Behold! Gremalibur!

There's something your author has noticed about very good product designers. They're essentially children. Yes, they may front like adults, but they're mired in that young world of possibility, always asking, “It can't work like this? Well, why not?” Brooks Stevens was a giant of midcentury design, applying his aesthetic to trains, motorcycles, percolators, velocipedes, toasters and, of course, the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile.

He was also responsible for the Excalibur. Designed on a whim for Studebaker to goose interest in the flagging brand at the 1964 New York auto show, response was so overwhelming that Stevens' sons set up a company to build the Mercedes-Benz SSK-inspired machine. Though Stevens' original design hewed rather closely to the Benz, as the 1970s marched on, the cars took on a life of their own. Other companies such as Santa Barbara's Cl

By Davey G. Johnson