Father of C7 styling Ed Wilburn. Either you love him or you hate him, but the C7 was a big hit.

When you see a C7 roll by you can thank Ed Wilburn. As vice president of GM Global Design, he recently announced his retirement after a 44 year career. He was just the sixth person to hold the design chief position at the huge US automaker and the first African-American.

His predecessors include such GM luminaries as Harley Earl, Bill Mitchell, Irvin Rybicki, Chuck Jordan and Wayne Cherry. GM will appoint Australian Michael Simcoe, a 33 year veteran and the first non-American to hold the position.

Michael Simcoe becomes only the 7th GM Design Chief. He has some big shoes to fill.

Wilbur leaves behind a memorable body of work including the Buick Riviera and Park Avenue in the 1970s, Saturn in the 1990’s, the 5th Gen Camaro and concepts like the 2013 Cadillac Elmiraj and 2015 Buick Avenir.

The car he’s says is near and dear to his heart is the C7 Corvette which debuted in Detroit in January 2013. Some Corvette folks might have a bone to chew with that as he was also responsible for the controversial design of the rear tail lights.

Maybe so, but sometimes good design has a way of revealing itself later or “growing on you” and we admit the  C7’s side quarter windows and square tail lights challenged our eyes at first. Now it all seems to gel and the styling gets better as the miles roll by.

In the meantime, Michael Simcoe starts May 1st, 2016 as GM Global Design Chief and we can consider it a new era in GM and Corvette design. What we will see on the street with Simcoe’s sole leadership remains a few years away, but we say, pick up where Welburn left off and continue GM’s leadership in design.

In the meantime, Ed has a road trip to Europe planned in a silver Z06 he’s shipping over. Now that’s the way to start a new chapter.

Thanks for the cool cars and Corvettes, Ed Welburn.