Legendary Common Motors designer goes out with a thud.
That is an installment in a collection of posts trying again on present automobiles that we really feel deserved slightly extra consideration than they received. You probably have a suggestion for a Forgotten Idea subject, please shoot us a line or depart a remark under.
Pontiac Phantom
First Proven: Common Motors Milford Proving Grounds in 1977
Description: Giant 2-passenger luxurious coupe
Gross sales Pitch: “An expression of private style, with out regard for division, or present client tendencies.”
Particulars:
First seen on the Common Motors Milford Proving Grounds in 1977, the Pontiac Phantom (company inside code title “Madame X”) was the creation of firm design chief Invoice Mitchell. Mitchell created the automotive as a retirement reward to himself, and conceived it as, “…an expression of private style, with out regard for (company) division, or present client tendencies.” Certainly, the Pontiac moniker was dropped from the automobile’s title in some unspecified time in the future in its growth.
Improvement of the Phantom was halted when then GM Vice President of Product Planning Howard Kehrl noticed the idea and demanded that it’s instantly faraway from the Milford facility. The Phantom was thus by no means fitted with an operational drivetrain.
Mitchell, who had been answerable for such legendary GM designs as the primary Buick Riviera and Oldsmobile Toronado, in addition to the 1963 and 1968 Corvettes, had grown despondent as GM tailored to rising gas prices and altering purchaser tastes by downsizing its product line. Mitchell had described designing downsized automobiles as, “tailoring a swimsuit for a dwarf.”
Deemed by GM administration to be wildly out of step with the altering instances, the Phantom was by no means seen on the auto-show circuit, nor publicly displayed in any manner. The automobile was preserved, nonetheless, and is a part of GM’s company automobile assortment.
Forgotten Idea: Chrysler Phaeton
CG Says:
Invoice Mitchell crafted a number of the best-looking automobiles of the Sixties and Seventies, so it’s painful to think about him as in-decline and out of favor at long-time house Common Motors. Nonetheless, the Phantom is hard to have a look at, realizing how extremely tone deaf the design was.
By 1977, Common Motors had redesigned its full-size B-Physique sedans and coupes, and the consequence was a collection of automobiles that have been trim, crisply rendered, and spot-on excellent for the instances. Mitchell’s lengthy, heavy-looking, and thickly sculpted Phantom appeared extra a product of 1967, not ’77, and had no place within the fashionable GM lineup. Even the Deco-inspired wheel covers on the idea automotive appeared curiously from a unique period, if not epoch.
I’ll all the time be curious in regards to the rectangular headlamps, that are the one component of the Phantom Idea which seem up to date—and in addition appear in any other case at odds with the automotive’s general design.
Forgotten Idea: Dodge Super8 Hemi
Pontiac Phantom Idea Gallery
(Click on under for enlarged pictures)
