AUTOMOTIVE DESIGN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

The Reminiscences of Virgil Max Exner, Jr

Reminiscence from the 1989 Interview with Virgil Max Exner, Jr. Automotive Design Oral History, Accession 1673. Benson Ford Research Center. The Henry Ford.

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This is David Crippen of the Edsel Ford Design History Center at the Henry Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village in Dearborn , Michigan . Today is August 3, 1989, and today we're privileged to be talking with and inter­ viewing Virgil Max Exner, Jr. Mr. Exner has had a long career as an auto­motive designer, mainly with the Ford Motor Company, and is the son of the celebrated Virgil M. Exner, Sr. We're talking today with Mr. Exner about his design career and about his relationship with his father. Since he has a unique perspective on being the son of a famous design and growing up and working with him, we would like him to speak in as detailed a fashion as possible about what he has perceived over the years of his father's career and how his father's career has impacted on the history of automotive design. So we'll ask Mr. Exner to give his career narrative in his own way.

A:      Thank you very much, Dave. It's a privilege on my part to be here, and I want to thank you for our association over the last couple of years, especially, while I was at Ford Motor Company Design and finally got around to making this interview.

As Dave said, I'd like to go through my father's biography on a chronological basis. It naturally impacts my own career a great deal, and so I may as well start with when he was born in Ann Arbor , Michigan , September 24, 1909 , and was, at that time, put up for adoption as having no supportive parents and was adopted by the Exners shortly after. The Exners renamed him. He was originally born to a couple with the background name of Little and Anderson, thus being [of] Scots and Norwegian ancestry and, perhaps, may be looked upon as getting some of his eventual design aplomb and sensitivity from particularly the Scandinavian side of that combination.

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Nevertheless, the Exners, an old German name in Buchanan , Michigan , adopted my father virtually from birth, and his name became Virgil Max -­ why the Max, we never knew -- Exner and the son of Iva and George Exner. My grandfather Exner was pretty much a do-it type of a person from a craftsman's standpoint and [was] an inventive/creative type of person him­ self and encouraged my father, at a very early age, to be able to handle all facets of shop making, woodworking, and working with his hands. But my own father was really more of the nature of the artistic type. With my grandmother's urgence and being the only child, from a protective stand­ point [she] wanted my father to pursue the fine arts rather than getting his hands a bit greasy.

My grandfather was a good machinist and worked for many years as one of the head machinists at the Clark Equipment Company in Buchanan , Michigan , which was the national headquarters of that company for many years. Buchanan was just a small town of about five thousand on the Western side of the state and about ten to fifteen miles North of South Bend, Indiana, which is the home of the University of Notre Dame.

My father grew up quite normally and had many hometown friends and went to Buchanan High School . He graduated at the age of sixteen and, very early on, had not any particular formal art training but did develop to become the Buchanan High School yearbook art editor and did a number of sketches. He was always known for painting signs and doing things of that nature around Buchanan , Michigan , while he was in his high school years. He was, as a boy [with] one of his best friends, Art Allen, in Buchanan -­ who was one of our family's life-long friends -- interested in guns and the Old West and all kinds of the romantic type notions that boys at that time went through.

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My father soon became very fascinated with automobiles and grew up with quite a passion for both the aesthetic appeal and the mechanical appeal of the car. While he was still in high school, he and his friend Art and a couple of the other fellows would go over to Chicago from time to time on the train and go to the auto shows, and my father, in par­ticular, seemed to be quite fascinated by the magnificence of the shows. Even one time, along with Art, crawled through a barrier to see a car that was a brand new type of car that was on display which happened to be called a Duesenberg back in the early 'Twenties. It was the Model A Duesenberg. He was always impressed by that. Even in his early 'teens, as well as doing fine art sketches and fine art work, he started to draw cars and to actually design the bodies, of which I have a couple of his very early sketches that he portrayed a couple of Model A Duesenbergs and a design for a Kissel Roadster.

But he soon graduated from Buchanan High School . He had just a smattering of artistic training in any way. He, at that time, decided that he would go to the university as a day student. The family was not Catholic in any way, but, nevertheless, the University of Notre Dame was close so that he could commute. My father and his rather fanciful-painted Model T Ford took off [for South Bend], and he went to day school and enrolled in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame in 1926, after having graduated from Buchanan High in 1925.

For a period of about two and half years, [he had] very little art training because this school was not a strong artistic school. But there were a couple of art classes: design, and just basic art design, and a bit of advertising art that was taught there. It was, primarily, fine art and painting, typical of the Catholic type institution.

