Never destroy the unfinished car design manuscript!

This is a love story with a bit of Raiders of the Lost Ark thrown in. You can imagine that the background of the story is the early 1960s, when the United States, having escaped the aftermath of the last round of wartime austerity measures, finally entered a period of prosperity and headed towards peace and prosperity with full throttle. New York's "Mad Men" have come up with unique ideas to create brand images and created many imaginative and popular slogans. However, Detroit has always been the economic and creative center of the United States, and the cars it produces also show this new confidence in increasingly gorgeous ways...

Like Harley? Earl , these heavyweight design masters such as Virgil Exner, Bill Mitchell and Eugene Bordinat supervised the development during this period The car's shape was heavily influenced by the jet age, and its excitement was like a strong cocktail of chrome, wings and fins, which tasted better than Frank Sinatra and all the dandies of the time. I drank a lot of whiskey sours at the Sands Hotel and Casino bar.

Now imagine yourself joining the growing design department of Chrysler, Ford, or General Motors during this period, where your job consisted mainly of sketching door handles. But probably because you graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, even in a low-level position, your boss often asks you to propose proposals for new models. You could let your imagination run wild, because the automobile industry coincided with the rise of a new pop culture, and art and commerce complemented each other in an unprecedented way. The design elements you rack your brains to come up with may be a big success, but most of them will be wasted, and because they are highly confidential, the things you design will almost always end up in the trash can, unless you sneak them out of the company and retrieve them. Go home...

Patrick Kelley found his first abandoned car concept design artwork by chance in 2005. "At that time, I was very interested in Americana and lost art, and I often went to the Art Deco Show in San Francisco." He said, "One time I found a stall selling original illustrations at the venue. The items on display were basically everyone's I have seen the original paintings used on the covers of cheap novels or magazine serials, but then I noticed some car drawings on the wall on the other side of the stall. The stall owner talked to me about the "golden age of car design". Such works are very rare, because only a few have been preserved, so I bought a work from the 1930s that was sketched with simple lines and signed by the designer..."

Fifteen years later. Today, Kelley has collected 400 such works of art, about half of which are published in his wonderful book "Imagine!?Automobile?Concept?Art?from?the?1930s?to?the?1980s". Some of the works are small in size, while others are as large as eight feet in length. The signatures of the works also include names that are familiar to car fans. After all, many designers in the past have been able to cultivate their creative hearts for a long time in a corporate and business environment. There are also many works that have made a career, but have been lost in the torrent of time. Even Taishan Beidou's early works are usually regarded as waste paper and have long since disappeared.

“You know, ninety-nine percent of the sketches these people drew were destroyed,” Kelley told me. “Either destroyed in front of their eyes, or they were destroyed at the end of the project. Those The supervisor had a very tough style, and would rip off the work you were painting in the middle of, and loudly say, "This is garbage, try painting it in a different direction." At that time, no one expected that these things would one day become valuable, so I didn't. It’s hard to imagine that they destroyed and discarded many wonderful designs. It can only be said to be a miracle that some of the works survived, especially considering that the works that were taken home and escaped may eventually be damaged by the passage of time.

Be aware that Michigan winters are brutal, and flooding your basement is not uncommon. ”

Kelley is not a veteran in this industry. He actually runs a boutique gardening business in Santa Cruz, California, supplying top ornamental plants and animals to Silicon Valley residents. He was born in California in 1955 Fresno, even though it’s a landlocked town about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, Kelley grew up surrounded by car culture.

“Wherever there was an event, his dad would do it. Take me to see it live. "It might have been the Kearney Bowl hardtops and the Clovis Speedway, or the NASCAR track in Hanford and the Raisin City drag strip," he recalled. "He clearly remembers being beaming with joy when he saw the Jaguar E-type owned by his friend's mother. He remembers the 64-year-old black coupe with white-ringed tires. He remembers seeing California at the annual Autorama in Fresno. Celebrities in the tuning industry, George Barris, Gene Winfield and Ed Roth, known as Big Daddy, attended the event. He never wanted to be a car designer, but the sunny sixties still sowed the seeds of curiosity in him.

Forty years later, as their collection of conceptual designs grew rapidly, Kelley and his wife decided to go to Detroit to conduct an unannounced visit to their Edsel and Eleanor store in Grosse Point, Michigan. Ford House participated in an exhibition called Eyes On Design and found a booth opened by an organization composed of former automotive designers (League of Retired Automotive Designers is an officially registered group, and Marvel is paying close attention to it) Whether there are business opportunities).

Since he had held informal small exhibitions, Kelley immediately seized the opportunity and put a leftover exhibition leaflet into the hands of one of the staff. The reaction was: "'Wow... this is my work! How on earth did you get it? It must have been lost or destroyed long ago...' The cover of my book happened to have the work of this dear friend - George Camp - printed on it. I told him that this work was hanging on the wall of my foyer, and that it was well framed and had good lighting. He was only twenty when he made this sketch, and is now eighty-five. In any case, he immediately called other colleagues present to come over. One of them even cried on the spot when he was looking at the flyer and said, "I haven't seen this work in sixty-five years." They handed over all their works that year, so they were unable to show the authenticity to their children and grandchildren. At that moment I realized something, so I said to my wife, ‘It turns out there is another angle to this. Collecting is not just for fun, we must show respect to these guys’. ”

He certainly does this when he illustrates a parallel history of a great era in automotive design. He features the work of eighty-seven artists in this lavishly illustrated volume, each of which They all contributed to the interesting new things in the United States in an era when everything was possible. Part of this book is like a chronicle, describing how Detroit rode the waves of the times. When the American automobile industry controlled the lifeblood of the country, it later became a chronicle. However, Motown was turned upside down by the 1968 riots, and five years later, the oil crisis shattered every detail of its dream of prosperity. I couldn't help but think that it would be great if the good times could be maintained.

In fact, we hope that "everything in the past is a prelude". With this wish and respect, we can relive the good things that have passed away.

Charles Maher started playing in 1968. Ford later switched to an art company, specializing in automobile design work.

Art Gerstenberger graduated from ArtCenter in Pasadena and was once employed by Ford Advanced Styling Studio.

Irv Rybicki (the one wearing a black suit jacket) was photographed in the design room on March 1, 1963. He was later appointed Vice President of Design Affairs at General Motors.

A perfect example of a concept car from the 1950s, designed by the little-known WMihailuk.

Allan Kornmiller, who drew this sketch in 1956, was a design manager at Chrysler and had worked for Ford Advanced Design Studio, as well as American Motors, Hudson and Nash.

This 1959 sketch comes from another designer who has been lost in history, Michael Cody.

The design submitted by Homer LaGassey Jr in the early 1960s. In 1942, he became the youngest styling designer in General Motors' history, at the age of only 22.

Joan Klatil-Creamer and Cadillac design boss Stan Parker were photographed in February 1967. She was the first female hired by General Motors' body design department.

It doesn’t matter if you haven’t read enough. Interested students can look for the following book:

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent Autohome’s point of view.