car design thread

Can't find one here in California. I think Collectors Studio in Toronto does but they aren't where the designers live. Come to think of it, do auto designers buy art when they could make it themselves?
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I was disappointed about this book, areas where it missed...anybody have any comments to add to mine?

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An “Almost” Tell-All about a Secret Detroit Coachbuilder




Title: Creative Industries of Detroit Author: Leon Dixon
•Paperback: 192 pages
•Publisher: CarTech (February 15, 2017)
•Language: English
•ISBN-10: 1613252137
•ISBN-13: 978-1613252130
•Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.4 x 11 inches
•Price: $39.95
•Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
•

Every year Detroit auto makers roll out concept cars and, unless they have a name like “Ghia” in a badge on the side, we assume that they made the car they are showing.

But this book, by Leon Dixon, is a cheeky testimony that, no sir, some were made by a semi-secret business called Creative Industries of Detroit.

Apparently the business was started by a man who was originally successful in designing welding equipment (machines that would do several welds at the same time on an assembly line). He then went on to start a firm that would fabricate anything of metal for manufacturers, not only carmakers but airplane manufacturers. The big boom came in WWII when they had contracts to do airplane wings.

You get the idea from this book that Creative Industries was almost like a CIA organization, with their employees sent to work directly for automakers and even the other employees at Ford, GM, Packard, Chrysler, etc. wouldn’t know they were really on the payroll of Creative Industries.

One of the most fascinating characters in the book was an executive named Ed Macauley who would have his own personal car restyled constantly even though no automaker was paying for it. (I kind of think it was an advertisement for his firm).

The execs that ran Creative Industries were cognizant of the fact that they were partially chosen for their role of building prototypes in secret because they could keep mum about their role. Oh, their company name was on the front of the building but you didn’t see them displaying cars they did under their own name.

In fact that there’s a fascinating side story about the son of Fred Zeder a Chrysler exec who has a custom car built, a sports car, and it’s bodied in Italy, and brought back and he can hardly wait to show it around Detroit but his father, a Chrysler executive, hides the car away until it’s outmoded and would have been a laughing stock as a proposal for a new car. The only thing you can conclude is that the father knew that, for Creative Industries to toot its own horn, would lose some of Detroit’s contacts. Think of them as a “ghostwriter” secretly doing the hard work behind the scenes.

Creative Industries, this author asserts, was also a place for design executives to go when they were having tough sledding at their regular employer. He cites Dick Teague, who later helmed AMC styling, as one who was having tough sledding at Packard and had an office at Creative where he did most of his work so he wouldn’t have Packard executives interfering.

I like the fact that such a book exists but am a little dismayed that in some cases the author doesn’t have much proof that they did a certain car. For instance he shows the Virgil Exner Sr.-designed Stutz Blackhawk but has no pictures of it being constructed at Creative Industries, and not even a reproduced company letter or memo referring to the car. Stutz publicity said they were made in Italy and I personally saw one with the Padane coachbuilder’s badge and have seen pictures of them at the Padane plant in Italy.

In the case of an all aluminum mid-engined Corvette prototype known later as the Reynolds Aluminum Corvette, he has some pictures of a car being built but no information on who was behind the project at GM—was this an alternative to the Two Rotor Corvette? Was it designed at GM? Was it ordered by Reynolds? His report is more that it was seen there, and that’s it.

The book skips around chronologically, I would expect it would go year by year but the aluminum Corvette is followed by coverage of a early ’50 Ford prototype, the FX Atmos, so you wonder why he couldn’t go era by era?



It’s a good thing the author knew many of the executives. There’s little glimpses of the personalities that made the firm special, One that’s fun to read about is a character that looks like Clark Gable named Rex Terry. He too had custom built cars for his own garage.

I describe it as an “almost tell-all” In the title of this review because it could have been a tell-all, and more entertaining, if he would have included some anecdotes about how they got the work—was it by schmoozing Detroit’s decision makes at the bar around watering holes like the Detroit Athletic Club, the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club, the Bloomfield Open Hunt Club what? Absolutely nothing on that score.

The book is very educational on how concept cars (then called “dream cars”) were pieced together, often non functional. There’s a couple cases where the doors didn’t even open so the lift off roof (on those with hardtops) and to be lifted off so a model could sit in the car and make you think it’s drivable.

