"Kip" Stevens with his 1951 Excal­ibur J

The blogsite of Hem­mings Motor News sees fit to post my  1982 arti­cle on Brooks Stevens, along with a gra­tu­itous opin­ion: “Per­haps Richard Langworth’s ten­dency toward pur­ple prose in this pro­file of Brooks Stevens in Spe­cial Inter­est Autos #71, Octo­ber 1982, is appro­pri­ate, given the pic­ture he paints of the leg­endary designer.” Aside from the fact that Hem­mings paid only for first rights and is there­fore in copy­right vio­la­tion, it’s nice to be remembered.

Reac­tions: A one­time edi­tor of SIA wrote: “I see noth­ing purple—it reads like an essay in The New Yorker.” (Ah, if only Hem­mings paid New Yorker rates!)  A Packard Club col­league wrote: “Naah, not pur­ple, maybe faint mauve.” A blog reader wrote: “Ugh, I can’t read it. The prose is too pur­ple for me, and the Excal­ibur J can run with the Jaguar XK120?” Of course it can, replied Tony Stevens: “As the cur­rent owner of the first 1951/2 Excal­ibur J race car, I can per­son­ally attest that it can run com­pet­i­tively with an XK120, even more so on a smaller, tech­ni­cal road course.” Right you are Tony. The XK120 was a great car—but the young­sters have swal­lowed too much pur­ple prose about it.

Here­with I post my (updated) piece on my late friend Kip. Read­ers may judge for themselves.

BROOKS STEVENS: THE SEER WHO MADE MILWAUKEE FAMOUS © 1982, 2003

“You’ll have to resolve the con­flict between Dutch Dar­rin and Kip Stevens,” I was told after being assigned my first auto­mo­tive arti­cle ever, on Kaiser-Frazer, in 1969. The ori­gins of the land­mark 1951 Kaiser were at the time still unclear: both Dar­rin and Stevens claimed it, and nei­ther was par­tic­u­larly com­pli­men­tary in describ­ing the efforts of the other. A col­league had warned me that the dif­fer­ences were prob­a­bly too great to resolve and that it might be best not to press the mat­ter. But my edi­tor said, “Hear both sides and make the judg­ment of the his­to­rian.” I didn’t know I was sup­posed to be a his­to­rian, but I wrote to Brooks at his stu­dio near Mil­wau­kee and said in effect, “Tell me every­thing you remem­ber about the 1951 Kaiser.”

The gor­geous 1951 Kaiser. The "full-perimeter bumper" was Brooks Stevens' idea dat­ing back to facelift pro­pos­als for the '48 models.

By return mail came a large white folder with gilt let­ter­ing, con­tain­ing a thick pile of pho­tographs and a long, detailed let­ter doc­u­ment­ing Brooks “Kip” Stevens’ role as a design con­sul­tant to Kaiser-Frazer. Within a year I had met him, and the friend­ship that resulted with­stood the trauma of track­ing the 1951 Kaiser’s design, the full story of which appeared in my book Last Onslaught on Detroit in 1975.

The “judg­ment of the his­to­rian” did not sat­isfy Kip, and in turn pro­duced another white and gilt folder with fur­ther doc­u­men­ta­tion. On that sub­ject it would be accu­rate to say that we had dif­fer­ences but not mis­un­der­stand­ings. Cor­dial­ity never suf­fered, for Stevens was a mas­ter of cordiality.

He was a tall, good look­ing man who belied his age, whose appear­ance and demeanor reflected accred­i­ta­tion to what Cole Porter would have called High Soci­ety. He was, indeed, cast in “Colie’s” image. For Stevens there was only one way to fly to Paris—Concorde—and one way to get to Eng­land in the summertime—first class on the QE2. His per­sonal tastes reflected sim­i­lar stan­dards, pro­duc­ing an effect of refined ele­gance. He was one of those who took pains about every­thing. His designer’s back­ground per­me­ated every aspect down to and includ­ing those ele­gant fold­ers (I have quite a col­lec­tion now) in which he sent his heav­ier mail. In his pres­ence peo­ple were impressed but not over­awed, because he was so com­pletely nat­ural and so full of cour­tesy and fun.

It was never hard to gain Brooks Stevens’ acquain­tance, whether one was a coverall-clad mechanic or the Pres­i­dent of Gen­eral Motors. Along with an inborn civil­ity and an inter­est in oth­ers went an all-encompassing enthu­si­asm and love for every­thing con­nected with cars, an ency­clo­pe­dic first­hand knowl­edge of the indus­try, and a streak of nihilism.

