on a cast cover. This casting is in two parts. The bottom half covers the top of the transmission and cradles the steering shafts to coming out of each side. The top half covers the steering gears. This is important. We’ll come back to this.

I took off the plug to fill the hydraulic system. I looked down into the abyss and see… burlap.

Burlap? A little digging with a pair of extra long needle nosed pliers rewarded me with a piece of burlap about 18-inches square. I had a bad feeling about this. That burlap wasn’t put in at the factory and didn’t get there on its own. There had to be a reason it was there. I had a suspicion that I would regret finding out why.

I forgot to mention that the steering was pretty sloppy and getting worse.

After I removed the grain sack or whatever it was, I filled it with new hydraulic fluid and started the tractor. It was then that I discovered that there were cracks in the cover. Fluid was now seeping out and making a real mess. I had to do something. 

The casting is in two parts. It covers the top of the transmission, allows for the steering shafts to come out of each side, and also covers the top part of the steering box.

So I took the cast cover off. Now this is the same cover that also covers the steering gears, remember? Steering shafts come out of each side of the cover supported by bearings. There would be a bearing half in the lower case casting, and another in the upper casting cover along with a rope seal. So I removed a bearing half from the top half, and another from the bottom. Then I removed another one from the bottom. From each side.

Do you remember the Bob Newhart show? “Hi. I’m Larry, and this is my brother Daryl, and this is my other brother Daryl.“ Well there were three half bearings per side. That’s two too many. Some owner up the line shimmed the worn out steering shafts with an extra bearing half to take out the play. Too much play and the steering sector gears would no longer engage and the front wheels would no longer cooperate with each other. The cover was not designed for the extra bearing thickness. As a result the cover cracked when it was tightened down.

The burlap was there to keep oil from splashing up against the cracked cover and leaking all over the place. While the burlap was an effective solution to prevent fluid from seeping through the cracks in the cover, it had an undesirable consequence. It was also very effective at preventing oil from lubricating the steering sector gears that relied on lubrication splashed up from the transmission. This had the look of a short term fix. I think maybe they saw me coming.

I replaced the steering sector gears and shafts, and had the cover welded up. But it still leaked. The fact of the matter was the whole thing was just plain worn out. It didn’t need to be restored. It needed to be replaced. In the words of a good friend of mine, “I know enough that when I can’t fix something to throw it overboard and order a new part.”

The engine ran pretty good. The reason was the thick substance in the crankcase. Of course, I stupidly changed the oil and then it started to smoke. Had I still lived in Michigan, it would have been very effective at keeping mosquitos away. But that’s another story.

I eventually sold the 9N, but a few years later had to have another tractor. I bought a ’53 Jubilee from the owner in Union, Nebraska who had it 23 years. It’s not perfect, but it’s not worn out. And in ten years I’ll still have something. If I would have bought a fold and staple tinfoil garden tractor from Home Depot, in ten years it would just be so much scrap. If it lasted that long.

Most people when they find out I have a tractor look at me funny. They always ask why on earth would I want a tractor and what do I do with it? “What, do you have 100 acres?” I don’t waste my time with them. First off, it’s just a really cool piece of machinery. My property is groomed, and I can pop a large staghorn cholla out of the ground like it was nothing. You can’t get close enough to one of those nasty cacti to get it out by hand without getting stuck.

By Gary D. Smith. Story edited by John Thawley. Thanks, coach.

The Jubilee is a modern tractor with its overhead valve engine! And it has a really cool hood.