Callaway Automobiles introduced in the present day that founder Ely Reeves Callaway III handed away on Tuesday, July 11 at his dwelling in Newport Seashore, California. His reason behind dying is alleged 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 needed to develop into a race automobile driver. However when that didn’t work out, he grew to become a racing teacher on the Bob Bondurant racing faculty. Whereas working at Bondurant, he developed an aftermarket turbocharger package for the BMW 3 Sequence and managed to get Automotive and Driver to evaluate it.

Whereas he initially ran Callaway Automobiles out of his storage, the constructive evaluate from Automotive and Driver led him to open Callaway Automobiles’ first headquarters close to the place he was dwelling in Previous 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 via 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 fingers 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 received 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 in the present day, in addition to Camaros, Silverados, Suburbans, Tahoes, Sierras, Yukons and Escalades.

In a press release, his son Peter Reeves Callaway mentioned:

Due to Reeves’ visionary entrepreneurial spirit, Callaway Automobiles 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 will be seen in every challenge, and we stay dedicated to executing to the best requirements, in true Callaway vogue. He was not often discovered doing something apart from working in the direction of the following milestone for the corporate. He was a charismatic chief with a humorousness that we’ll all bear in mind via numerous “Reeves-isms”. I really feel lucky to have grown up working with him and the corporate.