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Q:      Enlightened Catholic institution?

A:      You might say that. Again, my father was not Catholic in any way. My grandparents were quite independent. My grandmother really was Church of the Latter Day Saints and never imposed it on my father in any way. My my grandfather was quite a normal individual at that time -- Protestant, but not heavily involved in any church. They supported him, along with his own efforts in picking up a bit of work doing sign painting around Buchanan to help [pay] his way through school. They picked up the majority of his tuition fee at that time.

This worked for about two and half years, and it got to the point where funding was running out, and it was getting more expensive. He really only attended the university and did very, very well in his regular academic courses; he had very high grades and did as well as he could in picking up the artistic end. But he was advised, frankly, by the head of the art department, that they couldn't teach him very much more as far as becoming a professional artist -- which he was by then very interested in -- and [suggested] that, perhaps, it [would be] best if he tried to secure a job around the fringes of advertising art at that time. So he quit school in 1928 -- he did not graduate -- and started work for a firm in South Bend called Advertising Artists. This firm was an advertising stu­ dio, a branch of the then widely-established Meinzinger Studios, which had its head offices in Detroit and Chicago and was run by Frank C. Foote and Ed Clark in downtown South Bend . And they held accounts in South Bend . Their office -- Advertising Artist -- held the account of Studebaker Corporation -- their main [client] -- for doing their advertising catalogs and the advertising art work leading to the catalogs. Their accounts were

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also some of the musical instrument [companies], which were largely con­centrated in nearby Elkhart , Indiana , such as Conn Instruments. Some of their other accounts were local breweries like Berghoff, which was in Fort Wayne , Indiana , and Clark Equipment Company, of course, in Buchanan, as well as various other typical office equipment accounts.

So, my father was advised to try that, knocked on the door and was actually ushered in for an interview as an errand boy to start with, by my mother who was then the newly-hired office secretary of Ed Clark there at the advertisng agency. My mother, having come to South Bend from Three Rivers, Michigan , [from] a family of one son and three daughters. Both my mother and her younger sister -- they being the youngest of the family -­were sent off to South Bend to go to secretarial college by my uncle, the oldest son of the Eshleman family -- my mother's family. [They were] from Nottawa , Michigan , [and were] farmers, for the most part. [Nottawa], where my mother was actually born, was close by Three Rivers , Michigan . My mother went to high school in Three Rivers. They were sent off to go to business college in South Bend by my uncle who, because my grandfather on my mother's side had died at a very early age, had taken over the family at that time with Grandma Eshleman (Virgil and Frieda).

So when my father showed up at Advertising Artists, it was really my mother who did the physical hiring, along with the paperwork, but my father became an errand boy to begin with.

Q:      Typical of those days?

A:      Yes, typical of those days. Really [it was] an apprenticeship. And he was happy to get the job and to be around watching artists there at work. The type of errands that he did was to deliver artwork and prints

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and all kinds of things like that to the [client] companies, but it was primarily Studebaker that they needed that type of liaison with. He got to know the design engineering department at Studebaker, and this furthered his interest in cars.

Q:      What year was this?

A:      This was in 1928/1929. And, of course, the Depression came along at that time, and that hit very hard, and that's one of the reasons that he could not foresee the continuance of going to college. So it was important that he had this job. And I remember both my mother and my father telling me, when I was a little kid myself, that, oh boy, they worked long hours there, and then my father got on the board and actually started to do a bit of the illustration of advertising art under Frank Foote and Ed Clark. They worked him onto the boards to actually start doing some work.

Q:      They, obviously, recognized his talent?

A:      Yes. They started to recognize his talent as he started to discuss things then, talk about things, show them some of the work, that he had done. My mother was making more money than he was. My mother was making $11.44 a week, and my father was far less than that just starting out. And he kept up for a few years at those kind of wages. But he soon started to work out quite well on his own, as far as being able to handle some of the major work. He started out doing backgrounds, to a great extent, for some of the car illustrations, and then he started to do some of the car illustrations himself for both the Studebaker truck and the car. And then worked in the complete advertising layout brochures and the full-size brochure illustrations. [Eventually, he] worked into the complete range of things, as well as cars, and worked out some of the major brochures for some of their major accounts.

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He didn't really become a senior artist, from a managerial stand­ point. They just didn't have things like that. But he became one of the full associate artists within a couple of years, and, as I said, became responsible for some of the major brochure work, of which I have a few samples left from that time.

Q:      What can you tell us about his personality? The photographs show that he's tall and handsome?

