(first posted 8/13/2012. The original post called it the “Camaro Hawaiian”)
There were a lot of things happening culturally in 1967, but Detroit wasn’t always exactly on the leading edge. While the kids were celebrating the Summer of Love in San Francisco, Chevrolet was playing up the lure of the tropical islands, which had its heyday in the forties and fifties. OK; Hawaii is always appealing. But couldn’t they at least have shot their 1967 Camaro “Waikiki” concept on Waikiki Beach instead of the scruffy grassy banks of what I think is the Detroit River? Now I might be wrong on that, having never been there, but it sure don’t look like Hawaii, where I have been. And the surfing is not likely to be so hot.
The illusion of the beach scene circa 1967 was further hampered by the GM wardrobe department: that bathing suit is sooo 1952. Come on, Chevy; bikinis have been around for several decades. And that thing on the trailer: some sort of proto-jet ski? Now that interests me more than the Di-Noc slathered Camaro or the prim girl.
Everyone is having a good time pretending they’re 6000 miles away, despite the smoggy haze. And I guess it’s safe to assume that the Camaro Waikiki didn’t make a very lasting impression. Oh well. Maybe you should try a Revolutionary War-themed Camaro?
Since we’re looking at 1967 Camaros and we’re doing beaches, might as well trot out this ad from 1967. What? No long hair? And no girls at all?
Oh, I get it. Chevy finally saw the light, and wanted to be well ahead of the next big wave with this one, targeting the nascent gay market. It pays to be a risk-taking pioneer!
Gotta love the Harvest Gold shag carpet.
Probably a concept. The headlights would have never been approved for use in 1967. Everyone had to use the round sealed beam lights then.
Would explain why one has never been seen in the wild.
Yes, it was, and I identified it as such. Somehow, I don’t think it was quite ready for prime time beyond just the headlights.
It would had been cool if the squared headlights got the green light in 1967. There seems then lots of show-cars of the era showed squared headlights as the next big thing. When it wasn’t show-cars, it was customized cars like the customized Mustangs then George Barris did for Sonny and Cher http://justacarguy.blogspot.ca/2009/02/sonny-and-cher-mustangs-that-barris.html
And other customized cars used squared headlights like this Barris 70-X Oldsmobile Toronado showed at Expo ’67 http://www.schmitt.com/viewimage.asp?ID=4031 (and speaking of Toronado, there was the customized roadster used in the 1st season of the tv series Mannix).
Grampa’s favorite show! Can’t recall how many episodes of Mannix I watched sitting on his knee (born ’66)
They might be the same headlights as used on the 1967 Vauxhall Viva
https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6045/5909109216_b2d4e8c43a_z.jpg
They’d have a GM part number…
Well, at least the lovely ladies didn’t jump into that circa 1967 water! I’m thinking of what Colonel Kilgore of Apocalypse Now fame would have thought of that beachfront with no killer break……..possibly the River Rouge and Highland Park furnaces knocked the wind right out!
Was Bill Mitchell a man who liked woodgrain side panels? 2 years removed from the Mako Shark II, I just can’t see him approving of this treatment……….That surfboard rack is an interesting design, though.
There plenty of Mitchell touches though, the “european” driving lights, the real wire wheels, the shaggy carpet and wood wheel are all Mitchell M/O’s. Mitchell did all sorts of color combos on cars, depending on what he felt like.
That surfboard and the rack look like a built-in diving board.
The summer of ’67 in Detroit was a very, very long way from the “Summer of Love” in almost every way possible.
I do agree that this is probably on the Detroit river/Lake St. Clair. I’m not sure if Detroit or Windsor is in the background—possibly both if they’re in Grosse Pointe. They might be on Belle Isle.
Summer of ’67 in Detroit you had these two little bands: The Stooges and the MC5 getting started.
No, it wasn’t the Summer of Love. It was, however, the spring of the best damned rock and roll to come for many years.
Cheers! Hearing `No Fun’ in that Chrysler commercial made me feel good! Does that mean no Summer of Love for me?
I was thinking Belle Isle also. Since this is a concept car, maybe the photo shoot is also a concept for a real ad? Even GM wouldn’t actually try to pass that off as Hawaii.
The Hawaiian was a Chevrolet concept car shown that year at car shows, fairs, and in the press. To the best of my knowledge, these are the only press photos of it that GM released. There was no such production car, and no ads. This is it.