1982 Excal­ibur

Kip once invited my friend Bill Tilden to Wis­con­sin to drive some demon­stra­tion laps at Elkhart Lake in the Excal­ibur J, his Henry J-based sports car. Brooks phoned me after­ward to chat about this adven­ture. The story involved the helicopter-assisted arrest of the ram­bunc­tious Stevens as he charged toward Elkhart Lake in his per­sonal Excal­ibur, vio­lat­ing most Wis­con­sin road ordi­nances plus sev­eral they hadn’t thought of yet.

Pic­ture Stevens, trail­ing a silk scarf, dri­ving a very loud open sports car with what the British call “assur­ance,” tracked by an army of gen­darmerie, includ­ing air­craft. After fail­ing to run him to earth in the ordi­nary way they block the road. Pic­ture next the near­est police­man, seven feet tall as they all are, jerk­ing his thumb at the Excalibur’s sar­to­ri­ally splen­did dri­ver and shout­ing: YOU—OUT! It was a vision. Kip paid his fine. It was substantial.

The world's last great French­man: René Drey­fus with brother Mau­rice at the late, sadly lamented "Le Chante­clair," 49th Street, Manhattan.

He had great gen­eros­ity, which did not always func­tion in his favor. I remem­ber one press night at the New York Auto­mo­bile Show, when Kip arrived at René and Mau­rice Drey­fus’ famous auto­mo­tive water­ing hole, “Le Chante­clair,” with a very large ret­inue of admir­ers. The broth­ers Drey­fus were hard­pressed to seat such a large assem­bly, but they even­tu­ally did, at a long table with Brooks as cen­ter­piece. Le Chante­clair was never the place for a cheap meal. When the bill came, for what I recall was uncom­fort­ably close to one thou­sand 1974 dol­lars, Brooks qui­etly laid down his Amer­i­can Express card. Those who had no inten­tion of sock­ing him with that bill sur­rep­ti­tiously handed him rolls of bills, but a good half the com­pany didn’t bother. There was no sign that our host was in the least dis­ap­pointed: a mea­sure of a man who felt no expense unwar­ranted for the plea­sure of an evening among friends, pro­vided your descrip­tion of “friends” is fairly elastic.

1951 Willys Jeepster

I once stole a line from Schlitz and called Brooks, to his great delight, “The Seer Who Made Mil­wau­kee Famous.” He was one of the ten char­ter fel­lows of the Indus­trial Design Soci­ety of Amer­ica. To the auto­mo­tive trade he brought impec­ca­ble cre­den­tials at just the right time. Ulti­mately he would con­tribute designs to over forty makes of car. One of his ear­li­est asso­ci­a­tions was with Willys-Overland, dur­ing and after World War II. He con­ceived of Willys’ most inter­est­ing prod­ucts: the 1946 Jeep, the first all-steel sta­tion wagon; and the 1948 Jeep­ster, the world’s last pro­duc­tion tour­ing car.

A con­trib­u­tor to Kaiser-Frazer from almost the out­set of that ven­ture, Brooks pro­posed the first prac­ti­cal facelift for the plug-ugly 1947-48 pro­duc­tion cars; man­age­ment didn’t take his advice, but assigned him to the famous three-way com­pe­ti­tion for the 1951 Kaiser, against Dar­rin and the in-house styling team. It is the pre­vail­ing judge­ment today that the basic shape selected was Darrin’s, but it should be empha­sized that this was not a direct con­test. Kip was simul­ta­ne­ously busy on a score of accounts in a half dozen coun­tries, with cor­po­ra­tions like Allis-Chalmers, Miller Beer, Briggs & Strat­ton, Evin­rude, Lawn-Boy, 3M, Out­board Marine Avi­a­tion, Sears Roe­buck, and Club Xanadu in Costa Rica. At the time of the Kaiser styling con­test he was involved with Alfa Romeo on 6C 2500 designs. Dar­rin had only one project on his plate. Had it been a one-on-one con­test, things might have been different.

Alfa Romeo 6C 2500

And many of his con­tri­bu­tions were used on Kaiser prod­ucts. After K-F bought Jeep in 1953, it was a Stevens design which became the Wag­oneer, a con­cept so time­less that the shape has sur­vived thirty years. He always referred to this and his other styling project in the plural: “we” did this or that. This was only because he wanted to make it clear that Brooks Stevens Asso­ciates was not a one-man company.

Kip did find time to do a lit­tle per­sonal brain­storm­ing on a Kaiser chas­sis.  While Dar­rin was plac­ing a pretty fiber­glass body over a stock Henry J chas­sis to cre­ate the Kaiser-Darrin, Stevens moved in the oppo­site direc­tion with the afore­men­tioned Excal­ibur J—a highly mod­i­fied dual pur­pose, road/track sports car not dis­sim­i­lar in looks or con­cept to the later Lotus 7. This first Excal­ibur could pace the vaunted Jaguar XK-120s, and often did in SCCA competition.

