Shinoda shares his Mitchell “fish story” and De Lorenzo shares his “”neighborhood kid on a bike” Mitchell story!
Here's Bill Mitchell with his two favorite fish - the 1959 Stingray Racer and the 1961 Mako Shark-I. Snappy coat, Bill!
Here’s one for the Kawinkydink Department. I thought we were all done with our look back and the life and career of Larry Shinoda – wrong! This morning while surfing around the net, I found a video about Bill Mitchell. Before I knew it, there’s Larry Shinoda telling stories about his former boss, Bill Mitchell!
Most of us in the Corvette community are very familiar with the unique “shark” paint style used on the Mako Shark-I, Mako Shark-II, and the Manta Ray concept/show cars. Larry shared a wonderful story about how the guys in the painting department perfected that distinctive paint scheme.
Also interviewed in the video is the late David E. Davis, former Campbell-Ewald Advertising man, former editor of Car and Driver, and founder and former editor of Automobile Magazine. Here’s the video…
A Salute to the AWESOME, highly collectible, Baldwin Motion Corvettes
In November 2011 there were a few automotive bomb shells dropped on the MCACN Muscle Car Show. Namely three unique Baldwin Motion Corvettes. One Survivor Phase III 454 Corvette, one restored Motion Mako Shark Corvette, and one garage/barn find Corvette, the ‘76 Can-Am Spyder.
The survivor car is known as the “Ankenbauer Phase III 454 Corvette. The car is currently owned by Dave Belk and is just an amazing Motion survivor car. I have a feature story on this Motion Phase III 454 Corvette coming out in Vette Vues Magazine in a few weeks. After publication, I’ll post the story here. The car is jaw-dropping and the owner’s story rocks!
Dan McMichael is a collector of Motion Corvettes. His latest finished Motion car is the 1970 Motion Maco Shark Corvette. There are many configurations of the Mako design. Both Silva and Motion produced customer Macos AND sold the body kits. This car was built by Motion Performance, according to the customer’s specifications. The restoration of this car is said to be “STUNNING!” From the photos I’ve seen, that adjective is spot on.
And Dan McMichaels scores a second stunner. This might be the most amazing Corvette barn find ever. The car was discovered by Maryland State legislator Rick Impallaria when he was clearing out cars and hardware after evicting a tenant from the auto body shop he was renting. Stashed away was the hulk of an unusual Corvette. Rick was told that the car might be the remains of a Motion Can-Am Spyder Corvette. Rick did some inquiries, including to our sister site, www.BaldwinMotionReport.com, as to what the Corvette community thought this hulk might have been. Turns out it was one of three yellow Can-Am Spyder Corvettes built. And now it’s Dan McMichaels. If anyone will “do right” by the Can-Am Spyder, it’ll be Dan! Continue reading “NEW Motion Performance Corvettes Tribute Art Print”→
As groovy as the new C3 1968 Corvette looked to most Vette fans, for some, it wasn’t what they were expecting. What they were expecting was what they’d been drooling over since ‘65 – a production version of the “Mako Shark” show cars. They didn’t want to hear a lot of bunk about what can or can’t be manufactured or that the Mako’s front fender humps were too tall. They wanted the Mako Shark-II, period!
While some grumped and grumbled, one man did something about it. He made his own Mako Shark-II. And to prevent GM from crashing down on his head, he called it the “Maco Shark.” John Silva produced the first total body kit for the late model, C3 Corvette. The only part of the exterior body that was production Corvette was the windshield. While the completed kit wasn’t a 100% dead ringer for Bill Mitchell’s Mako Shark-II, it was close enough for many. But what put the Silva Maco on the map was the guy from Long Island that was already building Chevy supercars and could make sure the Maco had gobs of grunt. Yes, Joel Rosen.
Joel Rosen, along with PR master, Marty Schorr, editor of CARS Magazine, were already in the thick of things with their Baldwin-Motion Phase-III Supercars. Their line of turn-key, bad-ass Super Chevys was called, “The Fantastic Five.” You can get a heap’n help’n of Baldwin-Motion dishes at our sister blog site, www.BaldwinMotionReport.com. While the sales of Phase-III Supercars was cooking along in 1969, Rosen was thinking ahead and working out the details of his Phase-III GT Corvette. Rosen’s plan was to offer a true GT (Grand Touring) version of his Phase-III Corvette. The classic GT car configuration used a stout frame and chassis, plenty of power, excellent brakes, creature comforts, and room for travel bags. GT cars were essentially a sport coupe that you would use for a long trip – a “grand” “tour.” In other words, a “big trip.” C3 Corvette Coupes are short on usable space, so Rosen created a fastback rear window to open up the back storage area to hold those small travel bags for his customer’s, “Grand Tour.”
So, around the same time Rosen started offering his Phase-III GT Corvette, John Silva was making his own version of the Mako Shark, marketed under the name “Maco Shark.” The two men worked out a deal and Motion Performance started offering their own turn-key Motion Macos and Maco body kits. Here’s where things get a little muddy. Removing the complete production Corvette body and replacing it with the Maco was VERY labor intensive and expensive. So, very few Motion-built Macos were produced.
This Maco Shark was a barn find car! It's a real beauty today.
However, lots of body kits were sold and if you’ve ever been involved in the kit car hobby, you know that most kits are not completed. For the cars that were completed, some were better than others and depended on Continue reading “Mako Shark Attack Week!!! The Motion / Silva Macos”→
Bill Mitchell’s longer, lower, louder, sleeker Mako Shark
Bill Mitchell and his design team cranked out an amazing number of concept and show cars through the ‘60s. The ‘69 Manta Ray was the end of the line for Mitchell’s shark theme that started in ‘61, and was somewhat overlooked for a time. Those were heady days between the new production Corvette, Chevy and other exciting muscle cars, and tremendous advances in all kinds of race cars. The Mako Shark-II-based Manta Ray was kind of, “been there, done that” by 1969. Designers often have concept ideas that they just want to try out in full size, and it seems that the Manta Ray was such a car.
