Tag: corvette designer

Corvette’s Founding Fathers, Larry Shinoda, Pt 5 of 6: Sting Ray & Mako Shark Designer

Published on by Scott

Larry Shinoda: Genius Designer/Stylist and Self-Confessed Malcontent

Larry Shinoda was the perfect designer/stylist for GM VP of Styling Bill Mitchell. In the same way that Mitchell fit with Harley Earl, Shinoda clearly understood what Mitchell wanted. As VP of Design, Mitchell’s job was to hold the vision for what he knew would be new and fresh, then lead his designers and stylists to bring his vision into reality. Corvettes were always Mitchell’s pet projects and he was famous for saying, “Don’t get cocky, kid! I design Corvettes around here!” Mitchell’s Corvettes were about design, speed, power, and performance. And for that, he needed a designer/stylist equal to Duntov’s engineering/racing prowess. Larry Shinoda was his man.

Shinoda was a self-confessed malcontent, and proud of it. As a kid, Larry was always drawing cars with pencil stubs he found. At the age of eight, he did a large color painting that years later hung in the Los Angeles Museum of Art. Just after his father died when he was 12-years-old, Larry and his family were swept up and sent to a Japanese internment camp. No doubt that this helped form his surly persona. While in the camp, Larry designed and built a reclining chair for his grandmother from wooden crates. After two years of internment, Larry and his family relocated to Grand Junction, Colorado to help with the family nursery business. But rural life wasn’t for Larry and he quickly relocated back to Los Angeles to finish school.

Late 1940s California was the birthplace of the hot rod car culture and Larry was all-in! He built hot rod Ford coupes and roadsters called “Chopsticks Special” that he street raced, drag raced, and speed raced on the dry lakebeds of California’s Mojave Desert. When he wasn’t racing, Shinoda worked at the Weiland Company to put himself through two years at Pasadena City College. After college Larry had a two year stint with the Air National Guard and spent 16-months in Korea.

Shinoda knew that if he was ever to be a designer, he’d have to go to the Art Center of Design in LA. What seemed like a great idea quickly went sour, and Larry was kicked out! Shinoda only wanted to design cars, and saw no value in watercolor and life drawing classes. One of Larry’s former instructors called him when a rep for Ford was interviewing for designer positions.

Shinoda put together his portfolio and showed up for the interview in his attitudinal car-guy gear; peg-let jeans, and a loud Hawaiian shirt over a Howard Cams t-shirt. The Ford rep was so impressed with his work that Larry was offered a higher-than-normal salary, plus Ford paid to transport his hot rod to Michigan! But before going to Ford, in 1953 Shinoda set the SGTA Bonneville Nations D-Class Speed Record with a two-way average speed of 166-mph in his Chrysler-powered roadster. Then in 1954 Larry won the Fuel Roadster class at the first NHRA Nationals in Great bend, Kansas. Yes, gasoline was in his veins.

Shinoda spent a year with Ford learning the ropes of a big corporation and picking up a lot from fellow designers. Not contented with Ford, Shinoda jumped over to Packard where he befriended John Z. DeLorean. Earlier that same year, Larry was part of the John Zink crew that raced and won the 1956 Indy 500. Naturally, Shinoda designed the body and the car’s paint scheme. Shinoda and DeLorean quickly realized that Packard was a sinking and jumped to GM.

Hired as a senior designer by Harley Earl in late 1956, life inside GM was uninspiring. After his short orientation, Shinoda was transferred to the Chevrolet group where his unique flat rear fin design was incorporated into the 1959 Bel Air. Larry even showed how to manufacture the unique shape by welding the upper and lower parts of the shape and covering the weld with chrome trim. Larry then had a brief stint in the Pontiac design group and worked on the Wide Track Pontiacs and the 1960-1961 Tempests. To counter the doldrums in the Buick and Cadillac groups, Larry rendered the big cars with racing numbers, stripes, and mags. His bosses were not amused!

Sometimes providence has to bring the right people together. One day on the way home from work, Shinoda pulled up to a stoplight next to a supercharged 1958 Pontiac with VP of GM Design, Bill Mitchell behind the wheel. Larry let Bill get ahead of him, then totally smoked the VP! A few days later when Mitchell was in the Chevrolet studio, he asked who owned a white 1956 Ford. The studio boss said, “Hey Larry, don’t you have a white ’56 Ford?” Shinoda confirmed that indeed, he was the guy that dusted off Mitchell. Bill asked Larry to bring his car into the garage so he could check out the designer’s machine. When Mitchell looked under the hood, he nearly had a heart attack! The engine was a Bill Stropp race-prepared 352 with dual quads, headers, NASCAR shocks and a full roll cage. It was essentially a racecar! That was IT! Mitchell had found his go-to design/styling man.

