I love Dean's car as well... But it's more "custom car" than prototype... and in my mind there is a difference. Hard to pinpoint exactly what that difference is, but I feel like the Mako II had a little more continuity to it. Which is understandable being GM had a much larger budget obviously...
Love that car, especially the rear. The correlation between certain details of the body just... works!
I saw a Manta ray in the Indian ocean that we could have landed a CH-46 on. He was just sunning right below the surface. They are awe inspiring.
Not disputing the difference, I get that. I was thinking that if I had seen the Ray, I guess it would have reminded me more of Dean's Manta Ray... Not that I don't see the genius of Mitchell's design. It is brilliant, damn near organic.... Excellent topic!
Yes... If you swim next to a ray, you will see all of these details you pointed out in the animal as well... It's really, really amazing... and not something I had ever noticed before. The ray I swam with was about 9 to 10' across and easily 5 to 10 times my own m***. He was huge... and slippery... and graceful... and... It's funny, I started this whole dive thing because I want to be in the water with as many different shark species as I possibly can. I'm still doing the shark thing, but I've become much more enamored with Rays simply because I see so much automotive design in them.
Jeffries car may feel like it is more in our scope and it was a beautiful car but you have to admit the Mako eventually became the stingray on the showroom floor and while we seldom see them in our little piece of hot rod history they were beautiful cars and could be had by anyone with the means. This may take this entirely off the rails and I will apologize before hand but the other Mitchel car that I really liked was the 'vair concept. I built a slot car with one of these bodies when I was a kid and always wished I could have owned one.
Does anyone know what happened to Jeffries' car? It was displayed in his Hollywood shop for years. He died a couple of years ago. This car really helped build his career. I look at it and marvel at how well the body was designed and formed...all by someone with the resources that are available to us HAMBers. In the late 70's or early 80's I took my '27 T roadster to Dean Jeffries for a flame job...he had it done in about an hour. Speaking about customizers, Gene Winfield was at last week's Grand National Roadster Show, along with his old shop truck which is owned by someone else and has been restored. The work and design on that ruck are very impressive!
Being a young kid when this car came out it was certainly impressionable. The only negative about the car is it inspired some very ugly creations that came after it.
I love the Mako Shark I and II, but I don't care for the running version of the Mako Shark II quite as much (the one pictured with Bill Mitchell). The non-running Mako II is just a work of art.
Totally agree... They had to dumb it down a bit I guess... The only thing on the original concept I'd change is the stance. It needs less fender gap all the way around.
Ryan, The story behind the color scheme goes even deeper- Mitchell told the team that he wanted to match the colors of the shark in his office, but every time they painted the car, he balked- "too light, too dark, doesn't match", etc... Finally, they waited until a weekend, took the big fish off the wall, off the mount and paint IT to match the car, and put it back in Mitchell's offices so that they wouldn't have to paint the car any more
Yeah, I've always wanted to paint a '65 riviera with a similar scheme... of course, a '63 split window would work pretty well too!
Here is one built in norway inspired by the Makoshark. I remember the second version when it comes out. A link to Kustomrama for those that are intressed. https://www.kustomrama.com/index.php?***le=Einar_Valsjø's_Mako_Shark
Yeah Bill Mitchell needs to give John delorean and Pontiac credit for that one. Delorean and Pontiac designed and built it in 1963 to become the 1964 Pontiac banshee concept car but g.m. pulled the plug and turned it over to Chevy. Old news. Here's a pic
I always hear that argument from Pontiac folks, but the Mako I was shown three years before the Banshee project even started up under Delorean. And the Mako II started at around the same time as the Banshee... At the Corvette museum in Bowling Green, they mention that the two design teams shared members as freely as they shared design ideas and cues. So, I'm betting both the Banshee and the Mako II were done parallel to each other while Delorean and Bill Mitchell fought for the in-house credit. And at the end of the day, it would be hard to argue that Delorean had a better eye than Mitchell given their respective track records. It does make sense that GM would s**** the Banshee though... They couldn't have another brand compete with the Corvette.
I have a dark blue 64 Riv with silver interior. Maybe I should have silver faded in at the bottom to mimic the Ray.
I've had a love affair with stingray vettes since I was 19, owned 12 of them and I still look at the ads. Mako II cost me a lot of money.
Actually, the banshee was given to Mitchell in late 65, known as the xp833 thru Gm. Some of the info from delorean and others that dealt with the banshee have always held the project was taken from them. One of the reasons Delorean had given years ago for quitting g.m. The mako 1 was the gen2 vette and the banshee basically became the gen3 vette. Also too, there have been supposed internal g.m. memos that have been found to back up deloreans side of the banshee abduction to Chevy.
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