William L. Porter, designer of classic American cars, dies at 93

Boston Globe

11-05-2025

The Pontiac GTO model produced in 1968 and 1969, with its endless hood and smooth, tapering back -- its 'monocoque shell form with elliptical pressure bulges over the wheels,' as Mr. Porter put it in an interview in 2000 -- was one of his signature creations.
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GM made him chief designer at what it called the Pontiac 1 Studio in 1968, and he held that position until 1972, before going on to other senior design positions. In the early 1970s, he directed the design of the company's LeMans, Catalina, and Bonneville cars, which had tapering forms with jutting trunks, in keeping with his aesthetic.
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'I was taken with a plainer, curvaceous look featuring long, muscular shapes based on elliptical vocabulary,' Mr. Porter, a connoisseur and collector of American design, including Tiffany glass and Arts and Crafts furniture, said in an interview with Hot Rod magazine in 2007.
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Kevin Kirbitz, president of the Society of Automotive Historians and a senior manager at GM, said in an interview: 'It comes down to his understanding of shapes and curvature and lines. He had the ability to look at a curve and realize it had to have a certain proportion over the length of it.'
Mr. Porter was drawn to what he called 'organic shapes,' or those found in nature, that would have subliminal resonance for the beholder (or buyer) of a car.
'He would talk about the roundness of the bean,' said Kirbitz, who knew Mr. Porter well, and also about 'naturally occurring curves.'
The 1970-73 Firebird and the Firebird Trans Am, the quintessential American muscle car, also bore Mr. Porter's stamp: They were sportier than the GTO, with a more compact back end but a similar elongated hood.
With the Firebirds, Mr. Porter said, he was 'consciously trying to create an important American sports car.'
Mr. Porter's training in art history gave him an aesthetic conception of the car that was unusual at a major American automaker.
'When you open the door of the Firebird, there is -- I would like to think -- a subliminal sense of the unity of the interior and exterior. That had never been done before,' Mr. Porter said in the 2000 interview. 'There was a sense of the total car, being in it, and having things fall to hand, located in the right places.'
He paid acute attention to detail, something he learned from mentors among the general managers at GM. He praised one of them, in a post on his website, for being the sort who could spot 'a bump in a line that was maybe a millimeter high.'
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Mr. Porter was particularly proud of a detail he designed for the hood of the Trans Am: 'a pair of highly effective Ram Air scoops that were placed in the high-pressure area on the leading edge,' he said, to funnel air directly into the engine.
After developing the new Firebird, Mr. Porter went on to work on the Camaro. In 1980, he became chief designer for Buick, a position he held until he retired in 1996. He worked on designs for the Park Avenue and the Riviera, boxier cars with a more imposing presence on the road.
William Lee Porter was born on May 6, 1931, in Louisville, Ky. His father, William Lee Porter Sr., was the manager of the Greyhound bus station in Louisville; his mother, Ida Mae (Hampton) Porter, ran the lunchroom at a local elementary school.
He received a bachelor of arts in painting and art history from the University of Louisville in 1953.
After college, he served in the Army and then studied industrial design at Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn. He was hired as a summer student at GM Styling, the company's design unit, in 1957; the next year, he became a full-time employee. By the time he received his masters of arts from Pratt in 1960, he was a junior designer in the Pontiac studio.
During much of his time at GM, Mr. Porter also taught a course in industrial design at Wayne State University in Detroit, encouraging students to create objects influenced by styles that fascinated him, including Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau.
In addition to his son, Mr. Porter leaves by his wife, Patsy Jane (Hambaugh) Porter; two daughters, Sarah Wilding Porter and Lydia Porter Latocki; a brother, Thomas Hampton Porter; and three grandchildren.
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Mr. Porter was the rare stylist who saw a car's shape as a whole, with every individual element subordinated to, and integrated into, the overall design.
'He would talk about how one ellipse fed into another, and about how there are no true straight lines,' Kirbitz said. 'For him, the straight line was not desirable.'
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