A:      Yes. He was skinny. Relatively tall -- 5'10/"/5'11". Very dark hair. Rather light complected. He always had a high, receding hairline and was built not too unlike a tennis player.

Q:      Rangy, but...?

A:      A bit rangy. He liked sports, although my grandmother, even back in high school days, pooh-poohed that. My grandfather wanted to see him become a football player, and he wanted to be a football player, but my grandmother was a bit up in arms about that. Although he was an avid sports enthusiast, and while he was at the University of Notre Dame, went out for track there, he did not make the [varsity] team but participated in some of the intramural sports.

Q:      Was he gregarious?

A:      Overall, I would say he was quite gregarious. His personality, to hear him tell it, was that of a daring kid. Especially, he and Art [Allen] were full of pranks. The Allens owned the local hardware store in Buchanan for [many] years. They were that kind of prankish-type kids. He liked the girls in high school. Although to show his interest in cars even in those days -- his girlfriend's name was Mercedes in high school just like kids today, everybody liked cars. There were a lot more and varied makes in those days, too.

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Q:      Oh, in the 'Twenties, paradise!

A:      Incredible, yes.

Q:      How did it first manifest itself? You told us how he was able to parlay it into a job. I think you also indicated that he was interested in fine art.

A:      Yes, very.

Q:      But with his physical dexterity and his being able to translate what he saw into something more than just a sketch was, obviously, something he'd picked up along the line?

A:      He'd nurtured the idea of designing things in general as part of the background that he got from my grandfather, who was always building things on the side. My grandfather was purely a constructor type, but not much of a designer, but he would build his own furniture, turn his own wood legs for tables, and make small amounts of furniture. I think my father picked up on the idea of combining his artistic [sense] with making something. When he would make his own swords with the other kids, his would always be beautifully carved and break instantly. But he always perceived the idea of when he did something, he could make a lot of things. He could do things very well with his hands. He was not only a good draftsman, but he was a good craftsman and perceived how craftsman­ship should proceed.

Q:      A wonderful combination.

A:      Yes. Mechanically, especially, he had a sense for mechanical beauty. With his artistic ability, he could be very fluid in his draftsmanship and painting, but he liked mechanical beauty, also, or, at least, had an eye for it. It was a natural to work into about the only

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thing that really existed at that time -- as far as industrial design is concerned -- was the advertising aspect of art or architecture. But there was little in the way of any kind of school to be had for industrial design. It was a Twentieth Century phenomena, really. It was that you went to your local university, and they had art courses, and then art -­ which was a good background, because, after all, that leads to everything. At least he got a little bit of training there. But he was largely self­ taught, from a drafting standpoint, and he could see how drafts were made by seeing engineers working at Studebaker, and he was able to use that ability. He had a bit of mechanical drawing at the University of Notre Dame, but, mostly, he felt comfortable with a pencil and a straight edge and/or a paint brush and whatever type of media was available.

Q:      Obviously, a quick study as well?

A:      Yes, quick sketches. He was extremely versatile, as well as the ability to sculpt things. He was just able to master these mediums very easily. It's difficult to judge exactly what his best medium really would be, although it leaned most heavily towards transparent water color, which was of large interest in the 1920's. It was something that was quite popular in the 1920's, but he was particularly adept at that. Later on in his life, even while he was at Chrysler, he picked back up on that, and it was very much his first love. Even some of the illustrations that were done for Advertising Art during this period while he was there, the majority of them -- the final illustrations -- were transparent water color illustrations for cars or whatever it was.

He was there until approximately 1931. He started to date my mother there. It took him awhile to get up some nerve. He started to date her in 1929/'30. They were married in 1931.

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Q:      Tough year for young marrieds to start out?

A:      It certainly was. But they had a good time. By that time, my father had acquired a Model A Ford roadster, and it was a tan job with black fenders. He painted the wheels cerise, and it was a real sharp­ looking rig. Then he proceeded to work there. My mother, before she started to work at Advertising Art there, had gone to South Bend Business College . While she was doing this, in order to raise tuition and to cover her own room and board, had taken up a position with a rather large family as a housekeeper and live-in babysitter in South Bend, and they -- the Shaefers -- became both my father's and mother's very best friends. They built the Shaefer Gear Works in South Bend .

My mother was actually living with the Shaefers and continued to live with them when she first started to work for the advertising agency. That's where my father first starting dating her, and later on, in 1931, they were married and rented their first apartment. Their first house that they rented [was] in a very small, old-fashioned area in South Bend . It was struggling times during the Depression years, but they were doing quite well. During this period, they, naturally, kept up contacts with my grandparents in nearby Buchanan and with my mother's family in Three Rivers , Michigan .