Mitchell’s Studio X was the perfect place for Shinoda and it was there that he did all of the Corvette work he’s loved and admired for. Larry’s first project for Mitchell was to take Peter Brock’s 1957 Q-Corvette design and translate it to fit the mule chassis of the 1957 Corvette SS Racer. The result was the 1959 Stingray Racer. Mitchell erroneously thought the shape would act like an inverted airfoil and push the car down. The front-end lift was terrible and was unfortunately inherited by the C2 Sting Ray. Before the C2 Sting Ray project, since Shinoda had already designed the body of a winning Indy 500 car, he was tasked to create the body for Duntov’s Indy car-like CERV-I R&D vehicle.

Not only did Mitchell’s Stingray Racer win a championship, it was such a hit with the crowds, the design had to be the next Corvette, and Larry Shinoda was the man for the job. Translating a sketch into a racecar body is one thing; making the shape into a real automobile is a whole other thing. The only carryover parts were the engine and transmission, everything else had to be designed and styled. Although the Sting Ray was Mitchell’s vision, Shinoda and his team worked out the visual details.

 

Shinoda was the perfect man for the time. Design studios all over Detroit were white-hot with secret advanced design projects and a steady flow of concept cars. The following cars all have “Larry Shinoda” baked into their DNA, and they all still look good today; 1959 Stingray Racer, 1960 CERV-I, 1962 Corvair Super Spyder, 1962 Monza GT, 1962 Monza SS, 1962 Mako Shark-I, 1963-1967 Sting Ray, 1964 GS-2b, 1964 CERV-II, 1964 Rear-Engine XP-819, 1965-Mako Shark-II, 1966 Mako Shark-II, 1965-1966 and 2D, 1967 Astro-I, and the 1968-Astro-II.

Larry Shinoda was well rewarded for his contributions. Just before the Mako Shark-II project, Larry was promoted to Chief Designer for Special Vehicles, where he coordinated efforts with Frank Winchell’s Chevy R&D group and Vince Piggins Performance Group. But by 1968, the self-confessed malcontent left GM to work with his friend Semon “Bunkie” Kundsen, the new president of FoMoCo. Larry’s new position at Ford was Executive of All High-Performance and Show Vehicles. Shinoda was responsible for the Boss 302 and 429, the Torino Talladega, Cougar Eliminator, the King Cobra, the Torino Design Study, Cyclone Spoiler II, and the Mustang and Torino pace cars. But life inside Ford was more turbulent than GM, and after 16 months, Knudsen and Shinoda were fired. The Shinoda/Knudsen team then formed RV company RecTrans, which was soon bought by White Motor Company, with Knudsen as president.

The last chapter of Shinoda’s career began in 1976 when he created Shinoda Design Associates, Inc, with a staff of designers, clay modelers, technicians, engineers, and fabricators. Shinoda’s team worked to help client’s profitability with excellent design that would be appealing to their client’s; trucks, boats, motorcycles, golf equipments, products. Larry’s last Corvette project was the Shinoda/Mears Corvette body kit.

Larry’s older sister Grace had this to say about her famous brother, “Creative people take risks. They see things in new ways that the establishment doesn’t agree with.” She certainly knew her brother very well.

Larry passed on November 13, 1997, but on January 6, 1997 he completed and signed a color rendering of a C5 Corvette Split-Window Coupe with C2-style front and rear fender humps and rear bumper cover. Clearly, Larry wanted to see more “Sting Ray” in the then-new C5. Unfortunately, Larry health issues got in the way and the project never went past the illustration. The following year, Larry was inducted into the National Corvette Museum Hall of Fame. And in 1995 Larry was inducted into the Mustang Club of America’s “Mustang Hall of Fame”. Larry Shinoda was outspoken (often to his own determent), candid, humorous, and firmly believed in whatever he was doing. – Scott

 

 

 

 

 

A Look Back At Race Cars & Corvairs Designed by Larry Shinoda

Published on by Scott

Dateline: 3.30.12

A brief overview of six racing cars and three experimental Corvairs Larry Shinoda designed.

Check out our awesome slide show tribute to Larry Shinoda’s designs at the bottom of this post.

Larry Shinoda’s designs were so strong that when his name comes up, it’s almost always first associated with Corvettes. But Larry’s talent for designing fast-looking cars wasn’t limited to Corvettes. I suppose that when you are the go-to-stylist for a legend the likes of Bill Mitchell, you get a few peach projects. In retrospect, what helped make Shinoda’s design work so edgy was his passion for racing. In a sense, Larry’s NHRA Nationals win in ‘55 put him in the same category as 1954 Le Mans racer Zora Arkus-Duntov. As Bill Mitchell used to say, both men had, “gasoline in their veins.”