The budget for this thing was obviously minimal, as were the changes to the car. And the budget obviously didn’t include shipping it to Hawaii.
It’s definitely Detroit in the background. You can barely make out the Ambassador Bridge in the first photo (upper left). It could be Belle Isle or Windsor, but I suspect Belle Isle from the angle of the photographs.
I`m amazed that the art dept .didn`t slip a matte painting or a photo blowup in the background of this shot, like a cheap “on location” theatrical film would do. Destroys the whole illusion.
I remember that this particular custom Camaro was used as one of those AMT 3-in-1 model kits.
I want one of those jet skis!
Maybe they were going to re-touch the photo with a different background but then just said “screw it”.
Many of GM’s older factory photos were taken on the roof of the GM Building in downtown and then more exotic backgrounds were then added.
Paul, not everyone was a long haired hippy in 1967, in fact the majority of people weren’t.
Hawaii has always been popular, this predates Hawaii Five-O by a year, and that was on the air for 12 years.
I know that too! And I wasn’t either.
There’s actually a bigger story behind this: Chevrolet had a rep for being particularly conservative in its advertising and marketing. I challenge you to find another youth-oriented sporty car PR/ad picture from 1967 with such a prim young woman at “the beach”.
DeLorean wrote about this extensively, how shocked he was at the state of Chevrolet advertising/marketing when he moved there in 1969. And I’ve found a blog by a guy who shot many Chevy ads back then, he confirmed the same thing. The ad agency guys were constantly suggesting “racier” or more contemporary approaches to the photo shoots and ads, but were shot down most of the time.
Compare Chevy and Pontiac ads from the 1963 – 1969 era, and it will become quite apparent.
The point I’m making is not that Chevy should have used hippies in their ads in 1967, but they certainly should have been hipper. The “Hawaiian” makes that painfully obvious.
Along with (in)famous GTO advertising like the ‘You know the rest of the story’ 1968 GTO on Woodward Avenue magazine ad or the 1970 GTO Super Bowl commercial with ‘The Humbler’ cruising a drive-in for a race that were quickly and unceremoneously yanked, one of the best stories DeLorean had about a proposed GTO ad that never ran was a simple photo showing a small boy with a pale of water standing in front of a GTO in a driveway with the caption, “A boy and his Goat”.
When GM brass saw it, they were outraged. They lambasted the ad agency by saying, “You can’t call one of our cars a goat!”. They didn’t understand that the term wasn’t derogatory but GTOs were just known as Goats on the street. Instead, they came out with the rather lame ‘Great One’ ad campaign, instead.
I remember the “Command Performance” print ad firsthand, seeing it in car mags etc, in 1967.
But I also remember Chevrolet TV ads…where they existed, such as they were, pretty much sucked 1966-68. That struck me as a kid…especially in contrast to Ford and MoPar…with their catchy jingles or pop culture tie-ins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCUWU3sbfrU
Embarrassingly tacky for today, but it sold cars in 1968.
Aaron Severson mentions John DeLorean’s dismay at Chevrolet advertising in Ate Up With Motor’s history of the late-sixties Impala…stating much of the ad budget was “squandered on side projects for division management”.
Perhaps the exercise above is such an example?
I’m late to the party on this one but long hair was not accepted by many “older” people back then. Like my parents. Look at photos taken at events during the era and you will still see many young men with short hair or “block” cuts. By the early seventies society was more accepting of long hair on men.
As for me and most of by male friends, we came from homes with strict parents and didn’t growing long hair until after graduating high school.
“…not everyone was a long haired hippy in 1967, in fact the majority of people weren’t.”
Neither was I. Sure loved the music of 1967, though.
I got my driver’s license when I turned 16 that year. I still sported a flat-top haircut until spring, 1968! Many men still wore hats – dad did, and for the last 10 years, so do I. I do have fairly short but combable gray hair – no more flat-top and no bald spot!
Paul, shame on you for making a “gay” comment about the last photo. The advertising at the time showed all young men dressed that way – it was the “norm” to be well-dressed. This was still the era of the “debonair”, James Bond-suave look. Sure, the ad may have been a bit behind the times, but the advertising world in many product ads projected an image for an older, more mature age group – perhaps late 20’s – early 30’s, an image of what they may have regarded as “class”.