During this time that my father was working various accounts, he was also, on the side, always fiddling with new car designs, with the idea of designing the lines of cars himself and not just illustrating existing cars. But the idea was more and more appealing to him to do new advanced­-looking cars, just for his own amusement, more than anything else. He did not realize that, other than at the various [custom] coachbuilders during

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those years. there wasn't too much of a call for actual art designers to do cars, but he had definite ideas about how cars should look and what they would look like in the future.

I might add that a very important part of his background and enthu­ siasm and interest, and it became an interest of the family -- I was brought up with it almost all my life, and my mother was a great enthu­ siast, too -- was of automobile racing. Even at an early age, he was fascinated by racing cars. My grandfather was a bit enthusiastic about that, too, and would take him to the local dirt track races in those days. As early as the age of sixteen, he begged my grandfather to take him down to Indianapolis , and, of course, that was a big turn on. Unfortunately, my grandfather was hit by a car while they were down there that first time and broke his leg. Well, he was enthusiastic about it and liked the idea, but he said, "[I] never want to go back down there to Indianapolis again." But my father just loved it, and [this interest] carried on through the days of the early 'Thirties when the purest breeds of racing cars existed with the Duesenbergs and Millers and cars of that type that were aestheti­ cally beautiful and sounded good and ran fast. He was a great enthusiast of the sport, and he hot rodded his own cars around through high school and even with his Model A Ford.

In 1933, I was born in South Bend, Indiana, and just shortly after that time, a couple of visits from the main branch of Meinzinger's in Detroit, resulted in my father breaking away from Advertising Art and coming up to Detroit. I can't remember who the individual was. It was one the top-ranking persons up here that had been visiting the studios in South Bend occasionally and had seen my father's work that he put up

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around his design or drafting cubicle. One of these individuals kept seeing some of these advanced car designs, and my father got a bit of publicity, in that a couple of little home magazines around St. Joseph County in South Bend wanted to do an article on what a futuristic car would look like, and my dad did make a couple of sketches and illustra­tions for them. I have a copy of that, and it's really nice looking stuff -- a pencil sketch as well as a black and white ink sketch. So he got a bit of publicity there to show off what he thought advanced cars would look like.

It was in 1933 that he was told of the hiring that was going on on the part of General Motors. He was advised, "Gee, you ought to go up there and show some of those people the kinds of things that you're doing, and, maybe, you could, perhaps, get into a career of working into actual automotive design." This appealed to him greatly. So he gathered a port­ folio together of the work that he had done there, and, especially, the advanced car designs. And he was advised to go up and see Harley Earl, who had been putting together the General Motors design/styling section since 1926/'27. It initially started out as the Art and Colour section.

My father went to G.M. and met with both Harley Earl and Howard O'Leary at that time. They were impressed with his work and offered him a job which he was really tickled to death to get starting off as just a young designer. They were gathering together a bunch of young designers. There was hardly any kind of formal training that was available for car designers in any way.

Q:      This was 1934?

A:      Yes. During that period, they had been stocking the Art and Colour

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section with designers that had come from coachbuilders. A lot of them [were] going out of business during that time.

Q:      Which made a large talent pool available?

A:      There was, and G.M. got them, and they supplemented them with young fellows, like my father, a lot of them coming directly out of high school. Some of them had a bit of formal education. Some of them switched jobs from other places -- came in from advertising businesses, like my father.

Q:      Very fluid and flexible in those days?

A:      Oh, yes, very much so. Not formalized in any way. With a philo­ sophy yet to be developed, and so it gave birth to a great variety of design which General Motors was, consciously, at that time, promoting their products to make each one of them different. So it was just a natural pool that developed there.

Initially, my father worked for Frank Hershey, who was the head of the Pontiac studio. But, at the same time, and this went on for only about a year, Harley Earl decided to put on a design contest within the General Motors studio network.

Q:      Did you father ever mention why he thought Harley Earl initiated this contest?

A:      As I understand it, the reason was that he wanted to put people in competitive positions and increase the competitiveness within the studios. And, also, I think he wanted to hold out as sort of a reward, the studio head positions. Because it got down to a process of selection, from that standpoint, as some of the older fellows, perhaps, didn't have quite some of the creative ideas that Harley saw within the younger group. So they had a contest, and one of the people that was around at that time that I

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can remember my father talking about was Clare Hodgeman, who was certainly one of the young group that hung around together after my father and mother came to Detroit . They were good friends. The Hodgemans -- Clare and his sister, Clarese -- were originally from Jackson , Michigan , and so they were all small-town-oriented people. At that time, Clare wasn't married, but his sister was always hanging around up in Detroit . It wasn't that far from Jackson to Detroit , and my mother and Clarese became very, very good friends.