In the late Fifties Stevens cre­ated the Excalibur-Valkyrie-Scimitar design exer­cise, which among other things showed what could be done with alu­minum. In the early 1960s he revived the Aero-Willys through a reskin for Willys-Overland do Brasil. This facelift per­suaded Stude­baker pres­i­dent Sher­wood Egbert to let him mod­ern­ize the aging “Loewy coupes,” and the result was the sin­fully beau­ti­ful Gran Tur­simo Hawk of 1962-64. Brooks was even able to apply crisp, mod­ern styling to the dowdy Stude­baker Lark, giv­ing it an extra lease on life. He pro­duced the first sliding-roof sta­tion wagon in the Wag­o­naire, and his Stude­baker pro­to­types for a new gen­er­a­tion of cars were things of breath­tak­ing beauty. (See “Why Stude­baker Failed” on this site.)

Unhap­pily most of his auto­mo­tive efforts were for dead or dying com­pa­nies. Had they been offered at the time to, say, Chrysler, they would be more famous today. Still, he man­aged to cap his career with an unequiv­o­cal suc­cess, the Excal­ibur line of “mod­ern clas­sics” based on a suc­ces­sive series of Mercedes-Benz com­menc­ing with the immor­tal SSK. Among “repli­cars” the Excal­ibur was the best sell­ing, best engi­neered, and most care­fully built. Its per­for­mance was demon­strated by the suc­cess­ful rac­ing ver­sion run by Ecurie Excal­ibur, the team that Kip and his sons ran in the Sev­en­ties and Eighties.

Pintacuda's Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Mille Miglia (now Ralph Lau­ren Collection)

Auto­mo­biles were but one facet of a remark­able, half-century career, but they were cer­tainly his first love. At his offices in Wis­con­sin he estab­lished the Brooks Stevens Auto­mo­tive Museum, small and select, includ­ing some of the finest cars ever to set rub­ber to road: a Packard Twin Six, a 1925 Due­sen­berg Indy race car, a Bres­cia Bugatti, the Mercedes-Benz 500K and 540K, the Cord L29 and 812, the Mar­mon V-12. His fron­tispiece was a stag­ger­ingly beau­ti­ful 1939 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B, Pintcadua’s car from the Mille Miglia, the world’s fastest pre­war pro­duc­tion sports car. He added many of his own per­sonal designs, like the Jeep­ster and Brazil­ian Willys, and the Alfa 6C 2500. The col­lec­tion was bro­ken up after his death, but those priv­i­leged to know it in its prime will never for­get  it.

Brooks did not come in for the uni­ver­sal plau­dits he deserved. Too often, casual observers saw only his more rad­i­cal depar­tures and pro­nounced him a hope­less expo­nent of chrome and tail­fins. This is very short shrift, for it fails to take the total mea­sure of the man.

He was one of the sup­port­ing pil­lars of the auto­mo­tive com­mu­nity, both man­u­fac­tur­ers and col­lec­tors. His designs—whimsical, bril­liant, imag­i­na­tive, for­mal and radical—will live on. His non-automotive designs were cre­ated for some of America’s great cor­po­ra­tions. More than a few gained inter­na­tional renown.

He was as well a great com­pan­ion, not at all self-centred (rare among design­ers). Always he seemed to draw out the best in his friends, be they car nuts who invited him to their gath­er­ings, fel­low styl­ists, or lowly auto­mo­tive writ­ers. No one escaped his attrac­tion. Every­one became proud and delighted to have their own work so gen­er­ously encour­aged by a man of distinction.

There are many ways to mea­sure wealth, but Kip Stevens banked his great­est trea­sure in the hearts of his friends. And we will trea­sure his mem­ory till our time is come.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

• 

Tagged as: 3M, Aero-Willys, Alfa Romeo, Alfa Romeo 6C-2500, Allis-Chalmers, Bill Tilden, Briggs & Stratton, Brooks Stevens, Club Xanadu, Cole Porter, Concorde, Dutch Darrin, Elkhart Lake, Evinrude, Excalibur automobile, Excalibur J, Hemmings Motor News, Industrial Design Society of Amaerica, Jeep, Jeepster, Kaiser-Frazer, Lawn-Boy, Le Chanteclair, Mercedes Benz SSK, Mille Miglia, Miller Beer, Milwaukee, Outbard Marine, QE2, René Dreyfus, Schlitz, Sears Roebuck, Sherwood Egbert, Special-Interest Autos, Studebaker, Willys-Overland, Willys-Overland do Brasil