Callaway Vehicles Founder Reeves Callaway Has Handed Away At 75

Callaway Cars introduced at the moment that founder Ely Reeves Callaway III handed away on Tuesday, July 11 at his residence in Newport Seashore, California. His reason for dying is claimed to be “from accidents sustained after a fall.” He was 75.

The son of Ely Callaway Jr., the founding father of Callaway Golf, Reeves Callaway initially wished to turn out to be a race automotive driver. However when that didn’t work out, he turned a racing teacher on the Bob Bondurant racing college. Whereas working at Bondurant, he developed an aftermarket turbocharger package for the BMW 3 Sequence and managed to get Automobile and Driver to assessment it.

Whereas he initially ran Callaway Vehicles out of his storage, the constructive assessment from Automobile and Driver led him to open Callaway Vehicles’ first headquarters close to the place he was residing in Outdated Lyme, Connecticut. Over the following a number of many years, he would go on to switch BMW, Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, Land Rover, Mazda and Normal Motors merchandise. However he’s arguably greatest identified for his work on a number of generations of Chevrolet Corvettes.

Callaway had an in depth relationship with GM, which allowed him to promote his vehicles by way of Chevrolet sellers. In 1989, a Callaway Twin Turbo Corvette, often known as the Sledgehammer, made 880 hp and 772 lb-ft of torque. Within the arms of John Lingenfelter, it set a manufacturing top-speed report of 254.76 mph. That report would stand for 21 years when Bugatti managed to hit 267.85 mph within the Veyron Tremendous Sport.

From there, Callaway obtained into racing however continued to switch Corvettes, together with fashions with customized our bodies such because the Callaway C12 and the C16. Callaway nonetheless modifies Corvettes at the moment, in addition to Camaros, Silverados, Suburbans, Tahoes, Sierras, Yukons and Escalades.

In an announcement, his son Peter Reeves Callaway mentioned:

Because of Reeves’ 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. Dad’s ardour for making fantastically designed and crafted machines might be seen in every challenge, and we stay dedicated to executing to the very best requirements, in true Callaway style. He was hardly ever discovered doing something apart from working in direction of the following milestone for the corporate. He was a charismatic chief with a humorousness that we are going to all bear in mind by way of numerous “Reeves-isms”. I really feel lucky to have grown up working with him and the corporate.