Then, in addition, there was Paul Zimmerman, who was an Easterner U.S. -- actually an Austrian -- who was quite a good designer. It was primarily those two.

Q:      Gordon Buehrig was...?

A:      No. Gordon was not at -- I don't believe he was ever at General Motors.* Bill Mitchell had not quite come in there at that time, but they became friends. And there was Carl Reynolds who worked there as well as some of the modelers with whom my father was always friendly throughout all of his career. They were among his favorite people at all time. He appreciated their artistic ability and sculpturing ability, and he liked to do that himself. Some of his greatest friends were always the modelers -- the clay modelers and wood sculptors.

Q:      Very astute of his because that's where it all started.

A:      That's really true, and he appreciated the fact that they could execute in three dimensions the things that he, himself, and other people dreamed about in two dimensions and always appreciated that. There was

* Editor's Note : Mr. Exner is mistaken here. Gordon Buehrig was a member of General Motors' Art and Colour Department in the early 1930's.

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never any rivalry there like there has been about many designers with the model-making faction.

In those days it was primarily wood mockups that were done in full­size work. However, G.M. did, more or less, start the large process of going through scale clay models with the old type of almost children's type of modeling clay, initially.

Q:      It's been written for years that Harley Earl and his great modeler at G.M. really pioneered that technique.

A:      Yes. For the most part. [But] the use of modeling clay was done at some of the other coachbuilders and bit in Europe before it really happened [at G.M.]

Q:      It's a natural progression because children's modeling clay has been available since the turn of the century.

A:      Yes, that's right. And that's all that there was, unless you got into a water base clay from which it was impossible to form any kind of a finished surface that would hold. So the use of oil base clay was impor­ tant. Initially, it was used as a filleting material for wooden models more than anything else, and then it became more and more the overall sur­ face of the model.

Q:      It was a natural progression?

A:      Yes, it was. So, those were some of the people that were there at that time, as well as some of the older designers like Frank Hershey. It became necessary, as they were hiring more and more people, to sort out echelons to sort out areas of responsibility and to establish more strongly the individual studios: Pontiac, Chevrolet, Cadillac and Buick, with LaSalle being more or less a subdivision of Cadillac and not its own

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studio, and with Oldsmobile. So it became necessary to sort that out, and Harley's way of doing that was to hold this in-house contest, and each designer that had relatively major responsibility worked up his own designs and model for this contest. One of the winners was my father, and another was Clare Hodgeman, another one was Paul Zimmerman. And they were soon assigned, not too long after that, to be the [studio] heads. My father took over the Pontiac studio. Frank Hershey moved up at that time to Buick or Cadillac. I believe it was Cadillac studio.

My father took over in 1935 as the head of the Pontiac studio, and Clare Hodgeman became head of Oldsmobile studio. Paul Zimmerman, I believe, was Chevrolet studio. The work that my father had done prior to that -- even as early as 1934 when he was first hired there -- did manage to influence the '35/'36 models of Pontiac . Even though it was, basi­ cally, the overall managerial responsibility of the studio head, who was Frank Hershey at that time, it was his team of designers, including my father in 1934 and '35, that did create the Pontiac Silver Streak. And, of course, Frank Hershey is known for that, but, I believe, that my father is given some specific credit, too.

Q:      Very distinctive trademark.

A:      Yes. It certainly is distinctive. Later on he was known as the " Fin Man. " You don't know if you want to be known as that or not. Piling some chrome on cars was something that became taboo later on, but, nevertheless, it was looked upon as quite a break-through at the time. Then after he became the head of the studio, his large contribution was the '38 Pontiac, really, and he was largely responsible, along with his own team of people, of having designed that car.

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Q:      Was there a distinctive look about it?

A:      It was very slim. He always believed in and started to develop a philosophy of car design. His chief modeler in the Pontiac studio was George Martin, who later, along with his sons, made tremendous contribu­ tions to the industry in the sculptural field, clay modeling in par­ticular.

Q:      In what firm?

A:      George was at G.M. and later went out to Art Center in Los Angeles to become one of their first sculpture instructors ten or fifteen years ago -- maybe earlier than that. Ronnie Martin, his son, actually worked for my father at Chrysler when he was young and developed many fiberglass techniques. Later he became a representative of Chavant Clay in New Jersey . He built and demonstrated a clay [extrusion] machine for them and later supplied Chrysler with [foam] models [and clay modeling assistance]. He knew all types of methods of clay modeling and promoted the material.

