David R. McLellan - Hall of Fame 2014

BSME 1959 joined General Motors Proving Ground Noise and Vibration Lab after graduating from Wayne State. His early assignments included dynamics of cars, trucks and military tanks, and manager of the newly completed Vehicle Dynamics Test Area (Black Lake).

McLellan’s career took him to Chevrolet where he led the team that finished the 70 1/2 Camaro development, then to the GM Technical Center to manage John Delorean’s project to combine the Camaro and Corvette platforms as a way to save the Corvette (it did not work).  In 1973 he was named a Sloan Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  Shortly after returning to Chevrolet, he was appointed Corvette Chief Engineer and would be indelibly linked with the Corvette for the next 17 years, developing models with advanced electronics and the ultra high performance ZR-1.

In what turned out to be his last development of the Corvette, McLellan challenged an R&D team to design a next generation Corvette capable of ZR-1 performance, but at standard Corvette prices. As a result, his team adopted the backbone architecture that would be the hallmark of the C5 and all subsequent Corvettes. McLellan retired from General Motors in the fall of 1992. His 2002 book, Corvette from the Inside, chronicles the history and shares inside details of this iconic vehicle.

In retirement, McLellan has worked with Porsche Engineering Services, developed an electronically reconfigurable, steer-by-wire car for NHTSA, commercially based military trucks for TACOM, consulted on the Lockheed Martin JLTV, and been the expert in a number of automotive injury and patent legal cases. He is an SAE Fellow and a recipient of the SAE Edward N. Cole Award for Automotive Engineering Innovation.

McLellan and Glenda, his wife of 49 years, have two adult children, David and Philip, and three grandchildren.