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	The Forgotten Era, 1950 - 1965

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An Interview with Hugh Nutting
		I was born in 1939 about 15 miles from the Oldsmobile factory. The first really neat car I remember was a Cream 1937 Cord 810 sedan that I think was Martin Tanner's folks car. I was 4! Through the K-12 years I had friends that had fathers in the Car business. My early spin on automotive history is from a bit different view point. Dad was a Chemist and S.A.E. member doing basic research on the raw materials that built and ran cars. Because of WWII gas rationing, most of my early car rides were with my Uncle. He was an old fashion country doctor that made house calls. He also owner the first car in Saint Ignace, MI -- a 1906 Maxwell roadster. (the family's first car) With these roots, the Love Affair with the Car began. It was not long before I began to like cars that were designed BC - before committees. Neat guys built neat cars!
What headed you in the car styling direction? Being from near Detroit we took field trips to Greenfield Village several times as grade school kids. The second car to impress me was Edsel Ford's 1941 Continental Convertible. Shortly after those days we went to the Detroit Auto Shows when the Chrysler Ghia/Exner concept cars were first shown. ( the front of Jim Webb's Savage had this look) - saw the first Corvette and Thunderbird displays in 1953 and 1954. Also we went to the Sports Car Reviews that Benson and William Clay Ford put on at the Museum. I got close to the first Cunningham and First series Testa-Rosa I'd ever seen. Other big events came in 1954. Dad took me to Washington DC where we visited the Jaguar Dealership in addition to all the Capitol sights. That December we were in Florida and went to B.S. Cunningham Company. We were shown around by Phil Walters. All pumped up by this I came home and purchased my first restorable car, a 1929 Model A Roadster with a warmed up 4. I learned a lot about the early V8 running gear when I installed a 303 Olds engine in 1958. Still use the knowlege on the Glasspar G2. Oh yah, one other thing in this period was going to my first sports car races. Martin Tanner helped put them on and raced. This was before his Championship H-mod years. When were you at Art Center School? All of 1960 and 1961 at the 3rd Street Campus Did you have a special mentor? I'd say Strother MacMinn came first on the list. As a kid, I'd seen his articles in car magazines. Art Center became home-base and Mac was the energy and the point man for all of this net-working between students and the makers of cars plus auto publications. I read something recently that stated Mac never designed a car --he just stimulated others to come up with new concepts and designs -- The mark of a real educator! He grew-up in Pasadena when Walter Murphy was building Duesenberg bodies. Some of Frank Springs staff taught him to draw. And his early friends were guys like Tommy Lee, pioneer hot rodder and son of the California Cadillac Distributor. Frank Kurtis and Harley Earl got started in the Don Lee Dealership body division. Lots of people in the car world have been my hero's over the years. At the top of the list are Strother MacMinn. Edsel Ford, Reid Railton, Martin Tanner & Joe Thompson. I was lucky enough to know them or their son's over the years. Its almost scarey to think about - when I met William Clay Ford his son Bill had an entry-level management job. Bill is now CEO of Ford. And sadly Hugh Jorgensen and Dean Batchelor past on far too young in their 70's. This 1928/9 Model A boat-tail rendering is one I did in Hugh Jorgensen's class. I actually built a 1931 version for a customer in the mid 1970's. Kind of funny cause Jim Webb did a DV-32 Stutz boat-tail about the same time. Did you ever meet Howard 'Dutch' Darrin? Yes in later years. Dutch was a WWI fighter pilot in Eddie Richenbacher's Squadron. Like many of the WWI vets he stayed in France to enjoy the roaring '20's and began his auto design career there. Howard might be the all time auto world's original "wild and crazy" guy. He had about 5 wives and 10 kids. Spending most of his post WWII years in Hollywood customizing and designing cars for Stars. I met him in Colorado about 1980 when he was doing the "lecture tour" type thing with car clubs. A friend of mine drove him around with his youngest son, Pat for several days in his (my friend's) 1940 Packard (rare) 4-door Darrin convertible. Dutch/Howard, Bill Tritt and Rudy Stoessel of Coachcraft Ltd of Hollywood worked together on the 2 Packard and Kaiser Darrin developements. Jim Webb and I visited Coachcraft Ltd several times in the early 1960's while the business was still on Melrose. Rudy's son, Bill was about our age. Strother MacMinn tried to get the Bill to enroll at Art Center, but he liked working with his dad in the family business. Bill kept the business going for many years in the Valley after his father past on. Some of these guys friends were Duval (he had one of the best chrome shops in SoCal) who designed the speedster style windshields for A and B Ford hot rods and, Bohman & Schwartz, the former Walter Murphy employees. At times all these guys might work on a car project