June 17, 2003 - This year’s Eyes on Design Automotive Design Exhibit will present 75 years of GM Design at the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan on June 22. The event will open with a brunch presentation by Wayne Cherry, GMs fifth head of design. Car Design News expects that the name of the sixth may be announced during the presentations, and in this series of articles we are celebrating the five men who have carried GMs very distinct design torch, and have contributed to a remarkable consistency. Number four in the line is Charles M. “Chuck” Jordan.

I remember sitting with Henry Haga under an apple tree (really!) near Rüsselsheim in the spring of 1976. Haga, the most elegant of designers, at the time with Opel, having followed David Holls who had succeeded Chuck Jordan there, was as interested as the next guy about who were to follow Bill Mitchell as GMs third head of design. 

“My hunch”, he said, “is that they will let Clare MacKichan be “chief for a day”, but move him on, then Jordan will take over for some years, to be followed by Irv Rybicki, and finally David Holls will put the house in order again”.

Pretty cynical, but it was already obvious that the next years would spell trouble - meaning government interference and safety and environmental considerations. Corporate ineptitude wasn’t as obvious yet, at least not to us outsiders. Most of the names he mentioned came from the middle level management sectors as he was, many of them were younger that him, but he was sincere (I believe) when he said he did not crave such a job. (He headed the California advanced studio, before a far too early death in 1988).

Apart from MacKichan, Haga got all the names right, but the order was wrong. And the reason we did not hear anything more from Holls, may have to do with the fact that he, too, was one of those who died too young. He worked as second in command under Jordan until 1991.

But it proved to be Rybicki who was the unfortunate to get there first, and to Charles Jordan fell the job of returning GM Design back to it’s former glory. He took over in 1986 and left in 1992 with not only an enviable reputation, but also one of the world’s largest collections of Ferrari models! He was a “car guy” in the Mitchell mold.

Charles M. Jordan was born in California in 1927. In 1945 he first graduated from MIT Engineering School and then won the Fisher Body National Design Contest. Harley Earl saw his work and asked him to join the GM design staff, where he started in 1948. His earliest classic was the 1955 Motorama Cameo, the first smooth sided pickup. Then he went to Euclid and later designed the Aerotrain. He returned to automobiles - the 1958 Corvette is one of his - became head of Cadillac design, and he signed off some excellent cars when he was at Opel at the end of the sixties.

And, as noted by for instance such a remote body as San Diego Model Car Club: in the Sixties he met Enzo Ferrari who drove him in the 250 GTE prototype. Mr. Ferrari even gave him a model of the Phil Hill Sharknose 156 Ferrari. “This was the start of a remarkably vast collection of Ferrari Models”. Why the San Diego MCC? Only because that was one of the many places Chuck Jordan recently visited and entertained with his reminiscences and observations.

This man who has been well known for not suffering fools gladly, he has called interviews off less than gracefully, calling them a waste of time; cutting off his designers enthusiastic descriptions asking “why don’t we put it in the drivers manual?”, and writing letters to Automotive News saying exactly what he thinks about to-day’s GM design (hated digital development – “a car like the Aztek would not have happened had a real model been developed”), and who once commanded 1300 people in six studios, has a very obvious mellow side too. Visiting enthusiasts clubs, and teaching high school pupils are parts of his daily schedule now. Valhalla High School in El Cajon has some very privileged Art students, that’s where he teaches car design on a voluntary basis for classes filled to capacity.

His continental career set new standards for GM. As design director for Opel from 1967 he developed new standards both for design and organisation. The elegant Manta coupe was his, and some of the bread and butter Rekords were very competently done. He worked closely with Bob Lutz there, which might have helped the development of his personal style considerably. His Opel interest never waned and he was closely involved with the 1986 Omega/Carlton as well as the 1991 Astra, and when he did the production version of the sensational Opel GT in 1968 he worked closely with European body manufacturers like Chausson and Brissoneau et Lotz.

Earlier he supported Bertone when they developed the 1963 Testudo on the Corvair base - that was a new GM direction, and you can ask people like Renault’s Jean-Francois Venet about Jordan. He is not the only senior designer around with an enormous passion for Corvettes and admiration for Jordan. We should also mention his nose for emerging talents – he offered Anne Asensio a job when she studied at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit in 1987/88 – she stayed loyal to Renault then and did not accept until the offer was renewed in 2000. Students at Detroit’s CCS might also remember him with affection. During the development of the Buick Wildcat (1985) Jordan invited 12 students to participate in the development of that 'dreamcar' – unheard of until then.

Jordan’s career at the US end of GM is comprehensive. He worked closely with Earl, Mitchell and Rybicki. Before he became head of the Cadillac studio in 1959 he worked on such milestones as 1958 XP 700 Corvette concept and at his departure to Opel he had been head of all American and foreign small cars from 1962. At home again in 1970 he participated in big projects as the J Car (1982 Cavalier, which started as the U-project in 1975) and when the Rybicki period started he became his second in command, and as part of an integrated vertical hierarchy, accessible only through Jordan, all design was to a large extent placed under him.

So there was no great surprise when Jordan was announced as Rybicki’s successor. He was well known, his tall figure was a familiar landmark at motor shows all over the world. He was the least insular of all GMs design bosses so far. He gave us journalists excellent copy, his quotes were as good as those of Bob Lutz and of equal candidness. He was a Ferrari owner and knew how to drive them. And he had some good designs to his name. 

But how will history judge his six-year’s reign? He took over in October 1986 and knew he had to retire at age 65, in 1992. He also knew that six years is not a long time in a car’s life. He may have had a clear vision of where GM design should head – the renaming of the division is an indication of that. GM Styling was the pre-war name, then in 1972 that was changed to Design Staff. In 1992 the name was again altered, to Design Center. Some might say that this was the most significant break with the past during this epoch.

The Oldsmobile Aerotech concept (1987) and the Buick Reatta (1988) were two successful cars from the Jordan era, but he has also left behind some very bland Saturns and a not very exciting Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight (1992) among many other very forgettable models. The Chevrolet Caprice was particularly unhappy as it happened more or less at the same time as the 'putsch' at the GM Board – some people did not believe Jordan would survive that one. And this was at the time when especially Chrysler’s designers were racing past, at least when it came to the all important column inches from the emerging Auto Show in Detroit. 

In his “The Art of American Car Design” (1988) Professor C. Edson Armi writes, “…Unlike certain business judgements, taste is an elusive thing that does not improve by conference calls. Someone at the top of General Motors has got to have it, and use it. The future rests in the hands of men like Design Director Chuck Jordan, but when he speaks of the advantages of the cooperative system of anonymous design his perspective is that of an engineer, unknowledgeable about art and uninterested in the history of automotive design…”

I always found Chuck Jordan well informed of art, current and old, he was extremely knowledgeable about the history of car design, especially the European angle, and I always found him a very individualistic person. But you have to remember that he had just, fairly directly, refused the professor an interview, and his PR-figure might of course be quite different from the corporate Mr. Jordan.

But whatever judgement history will pass on him, there can be no doubt that with his “corporate design” philosophy he at least prepared the ground for his successor’s Brand Character philosophy.