Much of the credit for the massive tail-finned and chrome-laden beauties that rolled off General Motors’ assembly floor goes to former vice president, Harley Earl. But there were many other designers who were responsible for cars dripping with exuberance in the Fifties.One of them was Charles ‘Chuck’ Jordan.
He helped shaped the US’s golden era, taking cars to their surreal peak with his 1959 Cadillac Eldorado, and then had the foresight to reshape them with more subtle, sporty-looking models such as the Camaros and Firebirds of the Nineties. His designs ranged from automobiles to tractors and trains, penning the locomotive of the future, the Aerotrain.
Give Chuck a pen and paper, and he’d give you designs that were way ahead of their time. He was perhaps best known for bringing the streamlined style into GM’s design language, thanks to his 1963 Buick Riviera and 1973 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. He liked his cars to be long, low and wide.
Born in Whittier, California on October 21, 1927, he started sketching cars when he was just six years old. He studied engineering and design at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and won the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild model car competition.
GM executives were already sitting up and taking notice, and Earl gave him his big break in 1949. He loved nothing more than to be in the design studio, and was instrumental in the design of the 1958 Corvette, the fanciful dream cars for GM’s Motorama exhibitions and the wide-track Pontiacs that helped make John DeLorean’s name.
His efforts paid off when, at just 30 years old, he was made chief designer of Cadillac, one of the carmaker’s most prestigious positions. When the offer of chief of exterior design and director of the entire design staff at Opel came along, he packed his bags and moved to Germany. The elegant Manta coupé was one of his, but he found himself back on home soil in 1986 when he was made the third successor to Earl as GM’s vice president of design.
The Ferrari-obsessed Jordan was a close friend of Enzo’s and loved recounting the time when the former race driver took him for a drive in the 250 GTE prototype — and scared him witless. In later interviews, he’d recall it as being “the best day of my life.”
Jordan retired in 1992 with an enviable reputation having commanded 1,300 people in six studios. He even found time to teach design at high school. In 2010, he passed away aged 83 following a long battle with lymphoma.
He saw it all during a glittering career and will always be remembered as the last of the great style and design grandees of General Motors.