Up to that time, many pop groups still sported coats and ties and dressed somewhat unifomally.
Shame on you for taking me way too seriously 🙂
Touche’!
2016 now, probably the wrong thing to say. Forgive you though Paul, they were different times way back in 2012!
Outsider: I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, but seriously, I’m interested in it. Please be more specific.
Nothing you said offended me, and I’m gay, Paul. It was hilarious though.
To me the Camaro ad seemed have more of a “John Birch Society” look.
For some reason the 3 Camaros on the beach picture made me think of “Eric Stratton, Rush Chairman….damn glad to meet you”
Agreed! Just look at The Beatles from 1966-earlier or just about any other pop group from 1966-earlier including The Stones! 1967 was the year EVERYTHING changed!
I like how that seat belt webbing is draped across the floor in that third photo.
Yeah, thats one of the things that makes me think that these weren’t really the “finished” product.
The Jet-Ski thing is a small powerboat. It would seat one in the hull, like a regular boat. I recall plans for building your own being published in Popular Mechanics or Popular Science. Maybe Mechanix Illustrated. Anyway, they used small outboards, in the range of 10HP and, because of their very small size, went very fast. Forget the generic name that was used for them, though. Looks like the outboard is actually mounted mid-ships on this one, though. Don’t recall that, maybe for balance?
The headlamps look like the Cibie units from the Renault 16 and other French cars of that era. Could be wrong. Possibly not quite wide enough, hard to tell.
The ads (fourth and fifth pictures) look like they were trying to sell to The Beach Boys of a couple of years earlier, or Jay And The Americans. Bands like that and their fans. No way was Steppenwolf or The Jefferson Airplane contemplated 🙂
Ha! I actually built one of these boats circa 1967 (I was 14 then). Not sure where my dad found the plans, but he encouraged me to build it as my first serious DIY project. When I finished it, he surprised me with a brand new 5HP outboard motor and a steering wheel.
I still remember handraulically screwing over 400 wood screws into this thing. And covering the wood hull with a couple of layers of fiberglass before painting it.
This little boat could indeed go quite fast once it lifted itself out of the water, skimming on a small part of the hull. It could only achieve lift on perfectly still water – it was completely useless on a windy day.
After a few years, it finally succumbed to a small leak into one of the sealed compartments, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted.
Here’s a picture taken of my little skimmer at our cottage (located on the Ottawa river), sitting on top of my Dad’s 1968 Chrysler Newport Custom.
I wonder what everyone was thinking around this time that made wood-paneled convertibles seem like such a good idea. The 68 Chrysler and Mercury offered a woodie convertible, but it was on the big cars. This Camaro with the DiNoc is just so wrong. But if it had come out, would woodie Mustangs and Barracudas have been far behind?
I agree, the wood decal on the side is so disgusting on a Camaro! Woody wagons only! Here is an example of a good one:
I want that exact car in that exact color with that exact woodgrain! Oh, it had better be a six cylinder powerglide, too – with air…
The setting is Windsor. That’s how they get Detroit in the background.
There’s a riverfront park in Windsor that’s used in lots of car shots of that period, and even much later. Cadillac had a series of great photosof the 58 models shot in Windsor.
Belle Isle won’t give you the view of downtown like Windsor will.
Paul, you are about a half a generation too young to make the distinction between “hippies” and “freaks”. Hippies were the back to the earth, off the grid a-holes who tolerated hairy-legged girlfriends/common law wives. Freaks were counter-culture, dope-smoking hipsters, and given the chance, would have loved a new 1967 Camaro or Mustang. But not with the fake tree on the side. Freaks did have standards.
Thanks for the compliment, but I’m not too old to know about that distinction. I came of age right in the heart of that era.
Truth is, the word “hippie” is perhaps the most misunderstood and misused word in modern history. The genuine hippies (actually called “Diggers”) marked “The Death of Hippie” right after the Summer of Love in 1967, because they knew it was over, thanks to the mass invasion of kids, hard drugs, and the media.
But the name has been used/abused by many, both as a self-adopted identity, or as a very broad or derisory label. Everyone seems to have their own definition of these terms, undoubtedly colored by their own experiences of the time, as well as their politics and values.
