Click to enlarge.
“Nobody knows how the binder journeyed from Detroit to upstate New York. When Josh Quick found it in a barn at an estate sale, he grabbed it without thinking. It was only days later, while flipping through the pages, that Quick realized he was holding a missing piece of General Motors history,” Bob Sorokanich, senior editor, GM News posted last week.*
In 2024, Josh Quick went to a farm estate sale in the small town of Conesus, about 45 minutes south of Rochester, New York, on the hunt for antique tractor parts. He thought he’d hit the jackpot. “I asked the guy, what do you want for all this stuff? He said, ‘two cases of Busch Light beer,’” Quick told GM News.
Among the parts, Quick found a binder full of old pencil-on-paper car drawings.
“I flipped it open, saw the first picture, and thought, that’s cool,” he said. The guy running the estate sale had never seen the binder before. He told Quick to take it. “I just threw it in with the rest of the stuff,” Quick said. “I didn’t know what it was. I left it on the seat of my truck for three or four days. I was more excited about the tractor stuff.”
Quick eventually looked through the collection of hand-drawn automobiles, nearly 80 pages preserved in plastic sleeves. The images, all dated from the summer of 1940, show visions of what General Motors vehicles – Buicks, specifically – might look like in 1942.
Quick has YouTube channel, Quick Speed Shop, where he documents his work restoring vintage cars and trucks and building hot-rods. As he flipped through the pages of his barn-find binder, he began recognizing some of the names signed to the artwork. “That’s when I put the pieces together,” he told GM News.
“The cars depicted the binder were never put into production, but the artists who drew them went on to become influential figures in American car design. This collection, forgotten for decades in a New York State barn, was a missing piece of history from the Detroit Institute of Automobile Styling, a General Motors-operated school that launched the careers of some of the greatest car designers in history.
“The Detroit Institute of Automobile Styling was, like so many aspects of the car-design industry, a brainchild of Harley Earl. Born in California in 1893, and largely self-taught, Earl spent his early career designing custom bodywork for the luxury cars of Hollywood movie stars. He was hired by General Motors in 1927, where he established the Art & Colour Section (spelled the British way for added style, so to speak. Ironically Earl’s breakthrough 1938 Buick Y-Job convertible – the industry’s first concept car was restored at the Henry Ford Museum, where it resided from the early 1950s until 1993 when it was returned to the GM Design Center. – AutoCrat).
“Art & Colour, made GM the first automaker to standardize the automotive design process in product development. Staffing this department was problematic for Earl,” said GM News.
“He was looking for designers, but he had to train them as well, because there were no schools at the time that had a curriculum in automotive or transportation design,” said Christo Datini, manager of the GM Design Archive & Special Collections. In 1938, Earl launched the Detroit Institute of Automotive Styling. Operated by GM, the school served two purposes: Training the next generation of car designers, and recruiting the best to come work at GM.
“With the Detroit Institute of Automotive Styling, “General Motors Design became a training ground for young designers,” Datini said. At the end of the year-long course, a promising student could even receive an offer to work under Earl. “So many pioneers of design came through GM,” Datini said.
“The barn-find binder shows future design legends at the dawn of their careers. Some rose to prominence as leaders at General Motors: Ned Nickles, who styled the groundbreaking 1963 Buick Riviera; Ed Glowacke, who led Cadillac design during its trend-setting 1950s tail-fin era; Clare MacKichan, directly responsible for Chevrolet’s iconic ’55, ’56 and ’57 sedans, not to mention the first generation of Corvettes.
“DIAS had influence far beyond General Motors. Included in Quick’s binder were sketches by Joe Oros, credited with designing the first Ford Mustang; Gene Bordinat, who later served as a vice president at Ford; and Elwood Engel, later a vice president at Chrysler,” said GM news.
“The guys in that binder designed every single important car in Detroit from 1952 to 1974,” Quick said.
