There are many nice photos of the finished car on Motor Sports Center’s website.

So I drove down to Scottsdale to see an Alfa GTA that was for sale. The man that had the car was selling it for a friend. He took me behind a rather large, impressive shop to where the car was parked along with the remains of several project cars and various other pieces. I decided that the Alfa was too big of a project for me, but in the course of conversation I mentioned that I had worked at GM Design staff. My host asked me if I knew Dave Holls who I had worked for indirectly, since he was a director over several studios.

That seemed to be all the credentials I needed to get a tour of Chuck Rahn’s shop. He had several very interesting car projects going on, and eventually we sat down in his office. There on the wall was a print of a very unusual painting.

In the late ’70s I was assigned to Buick Exterior Production Studio, and sat next to an extremely gifted designer, Gray Counts. He had developed a reputation for exceptional renderings, and Dave Holls asked him to illustrate a design that he had roughly sketched similar to a 1937 Type 57 Bugatti. Bob Shaw, a friend of Dave’s in Florida had a Bugatti chassis and an engine, but no body. So it was decided that Dave would design a body similar to what Jean Bugatti might have done originally utilizing T59 Grand Prix racing wheels and a left hand drive seating position. Dave’s rough sketches ended up on Gray’s drawing table to refine and illustrate. There were very few prints made of that illustration, and I had one framed on my wall.

Dave Holls original rough sketches of the car that Gray Counts used as a guide for his rendering.

Gray Counts’ finished rendering.

Fast forward 30 years later. There was one of Gray Counts’ prints on the wall in Chuck Rahn’s office. I was really surprised to see it, and told Chuck my story. He floored me by telling me that the unfinished car was in his other garage. The car had the start of an aluminum body, but it wasn’t right. The engine was at an engine builder, and chassis and other parts were in his shop. There also had been fabricated a set of unbelievable banjo wire wheels for the car. Cost, apparently, was no object.

The unfinished car stored in Ron’s garage.

Ron Kellogg bought the stalled project. The project being resurrected, Dave Holls paid Chuck Rahn a visit armed with a full-size line drawing of his vision of the car, did some studio arm waving, and left Chuck to figure it all out.

Dave Holls, Bob Shaw (I think), Chuck Rahn, and Ron Kellogg.

I visited Chuck a few times, and I could see he was struggling to interpret what he was seeing in Dave’s sketches and translate that into 3D in the form of a foam model over the chassis. So I offered to help, and Chuck gave me the opportunity to give Ron Kellogg a presentation to try and get involved with the project. I demonstrated what was wrong with the body they had and proposed a practical process to design the body that would lead to a spectacular result. Ron subsequently hired me to come up with the body design based on Dave’s rendering. The problem with Dave’s sketches and rendering is that while they gave a sense of gesture and stance, there wasn’t enough information that would define the forms and shapes, and work out all of the transitions and surface development necessary to complete a car.

Sketches used to convey to Ron what needed to be done to the car to get it right. The side view is showing the differences between the body currently on the car and gesture lines showing that the profile of the car needed to get from the hood to the tail in one curve instead of being fractured by the cockpit.

I got in touch with Larry Brinker who was then Chief Sculptor at Nissan Design International in La Jolla, California. We came up with the strategy that had several stages. First, we leveled the car (without the body) and used a transit to pick hard points on the car and plot them in 3D space using X,Y,Z coordinates. Then I took that information and turned it into a 1/5 scale, four-view surface development drawing with sections and profiles, along with sketches of different ways to handle the transitions and other details. Larry built a 1/5 scale model, and he and I got together several times with the model to go over and refine it. We kept Chuck and Ron in the loop with photos.

The four view, 1/5 scale development drawing that was derived from the points taken from the actual car’s chassis. I created enough profiles and sections to give Larry enough information to build the clay model armature and start the model.

A montage of shots of Larry’s model.

The finished clay model as presented to Ron Kellogg at Nissan Design. Click here to review more photos of the model and presentation.

Ron and Sonya Kellogg with the finished clay model.

The finished model was presented to Ron and Chuck at Nissan Design on a Saturday. Ron approved the design, and the model was sent out to be digitized. The digitized surfaces were then enlarged to full size and a drawing was produced from the information. Chuck Rahn built a stringer buck of the design to give to the body fabricator who made the body from aluminum.

3D wireframes of the digitized surfaces.

Chuck Rahn’s wooden stringer buck used by the fabricator to build the finished body.

Photos of the car being constructed at Andy Palmer’s Palmer Coachworks in Bellflower, California.

The car was eventually finished, and I saw it for the first time at the Great American Roadster Show in Pomona, California in 2006. There are many nice photos of the finished car on Motor Sports Center’s website.

Myself and Larry Brinker at the Great American Roadster Show. The process that Larry and I used to create Ron Kellogg’s Bugatti is adaptable to a variety of projects. Click here to review more photos of the model and presentation.

By way of footnote, according to the Motor Sports Center’s pictorial essay on the car: “The Kellogg project required climbing special challenges. Not the least of which was getting the approval of the Bugatti Trust for permission to go ahead with the program. So the Kellogg Bugatti has a legitmate historical production chassis number. This is no small accomplishment. Assigned the number #128, year 1937.” It’s difficult to imagine what a brand new 1937 Bugatti could possibly be worth. If there is only one, that’s the very definition of rare. It’s a very special car indeed.

Click here to review more photos of the model and presentation.

