Who owns an automotive design? In the era before the information age, when it wasn’t possible to do a deep dive on the details of a specific vehicle without visiting some dank corporate archive, the answer to that question was entirely in the hands of an automaker’s PR apparatus. The designers they celebrated were the ones who received public acclamation for their work, while any other stylist or engineer who might have toiled on a particular product was fated to remain in obscurity, outside the official spotlight.
A stellar reputation was no guarantee either that you wouldn’t be left out of the history books. Perhaps no greater example of the capriciousness of the ‘80s auto industry exists than the story of Larry Shinoda, a man whose accomplishments prior to his brush with indifferent corporate malfeasance had almost no effect with regards to his being given credit where credit is due.
All of this turmoil played out in the shadow of one of the most important vehicle launches of the era, one where Shinoda’s contribution was, as later determined after a protracted lawsuit, straight up stolen from him, effectively wiping his fingerprints from the debut of the first-generation Jeep Grand Cherokee.
A Distinguished Path
Shinoda’s name is no doubt familiar to most automotive enthusiasts, but his accomplishments are impressive even to the most casual car fan. After enduring internment as a Japanese-American during the Second World War, Larry Shinoda leveraged his passion for hot-rodding into a career that began at General Motors, where he worked on timeless designs such as the late-’50s Chevrolet Impala, the Chevrolet Corvair, and a series of concepts like the XP-819 and the Mako Shark, that led directly to his work on the Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray.
He then moved to Ford, where he big-upped the Mustang’s profile with the Boss 302 model, while also styling the Torino King Cobra.
Eventually Shinoda struck out on his own, which led to a fateful intersection with ailing automaker American Motors Corporation in the early 1980s. At the time, the company, which owned the Jeep brand, was looking for a follow-up to its very popular entry-level Cherokee, a box-shaped sport-utility that was well on its way to becoming an icon.
The decision was made to hire a trio of companies to put together a concept for a larger SUV along the same general lines, with the winner gaining the design contract.
The twist? AMC’s own design department was also in the mix, which proved to be a crucial turning point in the eventual plot against Shinoda. AMC honchos had access to the private studio Shinoda was using, and one day decided to evaluate his work without him present. By the end of that same week, they had phoned up the designer and negged him out of competition, denigrating his design and telling him to destroy the mock-ups he had built so far.
You Wouldn’t Steal An Entire SUV Design, Would You?
Here’s where things got weird. When Shinoda returned to his studio, he was surprised to find a team of AMC employees in the process of burglarizing the space of all drawings and clay moulds—hardly the actions of an entity that had declared itself thoroughly uninterested in the product of the designer’s brain. Shortly after that, he was also informed by multiple American Motors employees that his design was, despite what he had been told about the low quality of his work, moving forward as the basis for the upcoming sport-utility.
Did that mean AMC was fulfilling the terms of its contract with Shinoda, which guaranteed him a certain sum for the initial design, and then another once it was officially chose for production? Absolutely not: what really happened was that AMC lifted Shinoda’s design, shook off its obligations to the designer, and claimed the new-look SUV as the company’s own. Technically, Shinoda was under contract to AMC during this entire experience—a legal tie-up that kept him quiet about the dust-up for a full five years, due to a non-disclosure clause.
At the same time, AMC was falling apart. Its partnership with Renault hadn’t done much to stem to gallons of red ink gushing from dozens of accounting wounds dotting the company’s operations, and in 1987 it was purchased by Chrysler, which re-organized it under the Jeep-Eagle banner. It was the former that was the real prize for the Auburn Hills-based automaker, and unbeknownst to Shinoda, the revitalized Jeep planned to lean heavily on the vehicle he had penned as part of its renaissance.
A Post-Mortem Victory
The Jeep Grand Cherokee officially went on sale in 1992, and was an instant success for the company. The fanfare surrounding the model was also Shinoda’s cue to pursue Chrysler for the cash and credit that had been denied to him by AMC. No longer gagged by his previous contract, Shinoda contacted the company to tell them it owed him the balance of his $354,000 contract, of which he had only been paid $135,000—nearly a decade ago, at this point.
To make up for the insult of the design’s theft, he also presented the full case for his ownership of the Grand Cherokee design and asked for a piece of the profits generated by the vehicle’s stupendous sales.
Needless to say, Chrysler executed a strategy familiar to anyone who has ever been forced into this type of David v. Goliath confrontation: it stalled. It took a full five years for a settlement to be negotiated, and while Shinoda eventually prevailed (out of court, and with no dollar figure publicly announced) it would be too late for him to enjoy the fruits of his labour, as the designer died of heart failure shortly after victory was declared.
The Truth Is Hard(er) To Hear
Whoever controls information, controls the world—or at least, the automotive world of the 1980s and early ‘90s, before the Internet truly took hold and started to shake out stories that had previously only been accessible to those plugged in to the whisper-network working in the background of the industry. Indeed, that’s how Larry Shinoda’s story came to light, after a comment made to a reporter kicked off an investigation that confirmed each and every one of his claims.
It’s a story worth revisiting in an era where it’s become increasingly difficult to tell what’s real from what’s fake—especially when the latter is loudly proclaiming its verity on the very channels that once pointed towards the truth.
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