It’s also the story of materials, there’s a lot on Detroit’s reliance on fiberglass for concept cars even though the production cars were steel bodied. The Alleghany Ludlum stainless steel cars—of which several were built of different model years, including four door Continental convertibles-- are interesting in that Creative Industries amply proved that stainless steel was a workable material but apparently no automaker ever believed them but John DeLorean (where the author claims they built the prototypes).

The author , who was personal friends with many of Creative Industries executives, is constantly alluding to his theory that Creative Industries built this car or that one but I think his documentation is a little sketchy, for instance, on the DeLorean, I always understood it was Guigiaro at his new firm Ital Design that designed it—he didn’t build a metal prototype? (I know he built a foam one, and that was mighty embarrassing when it looked so tacky but that's not mentioned) ’If this book is ever redone I’d like to see more company memos about this and that car being worked on. There’s one reason I can see mistake should be made, an automaker could have damage occur while unloading a concept car (which I have seen happen at Pebble Beach) and call Creative Industries to do a quick repair, so that would account for a sighting of a car at their shop but you can’t assume they built it.

Fascinating is his stories of what happened to some of the concept cars; the worse case scenerio when Packard went bust-- some of the concept cars were just driven off! I’d like to hear how ownership was established by those “executive car thieves” later on!

Overall, I think it is a book those interested in the behind the scenes firms that help sustain the automakers.

I hope if the same author does more books in this vein, he will take a minute to go into the mission of each concept car; what executives at the automaker were pushing it, and why, ultimately, it didn’t get green-lighted for production.

One waste of space is the kiddie cars various executives had built, to me that’s a half page footnote but subtracts from the real cars. Ditto with motor scooters. Wasting space for people who bought the book to read about the cars.


Production quality is very good, paper quality superb.The book is a bit pricey at $39.95 for paperbound but I suspect Amazon prices will be lower.
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I agree when businesses close down their old offices most correspondence goes into the dumpster...but I wonder if he would have advertised in various suburban newspapers for old employees of Creative Industries to contact him, he could have gotten more proof of what projects they remember working on, old letters, old pictures.

There's no reason the "secrets" can't be told now when the people who worked on them are long passed...even the Hummer section doesn't tell that the original idea came from a car called the Cheetah, and that Lamborghini had something to do with it. He just comes at it as a guy without much background in auto industry, though he worked in the auto industry (mentions working on the Mazda Miata development)

 

Earlier Jm2 refers to the drawings released with a new car when it reaches production being significantly altered to match the production car, which Jm2 refers to as a bit on the cheating side, and in that book Secret Concept Car Builder there is a beautiful full color drawing of a Stutz Blackhawk, reportedly by Virgil Exner Sr., and it looks a lot better than the final fatter, taller production car.
One interesting thing to note is that it has chrome tips to the fenders, never seen these on anything other than a motorcycle. Also the grille cavity shell is much deeper in the drawing, there is a chrome stepplate on the outside exhaust and the windshield is more rakish than the production car. Only the Continental wheel set into the rear deck was carried over from these drawings.Maybe one excuse for the drawing(s) being more exciting than the real car is that hadn't chosen a chassis yet so didn' t know what they had to work with as far as heighth.

I am also adding a brown burnt sienna tone version of the same drawing which appears on Prof. Madle's website, he a college professor who covers the history of all these Italian built American engined retro cars. That proves the color drawing is a period piece.

 

Creative Industries of Detroit pg. 163
second monochromatic drawing from Madle.org website
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Remember that the Stutz started as a Duesenberg. It was resurrected to become the Stutz. To me these look like early on concepts that may express what Exner really wanted; pre platform selection; pre feasibility.

 

The future is looking out the windshield not in the rearview mirror!

He soft peddaled the discussion of marketing "data" but I take it his real intent is that they are a lot of buzzing flies.

 

Amazing stuff, thanks!

Are the two GTO's by Fitz and Van?

Just discovered the Corvette 2-rotor drawing here last week:

https://revslib.stanford.edu/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search_match=any&q=2+rotor+drawing&search_match=any

 

Could it be that the 2-rotor sketch was done after the end of the design phase? There are quite a few details that differ from the actual car.

Also, I count at least three red Pontiacs which I suspect are your sketches, yes? The one inspired by the F1/87 of Gerhard Berger and the fact they're red, go a long way in explaining your choice of a red 488 ;-)

 

Super-cool! A red Pontiac sketch by Art (Van not handy for the backdrop ...) -
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