Die Valkyrie
By noderel:
Industrial designer Brooks Stevens was a kind of friend of mine. I had taken the Industrial Design course at Brooklyn Technical High School in the early '60s. At that time, "Tech" was the only high school in the country that had an industrial design program. So, I studied about people like Richard Teague, Raymond Loewy and Brooks Stevens.
When I moved to Wisconsin in 1978, I met furniture salesman Bill Hebal. He was having a copy of Brooks Stevens' first Excalibur built and invited me to visit Brooks at his automobile museum in Mequon, a suburb of Wisconsin. From that point on, almost every trip to or through Milwaukee included a stop to see Brooks Stevens and his cars.
Many of Brooks' cars we painted white and black or cream and black and many of them were unusual in their designs. One of the most unusual was a large GT coupe called Die Valkyrie. It was two-toned in black and white and had a touch of one of Stevens' famous designs - the Studebaker Hawk GT - to it. But it was much larger than a Studebaker Hawk GT.
Die Valkyrie was built in 1955. It was based on a 1954 Cadillac Eldorado chassis that was nearly 22-ft. long. This unique automobile was exhibited at shows in the United States and Europe. It won awards at the Paris Auto Show in France and at the New York Auto Show in Madison Square Garden.
Brooks Stevens created the design for the Die Valkyrie at his industrial design facility in Mequon, on the same campus where he built the car museum. The coachwork was crafted by Spohn Body Works of West Germany, an Old World company that produced only the finest car bodies for prototypes.
Die Valkyrie had one of the longest hoods ever seen on a prototype car. It had a removable hardtop, but it was a two-door hardtop style when the top was attached. The rear doors were extended for easy entrance and egress. Double vent power windows are included. Finned fender ornaments made of Plexiglas light up when the turn signals flash. Plexiglas headlight covers fous the high beams. The front wheel openings are specially designed to reduce wind resistance by 20 perent at speeds over 100 mph.
The car's most distinctive feature is its V-shaped front end treatment. The significance of this was purely American pride. When the car was displayed in Europe, Stevens wanted everyone to know that there was a big, overhead valve Cadillac V-8 under that long hood. In those days, the Eldorado V-8 was the hottest engine in the world along with the Chrysler Firepower HEMI.
When Die Valkyrie came off the car show circuit, Brooks Stevens gave it to his wife to drive. She tooled around Milwaukee in it for about five years. Between 1956 and 1961, the sight of this car on the road must have stopped lots of traffic. Afterwards, the car was put in Stevens' museum. It stayed there until after his death, when Chicago-based dream car collector Joe Bortz bought it.