Shinoda’s race car design credits include: Pat Flaherty’s 1956 Indy 500-winning John Zink Special, Bill Mitchell’s 1959 Stingray Racer, Zora Arkus-Duntov’s CERV I and CERV II, the GS-II (Grand Sport II), Jim Hall’s Chaparral-2, and Peter Weismann’s 1963 rear-engine Indy car.

Although the Corvair never really caught on as a performance car or a sports car, designers such as Shinoda had some jaw-dropping ideas for Chevy’s rear-engine car. The 1962 Monza GT Coupe was in direct competition with Ford’s mid-engine 4-banger Mustang I concept car. What an interesting Chevy vs Ford battle that would have been! When you work in an R&D department often many “variations on a theme” are explored.

The Monza SS was an open cockpit-type design with a racer-like cut-down windshield. Another version was explored with a more traditional type of windshield. And in the same way that other GM divisions glommed on to Harley Earl’s Corvette concept in ‘53 and came up with their own “Corvette” concept cars for the ‘54 GM Motorama (the ‘54 Pontiac Bonneville, Buick Wildcat, and Olds F88). We have an example of a Monza variation that looks a lot like a roadster version of the 1964 XP-833 Pontiac Banshee. It was very common back then for designs to get tossed about within GMs divisions.

One Shinoda design that was not shared by any of GM’s other divisions was the 1967 Astro I. Corvair production peeked in ‘65 for approximately 235,000 Corvairs built. By ‘67 the number went to just over 27,000! The Corvair-based Astro I concept/show car arrived in 1967 and was probably started around ‘65 – ‘66, before the car started to tank. Unlike the Monza GT that eventually became the ‘67 Opel GT, the Astro I was so over the top, none of its design elements were used in any serious fashion. Instead, Chevrolet used the “Astro” name on one of their full-size vans and there was nothing “Astro” about it. Continue reading “A Look Back At Race Cars & Corvairs Designed by Larry Shinoda” →

A Look Back At Corvettes Designed by Larry Shinoda

Published on by Scott

Dateline: 3.30.12

Hot rodder Shinoda teams up with Bill Mitchell and defined the “Corvette look.”

Perhaps it was “in the stars” that Larry Shinoda was in the right place at the right time. If you strictly look at Shinoda’s resume in 1956, you might ask, “How did this guy get in the front door?” As a young man, the only thing Larry ever graduated from was high school, Army boot camp, and the School of Hard Knocks. Twelve-year-old Larry had his life turned inside out when along with thousands of Japanese-Americans, he and his family were sent to interment camps for the duration of WW II. The experience had a profound effect on his personality. A self-professed “malcontent” Shinoda could be a little difficult to work with.

After his Army tour of duty in Korea, Shinoda attended Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles, but truly hated being there. He could see no purpose in taking the classes in design and the various art mediums, such as watercolor painting. He was a car guy/hot rodder and he wanted to draw and design cars! So he left Art Center without graduating and based strictly on his car illustrations, landed a job at Ford, then Studebaker/Packard. Just a year after starting his career, he landed a job as a designer at General Motors.

The rest is the stuff of legend. Street racing and blowing the doors off of Bill Mitchell’s souped up Buick and quickly being taken under Mitchell’s wing. Things like that happens, but rarely. There was obviously some chemistry between the two men, perhaps it was because both men could be brash and had strong opinions.

Shinoda got his first big break when Mitchell tapped the 28-year-old to translate the body design of the ‘57 Q-Corvette on to the mule chassis from Duntov’s aborted Corvette SS project. The finished car became Mitchell’s 1959 Stingray Racer, which formed the styling theme for the ‘63 Corvette. From there, Shinoda got one peach project after another. It’s worth noting that the design of the Stingray Racer is held in such high esteem that current Corvette chief designer, Tom Peters (C6 Corvette and late model Camaro designer) is on record stating that his ‘09 Corvette Stingray Concept (aka Transformers Corvette) was influenced by the ‘59 Stingray. Continue reading “A Look Back At Corvettes Designed by Larry Shinoda” →

Larry Shinoda Interview From December 1997 VETTE Magazine

Published on by Scott

Dateline: 3.28.12

Tom Benford’s Summer 1997 candid dinner interview with car design legend, Larry Shinoda.

Our celebration of the life and career of car design legend Larry Shinoda continues with this delightful interview that was originally published in the December 1997 issue of VETTE Magazine. Tom Benford and his wife Liz connected with Shinoda in August of ‘97 at the Corvettes At Carlisle Show, in Carlisle, Pa. This may well have been Larry’s last interview, as he died just 2-1/2 months later. Larry’s kidney disease had progressed to the point where he was on the list waiting for a donor kidney.

