I vaguely remember seeing a full-size fiberglass model of a Mitchell design with four distinct fender forms that was nicknamed the “four-fendered farkle” by its detractors. I don’t remember if this was it or not. I have been told there were several such designs proposed. There was another full-size Mitchell design model (that may have been designed by Hank Cramer) called the “Phantom.” If memory serves me correctly, Mitchell wanted to make it into a running car for his retirement, but corporate said no.

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Exterior of GM Styling Staff at the General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan.

Clockwise from the top left: Stairs in the Administration Building. The main entrance lobby can be seen on the ground floor. The upstairs on this end of the building had a gallery area at the top of the stairs. The Administration Building cafeteria is to the right, and to the left were several executive offices. Bill Mitchell’s office suite was at the end of the hallway. Other photos: Color Room, Styling Auditorium, and a night shot of Styling with the Styling Auditorium dome in the background.

Introduction by William L. Mitchell

Clockwise from the top left: Cadillac Studio (Wayne Kady is seated on the right). Fridgidare Studio, dummy in seating study fixture, Cadillac scale model, Chevrolet Studio working on the Monza GT (Bernie Smith on the right), an interior studio shot (center).

Brief description of the different departments at Styling.

Clockwise from the top left: Full size ’66 Toronado airbrush rendering, Dave North sketching with a Tornado production model in the background, Tech Stylist working on Tornado packaging, design review of a GM showcar (Bernie Smith second from left, and Bill Mitchell is in the center), full size production clay model of the ’66 Toronado.

Description of the design process.

Back cover. Mitchell’s Corvette Mako Shark II show car.

1979 Buick Road Hawk

Buick got a bit carried away with the idea that graphics were the key that would remake their image. For example, consider the Road Hawk. It had a “Free Spirit” hawk on each wheel center, one on each side of the car, one on the hood and another on the deck, one on each B-pillar molding, one in the center of the steering wheel, one embroidered on each seat, one in the center of the grill, and finally one on the emblem in the center of the rear end panel between the taillights. That’s 17 too many. Not only that, but there was a quarter panel overlay that extended and wrapped over the hatch to form a deck wing, and a special front spoiler. All topped with two-tone graphics. You have to understand that the studio really couldn’t take the car seriously. The Skyhawk was really a Chevy Monza with Buick badging, and our task was to make it look like a Buick. A sporty appearance was all that could be hoped for. At the time the typical Buick buyer was an aging market and Buick was hopeful that cars like the Skyhawk would help lure younger buyers into showrooms. By the way, the H-body had a really big transmission tunnel that took up a lot of room in the interior. The reason? The H-body platform was designed around GM’s rotary Wankel engine that was eventually scrapped, but not until it was too late to change the structure of the H-body.

That reminds me of another story. We were working on the new downsized E-body, the Riviera. That is a very important car to GM, as it is a money-maker. Oldsmobile was developing the Toronado, and Cadillac the Eldorado, all sharing the same platform. It was getting late in the program, and the doors were already released. It dawned on GM management that the new E-bodies were not very dimensionally different from the new N-bodies that were also being completely redesigned. They even looked similar. Problem is, they cost way less. So it was decided to make them wider to make them different looking from the cheaper car line, and to accommodate Cadillac who decided that they wanted to be able to have a V-8. Buick and Olds both would use Buick’s 3800 V-6. We literally added 100mm right down the center of the car. My memory is a bit fuzzy on this; we may have widened it twice for a total of about 100mm. The first time to make them look different, and the second time so Cadillac could stuff a V-8 into the thing. The problem with adding 100mm right down the center is that the doors were already designed and released, so they couldn’t be changed. It’s OK to make a car wider, but the tumblehome (front view inward slope of the side glass) needs to be increased so the roof doesn’t look too wide. Well, they couldn’t change the tumblehome, so the cars went into production with a really wide roof. Too wide.

