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1909–1977

Ed Cole

Chevrolet general manager, then GM president

Blue-and-white 1967 Camaro SS
1967 Camaro SS Photo: GPS 56, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; plates blurred Original photograph License

Ed Cole was the GM executive who pushed the Camaro into production. He was running GM's car and truck operations when the Ford Mustang arrived in April 1964, he championed a fast answer to it, and in 1967 he became GM president.

Before the Mustang, GM was cautious. Chevrolet general manager Bunkie Knudsen had been shown an early Chevy II-based sporty-car clay and declined it, reportedly telling the team, "the one thing we don't need right now is another car." GM in the early 1960s was wary of adding models the market might not absorb.

1967 Camaro convertible interior and dash
1967 Camaro convertible interior Photo: Joe Ross, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Original photograph License

The Mustang changed the argument. It proved a large, immediate market GM had no product for, and Cole, then executive vice president over car and truck operations, wanted a competitor in production on an aggressive timeline. The result was the F-body program that became the Camaro, developed in roughly two years and on sale in September 1966.

Cole also decided what Pontiac would get. John DeLorean wanted a two-seat Pontiac sports car, the Banshee. Cole refused it and offered a Pontiac version of the Chevrolet F-body instead. That compromise is the Firebird, and the reason the Camaro spent 35 years with a sibling. Pete Estes, Chevrolet's general manager from 1965, introduced the finished car.

Did you know

  • The Firebird order came in March 1966, when Cole told John DeLorean to make a Pontiac out of the Panther, the code name of Chevrolet's Mustang fighter.
  • Cole is the father of the Chevrolet small-block V8. He became Chevrolet's chief engineer in 1952 to develop a new engine, and the design stayed in continuous production from fall 1954 through 1997. Before that he was a lead engineer on Cadillac's 1949 overhead-valve V8.
  • Cole was on the cover of Time on October 5, 1959, in a story on Detroit's compact cars, as the engineer behind Chevrolet's air-cooled, rear-engine Corvair, which launched for 1960. He had been Chevrolet's general manager and a GM vice president since July 1956.
  • He retired from GM in 1974 under its mandatory retirement policy at 65, then became chairman and CEO of Checker Motors and chairman of the air-freight firm International Husky.
  • Cole was a pilot, and he died at the controls. On May 2, 1977, at 67, he was flying his own twin-engine Beagle B.206 near Kalamazoo, Michigan, when it crashed: he had flown under visual rules into bad weather and suffered spatial disorientation.
  • The Automotive Hall of Fame inducted Cole in 1977, the year he died, and the Corvette Hall of Fame added him in 1998 in its GM/Chevrolet category, alongside Bill Mitchell, Larry Shinoda and Zora Arkus-Duntov in that founding class.
Sources for these details

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