According to the Pasadena City College Celebrated Alumni Larry Shinoda page , “In poor health, Larry Shinoda remained active to the end. Larry passed away at his home in Michigan of heart failure on November 13, 1997, while working at his design desk with a phone in his hand. Larry had just passed the final tissue-match test for his kidney transplant the day before he died. Though Larry is gone, his legacy lives on.” Continue reading “Larry Shinoda Interview From December 1997 VETTE Magazine” →

Corvette Timeline Tales: Happy 82nd Birthday Larry Shinoda

Published on by Scott

Dateline: 3.26.12

The next time you see a mid-year Sting Ray or Shark Corvette, think of Larry Shinoda.

He was born “Lawrence Kiyoshi Shinoda” but the automotive and Corvette world knew him as Larry Shinoda – Corvette designer and all-around carguy! Growing up in Southern California, Larry was steeped in the car culture and like many SoCal young men, was into the burgeoning sport of drag racing. In addition to his Corvette accomplishments, Larry also participated in an won his class at the very first NHRA national event in Great Bend, Kansas in 1955.

Larry was only 25-years old when after not completing his studies at Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles, he landed his first job with Ford in 1955. A year later, he briefly went to work at Studebaker/Packard, then went to General Motors late in 1956. Larry not only had an impressive portfolio, he had an intuitive sense of styling. If didn’t take long before his talent caught the keen eye of GM’s Bill Mitchell. But it wasn’t just Larry’s skill at wielding a pen and airbrush that helped acquaint him with Mitchell – it was drag racing.

The story goes that one day Shinoda and Mitchell had a chance encounter at a traffic light. Since both men had what Mitchell called, “gasoline in their veins,” neither man needed much goading to initiate a little stoplight grand prix. The light turned green and Larry put a whoop’n Bill, which may have been one of his best career moves. Mitchell drafted Shinoda into his special forces of car design, headquartered deep inside GM’s guarded facilities in a place called, “Studio X.” (sounds like a ‘50s sci-fi b-grade movie, doesn’t it”?) Continue reading “Corvette Timeline Tales: Happy 82nd Birthday Larry Shinoda” →

Vette Videos: The Life & Times of The Father of the Corvette, Harley Earl

Published on by Scott

Dateline: 11.23.11

Harley Earl gave us much more than the Corvette. He could have also been called, “The King of the Razzle-Dazzle!”

Three Harley Earl Videos!

Yesterday we shared with you a brief overview of the life and career of General Motors’ first chief of design, Harley Earl. When it comes to Corvettes,  it’s easy in retrospect to say that GM should have done this and done that. But it’s essential to remember that when Earl first showed his sports car renderings of what they were calling the “Project Opel,” there were no sports cars being made in Detroit. And no one even knew if there was an American market for the little machines. And on top of that, no one in Detroit really knew “how” to build a true sports car. But, everything has a beginning. And lucky for the Corvette, it skimmed by for a time, just on its good looks.

So much of what Earl pioneered  in his career at GM is now commonplace practices in the automobile industry. Two of the best examples of Earl innovations were the “design studio” and “annual model changes.” Today all of the major car companies have their own private facility where ideas and concepts are thrashed out. Before Earl’s Technical Center was officially christened in 1956, there were no such places where ideas could be securely developed in private. Continue reading “Vette Videos: The Life & Times of The Father of the Corvette, Harley Earl” →

Corvette Timeline Tales: July 1977 GM’s Chief of Styling, Bill Mitchell Retires

Published on by Scott

“I design Corvettes around here!” – Bill Mitchell

Mitchell was a master at proportions. By itself, the Mako Shark looked BIG. But next to a production ‘68 Corvette, it looks like a 7/8s-size car.

It was probably a hot July day in Detroit when William L. “Bill” Mitchell quietly retired from General Motors after 42 years of service! Volumes could be written about this man. Mitchell looms large in the Corvette world because he was one of four key players that were responsible for setting the tone and design of the Corvette. Harley Earl came up with the concept of a mass-produced American sports car built in Detroit. Ed Cole was the inside engineer man that made it happen. Zora Arkus-Duntov put hair on the Corvette’s chest and made it the car a bare-knuckles brawler. And Bill Mitchell designed and guided the ‘63 – ‘67 Sting Ray and the Mako Shark-II-styled C3 Corvette. The Corvette would not have its signature style were it not for Bill Mitchell.

Bill was known as a “snappy dresser” that loved expensive italian silk suits. “Red” was also his favorite color.

Bill Mitchell, son of a Buick car dealer, started his professional career as an illustrator that liked to draw cars. While an illustrator at Collier Advertising, someone suggested that he show his car renderings to then VP of GM’s Art and Color Department, Harley Earl. Harley liked what he saw and hired Mitchell on December 15, 1935. Mitchell became Earl’s protégé and was eventually Continue reading “Corvette Timeline Tales: July 1977 GM’s Chief of Styling, Bill Mitchell Retires” →