1986 Buick Riveria

I worked on four Indy Pace car paint schemes, all Buicks. The first one was a 1975 Buick Century with the last year of the old couple A-body design. I don’t remember anyone dictating or suggesting the flag graphics on the body side. The body design itself seemed to suggest to me a waving flag, so that’s what I proposed. Studio management bought the idea from the first sketch (probably to get the project over with as soon as possible). The country was anticipating the 1976 bi-centenial, so the paint scheme was in anticipation of all things patriotic. 

Original proposal for the 1975 Buick Century Indy Pace Car

Buick’s buyer demographics was the aging car buyer, and “Free Spirit” was a marketing term attempting to capture more youthful image. I don’t remember where the Hawk silhouette came from. I do remember having a battle over the orientation of the “Free Spirit” hawk graphic. Whenever the graphics was attached to a car, designers were laying the hawk back on it’s tail. I insisted that it be vertical, like the old Richfield emblem. I must have gotten my way.

The 1975 Buick Century Pace Car had a 7.5 litre (455cid) V-8 and was anything but stock. There was really nothing very performance oriented in the Buick production lineup by 1975. The replicas had 350s, GR70x15 radials, and heavy-duty suspension. They shared the same graphics with the real pace cars. I believe that the 1975 Buick pace cars may have been the first to be retrofitted with removable roof panels, or a T-tops. They first appeared on the 1968 Corvette.

1975 Buick Century Pace Car Publicity Photo

Me posing in front of a replica at a Buick dealer in 1975. It’s not that I thought it was such a great design, but I had only been at GM two years.

1975 Buick Century Pace Car on a billboard somewhere in Detroit.

1976 Buick Century Pace Car Graphics

The 1976 Buick Century Pace Car had more extensive styling and mechanical modifications. One thing to note is that the real pace cars and the replicas differed graphically. The replicas didn’t have the front air dam or the blistered hood. The replicas did have the originally proposed side scheme that started at the front of the doors. The idea was to have the shapes coming from the hawk like an abstract stop motion photos of flight. Bill Mitchell made me extend the graphics to the front of the car in front of the hawk for reasons unknown. His change didn’t make it into production. My guess is that it was cheaper to make. I think the shorter graphics look a great deal better.

A bit of trivia. Buick lettering at the time looks like all capital letters, but in fact the “U” is in lower case with the stroke to the right side enlarged to go with the other letters.

1976 Buick Century Pace Car replica with the short graphics

1976 Buick Century Pace Car on the cover of Motor Trend. Photo shows the full graphics that were on the actual pace cars. That car looks pretty good blurry.

The front and rear air dams and the hood blister were modeled in the studio. This photo of the 1976 Buick Century Pace Car model photographed in the Design Staff Styling Auditorium shows the hood blister and front air dam.

Why did the 1976 Buick Century Pace Car have a turbocharged V6?

The ’76 pace car had a turbocharged 231 CID V6, almost half the size of the 455 in the ’75 car. It developed around 306 hp. Why did Buick use a V6, and how did Buick get involved with turbocharging? Everything was downsizing in the ’70s, and Buick needed a smaller engine. Instead of developing a small V8, they bought back the V6 that was developed in the early 60s from American Motors where the V6 had found a home in various Jeeps. They reinstalled the tooling for the engine in the original room where it all started. According to Mike Knepper, Motor Trend June 1976, the turbocharging program came along by accident. During the same time that the ’76 Indy Pace Car program began development, an Explorer Scout post sponsored by Bucik decided to try turbocharging the “new” V6 engine as its latest project. One Buick engineer who had been volunteering his time to help the Scouts mentioned the project to another engineer working on the pace car project. According to Mike, “You can fill in the rest of the story, from ‘Impossible,’ to ‘Let’s try it,’ to ‘It works.’” The output of the engine tripled from the stock V6 thanks to 20–22 psi of boost.

Glen Stringfield’s 1976 Buick Century Pace Car purchased from the original owners in Ohio.