By 1938 my father had responsibility for the design of a complete car. He had developed a philosophy of design in which, along with his own closest friends, were, more or less, in agreement with. And, of course, they were influenced by [contemporary] publications, automobile racing, anything to do with design, which was then coming to the forefront and in the form [of] a revolution of industrial design that was providing, at that time, [the philosophical and practical basis] for the modern industrial design concepts that we have today. It was a transitional period going from old, flat, high-hooded, straight angles, full fenders, flowing fenders, automobile design typical of the early 'Thirties and rapidly turning into the more fully-bodied, all-steel body, incidentally,

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as opposed to the combination of wood and steel, giving way to new mecha­ nical innovation in chassis, body, and total vehicle development, as opposed to the coachbuilding days of the 'Twenties and 'Thirties. Giving more and more to the design of all-steel bodied, mass production cars.

Q:      This was a remarkably fluid time as they [began to] adapt to the world of modern automotive body design?

A:      Very fluid. Right. Very contemporary, very modern for that time. It was dabbling with aerodynamics, and it was dabbling with smooth shapes with flowing, enveloping designs, as far as the body was concerned, with a certain amount of innovation in glass technology. In plastics technology even. In all types of material inventions. One of the things, for instance, was building in everything on the exterior of the automobile. Even though there were separate fenders and separate hoods and things like the, the idea of blending things together, building in. And, especially, a General Motors' overall philosophy at that time. You may attribute it to Harley Earl, but it was the idea of having a continuity of design where each detail, be it a bumper, and that was considered a detail at that time, or a radiator ornament, or a door handle, or any type of a molding, that every piece of ornamentation would look like it was designed to go with the basic body itself as well as every other detail. In other words, a continuity of design elements. Even headlights, for instance, were large details, but they were shaped and ornamented and designed to fit to the body much like the taillight would be. They even looked like they were -- one was a smaller version of the other, attached the same way, was sculpted the same way with whatever particular shape it took -- a bullet shape or a flat, thin shape looked like it belonged with the sister

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taillight. Bumpers looked like they were designed to go with their coun­ terparts. And various embellishments were design detailed. Trunk handles were designed to look like they matched the door handles, and that was a very important part of General Motor's philosophy, in particular, at that time. Some of the other firms didn't pick up that quite, but there were notable exceptions. The Lincoln-Zephyr was a very excellent example of that same philosophy.

Q:      Do you think that the European influence in the early-to-mid 'Thirties was ever acknowledged by your father, or did he just sort of absorb it as [part of the] general atmosphere of...?

A:      The designers -- and they became quite a group of people that sud­ denly were aware of what was going on in Europe as well as developments here in the United States . My father, in particular, became an enthusiast of, and conscious of, European design. Again, it was due to a certain extent with his great enthusiam and curiosity about European racing cars.

Q:      They were the acknowledged leaders?

A:      Yes. They were going through, in the mid-to-late 'Thirties, with the rise of Mercedes. The Germans, in particular -- Mercedes and Auto Union -- and prior to that, the Italians with Alfa Romeo and Maserati -­ were producing some of the most absolute stream-lined, purposeful, and powerful racing cars in the world at that time. [However], my father kept tabs on [The] Indianapolis [500], and my folks would go religiously every year to Indianapolis .

Q:      You mentioned the Zephyr, and this is what triggered my train of thought. Would he have known John Tjaarda at Briggs?

A:      He didn't particularly know him, no, at that time.

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Q:      Or would he have absorbed any of Tjaarda's [design] influences like his earlier streamlined Sterkenberg and the Tatra from Czechoslovakia ?

A:      Some of my father's own sketches and car designs of advanced nature didn't really embrace the Tatra type design that you're talking about or the Maxim, because he couldn't -- I believe he would tell me that he couldn't justify that type of a shape on the large cars we had at that time in this country. Those were designs at that time -- especially the Tatra -- that were okay to do to a Volkswagen size car.

Q:      He really felt the constraints of American tastes?

A:      Yes. There was constraints of American taste, but there was, naturally, always constraints of American engineering, too, as far as chassis are concerned.

Q:      What about the Airflow? Did that enter into his thinking?

