[Historybuff]

Camilo Pardo, one of the best from Columbia, is leaving Ford. This youthful looking (it's had to believe he's been with Ford 24 years when he doesn't look any older than 24) guy is so talented, I could see him competing with Puffy in fashion, with Hermann Miller in furniture or staying in the car field. Anyhow, anyone heard where he's going? Here's a story oin him that's lifted from his website:

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CAMILO PARDO - RENAISSANCE CITY MAN


By Jerry Vile


I recall the first ride I had in the Ford GT. Camilo Pardo, the chief designer, behind the wheel, Buckle up; maneuvering through the blight of dicey Detroit neighborhoods, down backstreets and alleyways of neighborhoods. There is something both dangerous and profound. The car is everything these Detroit streets are not; new, fast, expensive. They’ll jack an 86 Pinto in this town and t-bones happen frequently; stops signs and red lights are treated as options on Detroit’s usually deserted back streets. Sucked into the seat feeling every g, Newtonian laws are demonstrated on every unanticipated turn as the engine behind rumbles; even at moderate speeds it’s still more amusement park thrill ride than car.

Every detail of the machine was based on a lifetime devoted to speed and beauty. In addition to designing in Ford Motor Company’s “Big House”, Camilo is the Renaissance City man, designing furniture and fashion, throwing legendary parties and painting his enormous oils of performance cars and beautiful women. With his cult status red lining, appearances on the Discovery Channel as well as race theme-in a kid’s room on Extreme Home Makeover. You Tube covered "The Bull Run" as it made a pass through Detroit and Camilo and his GT were invited to join in the non sanctioned coast to coast race. The film shows his GT as he caught up to some Lamborghinis and Porsches...

I’ve been driving performance cars since I was 16.” Camilo quickly points out as he carefully obeys all traffic signs and adheres to driving requirements. Born in Manhattan, the first American of a Columbian family, Camilo lived in Queens Most of his formative years “It was in the 60s so I was surrounded by pop art and bad ass cars. My uncles are architects and mother that was a painter; we use to spend lot of time at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I always had the latest race tracks and slot cars; Johnny Lightning, AFX. My favorites were a gulf Porsche with headlights that worked and a blue Super bird with a flat black hood. It was number seven.”

By Camilo's tenth birthday, his family moved to Auburn heights, Michigan, about a half hour north of Detroit. “We lived in the country. We were the classic 70's kids—bell-bottom pants, long hair. I made my own posters for my room with day glow paint. I built models of race cars and dragsters. I really enjoyed auto and wood shop and had like several art classes. I spent most of my time underneath a lot of cars; a Roadrunner, Barracuda, Challenger and finally my first 911. That was the beginning of the extreme that I am involved with now.”

The dashboard surrounds the driver in an arc; a parade of circular gauges illuminates Camilo's face in a cold white. The design a retro-futurist morph, gull wings and curves, rubber under your feet as well as what hits the road, a series of lo-tech toggle flip switches kick on the state of the art components, “This car has been shrink wrapped to it’s components” Camilo explains, “The car is similar to an aircraft, a composition of similar elements, pilot, engine, wheels, and aerodynamics. Zero to sixty in three point four seconds. It sucks in air and fuel and burns it up.” The 5.4 aluminum V8 comes stock with 550 HP, although, you can modify it to 650HP like Camino's personal ride. He adds, “It is the fastest production car in the world- in its category. You would have to spend five-hundred grand to a million to get something faster.”

The GT had a sticker of $160,000. There are stories they went as far over sticker as half a mill at a couple of auctions, but the redesign and introduction of the car was seemingly a vanity project, mainly to, Camilo puts it best, “Out perform Ferrari… again. Only 1,500 cars a year, for 3 years were supposed to be made, it was designed as a break even program. 4,300 of these limited edition specialty vehicles were made from 2005 – 2006, primarily created to showcase and celebrate Ford’s 100 year centennial. It’s been called a pace car for an entire company.”

