Pete Brock

Peter Elbert Brock (born November 1936) is an American automotive and trailer designer, author and photojournalist, who is best known for his work on the Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe and Corvette Sting Ray.

Hall, co-designer of the Liberty L-12 engine and co-founder of Hall-Scott Motor Car Company) grew up primarily in the Sausalito area of northern California.

While still in high school, he won the Oakland Roadster show with the car, by then referred to as "the Fordillac" because of the Cadillac engine Brock had installed.

As GM had made a commitment to not engage in racing (known as the AMA ban) Brock worked with Mitchell in 1957 in a secret design studio, creating the prototype of the Sting Ray racer.

The production car was renamed the Stingray[1] and was released in 1963 with a rear split window, almost 4 years after Brock had left GM.

Brock continued racing, now driving his own Lotus 11 MKII and paid rides with a TVR and Mercury in the NASCAR series.

In 1972 as he drove by a construction site and saw people flying off of tall sand berms, hanging from kites made precariously from visqueen plastic duct-taped to bamboo sticks.

At the end of the race season he closed down BRE and founded Ultralight Products Inc (UP) to build hang gliders as he thought they should be.

As he’d done with BRE, Brock assembled a talented group of employees who developed state-of-the art hang gliders and led the industry in safety improvements.

Haggard shares: “Pete brought to hang gliding what he always brings… style, daring, drive, commitment, blended until it is a smoothly paved path to excellence.” Brock was inducted into the Rogallo Hall of Fame in 2024.

Brock became an instructor at his alma mater, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California after leaving the world of hang gliding.

In the early 1990s he wrote the definitive book on the history of the World Champion Daytona Cobra Coupes, cars he originally designed in 1963.

For more than 20 years Brock, joined by his wife Gayle, a world class photographer in her own right, covered endurance racing for automotive magazines such as Racer, Car & Driver, MotorTrend, Autoweek, Auto Aficionado, Classic Motorsports, Grassroots Motorsports, Excellence, Bimmer, Roundel, Sports Car Illustrated and Corvette magazine.

[2] In 2018, Brock shared the details of the cars he designed while at Shelby American in the book: The Road to Modena: Origins and History of the Shelby-DeTomaso P70 Can-Am Sports Racer.

Seeing the need for such a trailer in the industry beyond their own use, Brock's wife Gayle founded Aerovault LLC, managing the company on a day-to-day basis including manufacturing, marketing and sales.

Gayle also runs Brock's original BRE operation which now focuses on offering memorabilia from the 1960s and 1970s, and aftermarket parts and accessories for Datsun 510s and 240Z and Daytona Cobra Coupe replicas.