A:      I know that he was always an enthusiast of aerodynamics and [was] very honest as far as automobile design is concerned. It was a primary mission, and it was always the idea to get people from point A to point B first. That was the most important thing. Then there was plenty of room left over for some exciting style going on. But he always tried to be what he would call honest as far as his philosophy of what a car ought to look like, even though he took great liberties himself at times, as did we all. His other continuous theme -- he always had a great spot in his heart for what have become the real classics: the long hoods, the Duesenbergs and Packards and all kinds of cars with special coachwork.

He and his closest friends were constantly buying up all of the European car magazines they could lay their hands on [that] were available in the Detroit [area]. They all lived around the New Center area. Of

-21-

course, G.M. styling was located on the third floor of the General Motors Building . They ate up automobile racing and racing car models and were very enthusiastic. My dad did some race car sketches, as did some of the other fellows. They were always doing that type of thing.

I was just a little kid at that time. My dad was trying to "bring me up right," and he was always drawing me race cars when I was a little kid and making race car sounds for me and stuff like that. My folks were very close together, and it was sometime before I had brothers and sisters, [and], as I grew up, I was included in most of the racing enthu­ siasm. I was born in 1933. I saw my first dirt track race, myself, in Detroit , Michigan , in 1934 during the time that my parents lived here in Detroit . They constantly were going out to the speedway at 8 Mile Road where, initially, it was dirt track cars (sprint type cars, as we would call them today) on a half mile, and then it became a quarter mile track later on. Any type of racing was the big sport.

He wasn't ever particularly interested in water sports [boat speed races] that the Detroit area had to offer, until later on, and then he got very heavily involved in that. But it was primarily car design. The hours were long, lots, of overtime, typical General Motors' pressure, and....

Q:      They worked even on holidays.

A:      Oh, yes. The pay wasn't that great, and he did manage to become the chief of the Pontiac studio at that time and contributed a bit to when they had crash programs on various other products. I think he designed the 1939 Buick headlights for that particular front end and a few other miscellaneous detail assignments that he was responsible for.

-22­-

[I] was quite amazed in digging through my father's papers [to find] patents to the bumper integrated grille that he designed at G.M. The style shown on the patent is very similar to the late 1940's style of bumper grilles that were used by G.M. in the early '50's.

Q:      Somebody went back and saw those drawings?

A:      Well, G.M. held the patents, and it was a functional patent: The idea was to take the air in through the bumper and actually shroud it to the radiator. The patent was made in his name at that time. It was issued, really, after he had left General Motors and gone with Raymond Loewy in 1938, which was the next phase of his career. But this was a leftover from that period of time regarding patents, when designers at that time worked for companies -- nowadays, you just sign a release that you [won't] get anything from that standpoint. Back in those days, the company had to do the patent research, issue the patent in your name, and then they paid you a dollar, officially, to buy the patent for the cor­ poration. This was the way it was handled at that time.

Q:      Tell me, was he happy at General Motors?

A:      Generally speaking, yes, he was happy.

Q:      What did he think of Harley Earl?

A:      He liked Harley Earl very much, and, apparently, he thought Harley liked him, too. In fact, Harley tried to talk him out of [leaving]. [He] practically cried when he left.

Q:      Elaborate on that. How did that happen?

A:      He was contacted by the Raymond Loewy [design] headquarters in New York .

Q:      Any particular reason?

-23­-

A:      They had gained the Studebaker account for [automotive] design as well as International Truck, and they were rapidly gaining accounts [such] as Pennsylvaniva Railroad, Coca Cola, [and other] large accounts. Industrial design was becoming a very important thing by this time.

Q:      Loewy had come up through the industrial design matrix?

A:      More or less. Actually, he'd started off in fashion design and then got into designing store fronts in Chicago , in particular. He had had a bit of experience as far as [working in] car design with Hupmobile. And, again, it was Frank Hershey [who] had been with him during that period and had a bit of experience there and then made contact with Studebaker and picked up their account. They had no in-house design at Studebaker. They were, of course, still pretty old-fashioned.

Q:      In body engineering?

A:      In body 'style'.

Q:      Loewy had worked with the Pennsylvania Railroad [where he] had become very famous with his locomotive design?

A:      That's right. Initially, they were looking for people to be able to handle these accounts, and he was gaining more accounts than he was able to service. That's what it amounted to, and so he started to go on a talent search, and it took him to General Motors first off, where within a very short period of time [he recruited] -- I believe Clare Hodgeman was the first to go, [next] Paul Zimmerman, and then my father.

Q:      That's a high-powered trio.

