Irvin W. Rybicki, was elected to succeed Bill Mitchell as vice president in charge of the Design Staff of General Motors on August 1, 1977. He was only the third person to hold that position and did so until his retirement in October, 1986.

Rybicki was born September 16, 1921, in Detroit. At an early age, he began sketching and modeling automobiles and attended Detroit's Chadsey High School where he received art training before graduating in 1940.

Following World War II Army service, Rybicki was hired as a project engineer by the Engineering Standards Laboratory at the GM Proving Ground in February, 1944. In September 1945, He transferred to the GM Styling Staff (now GM design) as a junior designer when the staff resumed peacetime operations.

He was promoted to designer in 1947 and senior designer in 1950. He spent six years in the Cadillac studio under future Styling VP Bill Mitchell. One of his notable contributions to Cadillac was the gas cap that was concealed within the flip-top taillight. This detail appeared on Cadillacs beginning in 1948 and was present until 1956. Rybicki also played an important role in the design of the 1953 LeMans dream car. He styled the interior and instrument panel for that Motorama car.

In 1956, Rybicki was named assistant chief designer in the Oldsmobile Studio. A year later, he was promoted to Oldsmobile chief designer. He spent five years in the Oldsmobile studio, working on production vehicles during the day and the Olds Motorama cars late into the evening.

Rybicki was transferred to the Chevrolet studio as its chief designer in February 1962. General manager Bunkie Knudsen had begun to push Chevrolet in a new direction around this time. Rybicki helped him make GM’s lowest priced cars and trucks appear more upscale. New exterior styling and interior trims gave Chevrolet owners more for their money. In 1963, Rybicki and his team also presented Knudsen with a styling concept for a new, sporty image car that would be a four-place companion to the Corvette. However, Knudsen nixed this idea saying that Chevrolet already had enough cars in its lineup. Later when Ford introduced the Mustang in`1964, Knudsen et al were forced to play catch-up as the Camaro wasn’t introduced until the 1967 model year.

In July 1965, Rybicki was named group chief designer for Chevrolet passenger car and GMC truck studios. Five years later, in September 1970, he was promoted again, this time being named executive in charge of exterior design for Chevrolet and Pontiac passenger cars and Chevrolet and GMC trucks. In this role, Rybicki led the team that redesigned the Monte Carlo for the 1973 model year. When shown the original concept for this car, Chevrolet general manager John Z. DeLorean said to send it for production without changing a single detail. One unique feature of the Monte Carlo design was the opera window located in the rear pillar. This was part of Rybicki’s original design for that car, but GM’s upper management decided to incorporate it into the 1971 Cadillac Eldorado first. Thus, Chevrolet buyers got Cadillac design flourishes for the price of a Chevrolet.

Rybicki held his position over Chevrolet, Pontiac and GMC until September 1972, when he was named executive in charge of Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac passenger cars. Here, Rybicki was involved in the design of the original Cadillac Seville and had a major role in the huge GM redesign program beginning with the 1977 full- size and 1978 intermediate passenger cars and carrying through the entire model lines.

When Bill Mitchell retired as GM Styling vice president in 1977, Irv Rybicki was elected to take his place. He would soon find that Mitchell’s shoes were hard to fill. During his tenure, Rybicki faced many obstacles that neither of his two predecessors had endured including new energy conservation laws, new safety regulations, increased foreign competition, and a more autocratic upper management staff.

The oil crises of 1973 and 1979, along with the Energy and Conservation Act of 1975, compelled General Motors to begin building smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. These cars were built hastily weren’t accepted by consumers initially. GM would spend years and billions of dollars trying to build a small car that the American public wanted to buy during which time the smaller, reliable Japanese imports continued to improve their reputation and gain market share.

Rybicki’s design staff also faced new safety mandates from the federal government. Confusion over how to cope with these new laws from a design and engineering standpoint led to poor decisions that affected the exterior and interior appearance of GM’s cars through the late 1970s and 1980s.

Rybicki did not have the bold personality of Bill Mitchell or Harley Earl. Nor did he have the clout with GM’s management that either of those two men had. As such, Rybicki and his design team were subordinated to the directives of GM’s upper management throughout the 1980s. This as much as any other factor led to the styling that would characterize GM’s car and trucks of that decade. GM began to lean on consumer research for direction to its designs, not the imagination of its designers as it had in the past. Direction from above, the input of focus groups, and GM’s effort to create a corporate identity across its product lines led to GM’s so-called "look-alike" vehicles of the 80s. Even the styling of iconic cars such as the Chevrolet Corvette and Cadillac Eldorado got a lukewarm reception when they were updated in 1984 and 1986 respectively.

Rybicki was greatly disappointed when his Design team lost out on the styling of the new Cadillac two-seater (Allante) when that car’s body work was farmed out to Pininfarina in Italy. As such, he was quite motivated when Buick general manager, Lloyd Reuss approached him with an idea for a Buick two-seat image car. The resulting car, the Reatta, would be one of GM’s best-looking of the 1980s.

Like his predecessors, his tenure as vice president of Design Staff was marked with both successes and failures. His team produced popular cars such as the third generation Camaros and Firebirds, the short-lived Fiero, and the Reatta along with consumer and critical failures such as the GM-10 cars, X-platform and the J-cars.

Always a quiet man, Irv Rybicki retired from GM without fanfare in 1986. His legacy is tied directly to GM’s struggle to adapt itself to the modern automobile industry. Without the support and confidence of his superiors, Rybicki’s ability to forge a new design direction for General Motors was stunted. As such, it would hardly be fair for him to shoulder the full blame for GM’s styling failures of this period.

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