Tom Campbell built a house, a family, a wide circle of friends and a career. He also built a car.
This documentary was prepared by Rob Bearden of the Portland Art Museum (Oregon) to shed light on Tom and his amazing creation as part of the Allure of the Automobile exhibit in 2011.
Tom Campbell built this car by himself from ground up. He did everything himself and dedicated much of his time over a 20 year period designing and building the Cambellini from scratch in his 4,000 square foot shop. By 1991, he had built his second clay design model of the car at approximately 18" in length. From that model he used a projector to blow up slices of the model to full size for templates. Using tools and jigs he designed, and from those slices built a full-size clay model. He built the entire body and chassis from scratch, only purchasing items like the engine, wheels & tires & windshield
Rarely do endeavors like this ever come to fruition, but Tom was different. Despite being diagnosed with colon cancer, he saw it through to the end and still managed to raise two outstanding boys in the process.
I have driven this car and I must say, it is solid and drives very well. Tom did his homework. The car is planted and confident in the corners and joy to drive in stop and go traffic or on a twisty mountain road. He figured out complex shift linkages, optimal suspension geometry and proper weight distribution and managed to pack all of that engineering into a sleek and sexy body of his imagination.
Tom passed away in late 2009 after battle with colon cancer. He was my boss, my friend, and my mentor. He is missed dearly by everyone who knew him.