by Chris Chilton
- A collection of historically important car designs has been found in a New York barn.
- The 1940-dated sketches are from the GM-owned Detroit Institute of Automobile Styling.
- They’re the work of young designers who would go on to shape several US icons.
The 1955-57 Tri-Chevys, 1961 Lincoln Continental, and 1963 Buick Riviera are among the most iconic and best-known 20th-century American car designs. But thanks to a recent find in a New York barn, we now know more about the early sparks of genius exhibited by the designers who shaped them.
Enthusiast Josh Quick stumbled across more than 80 long-forgotten designs while looking for antique tractor parts in Conesus, south of Rochester. Although he thought the folder of sketches dated back to 1940 interesting, at the time he had no idea just how historically important they were.
Related: Go Back To Future With These 1950s GM Motorama Dream Cars That Escaped Destruction
But Quick, who runs the Quick Speed Shop YouTube channel and is no stranger to vintage US tin, soon noticed some of the names below the sketches, names that would be central to the look of US car design in the 1950s and 1960s, and realized what he had on his hands.
A Classroom Of Legends
The work dates to a 1940 semester at the Detroit Institute of Automobile Styling, a design program established by GM legend Harley Earl in 1938 whose aim was to school the next generation of American automobile designers and allow GM to get its hands on the best of them.
All of the sketches appear to be the result of a brief to design a Buick for the 1942 model year. In fact, there would be MY42 cars due to the US joining WWII in 1941, and the modern pontoon styling characterized by integrated fenders seen on all of the designs wouldn’t become the norm in Detroit until the very end of the decade. Futuristic airplanes and monorails seen in the background add to the ‘tomorrow’s world’ theme.
From Sketchpads To Showrooms
The well-preserved 80-page folder contains work from the likes of Ed Glowacke, who pushed Cadillac forward during the middle years of its tail fins era, Clare MacKichan, the man behind Chevrolet’s iconic ’55, ’56, and ’57 sedans and early Corvettes, and Ned Nickles, who gave us the still incredible 1963 Buick Riviera.
But some of the fledgling designers went on to great things outside of GM: Joe Oros helped create the Ford Mustang, Gene Bordinat served as a vice president at Ford, and Elwood Engel oversaw Chrysler design throughout the 1960s.
Back Where It Belongs
The family of the farmer whose estate sale resulted in the find has no idea how or when it came into his possession, but the folder is now safely in the hands of GM’s archivists, who have digitized the full collection and stored the original drawings alongside other works from the DIAS.
