These Models Aren’t Missing.
By John Jacobus
At the Guild Reunion in Salt Lake City, 18 Guildsmen exhibited 30 historic 1/12 scale models from GM’s Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild (1930 to 1968). These models represented the competition years 1953 to 1967 and included national scholarship and styling scholarship award winners as well as regional and state award winners. After WWII, the Guild became a national public relations, talent search, and recruiting program to find young talented men to design the cars of tomorrow. Five Guildsmen who were inspired by the FBCG, who enjoyed careers in auto design (now retirees), and who participated in the Salt Lake exhibition, included George Anderson (GM Design), Geza Loczi (GM Design, VW, Volvo), George Prentice (GM Design), Thomas H. Semple (GM Design, Nissan Design America), and Ronald J. Will (GM Design, Subaru).
Photos of the Guild Models on display courtesy of GSL-25 Championship.
These cars are awesome! Thank you for posting these photos.
It’s great to see these models once again. They look splendidly preserved!
Thanks for sharing for all to see, admire and enjoy anew…
John M. Mellberg
FBCGuildsman
2nd National Sr. Award, 1966
Great show! Nicely photographed and indexed. Were all the owners of those cars in attendance? Clearly the Guild influenced the future careers of a number of members.
It greatly influenced mine. When the Guild re-started after WWII, I entered during my last two years of high school and won state prizes.
The Guild helped give me the confidence to pursue a career as a car stylist, as we were known then. Those were rarified jobs at the time; it wasn’t as easy a decision as it was later.
My was as a designer for Ford, Raymond Loewy, Studebaker (on the corporate staff and as a consultant. I thus worked for them under three different arrangements – and it still didn’t help!), and Chrysler. Additionally that led to positions in product planning, marketing and sales with Chrysler.
The Guild was a valuable experience; I’m proud to be a member of this elite group!
This reunion of Guildsmen, who are now at or above retirement age, felt more like a group of young Guildsmen who were still interested in trading secrets of how they built their models. It was as if they were getting ready to build their next model. How did you make your plastic windshield? paint your model? or cleanly cut the door lines in your wood model? were some of the favorite topics. In fact, one model built by Gary Graham was a completely new model, built to replace the model GM purchased 40 years ago. Other models received loving, detailed refurbishing. If there were a contest today, allowing us old designers to build a new Guild model, I think most of would eagerly jump in and do it all over again.
Missing in a different way.
I competed in the FBCG for 3 years (1957-59). First year I built a station wagon made out of planks of pine glued together as per the Guilds instruction manual. I managed to get it all carved out in my parent’s apt. in the Bronx, N.Y. but couldn’t get it painted and trimmed in time to meet the deadline.
The second year I built a sports car out of balsa wood which was much easier to work with my limited tools ( files,chisels knives, sandpaper and Krylon spray paint. I finished it and built my box and submitted it. I did not win a prize. I found out why when it was returned. I had the clearances too close on the struts that held the model in place in the box and the soft wood was crushed when the lid was screwed down. The model had two beautiful dents in the hood and trunk lid that weren’t supposed to be part of the design.
The third year I did a facelift of the dented second year model and put a lot more hours into the finish,detail,changed color,interior and box !!!. I was thrilled to win a N.Y. State Honorable Mention. It was a great experience in every way and was good preparation for attending Art Center School. When I left the Bronx to attend Art Center my neighborhood in the Bronx rapidly continued it’s downhill slide and my father’s apt was broken into ,totally trashed and my FBCG model was missing. Fortunately I had taken some photos of it which I still have. Attached are a couple of the original and the facelift. I never thought of making a reproduction of it. I have thought of making a reproduction of the full size fiberglass sports cars that Dave McIntosh and I designed and built during our time attending ACS. Those cars have gone missing too,Dave’s in Michigan and mine in L.A. (we built two cars) and a friend still has the molds, but that’s another story.
Ken Eberts
I am restoring my car(s) Are the tires available anywhere?
Thanks.
Tom Osborne
These guys did some beautiful models for the FBCG. Still fun to look at and appreciate their efforts.
A salute to all of them, especially those FBCG contestants I was fortunate to have worked with, or otherwise encountered, during my career as an automobile stylist at Ford, AMC, & Chrysler.
Glad to see your work displayed guys!
Phil payne
Note to Tom Osborne 8-19-15 I have a few professionally made, resin cast copies of the original 1954-58 period rubber tire/wheel. These were given to the constants FREE by Guild Headquarters. The resin cast copies I have were made to support restoration projects like the Bud Magaldi, Gray Graham and MIlt Antonick (e.g.,serious reproductions.) These are 2 – 7/16 in. O.D. What size do you need?
It’s so good to see that these models still exist. I was a state award winner in New York in 1958 at age 17. My shop teacher encouraged me to enter competition at the last minute. I built my model in about 3 weeks. This experience led me to design the fiberglass kit car the Talon GT and Talon GT 2+2 in the early 1970s and design and build several prototype designs as an independent design studio. I still have my entry and after years of being in storage and moving around it was pretty scuffed and broken. So I’m restoring it and plan on displaying it at the 2016 reunion at The Art Center of Design in Pasadena CA. in October.