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Bill Mitchell's designs blew away the past
Automotive News
July 7, 2008 - 12:01 am ET
If Harley Earl was the founding father of General Motors styling, Bill Mitchell was the favorite son.
Earl hired Mitchell on Dec. 6, 1935. Mitchell's first car, the 1938 Cadillac Sixty Special, debuted at the New York auto show less than two years later, on Oct. 27, 1937.
And it blew away the crowd.
No wonder. The car had no running boards! It had the rear deck of a coupe on the end of a sedan. Chrome-trimmed window frames. It had a large glass area and a roof that looked like a separate piece of architecture from the lower body.
Mitchell's Caddy weighed 4,170 pounds and sold for $2,090. The Sixty Special name stayed in the Cadillac lineup through the 1974 model year and was revived for 1987-93.
Mitchell succeeded Earl as GM design vice president in 1959 and held the reins until he retired in 1978. Among his styling gems were the 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray and Buick Riviera, the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado and the Colonnade coupes of 1973.
A fellow designer said of Mitchell, "He's probably the most charismatic, overwhelmingly entertaining, bullheadedly perverse, dynamic, courageous, perceptively strategic ... design director who ever hit the automobile business."
For the rest of the story, read Automotive News' GM 100th anniversary edition, How General Motors Changed the World, on Sept. 15. For information about the special edition, go to www.autonews.com/gm100.
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