Automotive designers come in many varieties: some are artists who, wielding the luxury of a clean sheet (or a bare skeleton of a car), sculpt breathtaking masterpieces. There are also designers formally trained at design schools, well versed in rectilinear forms and classical volumes, able to craft designs that are technically ‘correct’, but sometimes so bereft of passion that they leave consumers, and enthusiasts of automotive form, wanting more.
Richard A. “Dick” Teague came from a different camp. Having monocular vision – the result of a childhood accident – and having been first formally trained as a technical illustrator of aircraft, his passion for automobiles burned bright before and throughout his career. An early enthusiast of the dry lakes racing scene, and an avid collector of classic and sporting automobiles throughout his life and career, Teague was, above all, what we call a ‘car guy’. As we’ll learn, that career took a winding path through some of the most legendary and respected makes, to some of the most humble. His portfolio is liberally peppered with cars designed on microscopic budgets and the challenge of having to make silk purses – or at the very least, canvas duffle bags – out of some sow’s ears. Such challenges might have prompted others to throw in towel, but gladly, that was not how this story ends.
Young Richard A "Dick" Teague, AKA Dixie DuvalBorn in Los Angeles, Dick’s early years included events and tragedies that make his automotive enthusiasm all the more remarkable. As a young lad, Dick, working under the stage name of Dixie Duval, played both boys and girls in silent films of the 1920’s. According to some sources, girls were seldom used as child actors because they were believed to be too fragile for the hot lights and gruelling filming schedules of the day. Regardless, his acting career was a brief one. At the age of five, Dick / Dixie was thrown through the windshield of a Ford, the accident breaking his jaw and costing him some teeth. Worse, the accident robbed him of sight in his right eye, and rendered his mother an invalid. A mere two years later, another automobile accident again brought tragedy to young Teague’s life, when his father was killed by a drunk driver on Christmas Eve. The automobile, so far, had not been kind to young Dick Teague.
Growing up in Los Angeles, he developed an affinity for building model airplanes. In the late 1930’s - along with his high school classmates Ed Iskendarian (later of Isky Cams fame) and Stuart Hilborn (the Fuel Injection guy) - Teague felt the early rumblings of the hotrod scene, and took the plunge by buying, in quick succession, a series of used Fords, including a V8 Model A that he took to the time trails at Muroc dry lake, north of his native Los Angeles. He was hooked. Interestingly, his love of hot rods and his experiences at Muroc led, indirectly, to what should have been one of his first paying jobs illustrating cars. More about that later.
With America’s involvement in WWII, most of Teague’s high school chums were enlisted or drafted when they graduated, but he was given a deferment, due to being blind in one eye. He signed on at Hughes, and then to Northrop Aircraft in 1942, where he honed his skills as a technical illustrator. His mentor and boss at Northrop was former GM designer and Bill Mitchell protégé Paul Browne. Each of them still kept their love of cars going by drawing cars whenever they could. Teague later shared that "Both Browne and I were drawing cars when we should have been drawing aircraft." While working at Northrop, Dick attended night school at the Art College of Design in Pasadena.
Immediately after WWII, Teague went to work for Henry Kaiser, the industrialist who made good during the war by developing techniques for rapidly building the so-called Liberty Ships by replacing rivets with welds. While employed by Kaiser, Teague worked on designs for a small economy car, well before the Henry J project. He took on additional work creating illustrations for publications. Teague drew an early cover for Road & Track. Another of his early works was a series of illustrations of the dry lakes hot-rodding scene, which were featured as single-sided, frame-able shop art in the famous Veda Orr
Hot Rod Pictorial books. Some years later, Teague was quoted as saying he was never paid for those illustrations, a sampling of which can be seen here:
In 1948, Paul Browne's associate and friend Frank Hershey (the real father of the tail-fin as a styling element, for which Harly Earl is often credited, and the designer of the first Ford Thunderbirds) hired Teague to work at General Motors. He moved to Detroit and joined the ever-growing ranks of apprentice stylists there. His work was well received, which resulted in a move to the Cadillac advanced design group, as the tail-fin era began.
In 1951, perhaps missing the sun and lifestyle of California, Teague made his way back home, and was married. Leaving the automobile business, he took a job with aircraft weapons manufacture Rhodes Lewis, a maker of bomb racks and similar devices. Though it seemed the door was closing on Richard Teague’s automotive career, his most prolific years, and some of his greatest challenges, achievements, and yes, some misfires - were yet to come.
I'll be publishing Part II soon, after completing some additional research and formatting of pictures.Sources:
Jalopy Journal
Automotive Industries Magazine
Motor Trend
Coachbuilt.com
Veda Orr's New Revised Hot Rod Pictorial