A pace has changed in the last year. Presently Camilo is in an advanced concept studio applying his skills to projects like the Edge TDV7, a hydrogen electric hybrid that you may have seen GB plugging in on the front lawn of the White House. So, does working with alternative fuels clash with Camilo's speed cult style? “We are getting some amazing performance and speeds with these vehicles that are responsible to the environment. The hydrogen powered landspeed Ford Fusion is a perfect example. We set a new landspeed record at 207mph with a vehicle that produce zero emmisions. ”
He is also working on advanced hybrid vehicles and rethinking Truck design, although he won’t reveal the particulars, “It's important that we regain our share of truck sales. Ford created this market.” We recently presented a concept "Taxi" design at the New York Auto Show. It was based on an excellent little truck from Europe, the Transit Connect. Which we're introducing to the US market. This Taxi concept brings you into the future with a very believable product. It really pulled in the media. I would bet that if it hit the streets, people would pay the fare just to get a ride around the block. We also did up a couple more transits to show how private business could use the vehicle. It was a good show.

The icy blue cast of halogen beams illuminate the years of overgrowth in the alley in eerie shades of electric greens. Shadows jump like POWs in the spotlight, and the sparkle of bazillion bits of broken glass alight the path to the nondescript three story industrial building to an already rising garage door, which the driver zipped into a like some ghetto Batcave.

Camilo Pardo is home. He has worked in this studio for 15 years. The building, like the driver, is legendary in this town and well known all over the world. He has been called the Andy Warhol of car design. This is the Bankle Building, Camilo's Factory. Where everything comes together. I have been here at countless parties- as has every other hipster, boohoo, scene queen, minimum wage celeb and hanger-on from Detroit. From underground raves to the legendary black tie optional Detroit Auto Show Designers Night; the Bankle has a better résumé than any club. Syd Mead showed here.

Inside, on the ancient lacquered wood floor sits his collection of cars, among them a 1982 Ferrari BBi and a 1967 McQueen-era Mustang fastback. At one time the original Batmobile was here. This is not your movie star vanity-garage, chances are Camilo is going to need a jump. A large wall like door pivots and you are in his lair; a rack of clothing, designed and fabricated by the artist is in the hall. He’s been creating fashions since college and his work falls into two categories, the outrageously abstract and racing themes—always sexy and exclusively for the ladies, the racing stripe is a recurring theme.

Camilo triangulates, “The creative process for creating fashion is exactly the same process as designing sexy cars. All we are doing is dividing a form into graphic proportion— you can divide anything into proportions. I like to emphasize a car’s dynamic shapes. Stripes can really help describe forms

The room opens up to his studio—it is the size of a GAP. The walls are covered with his paintings, primarily fast cars and beautiful women. An extremely talented painter, Camilo’s art is a blend of pop, abstract and Industrial Rendering 101. It’s a unique style—splashes and splatters of vibrant colors under brushwork that is as fast and furious as the imagery, the same **** he probably doodled in his high school notebooks when he was supposed to be paying attention to the teacher. He could probably live out the rest of his life on commissions of the GT alone.

But the most amazing trick Camilo has pulled out of his toolbox is his new furniture designs. He had been creating solid industrial pieces since art school, but his current work conveys some of the most fluid three-dimensional forms since fiberglass set the modern movement ablaze—and it is all done in with two dimensions. The pieces are made up of thick metal plates, evenly spaced, which are carved into soft, rolling organic shapes. There is a frightening amount of air between each slat, giving the pieces a different look from every vantage point. This negative air space and creates an illusion of lightness and transparency, but the chair alone ways 500 lbs, and is astonishingly comfortable. He calls his pieces eye candy, but many who have viewed this collection see it as important, furniture that rates aesthetically with the greats; Saarinen, Noguchi and Eames., “The pieces are another avenue for sculpture, functional art for a hotel or office lobby. You don’t go into it designing a chair, you go into it designing a sculpture, creating something people haven’t seen before. There is an ergonomic relationship with the human anatomy, as well as shapes and volumes, the volume is what’s there and shape creates an area for you to be comfortable.

Lamps, tables, and more follow this design. He’ll be showing the furniture at the Museum Of Contemporary Art in Detroit in a few weeks. Things aren’t finished. Nothing is ever finished in Camilo’s life until a few moments before showtime. He is notorious for hanging “wet” at art shows, delaying the runway at fashions shows, even his cars get finalized in a last minute flurry of activity. (This interview included). But it is not only part, it is essential to his creative process. “That’s when the mind locks in. You become focused and you start to work at your very best.”

When you think about it, Camilo is working a very demanding full time job, and the man still has accomplished more than a half dozen resident artists.