Al Borst
Al Borst (Alfred W. Borst) (1920–1982) was an American automobile designer who worked primarily for General Motors Corporation during the nineteen fifties within the design studio subdivisions of Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac, GMC truck and Euclid (construction vehicles) brands. He was employed as a designer by Chrysler Corporation (1959–62) and then became Art Director for AMT Corporation, which produced miniature versions of production vehicles in toy and kit form and as promotional items for dealer distribution. His package illustrations for AMT adorned hundreds of model kits during the period of 1962 through 1966.
Borst attended high school in Flint, Michigan and graduated in 1938. His further schooling was at General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) in Flint, where he achieved an engineering degree.
Borst served in the U.S. armed services as a pilot during World War II.
As an automobile enthusiast and talented artist, he maintained a cache of drawings within a portfolio that he had created. When his drawings were presented to Harley Earl at General Motors while applying for employment, they made a favorable impression and he was hired on the spot and assigned almost immediately to the 1953 Chevrolet Corvette dashboard design project. His employment was conditional, however, GM making it clear that no allowances would be made in accommodation to his rheumatoid arthritis, which might have limited his ability, but obviously did not affect the quality of his work. Because of this affliction, he was, however, accommodated to some extent by GM by being afforded the opportunity to work at home occasionally, and it is believed that for this reason some of his drawings survived, as company policy at the time was that all designers’ work be periodically destroyed.
He and hundreds of other freehand artists at the time executed illustrations for every visual component that comprised the whole of an automobile. Great expense and effort was expended to keep styling fresh during this period, and the influences of motion as exemplified in jet aircraft and rocketry were highly influential. The "Big Three" (Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler) were in tight competition, and visual appeal was far more important than considerations of safety standards and fuel economy. This period of time is considered to be the "Golden Age" of car design, where ideas were only limited by engineering and economic feasibility. The result was rapidly evolving styles that pushed boundaries in shape, color, and in public acceptance. Styling ideas that passed through to production models are responsible for the existence of all of the iconic automobiles of the nineteen fifties and sixties. These cars might be perceived as excessive in appearance by today's standards. Borst's concepts on paper pushed the boundaries too. There were a select few designers who were allowed to create whole car concepts from scratch – Al Borst was one of them, and he was one of the most daring and innovative designers of the time. His design in 1959 for Chrysler of a mid-sized or "personal-sized" vehicle, as it would later be termed, predicts the direction Chrysler would take with those cars in actual production ten years later. Stacked headlights appear in one drawing, as do streamlined truck bodies. Borst's work explores the direction automobile designs might have taken had the manufacturers allowed the excess. In perspective, they exemplify a vision Americans shared in the form of limitless possibilities and optimism as expressed in the world of vehicle design.
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