Dean’s Garage » Ted Schroeder

Chevrolet XP-898: Inspiration for two unique designs

Gary Smith — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 05:17:49 +0000

by Ron Will

Thanks to Ron Will for providing an original XP-898 brochure, sketches, and this short account of the XP-898.

It’s been many years, but I will do my best to recollect how the XP-898 came about. It actually started with the “Worlds First All Plastic Car” built in 1967 by the German Bayer Chemical Company. The BMW powered car had no metal chassis, only a foam sandwich frame and body built like a surfboard with a fiberglass outer shell and a fiberglass lower shell. Only the engine and transmission were metal. GM knew about the car because they were working with Bayer to develop the very first RIM (Reaction injection molded) parts for cars. The 1969 Pontiac Trans Am Spoiler was the first part created with the RIM process. New bumper regulations opened up a new chance for Bayer-Mobay RIM foam bumpers with the first appearing on the 1975 Monza.

At the same time Chevrolet Engineering was experimenting with their own foam sports car. Ed Mertz was the Chief engineer and a young 25-year-old Brook Lindbert was the Project engineer. The engine and drive components were from the Chevy Vega. The Vega tail lights were the only visible link to it’s underpinnings. The first notch back roof prototype was more of a testing mule. The car was rough and made mostly for testing purposes, and extra nose pieces were made for crash testing. I was told that the moment the nose hit the crash barrier, the room turned into a snowstorm of rigid urethane foam as it burst into thousands of tiny pieces. The tests were quite successful because the foam completely absorbed the shock of the crash. In such a crash the rest of the car should have no damage and the passenger compartment would stay intact. I was told that it would be possible to saw off just the damaged section and glue on a new part.

Publicity photo of the XP-898

GM Styling was able take advantage of the prototype by building a show car out of it. In Chevy III studio I helped design a new more finished coupe body from the test car. The changes primarily included a more realistic front end, rear end and a new fast back lift-off hard top design. The final model was a basic, clean, simple design that showed well in the car shows. If you look at the prototype, there are no cut lines for the front or rear bumpers. The concept was that as the body was molded, the ends would be soft for the bumpers and then blend into rigid structural urethane further back. Road & Track ran a 6-page article on the car saying it would be good competition for the Datsun 240Z and all 4-cylinder European sports cars.

The project really had no future technologically because the production process would be too slow for a mass producer like GM. Each FRP body shell had to be placed into a heavy mold that was bolted together to sustain the high pressure of the urethane foam injection process. The body would then have to sit for 15 minutes in the mold while it cured. While this was entirely too slow a process for GM, light bulbs went off in two people at GM, John Delorean and myself. John saw this technique as a perfect way to start his new car company. I saw the same idea and stupidly thought I could do the same. John Z left GM to create his Delorean and I left about the same time to create my Turbo Phantom. If you look under the stainless steel skin of the Delorean, you will see the FRP with foam injection used to create crash panels on the side, front and top. His initial idea was to make the car entirely of foam just like the XP-898, but that was changed with the chassis development by Lotus. The Phantom was more true to the XP-898 in that my body and chassis was entirely a foam sandwich design. I think the concept of the foam sandwich car is still viable for a limited production vehicle. The tooling is relatively inexpensive. It is rigid, crashworthy and lightweight, all attributes that we still strive for today.

Ron Will’s Turbo Phantom. One of these days Dean’s Garage will do a post dedicated to Ron’s car.

I don’t know who did the original design for the notch back prototype. The rough prototype car was brought into Chevy III and a platform was set up right in front of my desk. The show car version was mostly a face lift of the prototype. We did the clay work right over the fiberglass model as most of the design was additive. The design was simple and as a show car we had a short deadline. The car was modeled in a matter of weeks and then sent to the shop for completion. The new clay sections were cast in plaster to make fiberglass parts. The new parts were bonded right over the top of the original car. The most complicated part was the new fastback glass hatch. I later worked on the 1978 Corvette glass hatch facelift that was similar but more tapered in the back.

Randy Wittine and John Q. Adams were in the studio at the time, but I think I did most of the work on the car and helped direct the clay model. All of the Monza, Vega and Camaro work was going on at the same time, so everyone was busy and this was an extra job. Jerry Palmer was the chief and the assistant chief was Ted Schoeder. I still have some of the sketches for the 898. Most of the sketches are not full cars but just the details for the modelers to work from. I think the only full drawings of the car were full size airbrush drawings.

John Z. DeLorean’s stainless steel skinned sports car.

XP-898 Brochure

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’73 GTO/Grand AM Development

Gary Smith — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:20:05 +0000

Renderings by Geza Loczi and Charley Gatewood

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Grand AM Development from How Stuff Works

The 1973 Pontiac Grand Am started out in the development stages as a GTO. But the muscle era was drawing to a close and, very much aware of that, Pontiac decided to change the car’s character. Instead of continuing to make the GTO a stoplight drag star, the next iteration was to be more European — more along the lines of a luxury sport sedan. With that in mind, Pontiac designers and engineers examined Mercedes, BMW, Audi, and Volvo as likely targets.