Performance Design (see The Early History of the Buick Grand National and Performance Design) was created as an assumed name for freelance activities with Herb Fishel and Buick’s promotional efforts in the late ’70s. The 80X was featured in Hot Rod Magazine, October 1979. It was called the 80X because the Skylark was build on the new X-body platform for the 1980 model year.

Keep in mind that in the late ’70s the whole idea of what a performance car was, changed because of federal regulations, corporate downsizing, smaller engines, emission and fuel economy standards. Until computerized fuel injection engine management systems would become mainstream, new car performance was very modest by ’60s standards. Buick was struggling with image and an aging customer base, and needed to try and come up with ways to appeal to a broader market. Performance promotional vehicle creation was part of that strategy. Because these vehicles needed to be real cars that magazines would evaluate, they needed to preform much better than stock. That gave Buick the excuse to develop the unlikely V6 as a performance engine. This engine development produced factory performance parts that saw competition in a variety of racing venues, and eventually did see its way into production as the 3.9 liter turbo in the Buick Grand National and Pontiac Turbo Trans Am, and later in an even-fire configuration as the 3800.

Another thing worth noting is that Buick didn’t have any performance platforms like Chevrolet or Pontiac. So we were trying to make a performance car from an up-scale luxury car with conservative styling. It was no easy trick to take a stiffly sectioned boxy notchback and turn it into a performance car. If success is measured in lasting historical significance, then the 80X and the ’79 Century Roadmaster were not successful. But they were building blocks that helped lead the way out of the fog of the late ’70s.

80X concept sketch.

The modeling on the Buick 80X was done at Diversified Glass Products in Pontiac, Michigan by a group of very talented GM sculptors, mostly from Buick Studio. Larry Brinker acted as chief modeler. Other talented sculptors that helped on the project were Al Holgerson, Ted Klein, Dan Curtis, Dave Curtis, and Claudio Bertolini. If I’ve left anybody out, please let me know. We would meet at Diversified and work in the evenings and on Saturday. It was not the best of environments to work in, as it was a working (read: dusty) fiberglass fabrication shop during the day.

This is how these things start. Pretty scary and hard on the sheet metal.

Larry Brinker working on the front fender flare.

Models always go through ugly stages that tests the designer’s convictions. This car was no exception.

The sculptors were the best anywhere.

The hood blister came out nice. I felt free to break away from the stiff sections of the car and create a more organic form.

The finished model.

Two-page spread as it appeared in Hot Rod magazine, October 1979.

Publicity shots of the 80X.

Considering that these add-on panels were going to be offered to the pubic, I thought about ways to make the panels easier to install. I came up with the idea of attaching them with a C-shaped rubber molding with rivets instead of a lot of extensive and expensive body work. The C-shaped molding slipped over the flange designed into the body panels The lower leg of the molding went under the flange, and the upper leg of the molding covered the rivets that held the panels in place. The molding also added a visual, graphic element to the panel design. The idea was that the installation would be easier and far less expensive than traditional panel installation methods. I learned later that the shop that installed the panels and finished the car had a difficult time getting it perfect. Oh, well.

I imagine these are rare parts. Like none, maybe.

Buick, Olds, Chevrolet, and Pontiac studios competed for designs for the 1979 GM A-bodies. There were two coupe and two sedan uppers to be shared, a notchback and a fastback. Since Buick and Olds traditionally catered to more traditional buyers, it would be appropriate for those divisions to have the notchbacks. But there was a great deal of competition, and in the end Buick and Olds got the fastback designs they wanted. Even though Herb Fishel tried to put a positive spin on the fastback Century by calling it the ’40 Ford of the eighties, the truth of the matter was that they didn’t sell well.

The first major promotional car I worked on for Buick as an outside designer under the name of Performance Design (see The Early History of the Buick Grand National and Performance Design) was a ’70 Century coupe. It was called the Roadmaster in Hot Rod Magazine and the build up was featured in several issues in 1979.

I can’t find the original concept sketches. When I do I’ll add them to this post. The modeling was done at Diversified Glass Products in Pontiac, Michigan by a group of GM sculptors, mostly from Buick Studio. Larry Brinker acted as chief modeler. Other talented sculptors that helped on the project were Al Holgerson, Ted Klein, Dan Curtis, Dave Curtis, and Claudio Bertolini. If I’ve left anybody out, please let me know. We would meet at Diversified and work in the evenings and on Saturday. It was not the best of environments to work in, as it was a working fiberglass fabrication shop during the day.
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Larry Brinker starting the model.



Al Holgerson is working at the back of the model.

Dan Curtis and Larry Brinker.

The hood, front end, front air dam, and front fenders replaced factory parts. The fender styling was a unique in that we stretched the fender forms to meet the wheel well openings with conical surfacing instead of letting normal surface be interrupted by added flare forms. The hood bulge likewise was a raised, stretch surface. The sections of the new panels was lean and shear like the production car.

Fiberglass panels installed on the car.

The paint scheme was way overdone with too many stripes, but that was the trend in those days. Moly Designs in California painted the car. I can’t remember if the graphic design came from me or not.

Herb had Smokey Yunick build a 355 HP V6 for the car, and as a publicity stunt the car was taken to the Riverside International Raceway in January to have Cale Yarborough drive the car during a Winston Cup practice session. The entire spectacle was featured in the build-up finale in Hot Rod Magazine, April 1978.

From left to right, Herb Fishel, John Thawley, Smokey Yunick, and C.J.Baker.

From Hot Rod Magazine, April 1978.

The body kit was available from Diversified Glass Products. I wonder how many they sold.

On a tragic note, I recently learned that John Dianna’s son was killed in that car. John was editor of Hot Rod Magazine at the time.