Secret machines

Dave Brooks

The most interesting thing about American Specialty Cars is what they

can’t tell you.

Nestled away in the new Huntington Beach office of the

Detroit-based concept-car developer sit design plans for futuristic

hotrod remakes, prototypes for new convertible technologies and clay

renderings of concept cars that might one day be seen on the San

Diego Freeway.

And it’s all secret.

“Most of this stuff stays under wraps until it goes out in a press

release or is unveiled at an auto show,” said the company’s president

of creative services, Mark Trostle. “If one of our customers were to

feel their design was in jeopardy, we’d lose them pretty quick.”

So don’t expect to see any of the new projects American Specialty

Cars is developing at its new 18,000-square-foot design facility on

McFadden Avenue. Opened in November, the new studio will serve as the

West Coast office of the 1,000-employee company created by the late

Heinz Prechter, a German who first brought convertible technology to

the United States.

Prechter’s open-air innovations led to the 1967 Ford Cougar Coupe,

the first mass-produced convertible in the United States. The company

was also the first to install sunroofs in U.S. cars, and it designed

the first retractable hardtop for the 1995 Mitsubishi 3000 GT Spyder.

Much of the work done at the Surf City facility will involve

creating concept cars -- specialty vehicles displayed by major car

companies at huge trade shows and in specialty auto publications to

showcase new technologies and design elements. Most of the futuristic

cars don’t become mass produced models but act as gauges of a big

firm’s larger design concepts.

“It’s really about the direction of the design, not the design

itself,” said Huntington Beach American Specialty Car modeler Kevin

Norman.

Concept cars can also translate into direct sales. A recent survey

by Rochester-based firm Foresight Research said as much as 23% of new

purchases were driven by concept models and specialty vehicles first

seen at car shows and dealership floor rooms.

“It helps create a lot of excitement,” Trostle said. “Purchasing a

car is still an emotional experience.”

Designers for American Specialty Car work with big automobile

firms through most of the initial design process, swapping details

while pouring over endless stacks of sketches and artist renderings.

Once a concept is chosen, an artistic designer will work with a team

of engineers to hash out the mechanical aspects of the vehicle and

eventually input the information into a computer to develop a virtual

3-D model.

Designers can then take the coordinates from that program and

configure a computerized milling device that creates a clay model of

the vehicle. Often the clay models are created at one-fourth the

scale of the final vehicle, but sometimes designers make full-sized

models.

Some cars American Specialty Cars works on, like the newly

re-released Pontiac GTO, are completed quickly -- in Pontiac’s case,

a little under four weeks. Others take much longer.

“The clay model is the first opportunity to see what the car looks

like and often, the car you see on the computer screen doesn’t come

exactly as you expected,” Trostle said. “The design can go through

many revisions before being completed.”

The design of the car is often based around new technological

components of the vehicle. When designing the popular Chevy SSR,

American Specialty Cars had to determine how to design convertible

technology for a truck that wouldn’t require much rear cargo space in

the vehicle’s bed.

“What we came up with were two retractable panels that could be

stored in a vertical position behind the passenger seat,” Trostle

said.

The company is now working to develop a new series of convertible

hotrods and even putting together plans to independently manufacture

new convertibles devices and performance parts.

“Designing cars is really going beyond just building the frame,”

said Norman. “You have to look at the aesthetics of the exhaust

system or lighting technology ... the design of the vehicle is the

complete package.”