Legends

Any car lover who has ever smiled at the silky style of a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray (above) with its signature split-window smoothness, knows all too well about the little man named Larry Shinoda who became a larger-than-life legend. Born Lawrence Kiyoshi Shinoda into a Japanese-American family in Los Angeles, Calif., in 1930, Shinoda always seemed to have a flair for the artistic. As a young man, he crafted hot rod speed parts in front of his California home by day and tested their mettle by drag racing on the streets of L.A. by night. Tossed out of the city’s Art Center College of Design for being a self-described “malcontent,” by age 25 Shinoda was racing cars for cash and designing for Ford. He stayed at Ford one year, his first big break, then move to Studebaker/Packard. He left the automaker in 1955 and designed an open-wheel race car that won win the Indianapolis 500 that year. Three years later, back in Detroit, Shinoda went to work with General Motors’ head of design, Harley Earl, and the design team at Chevrolet. There, he worked with design wizard Bill Mitchell at GM’s Advanced Studios and the secretive “Studio X.” Soon, Shinoda found himself working almost exclusively as Mitchell’s “chief pencil” (designer/renderer). Some of Chevy’s exotic cars followed including several that directly led to the 1963 Sting Ray. There was also the Z/28 Camaro. Shinoda became the new head of Ford’s Special Design Center and was responsible for the Torino Cobra, the Boss 302 Mustang (below, right). As an independent stylist, he drew many industrial and automotive designs. He also had a hand in race cars, go karts, mobile homes, transport trucks and snowmobiles. And there were influences on others such as Honda, Toyota and even agricultural giant International Harvester. From Corvettes to sport utes, Shinoda’s designs were intended to please. His humor was infectious; his legacy was everlasting, a blueprint for future automotive designers. Shinoda died in November of 1997.