together if their shops space was full, the other guy had some specialized skills to share, or a customer was being a pain in the 'back-side'. Rudy started out at Pierce-Arrow as a pattern maker in the days when Pierce built Cast aluminum bodies. He and Joe Thompson were the 'class act' craftsman with old world type training that got us to the fiberglass car era. They set the standards for body pattern making. There are two basic types of people in many businesses. The artists/creator and the manager/business types. Bill Tritt and Les Dawes were on the artist side and Bill Devin and Woody Woodill were more on the management side. (both being auto dealers) All liked cars -- the one thing they all had in common. Skilled technical people from the Aircraft Industry who learned lots during WWII also added to the knowlege pool that helped in the birth of the plastic car era. In some respects Art Center's method of teaching put all these groups together. Hugh Jorgensen's interview also indicates this experience. Can you give us a typical class room day at ACS? Our instructors were all working professionals. Most spent one day a week teaching. We spent the whole day in one class. Transportation Design with Hugh Jorgensen might be Wednesday. Friday could be all day with Joe Thompson in the Model Shop. We had 5 classes a week and a couple of general ed classes on Saturday morning. Sometimes we were sent out to do research on products or cars. It was these 'research trips' when we headed for Bill Devins factory or the Ferrari Dealership, etc. Sometimes you could con a car salesman into a test drive. At the Sunbeam Garage I got a green salesman to demo a new Alpine (baby T-bird) I took him to Griffith Park for the curvy roads. He was not from LA and we got lost. But got lots of drive time before finding the Dealership! AND? We were able to take in what Southern California had to offer the car buff, Friday night on Hollywood Blvd, Riverside and Pamona plus Ascott and the Santa Ana Drags were all worked into our self generated 'educational' programs. Some were ACS trips and many were the impromp-to 'guy thing' trips. Tell me about your instructors. To me the kindest-nicest guy on the staff (also the oldest) was Joe 'Pop" Thompson, the senior Model Shop instructor. Pop started in the vehicle trade in 1904. He knew from the start where he wanted to be; Cadillac Motor Company. It took him about 10 years to get there. Joe was trained by the first guy to ever build 1/2 and Full scale model cars with plaster and clay. He became the Manager of the Sample Body Department (for prototypes) at Cadillac when Harley Earl started GM's Styling Department. Joe being the worlds second auto model maker, designed his own tools. He first taught us to make our own tools before he got us started in the shop working on clay model making. Joe stayed at Cadillac til WWII shut down the car plants. A normal guy would have retired at that point. Joe then hired on with Raymond Lowey in about 1945 to do Studebaker modeling/design work. Around 1950 well past retirement age Joe headed for Southern California. He started a model-making studio and began teaching at Art Center.. Hugh Jorgensen was in the first batch of his students. By 1960 he had the kids working with fiber-glass. We drew up what was called a 'speed form' (most looked like a ski-boat) in about 1/18th scale. He got us from the drawing to a fiberglass model in about a month. At his home studio business Joe helped Bill Tritt of Glasspar model the first bumper cars for Disneyland plus some parts for their mono-rail. Joe shared everything with the kids, a regular grandfather type. One day I was at the lathe and Pop came over beaming from ear to ear. He pulled out a letter from Raymond Lowey. The letter was about a new sports coupe for Studebaker. Lowey expressed a wish that Joe was there to finish the full-size clay model. About a year later I saw what Raymond was talking about on a turn-table in Grand Centeral Station as I was headed for Fort Dix ... The Avanti! Joe lived into his 90's Art Center had a grand Birthday Party for his 90th. You mention Bill Tritt. Yes. At Art Center we had a student chapter of the Industrial Designeers Institute (IDI). It was an evening meeting generally. Bill was a guest speaker. Another was Chuck Jordan then Head of Cadillac Studio later GM Styling VP after Bill Mitchell. This was also part of the great ACS education. At this point Uncle Sam came calling. The next chapter is Art Center and beyond staring Strother MacMinn, Dean Batchelor, John Bond, John Rienhart, William Clay Ford, Peter Morgan and more.


		MacMinn used this technique to illustrate cars. Black colored pencil on vellum tissue. This assignment was to Americanize the VW Ghia
		Classroom Artwork 1960
		MacMinn Assisted Builders
		Jim Webb's Savage
		My First Real Car
		MGTD at Art Center School
		Model A Boattail Design
		Schwartz Shop about like Coachcraft Ltd. of Hollywood
		Hugh Nutting with S600 Honda
		The Tommy Lee Speedster by Frank Kurtis was first shown at Santa Barbara in 1989. It was the subject of one of the last auto articles that Strother MacMinn wrote. Mac got the honorary parade ride in it past the judging stand.

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