Larry Shinoda

(www. corvettemuseum.com)

A hero is a person who does great things and is a great role model. My hero is Larry Shinoda. Larry is my hero because he has done many amazing things. He designed many cars. He designed cars for Ford and Chevrolet.

Larry loved cars since he was a little boy. When he was little Larry spent most of his time drawing cars in an internment camp he lived in during World War Two. When Larry got older he went to an art school. Larry didn’t like the art school very much because he wasn’t allowed to draw cars, which was his purpose of going.

Larry got his first job designing cars for Ford after he was kicked out of college. The car he designed for Ford was the Boss 302 Mustang. Larry only stayed with Ford for one year. After Larry left he moved to Packard in January 1956. Time at the Packard was slow so he took a leave. Larry went to Indianapolis during his leave and helped build a car that won the Indy 500. The driver of the car was Pat Flaherty.

In September 1956 Larry went to work for General Motors. Larry worked a little on ss racer. He mostly did details, but when Bill Mitchell bought the ss mule chassis from GM, Larry went to work in Mitchell’s basement refining the design of the clay model. It became the 1956 Sting Ray sport racer. GM banned racing so Larry had to redesign the car and it became the Corvette Sting Ray.

Larry has done some really extraordinary things during his life. He also created the “Shinoda kit” for C4 Corvettes. He was also working on producing a limited run of Shinoda designed C5 Corvettes. He was also working on 17, 18 and 20 inch Cragar wheels for the Shinoda designs. One of his last projects was the design of the mid America traveling Corvette. Sadly after kidney failure Larry died November 16, 1997 of a heart attack.