That era really marks the beginning of the great splintering of society into very many ever-smaller subsets. Your definitions are a wee bit too generic. There are conservatives and Libertarians who embrace “off-the-grid” living. Hairy legs: some of the girls in my high school adopted that, and they were quite sexy. Common law wives: that goes back a long way. And when it came to cars, there were always “freaks” who favored certain cars over others. Nothing new there. And freaks had standards? As in what kind of meth they preferred?
The labels “hippie” and such have been abused to death, but generic labels are too damn convenient to dispose. So help yourself.
There was a brilliant movie titled “It Was Twenty Years Ago Today”, which chronicles the Year 1967 through the impact of The Beatles album Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. It’s based on the book of the same name written by Beatles Publicist Derek Taylor. In depth, it focuses on The Diggers and Death of Hippy in additon to the other “Happenings” going on throughout the world in that year. The original footage of the protagonists then and later, in 1987 when this film was made is simply fascinating to watch. I think it was Peter Egan who wrote in one of his Road and Track Side Glances articles that he felt 67 was the best year for music. In seeing the original artists playing some of the best groundbreaking songs in this movie, I have to agree with Peter.
Paul, you are spot on correct with your observations of that year of years. I wonder if you have had the chance to see this movie? Today, it is considered a rare cult classic as it is not available on video. I was fortunate enough to tape it one night off our local PBS channel…….
Yes, I remember watching it in LA on KPBS. And I just watched half of it again on youtube. Much better than almost all of the other movies done about that era. Thanks for reminding me of it.
I saw that film as well and wifey and I marveled at the color footage of the Jefferson Airplane, which for a brief time, was one of my favorite groups.
Yes, 1967 was when the fracturing of society became evident and manifested itself in movies, music and pop culture in general.
Thing is, if you were young and growing up in and around it, even if the closest you actually got to it was through the new FM “underground” rock stations, you had a ball and enjoyed every second!
Those days were as yesterday still…
I’m constantly impressed with Paul’s ability to point out things that are often sitting there in plain sight but can go completely unnoticed.
Wow – the beginning of gay marketing, in 1967! I’d love to see the Mad Men episode when this copy was written.
“How much driver do you want to be?”
Options: Top, Bottom, or ‘Center’ (hmm…).
Bravo again, Paul 🙂
I think Subaru was the first to overtly advertise to their gay/lesbian clientele; are there any earlier examples?
The cars in the last ad have photoshopped California dealer or manufacturer license plates, probably placing the beach as one in southern Cal.
Chevy did a couple of good ones like the 1969 “We’ll take on any other 2 cars in this magazine” with the 427 Corvette and 396 Camaro in a barn together, the “do not tease” 427 ad and the “tied down” 70 Chevelle SS
I wish they would re-created this ad with a ZR1 Corvette and ZL1 Camaro.
I read an article about this series of Chevelle SS ads, the car they used was a regular Malibu made up to look like an SS, they shot it on a movie studio backlot, and one of them came across all this thick Navy rope and they got the idea to “tie down” the Chevelle.
There was another ad that was proposed about the same time that showed the rear of Chevelle SS on the other side of a big ditch, with tire marks on both sides, ostensively implying that the car had the ability to leap across wide gulfs. I don’t remember what the issue was (my guess would be the lawyers were afraid someone would actually try it) so the only picture of the ad is in black and white and doesn’t have any copy. I think it’s out on the net, somewhere.
It made me think of Otter too…
To me the music that was coming out of Detroit in the ’60s was way cooler and interesting than the one from the west coast hippie bands: Iggy and the Stooges, MC5 and most of all Motown Records…such a great time !
At least the hula girl looks like an authentic “hapa” wahine from here . . . . the “surfboard” ?? Proper surfboards of the day were tankers (9’5″ to 10′.5″). Smaller, swallow tailed, triple skegs didn’t come along until well into the seventies, and I can guarantee that anybody in real-life would not have an ironing-board stand with a sandy, salt-water dripping board, hanging over their top down nice Camaro. Yes, it’s show and make believe, but the consensus is that GM could’ve shot the promo pictures at least in SoCal (like the one ad with the “MFR” portion of the Black California plate blanked out.
It’s a joke that Paul refers to the boys in the ad as “pretty”, but I recall that was the normal “mod” guy look in the day . . .
