Irv Rybicki

Having served successfully as a styling director for each of GM's five brand divisions, Rybicki assumed the corporate design leadership just as the industry entered a period of tremendous pressure: in quick succession, the federal government mandated waves of increasingly strict and comprehensive automotive emissions, fuel efficiency and safety standards[3] – severely hindering the industry's ability to adapt – a period that became widely associated with austere and ungainly design, referred to in retrospect as the Malaise era.

[4] His earliest sketching focus on airplanes changed when he saw his uncle's 1938 Cadillac Sixty Special, declaring it "the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen," and turning his interest to cars.

[4] After he graduated from high school, Rybicki's father took his design sketches to General Motors without his knowledge, speaking with Jules Andrade, one of Harley Earl’s assistants.

He studied with the Forty Milwaukee, GM's school for trainee designers – led by Ned Nickles and later Frank Hershey.

In 1963, Rybicki and his team presented Bunkie Knudsen with a styling concept for a four-seater car with a sporty image that could augment the Corvette – what could have effectively leap-frogged the first Ford Mustang.

Rybicki led the team that redesigned the Monte Carlo for the 1973 model year, which Chevrolet general manager John Z. DeLorean approved for production without a single revision.

Rybicki worked on the design of the first generation Cadillac Seville and had a major role in GM's massive downsizing of the 1977 full-size and 1978 intermediate cars.

He was only one of seven to hold the Vice President of Design position, including Harley Earl, Bill Mitchell, Chuck Jordan, Wayne Cherry, Ed Welburn and Michael Simcoe.

[6] All automotive design staff competing in the United States faced complex federal regulations; Motor Trend magazine noted in 2016 that "confusion over how to cope with these new laws from a design and engineering standpoint led to poor decisions that affected the exterior and interior appearance of GM’s cars through the late 1970s and 1980s."

"[7] Automotive author Dave McLellan, in his book Corvette From The Inside,described Rybicki as a “team player, someone that would allow GM’s top brass more control over styling.