The Man Who Couldn’t Part With a Car Brochure

Even when shopping for a new car, most people dump the advertising brochure as soon as the salesman turns his back. But the late David R. Holls, a well-known car designer, was an avid collector of car-related materials.

Ten thousand of Holls’ catalogs, owner’s manuals, pamphlets, brochures, clippings and other items have been acquired by the Nethercutt Collection and Museum, along with more than 9,000 of his car-related photos.

The Sylmar complex is home to more than 200 antique and classic cars and a large collection of mechanized musical instruments.

“David Holls was director of styling for General Motors and, before he passed away, he amassed a wonderful, wonderful collection of automotive sales and advertising literature and photographs,” said Skip Marketti, 62, the Nethercutt’s archivist and curator.

Holls died in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, on June 16, 2000, at age 69.

Marketti, who occasionally served as a judge with Holls at car shows, said Holls’ widow, Patricia, had contacted the museum to say the collection was available. The Nethercutt paid $75,000 for the written material. Patricia Holls donated the photographs--about 9,300 images, Marketti said.

The David R. Holls Automotive Literature and Photo Collection will be available to historians, writers, restorers and others, Marketti said. The museum, created by Merle Norman Cosmetics co-founder J.B. Nethercutt, is open to the public without charge.

Holls collected material on American and foreign cars, with an emphasis on automobiles from the 1920s through the ‘50s, Marketti said.

“Whatever you could name, he could pull out a binder and there, neatly filed, was everything you wanted to know about the subject,” said Dennis Adler, editor in chief of Car Collector magazine.

As a designer, Holls was perhaps best known for the 1959 Cadillac. The design was wonderfully outrageous, Marketti said.

“It had the tallest tail fins ever used on a car,” Marketti said. “It was long and low and totally bedecked with chrome. It was over the top. It was the ultimate styling statement of the ‘50s.”

Other Holls designs include the 1964 Buick Riviera, the 1967 Chevrolet Camaro and the Oldsmobile Aurora--very different cars but all great looking in their own way, Marketti said. He speculated that Holls got his “swoopy sense of style” from the great French coach builders of the 1920s, whom he admired.