Perhaps the most unfortunate part of the whole Mako Shark-II story is the fact that the configuration of the the running Mako Shark-II is gone! When Mitchell decided to try out a few more design elements for the Shark Corvette, the quickest way to get there was to start with the ‘66 running Mako Shark-II. The running Mako Shark-II was a stunningly beautiful car, so can you imagine what it might have been like for the designers and builders that were tasked with the job of CUTTING THE CAR UP to make the Manta Ray? Oh, that first cut must have been painful! It must have felt like sacrilege taking a zip saw to such a beauty. Continue reading “Mako Shark Attack Week!!! Vette Video – The 1969 Manta Ray Corvette Show Car”→
The Non-running Mako Shark-II totally jazzed GM’s management, the RUNNING Mako Shark-II was mind-blowing!
While the non-running Mako Shark-II was dropping jaws at the ‘65 New York Auto Show, there was one major project and one minor project in the works within the Corvette design group. The engineers and stylists were jam’n trying to figure out how to translate the show cars body shape to fit into a car that could be mass produced. What perhaps looked like a no-brainer turned out to be not so easy.
Even though the new production Corvette would use the existing frame, suspension, engine/transmission, and drive train from the then-current Sting Ray, getting everything to fit within an even tighter package was a major challenge. There were issues with front and rear bumper requirements, headlight height and configuration, interior ergonomics, and forward visibility of those gorgeous front fender humps. Getting the design right, plus making all of the parts for tooling was impossible to accomplish in one year for the new design to be a ‘67 model. It’s surprising to me that GM’s upper management couldn’t see that. Another year was added to the development schedule and in retrospect, it should have been two years.
The minor project on the Corvette design team’s plate was to produce a running version of the Mako Shark-II. If you think the production C3 Corvettes were tight, take a close look at the image of the running Mako Shark-II in front of a preproduction ‘68 Corvette. And note how Bill Mitchell towers over the Mako Shark-II. And Mitchell wasn’t a big tall fellow either. The shot of Mitchell getting into the Mako Shark-II shows him slightly bent at the knees. No, the Mako Shark-II was a tiny Corvette. But the shape is brilliant and is a classic example of Mitchell’s ability to style and shape the proportions of a car such that a smallish car looks much bigger without any size reference. Take a look at Mitchell’s early Buick Riviera by itself and than next to a full-size car and you’ll clearly see that the Riviera was not a big car, it just had big car proportions. Continue reading “Mako Shark Attack Week!!! The Running 1966 Mako Shark-II”→
Dateline: 9.15.11 The last of Joel Rosen’s Shark Corvettes – The Moray Eel
As cool as the Mako Shark-styled production 1968 Corvette was, there were a few that were… disappointed. Why, you wonder? Because the ‘68 Corvette WASN’T the ‘65-’66 Mako Shark II show car. Making a show car is one thing, designing a car to be mass produced is another. While the Mako Shark II show car looked large on the stage, it was actually about 7/8s the size of the production Corvette. In other words, a VERY tight little package that could not directly translate into a production car.
But it was fiberglass man, John Silva that took it upon himself to make his own Mako Shark. “Kit cars” were all the rage in the mid-to-late ‘60s. Meanwhile, on Long Island, New York, Joel Rosen was building ground-pounding big-block Phase III Chevys and was looking for something really exotic to offer his Corvette customers. Rosen bought two complete Silva Maco cars and got permission from Silva to make molds off of the Silva parts to make his Motion Maco kits. The Maco kits were kind of a “love it, or hate it” thing. It wasn’t quite as svelte as the Mako Shark, but for many, it was close enough.
For creative types, such as Rosen, the mind never stops. In the early ‘70s Joel was on a roll with his “shark-thing.” His Motion Maco Shark burst on the street scene in ‘71, quickly followed by two interesting variations. The Manta Ray featured the front end of the Phase III GT with its distinctive tunneled headlights and Continue reading “Vette Videos: SUPER RARE, One-of-a-Kind 1972 Motion Moray Eel Corvette”→
By the late ‘60s, big-block Chevys were always contenders against anything from Ford and Mopar. Within the story line of muscle car history, the Baldwin-Motion Supercars are legends. For John Q. Public, a regular muscle car was often times more than enough. Then there were those who wanted more.
In the mid-’60s, Long Island speed shop owner Joel Rosen had areputation for building tough street and strip cars. Unlike Carroll Shelby’s deal with Ford to build quasi-SCCA Mustangs, Rosen struck with local dealer Baldwin Chevrolet to offer supercar versions of new Chevy muscle cars that were custom built to order and guaranteed to run 11.5 in the quarter-mile with a qualified driver.
Joel Rosen’s meca for Chevy supercars – Motion Performance on Rising Sun Highway, Long Island, New York. Note the custom fish-scales paint job! The Phase III Vega behind the Maco Shark was the car that brought the Feds crashing down on Motion performance.
As the new ‘63 Corvettes were hitting the showrooms, GM’s Chief of Styling, Bill Mitchell, was dreaming up the next Corvette. With the help of stylist Larry Shinoda and a small team of designers, the radical Mako Shark II was shown to GM’s management in Spring of ‘65. The non-running full-size mock up made jaws drop. Before the car was shipped to the New York International Auto Show, the order was given, “build a running version!” By October ’65 the running version of the new design was complete and headed out to the show car circuit where it received rave reviews. It was obvious – the Mako Shark II HAD TO BE the next production Corvette.
