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Thomas Kellogg, best known for designing Avanti, dead at 71
Sunday August 17, 2003LOS ANGELES (AP) Thomas Kellogg, an industrial designer best known for his work on the Avanti sports car, has died. He was 71.
Kellogg died Thursday at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, two weeks after being injured in a car accident. He was injured after his Mercedes-Benz hit a center divider while he was driving to lunch.
``He was very well liked, sensitive and caring,'' his daughter, Kris Machado, of Aliso Viejo, told the Los Angeles Times in Sunday's newspaper. ``He was also very analytical and would always offer his opinion on any design whatsoever. Even in the hospital he was analyzing the way the room was it sounded like it met his approval.''
Kellogg was part of a four-member team that designer Raymond Loewy assembled in 1961 to design the futuristic Avanti sports coupe for the Studebaker Corp. The team designed the car while working in a rented Palm Springs home and it was introduced a year before Studebaker went out of business in 1963.
``I've concluded that the car is cosmic,'' Kellogg told The Associated Press in 2000. ``It has some sort of personality or spirit that keeps finding people to take it over and stroke it and keep it going.''
Kellogg, who graduated from Pasadena's Art Center College of Design in 1955, had a long career as a freelance designer. He designed motor homes, recreational vehicles and fiberglass boats. He also created exteriors for Rolls-Royce and Porsche, a line of dinnerware and the shuttlecraft for the original ``Star Trek'' television series. He also was extensively involved in the interior design of the DC-10 airplane for McDonnell Douglas.
He joined the industrial design and packaging firm of Gould & Associated in 1972 and his package designs won several design awards.
More recently he had been teaching form development at Art Center College of Design.
Survivors include his former wife, Greta Kellogg, of Irvine; daughters Kara Kellogg, of Irvine, and Machado; son, Thomas W. Kellogg Jr., of Irvine and four grandchildren.
A memorial service has been planned for Wednesday at Calvary Chapel in Santa Ana.
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