Anatole Carl "Tony" Lapine (born 23 May 1930 in Riga, Latvia, died 29 April 2012 in Baden-Baden, Germany) was an automotive designer and racing driver.
[4] One of Lapine's first projects at Studio X was the design of the Corvette SS, working with Cumberford and Zora Arkus-Duntov.
[5] The Corvette SS mule was later bought by Mitchell, who planned to use it as a basis for project XP-87, which later evolved into the 1959 Stingray racer.
[8] At roughly the same time as the XP-87/Stingray racer was taking shape, Ed Cole was promoting an idea for a future GM car platform called the Q-Chevrolet.
The defining feature was to be a front-mounted engine with a rear-mounted transaxle, a configuration that would figure prominently in some of Lapine's later projects.
[7] After the Stingray racer, Lapine served as studio engineer for the 1963 Corvette Sting Ray production model.
[10] During this time Lapine met Wolfgang Möbius, a designer on a temporary assignment to the United States from GM's German subsidiary Opel.
[20] Accompanying Lapine in moving from Opel to Porsche were Wolfgang Möbius, Dick Soderberg, and chief modeler Peter Reisinger.
Challenged by new safety legislation in the US, Lapine incorporated the bumpers behind distinctive accordion/bellows covers and refreshed the shape with a trend setting black-on-body-color trim style.
[21][22] Facing the possibility that future American legislation would spell the end of the 911 in that market, Lapine headed up the project he is most closely associated with; the Porsche 928.
[10][25] Apart from his history at GM, Lapine revealed that the shape of the 928 had been influenced by the Chevrolet Testudo, designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro while at Bertone.
The Gruppe B prototype that appeared at the September 1983 Frankfurt Auto Show was designed under Lapine's oversight.
For the trio of 908/3 cars fielded alongside the 917s at the 1971 Targa Florio, Lapine used sponsor Gulf Oil's traditional colors; a sky blue body and orange stripes, but changed the standard stripes into arrows, and added playing card suit symbols on the right front corner of each car.
He was part of a team that consulted on a project in Russia that eventually went to Fiat, and became the VAZ Zhiguli, called the Lada in export markets.
The company had eliminated the flight engineer's station to free up more space in the fuselage for additional passenger seating.
[15] To keep his design office busy, Lapine at times intercepted communications meant for other departments, taking those jobs for his own team.
The car used the original MG chassis, with new reproduction aluminum body panels, but with a DOHC inline-4 engine and 5-speed manual transmission from Fiat, a rear axle from an Alfa Romeo, and the same pedals and titanium steering rack used in the Porsche 917.
[13] Lapine drove a variety of cars throughout his career as a racing driver, including his wife's new Jaguar XK120, which he totaled.
[3] Lapine was co-driver to Dick Thompson at the 1959 Road America 500 at Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin in Bill Mitchell’s XP-87 Stingray Racer.