Alex Tremulis

Alexander Sarantos Tremulis (January 23, 1914 in Chicago, United States - December 29, 1991 in Ventura, California) was an industrial designer in the North American automotive industry. Tremulis held automotive design positions at Cord Automobile, Duesenberg, General Motors, and Ford Motor Company before establishing a consulting firm.

Early career

As a 19-year old, and without any formal training in art or engineering, he landed a job on the design team for the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Company in 1933. Among his projects were the now famous and classic Cord 810 and 812 series, as well as a custom Duesenberg roadster having both convertible and hardtop options. In 1936, he was named Chief Stylist for Auburn-Cord-Deusenberg, and remained in that role until the company failed in 1937.

He briefly worked for General Motors before moving to Briggs-Le Baron, a custom coachbuilder for Chrysler at the time. In 1938 he worked for Custom Motors in Beverly Hills, California that made unique cars for movie stars. He was also a consultant for Crosley and American Bantam in 1939. His designs for American Bantam remained in production until the firm switched over completely to the production of military Jeeps prior to World War II. Returning to Briggs in 1939, he worked with Werner Gubitz and Howard "Dutch" Darrin to design the production versions of the Packard Clipper. He was also the creative source for the 1941 Chrysler “Thunderbolt” concept car. His contributions to these two models helped establish styling trends that would influence automobile designs after World War II.

Air Corps concepts

After Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, he joined the United States Army Air Corps. He worked on advanced aircraft concepts at Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base), and developed a concept, which in the 1970s became known as the Boeing Dyna-Soar, a gliding re-entry space vehicle. While at the Air Corps, he made the first speculative drawings of what extra-terrestrial life forms would use as transportation to visit the Earth. His concept drawings were the first saucer shaped spacecraft drawings documented. [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=5817812]

Later career

After the War, he worked with the design firm of Tammen & Denison until Preston Tucker hired him to design the 1948 Tucker Sedan. After the demise of the company, many people believe it was Tremulis whom Preston Tucker commissioned to design a new car for the early 1950s, named the Talisman by Tucker, but in fact Philip S. Egan of the design team deserves the credit for this work as his illustrations show in his book, "Design and Destiny". However, Preston Tucker's death prevented this car from being produced.

In 1957, as a Ford employee, Tremulis was assigned the task of designing the car that "he believed we would be driving in the year 2000". Tremulis drew up plans and made a clay model of the Ford X-2000, a concept that would later be brought to life in the form of a working prototype in 1999 by Australian Andy Saunders who showed it at car shows in Australia in 1999 and 2000.

Alex Tremulis left Ford in 1963 to found his own consulting firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Among Tremulis’ last designs were the 1978 to 1987 Subaru BRAT.

He served as a consultant for the 1988 movie, . He was a frequent contributor to "Road and Track" magazine.

Awards

* 1982 — Inducted into the Automobile Hall of Fame.
* 1987 — Honored by the Society of Automotive Engineers for the design of the Tucker, as one of the "significant automobiles of the past half century."

References

* [http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/driving/story.html?id=fdfd2dad-a63d-42f9-baf9-23677197c47b Matthews, Nigel. "Great designer came up with Thunderbolt", The Province, December 08, 2006] , Retrieved on June 26, 2007.
* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=5817812 Find A Grave] , Retrieved on June 26, 2007.
* [http://www.tuckerclub.org/html/tremulis.php Tucker Club's Tremulis page] , Retrieved on June 26, 2007.
* [http://new.idsa.org/webmodules/articles/anmviewer.asp?a=2039&z=60 Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) Tremulis page] , Retrieved on July 26, 2007.