Reeves Callaway, founding father of Callaway Vehicles and a legend within the Corvette world, has died. Callaway Vehicles confirmed in an e mail that he handed on Tuesday after accidents sustained in a fall in his Newport Seashore, California, residence. He was 75.
Ely “Reeves” Callaway III was born in November 1947 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and raised in Darien, Connecticut. His father, Ely Callaway, based the Callaway golf firm, one of many world’s premier producers of golf golf equipment. He raced go-karts as a child and, in 1973, received the SCCA Method Vee championship. By 1976 he was an teacher on the Bob Bondurant Faculty of Excessive-Efficiency Driving.
After his skilled racing profession did not pan out, he turned his consideration to modifying vehicles. His first product, a turbocharger equipment for the E21-generation BMW 320i, generated sufficient curiosity to guide Callaway to begin Callaway Vehicles from his storage in Previous Lyme, Connecticut, in 1977. Quickly he started providing efficiency kits for different vehicles.
“We do not name ourselves a tuner,” Callaway informed Street & Observe in a 2017 interview. “A tuner takes an mixture of elements that already exists, bolts them on the auto, and calls it a customization. Every thing we make is made particularly for the automotive. And we manufacture it ourselves.”
Shortly, his work attracted consideration from main automakers. Alfa Romeo was the primary, commissioning a turbocharger equipment for the GTV6 that debuted in 1983, then it was GM. Callaway developed a twin-turbo equipment for the Chevrolet Corvette, which turned obtainable via Chevy dealerships in 1987. On the time, a normal Corvette supplied 240 horsepower; Callaway’s twin-turbo Corvette upped that to 382 horsepower, making it some of the highly effective vehicles on sale on the time.
The 254.76-mph Callaway Sledgehammer
Ever sooner Corvettes adopted, maybe essentially the most well-known being the Sledgehammer, a C4 Corvette with low-drag aerodynamic bodywork and an 898-hp twin-turbo V-8. The Sledgehammer hit a high velocity of 254.76 mph and ceaselessly linked Reeves Callaway and the Chevrolet Corvette.
Whereas Callaway Vehicles labored with many different automakers, Aston Martin and Land Rover amongst them, its strongest affiliation was with the Corvette. Callaway additionally constructed Corvette race vehicles, beginning with the SuperNatural that made appearances at Le Mans in 1994 and 1995, ending 2nd and third in that yr’s GT2 area, and culminating in a GT3 racing model of the C7 Corvette that also races globally to at the present time. A notable current spotlight was the C7 Corvette AeroWagen, which featured a physique equipment that turned the coupe into a classy taking pictures brake. At the moment, Callaway Vehicles’ choices include improve packages for a wide range of GM automobiles, together with a supercharger equipment for the brand new C8 Corvette.
“Because of Reeves’s visionary entrepreneurial spirit, Callaway Vehicles will proceed to innovate and develop within the twenty first century, impressed by his distinctive, extraordinary imaginative and prescient and by his private instance of integrity, resourcefulness, and management as our founder,” stated his son Peter Callaway, Callaway Vehicles president, in an announcement. “Dad’s ardour for making fantastically designed and crafted machines will be seen in every undertaking, and we stay dedicated to executing to the best requirements, in true Callaway vogue. He was hardly ever discovered doing something aside from working in the direction of the subsequent milestone for the corporate. He was a charismatic chief with a humorousness that we are going to all keep in mind via varied ‘Reeves-isms.’ I really feel lucky to have grown up working with him and the corporate.”
He’s survived by 4 youngsters and two grandchildren.
Senior Reporter
A automotive fanatic since childhood, Chris Perkins is Street & Observe’s engineering nerd and Porsche apologist. He joined the employees in 2016 and nobody has found out a approach to fireplace him since. He street-parks a Porsche Boxster in Brooklyn, New York, a lot to the horror of everybody who sees the automotive, not least the creator himself. He additionally insists he isn’t a convertible particular person, regardless of proudly owning three.