To backtrack a little, the Grand Am concept originated in the Pontiac styling studio. At that time, all Pontiacs were designed in one studio under the direction of William L. (Bill) Porter. Working with him were his assistant, Wayne Vieira, plus senior designers Ted Schroeder, Charley Gatewood, and Geza Loczi. Dennis Barnes was a young modeler in the studio.

Porter, who retired as chief designer for the Buick LeSabre, Park Avenue, and Riviera, recalls that the notion for the 1973 Grand Am’s soft front end evolved from the GTO’s “Endura” bumper/grille, GM’s revolutionary body-color nose, which Pontiac introduced for 1968. Wanting to take that idea one step further, Porter and his staff did some collective brainstorming, while still thinking in terms of the next GTO. As a result of that session, Porter and Gatewood got together to sketch what ended up being the Grand Am front end, with its peaked prow flanked by “catwalk” grilles, plus quad headlights, an integrated bumper, and sharp fender end caps.

One of the givens in the then-GTO program—which subsequently spilled over into the Grand Am—was that the car had to be based on GM’s new 1973 A-body, i.e., Pontiac’s LeMans. Among other things, the GTO/Grand Am would have to use the new LeMans hood, which was already locked up. Because this had a raised center section, the Grand Am prow-nose seemed a natural.

Gatewood worked out the rest of the graphics and, being a superb artist, made a full-size rendering of the front end. Porter hung it on the wall opposite the studio entrance. The idea was to impress GM design vice president William L. (Bill) Mitchell when he next walked in. After all, Mitchell would be instrumental in selling the design and the soft-nose concept to Pontiac management.

Wayne Vieira, who would become chief designer for GM’s Saturn small-car subsidiary, confirms that “Charley Gatewood was the designer who came up with the original front-end sketch. Charley’s a very modest person, and he would tend to say something like, ‘Oh, actually . . . I remembered an old sketch that Ted Schroeder did years ago. All I did was to do Ted’s sketch over again.’ But it was Charley who sold the idea.”

Vieira continues, “And to help sell the design to Bill Mitchell, Charley did this full-size air-brush rendering . . . a white rendering with black grille slots. It really stood out from across the room. In fact, when Bill Mitchell walked in, all he said was, ‘Jeeeeeeezus Christ!’ And we were off and running. He brought people in to see it, and it was really quite exciting. The graphics on the front were so strong and unique compared to what was on the road at the time,” Vieira recalls. “In fact, we all felt that when the car came out for 1973, it had by far the best front end of anything in the industry.”

The technology needed to engineer the Grand Am’s soft front end wasn’t fully developed when the initial soft-nose designs were proposed. But a 174-day strike during 1972 gave GM extra time to make the soft front end feasible. “This was one of our first attempts to do a full plastic front,” Vieira told us. “The technology hadn’t yet caught up, and the car would have been very complicated and expensive to build [with the technology at the concept's beginning]. The division at first felt that they wouldn’t have a competitive, quality car for the price. But now that we had more time to work on it—due to the strike—they told us to take another crack at it, and this started the process of a new design.”

Source: 1973-75 Pontiac Grand Am from How Stuff Works

Mitchell criticized the back end design of the ’73 Pontiac A-bodies after the car came out. “Looks like a Tucker.” That remark combined with dealer criticism that that potential buyers thought the car looked like it lacked trunk room was reason enough to change the deck lid profile of the ’74s.

By the time I got to General Motors Design Staff in March of 1973, they were placing new hires directly into studios instead of through an orientation program like Design Development. I was placed into Advanced Chevrolet. Ron Hill was the Studio Chief, and Geza Loczi the Assistant Chief Designer. Geza must have recently been transferred from Pontiac Two studio where these renderings were done. I was given a three months to get orientated on my own, a daunting prospect. After a three month review I was transferred to Pontiac Two production studio.

More Saved Studio Sketches

Gary Smith — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:00:27 +0000

Chalk and marker rendering by Tom Semple

The day Tom Semple and I nearly did each other in.

I became interested in motocross motorcycles in the ’70s, and rode in the woods with several GM designers and sculptors including Larry Brinker and Bernie Smith. One Saturday several of us met up around Mt. Grampian ski area in Oxford, Michigan. There was a challenging, single-track loop about a half mile long that had hills, banked berms, and woods. Because it made a big loop, you could get to know the course, and each lap became faster than the last one. There were a couple of spots where you could get launched pretty good and get some air. And there were many blind turns. So for safety reasons, it was strictly one way. Tom Semple showed up with his Bultaco. I don’t remember who was going the wrong way, but Tom and I met in mid air, missing each other by inches. That was the day Tom and I nearly killed each other.

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Studio Cartoons

Gary Smith — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:00:26 +0000

To have worked in an environment with so many creative designers was an extraordinary experience. For one reason or another sometimes that creativity needed to vent in the form of cartoons. There were several designers that were very gifted at creating fantastic caricatures. These are the cartoons I have in my file, but I’m sure there are a lot more out there. Send them to me and I’ll make another post.

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Designing an Icon: Creativity and the American Automobile

Gary Smith — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:11:33 +0000

The Designing and Icon Exhibition is being held at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture, University of Houston, Entrance 18, 4200 Elgin Street, Houston, Texas.

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.

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