Aloha Motors and Service Motor, Co. would’ve been the Chevy outlets on Oahu in the day. . . . . Now it’s Service Motor, Waipahu and Kaneohe and Cutter Chevrolet (“Are you ready to Chevy?”) . . . .
So I stumbled across this thru the search function, just for kicks after today’s earlier Camaro post I chimed in on.
It was never called the Camaro “Hawaiian”; in actuality they named it the Camaro Waikiki, just as you suggested it be shot at. Blame that on Dayton Wheels, the sponsor of this stupid contraption; they paid to have the car made and shown. As another poster asked upthread if those are Ciebe lamps, yes they are. Also, as a final note, the tail lamps were extended to near full width, a hideously ugly finale similar to the same era Thunderbirds.
Not all that incongruous. The bathing suits were out of place, but the shore of the Detroit River was a popular and accessible place for beach-style recreation. Lots of middle-class folks around the sides of Grosse Ile had a boathouse instead of a garage.
Surf boards aren’t incongruous on the banks of the Detroit River? I’m thinking hula skirts probably weren’t all that common either there in 1967. But what do I know about what’s congruous in Detroit? I’ve never been there. But when I do, I’ll make sure to bring my long board. I hope it’s not too long a wait out there in the river for the first set to come in. 🙂
Not sure about Detroit, but the next time you come to Montreal, make sure you bring your surfboard!
There are a number of natural, permanent waves in the St-Lawrence river, some located minutes from downtown Montreal, where you can ride waves as high as 2 meters, for hours on end, without actually moving forward. Not recommended during the winter months, however…
See: http://montreall.com/best-surfing-in-montreal/
Montreal’s Habitat 67, the world’s greatest multiunit residential building IMO, also has one of world’s greatest standing waves right in its backyard on the St. Lawrence:
A lot to comment on here. I’ve been trying to figure out the location of the photoshoot, and I believe that it is on the very ESEastern tip of Belle Isle. The Detroit riverfront has changed considerably since 1967, and that along with the hazy day and blurry photos, makes for a difficult task to identify landmarks. Sighting down the river from the tip, you would see a portion of Ambassador Bridge, with no land showing to the left side of the photo, and with Downtown Detroit to the right (first photo). Assuming that the Camaro did not move, but the camera did, I believe that the building over the Brunette’s right shoulder is the Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Co. (second photo). There is just enough detail to identify the unique shape of the entry facade and the bookends, that and the fact that there appears to be large letters on the roof, although they are illegible in the photo. That building still stands; it is now part of the River Place complex. Over her left shoulder is a smokestack, which I think belonged to the Stroh Brewery Co. What would have been an easy read is if the (now) GM RenCen had been in place.
As for the car, the models, the theme… The Camaro looks like it got a George Barris quickie makeover, the models were probably from a local agency or maybe even from the GM ranks. Keep in mind that GM was still run by a conservative management, and even though they wanted to be “hip and with it”, they certainly didn’t want to offend the BOC buyers. Surfing was a big theme in ’66 / ’67. I was 12 in 1967 and my pals and I all wore white Levis, striped surfer shirts, and those ubiquitous at the time Iron Cross necklaces that had the surfer dude on the one side. We rode Schwinn Stingrays and thought that we were real “West Coast”.
1967 was, in my estimation, a Banner Year for cars and music. I was blown away by the sounds coming not only out of SF, but also Detroit, AA, and Flint, as other posters have mentioned. It was incredible how quickly the social landscape changed. One of my most favorite cars was the 1967 Pontiac GTO – even though it was only a facelift of the prior year, it just looked so much cooler.
Speaking of Social changes – I may have missed it, but nobody has commented on the riots that took place in Detroit that summer. I recall seeing the black smoke hanging over the city the Sunday morning of July 23rd. We lived in the suburbs at that time, but Mom and Dad felt it prudent to go to service anyway (Grand River at Livernois) just a few miles from West Grand and 12th St. Those events scattered across the country gave one pause – and still do.
A couple more things – what’s with the paint divide in the door jamb? The line doesn’t seem to line up with anything. Also… is she wearing heels, or standing on her tippy-toes?
Oops, I meant WSWestern tip of Belle Isle. I guess when I typed that I was thinking that when we travel from Detroit to Windsor “Our Neighbor to the North”, we cross the border in a SSEastern direction. Also, to answer my question, the newspaper clip that was featured just after my earlier post explained that the Camaro had a different color paint below the woodgrain – “Okra”. That’s the only time I’ve heard that descriptor as an automotive finish. Might have worked better on a kitchen appliance, I would think.