“The collected works seems to come from a single semester of classwork at DIAS, April through August, 1940. They appear to stem from a single exercise: Proposing designs for model-year 1942 Buicks. Flipping through the pages, you can see the work becoming more advanced. Straightforward, blueprint-style views evolve into fanciful illustrations of gleaming speedsters dripping with chrome. Occasionally, a speeding airplane or futuristic monorail train soars across the background, symbolizing a thoroughly modern age of transportation,” said GM News.
*Bob Sorokanich is a former automotive journalist whose work has appeared in Road & Track, Car and Driver, Wired, Robb Report, and many other publications. He is senior editor at GM News. Reach him at news@gm.com
About Ken Zino
Ken Zino, editor and publisher of AutoInformed, is a versatile auto industry participant with global experience spanning decades in print and broadcast journalism, as well as social media. He has automobile testing, marketing, public relations and communications experience. He is past president of The International Motor Press Assn, the Detroit Press Club, founding member and first President of the Automotive Press Assn. He is a member of APA, IMPA and the Midwest Automotive Press Assn.
He also brings an historical perspective while citing their contemporary relevance of the work of legendary auto writers such as Ken Purdy, Jim Dunne or Jerry Flint, or writers such as Red Smith, Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson – all to bring perspective to a chaotic automotive universe.
Above all, decades after he first drove a car, Zino still revels in the sound of the exhaust as the throttle is blipped during a downshift and the driver’s rush that occurs when the entry, apex and exit points of a turn are smoothly and swiftly crossed. It’s the beginning of a perfect lap.
AutoInformed has an editorial philosophy that loves transportation machines of all kinds while promoting critical thinking about the future use of cars and trucks.
Zino builds AutoInformed from his background in automotive journalism starting at Hearst Publishing in New York City on Motor and MotorTech Magazines and car testing where he reviewed hundreds of vehicles in his decade-long stint as the Detroit Bureau Chief of Road & Track magazine. Zino has also worked in Europe, and Asia – now the largest automotive market in the world with China at its center.
GM 1940 Design Sketches Found in Rochester NY
Click to enlarge.
“Nobody knows how the binder journeyed from Detroit to upstate New York. When Josh Quick found it in a barn at an estate sale, he grabbed it without thinking. It was only days later, while flipping through the pages, that Quick realized he was holding a missing piece of General Motors history,” Bob Sorokanich, senior editor, GM News posted last week.*
In 2024, Josh Quick went to a farm estate sale in the small town of Conesus, about 45 minutes south of Rochester, New York, on the hunt for antique tractor parts. He thought he’d hit the jackpot. “I asked the guy, what do you want for all this stuff? He said, ‘two cases of Busch Light beer,’” Quick told GM News.
Among the parts, Quick found a binder full of old pencil-on-paper car drawings.
“I flipped it open, saw the first picture, and thought, that’s cool,” he said. The guy running the estate sale had never seen the binder before. He told Quick to take it. “I just threw it in with the rest of the stuff,” Quick said. “I didn’t know what it was. I left it on the seat of my truck for three or four days. I was more excited about the tractor stuff.”
Quick eventually looked through the collection of hand-drawn automobiles, nearly 80 pages preserved in plastic sleeves. The images, all dated from the summer of 1940, show visions of what General Motors vehicles – Buicks, specifically – might look like in 1942.
Quick has YouTube channel, Quick Speed Shop, where he documents his work restoring vintage cars and trucks and building hot-rods. As he flipped through the pages of his barn-find binder, he began recognizing some of the names signed to the artwork. “That’s when I put the pieces together,” he told GM News.
“The cars depicted the binder were never put into production, but the artists who drew them went on to become influential figures in American car design. This collection, forgotten for decades in a New York State barn, was a missing piece of history from the Detroit Institute of Automobile Styling, a General Motors-operated school that launched the careers of some of the greatest car designers in history.
