MIT alumnus
Chuck Jordan just passed away last week at 83. Designer at GM of automobiles, he was perhaps most famous for his exuberant tailfins. As
Douglas Martin notes in his
NYTimes obit...
"...Jordan took tailfins to their surreal peak with his 1959 Cadillac Eldorado [...] The products of his designs included tractors and pickup trucks, Corvettes and 
Opels, and he contributed to the “wide-track” Pontiac, the baby boomers’ cherished muscle cars. His Aerotrain, G.M.’s 1950s train of the future, elicited wows from design buffs, but did not work well. Mr. Jordan’s classic designs included the 1963 Buick Riviera, the 1967 Cadillac Eldorado and the 1973 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. His vision was as streamlined as the jet aircraft that inspired it: longer, lower, wider -- and intended to excite. “We deal with design -- an intangible and emotional subject,” he said in an interview with Automotive News at the time of his retirement in 1992. “There are no rules or steps to success. It’s a matter of opinion. This isn’t research or engineering with computer programs and hard data. “Words may not communicate it exactly. You gotta see it and feel it. We deal with an emotion.” Mr. Jordan fought to retain the pre-eminence of designers in Detroit decision-making, against engineers, brand managers and market researchers. He loathed focus groups. “A good designer doesn’t need Mr. and Mrs. Zilch from Kansas telling him what to do,” he told Motor Trend in 2006."
Indeed! Hubris and humanity, incarnate.
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