The new Monte Carlo for 1970 was a real departure for Chevrolet. It was a personal- luxury kind of car with a longer hood than anything around at a Chevy price or any price for that matter. The styling was exceptional with not a lot of chrome. John DeLorean had just come to Chevrolet as general manager and took an active part in the advertising. His influence would be felt to a much greater extent in the next years advertising. We went from a sales department dominated approval process to a one man approval situation--John DeLorean. When we reviewed ads with him for the first time we were very close to the magazine closing dates. He liked the way the cars looked but wanted to know where we got all the hard looking female models in some of the pictures. He said they all looked like ladies if the night and had to be changed. The only one he thought was OK was this one in the Monte Carlo ad layout. At the time John was dating Kelly Harmon who was a very beautiful blond young lady. She was even better looking than the model in the ad and John would have her come in after hours to review the ads because he thought she represented the youth market. We just did not have time to shoot new models and strip them into the ads in question so I went through all the out- takes from this shoot and had the pretty lady above stripped into the other ads. Nobody noticed that we had the same model in several ads. The headline for this ad became the line for the outdoor announcement ad too. I take a little pride in the authorship and it fell right in with Chuck Felt's highly competitive stance for Chevrolet. Chuck was creative director on Chevy at the time. This ad did run in all the major magazines of the time. I am a little surprised that you can still buy nice examples of this car at reasonable prices. It wasn't a muscle car but it was something unique from Chevrolet and I think the best looking of all the Monte Carlos.
Shannon Stirnweis, Part 4: Paperback Cover Art
2 years ago
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