GTPNewsWire
Contributing Writer
- 21,555
- GTPHQ
This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:
This article was published by Joe Donaldson (@Joey D) on January 9th, 2019 in the Car Culture category.
One wonders to what degree he was actually involved. Did he go all the way back to the beginning of concepts like the Banshee and IROC-Z or did he reshape those designs into something safe for large scale production? And as has already been suggested, Chuck Jordan, who was head of design at GM until 1992, wasn't exactly the hands-off type.I find it amusing that the same guy that designed the 4th Gen Camaro designed the Ferrari Enzo.
One wonders to what degree he was actually involved. Did he go all the way back to the beginning of concepts like the Banshee and IROC-Z or did he reshape those designs into something safe for large scale production? And as has already been suggested, Chuck Jordan, who was head of design at GM until 1992, wasn't exactly the hands-off type.
I find it amusing that the same guy that designed the 4th Gen Camaro designed the Ferrari Enzo.
One wonders to what degree he was actually involved. Did he go all the way back to the beginning of concepts like the Banshee and IROC-Z or did he reshape those designs into something safe for large scale production? And as has already been suggested, Chuck Jordan, who was head of design at GM until 1992, wasn't exactly the hands-off type.
Interesting. I hopped on over to Dean's Garage and did a search, and of the three instances in which "Okuyama" appears, the most insightful simply indicates that he had Bunker Hill Bradley as an instructor at Art Center in 1984.Based on his website, he was the Cheif Designer at GM when he worked there. Although, a guy by the name of Kirk Bennion was over the Camaro design program. I'm guessing the two worked together to get the final shape.
Most of what I'm gleaning from broader searches seems to regurgitate the same vague information ("worked for GM before moving to Porsche and helping to design the 996"), though I found something that suggests he was keyed into the design of the Opel Calibra (which begs the question "where did he work for GM", since Wayne Cherry was in the United States and Erhard Schnell was in Germany).
Interesting. I hopped on over to Dean's Garage and did a search, and of the three instances in which "Okuyama" appears, the most insightful simply indicates that he had Bunker Hill Bradley as an instructor at Art Center in 1984.
Now that's certainly not the last word, as while I'm aware of Bennion at Corvette, he isn't mentioned on the site at all.
Most of what I'm gleaning from broader searches seems to regurgitate the same vague information ("worked for GM before moving to Porsche and helping to design the 996"), though I found something that suggests he was keyed into the design of the Opel Calibra (which begs the question "where did he work for GM", since Wayne Cherry was in the United States and Erhard Schnell was in Germany).
Edit: The "image cars" from GM were a bit of priority at GM Design in 1986, when Ken is supposed to have started with the company, so that feeds into (though certainly doesn't confirm) the notion that Ken may have been involved with the fourth generation Camaro from the start.
Oh, absolutely. He's supposed to have worked at Opel in the grander scheme (apparently being head of design there), and it's still very possible that he did that without being in Europe, let alone Germany.Its conceivable he was based in the US while working on designs for Europe.
That could certainly be the case.I'm wondering if the vagueness in the sources comes from the fact that most stuff I found about Okuyama is in Japanese.
Am I the only one on here who thinks that the Kode0 looks like a modern version of.. the Dome Zero?