Thank you Sally, for the sleuthing!
Yeah, but it was Easier, Cheaper and Faster.
It would’ve been fun trying to vacuum beach sand out of that shag carpet.
just being curious, anyone know if the actual car still exists?
An obliging columnist gave us all the details Chevy had provided:
Floyd Freel – wasn’t he the automotive editor of The Onion? That would explain a lot…
And here we learn the names of two models–and that the dancer was the Genuine Article:
I should have known you’d come up with their names, no less! Thanks for filling in the backstory.
^^^^My pleasure, Paul—I do enjoy this sort of sleuthing–and it was fun to see a 2012 column that was just a bit before I “found” CC and started dropping by. I do believe the swimsuit was perhaps a little modest for the time–but it looks like the sort of thing Dawn Wells or Sally Field would have been seen in on TV *if* they had a reason to be in a swimsuit. (Not gonna GIS that tonight.) 🙂
Before I quit: I remember those rectangular (Cibie?) lights from the “Sonny and Cher” custom ’66 Mustangs, which seemed so cool at the time; I just dug up pics of the cars online, and shook my head a bit in disbelief…..
Apparently fake wood on pony cars started with the Mustang. Eyebleach not included.
https://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2014/02/21/hemmings-find-of-the-day-1967-ford-mustang-2/
Now THIS is a identity crisis car!
Were there headlights made by Cibie ?
Fake wood on a Camaro, really. That surfboard doesnt look safely located enough for reaching the seed limit it could just become an early version airbrake
Smoggy haze?
Nope.
Weed haze.
Remember, they’re in fantasy land.
Smoke on the water?
About the then-illegal-in-the-US headlamps – I recall reading (in Collectible Automobile mag IIRC) that the US DOT was considering legalizing different headlamp shapes and that lamps like those on this Camaro were also planned for the new-for-’67 Dodge Dart, but the legal change didn’t happen when expected and 7″ round headlights were substituted at the last minute. This was why they intruded on the rectangular piece or chrome that surrounds them, with a small cutout above in the frame where the round headlamp interferes with it.
Good explanation for the somewhat strange ‘ogle-eye’ look of the 1967 Camaro, which is really apparent in the close-up shot of the ad pic. Throughout the Camaro’s history, Chevrolet’s stylists generally did a decent job with the car, but if I were to pick one that I like the least, it might be the first year car, and it’s all due to the most common, exposed headlights and big, round turn signals just not looking like they fit. If I were in the market for a 1967 ponycar back then, I likely would have went with a competitor, due entirely to that one Camaro styling faux pas.
Chevrolet did a pretty good job improving the look for 1968 with the smaller, rectangular turn signals replacing the big 1967 round turn signals which, frankly, look like a last minute hack job, and the theory that the original plan was for rectangular headlights goes a very long way to confirming it. I can only surmise that the round turn signals were some sort of effort to come up with a quasi-foglight look on the cheap that didn’t require offering the real thing, like on the A-body Barracuda. The problem was, unlike the Mopar, it didn’t work on the Camaro. They would have been much better off if they had went with the below bumper turn signals from the hidden-headlight RS cars on ‘all’ 1967 Camaros.
Which is exactly what they did for 1969. FWIW, I once read that Chevrolet management most definitely wanted a more aggressive appearance for the 1969 Camaro, and they sure got it. The dual, round 7″ headlights have a much more integrated look for the 1969 refresh.
I think that fellow in the navy blue prep school blazer is “Otter” Clearly the ad agency must have had no idea what the scene was at beaches in Hawaii or Southern California. However, I do from Zuma, to Santa Monica, to Huntington, to Encinitas,to Black’s, La Jolla Shore, Marine St. PB, MB, and OB.
I would have guessed the guy in the blazer was closer to Otter’s nemesis, Greg Marmalard.
I might even go so far as to suggest the guy in the blazer was inspired by John DeLorean, who was a real hippie within GM’s button-down corporate world of the time.
Ah, but he wouldn’t be driving an orange SS convertible as he was too conservative.
I imagine the models are actually shivering from the typical Midwestern chilly weather. As soon as pics were taken, they put on long coats. 😉