“The Detroit Institute of Automobile Styling was, like so many aspects of the car-design industry, a brainchild of Harley Earl. Born in California in 1893, and largely self-taught, Earl spent his early career designing custom bodywork for the luxury cars of Hollywood movie stars. He was hired by General Motors in 1927, where he established the Art & Colour Section (spelled the British way for added style, so to speak. Ironically Earl’s breakthrough 1938 Buick Y-Job convertible – the industry’s first concept car was restored at the Henry Ford Museum, where it resided from the early 1950s until 1993 when it was returned to the GM Design Center. – AutoCrat).
“Art & Colour, made GM the first automaker to standardize the automotive design process in product development. Staffing this department was problematic for Earl,” said GM News.
“He was looking for designers, but he had to train them as well, because there were no schools at the time that had a curriculum in automotive or transportation design,” said Christo Datini, manager of the GM Design Archive & Special Collections. In 1938, Earl launched the Detroit Institute of Automotive Styling. Operated by GM, the school served two purposes: Training the next generation of car designers, and recruiting the best to come work at GM.
“With the Detroit Institute of Automotive Styling, “General Motors Design became a training ground for young designers,” Datini said. At the end of the year-long course, a promising student could even receive an offer to work under Earl. “So many pioneers of design came through GM,” Datini said.
“The barn-find binder shows future design legends at the dawn of their careers. Some rose to prominence as leaders at General Motors: Ned Nickles, who styled the groundbreaking 1963 Buick Riviera; Ed Glowacke, who led Cadillac design during its trend-setting 1950s tail-fin era; Clare MacKichan, directly responsible for Chevrolet’s iconic ’55, ’56 and ’57 sedans, not to mention the first generation of Corvettes.
“DIAS had influence far beyond General Motors. Included in Quick’s binder were sketches by Joe Oros, credited with designing the first Ford Mustang; Gene Bordinat, who later served as a vice president at Ford; and Elwood Engel, later a vice president at Chrysler,” said GM news.
“The guys in that binder designed every single important car in Detroit from 1952 to 1974,” Quick said.
“The collected works seems to come from a single semester of classwork at DIAS, April through August, 1940. They appear to stem from a single exercise: Proposing designs for model-year 1942 Buicks. Flipping through the pages, you can see the work becoming more advanced. Straightforward, blueprint-style views evolve into fanciful illustrations of gleaming speedsters dripping with chrome. Occasionally, a speeding airplane or futuristic monorail train soars across the background, symbolizing a thoroughly modern age of transportation,” said GM News.
*Bob Sorokanich is a former automotive journalist whose work has appeared in Road & Track, Car and Driver, Wired, Robb Report, and many other publications. He is senior editor at GM News. Reach him at news@gm.com
About Ken Zino
Ken Zino, editor and publisher of AutoInformed, is a versatile auto industry participant with global experience spanning decades in print and broadcast journalism, as well as social media. He has automobile testing, marketing, public relations and communications experience. He is past president of The International Motor Press Assn, the Detroit Press Club, founding member and first President of the Automotive Press Assn. He is a member of APA, IMPA and the Midwest Automotive Press Assn. He also brings an historical perspective while citing their contemporary relevance of the work of legendary auto writers such as Ken Purdy, Jim Dunne or Jerry Flint, or writers such as Red Smith, Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson – all to bring perspective to a chaotic automotive universe. Above all, decades after he first drove a car, Zino still revels in the sound of the exhaust as the throttle is blipped during a downshift and the driver’s rush that occurs when the entry, apex and exit points of a turn are smoothly and swiftly crossed. It’s the beginning of a perfect lap. AutoInformed has an editorial philosophy that loves transportation machines of all kinds while promoting critical thinking about the future use of cars and trucks. Zino builds AutoInformed from his background in automotive journalism starting at Hearst Publishing in New York City on Motor and MotorTech Magazines and car testing where he reviewed hundreds of vehicles in his decade-long stint as the Detroit Bureau Chief of Road & Track magazine. Zino has also worked in Europe, and Asia – now the largest automotive market in the world with China at its center.