A:      He got all three of them right off the bat to [consider] going to New York . It took a little while. Clare got there first, and my dad kept in touch with him to see how he liked it there. "Well, okay, every-

-24­-

thing's fine. What are you working on?" that type of thing. [And] besi­ des, he [was] offered twice as much money, and that was a big deal and then the chance to go to New York and live around the big city.

Q:      Irresistible?

A:      Oh, a big, big thing. It made my mother gleefully happy, and my father was happy about the whole thing. He always had a penchant for travel -- an interest, a curiosity about what other people did. Even in the early days, they'd always taken trips with my grandparents back to Pennsylvania . That's where their relatives were from on my father's side -- the Exners were Pennsylvania Dutch, originally, and my grandmother was Holland Michigan Dutch. My father had been taken on long automobile trips during that time but had never been west of Chicago . [And while] he had been to Pennsyl-vania, he'd never been to New York .

So it was a big, big deal. My mother was game, and always sporty, always ready to travel and had fun at it. They were very young at the time. He was the youngest head of a design studio in General Motors' history.

Q:      How young was he when he assumed [the] Pontiac ...?

A:      If that was 1935/'36, he was twenty-six.

Q:      So, it's off to the big city?

A:      So then in 1938, he actually accepted [Lowey's offer].

Q:      How old were you?

A:      I was only five at that time. Those were my earliest recollections, really, about a lot of this. I can vaguely remember that my dad had a 1933 Ford when he first come up to General Motors. And that was just before he came up to General Motors that he traded the Model A in on that.

-25­-

He got the green '33 Ford, and I vaguely remember coming back. I was dragged back and forth myself from Detroit to South Bend or to Buchanan many, many times during that period of time to go back down and visit our family. To hear my mother tell it, and I don't know why I remember these things, but by the time I was about two or three years old, my parents told me that I knew every car that was coming up and down the road.

At any rate, the next big milestone I remember: I had my little race cars that I'd run on the front stoop of the apartment that we lived in on Ohio Street around the New Center Area. We lived in an upper flat. The people that lived below had a couple of little girls that I used to play with -- the Hoakes [family]. I remember my daddy bringing home his new 1938 Pontiac and my motherr telling me, "Look out the window. Your daddy designed the car. You're going to see him drive it up the driveway," and I remember watching for that. That was a big, big thrill. It was maroon. It was a four door. This was in early 1938. Shortly after that, he accepted the position with Loewy, and we packed up and tra­ veled East. That Pontiac car was a lousy car. He never liked that car.

Q:      [What happened to the Ford?]

A:      He got rid of that. He had the pressure on him by General Motors, of course, and he got a little bit of a break on the Pontiac . He was very proud of the fact that it was his design, but he never liked the car.

We went to Florida once when we lived in New York , and that was just unbelieveable.

Q:      Where did you live in New York ?

A:      We went, initially, to Long Island .

Q:      Typical?

-26-

A:      Yes. At that time it was developing out on the island, and we went to....

Q:      Robert Moses was carving out all of those wonderful parks out there?

A:      Yes, that's right. We lived in Amityville. Rented a house there. It was very nice. We had kind of a funny-looking, little house built around a green. The house was an older house, but it was all brick. My father was working right in the city at Loewy's studio on 33rd or 34th and Broadway. I'm not sure where the studios were at that time. But his initial assignments were to help Paul Zimmerman and Clare [Hodgeman] work out some of the passenger train car designs, and he got involved in a bit of architectural layout there with some of that work. He always told me, "That was a lot of fun." He liked to do that.

But his major interest was cars, and Loewy very shortly assigned him to work on two projects. One of the first projects was the 1939 International Truck design, and the second project was Studebaker. Studebaker was demanding that [Lowey] send somebody down there constantly to work with their engineers on the Studebaker designs.

Q:      Going right back home?

A:      Right back home, right. Loewy realized that my dad knew South Bend and Studebaker very well. He [first] sent my father down to Fort Wayne where International Truck was to do a bit of finish up work that they had there. Actually, I think he designed one of the front ends for one of the trucks at that time.

But more important was Studebaker, and, by mid '38/early 1939, he started to commute down there for a week at a time every three weeks, and it was a rigorous [schedule]. Meanwhile, my mother and I....

-27-

Q:      He'd take the midnight flyer home?

A:      Yes, the train. Many times I was sent along with him. I'd go to my grandparents, especially during the summer when I was out of school. I started school in Amityville in 1938. That Fall of '38, one of the big events in our lives -- my father was down in the [Lowey] offices in New York . It was [in] September of 1938 that the hurricane hit Long Island . It was a big one. It killed five hundred people.

Q:      Did it hit Amityville?

A:      Yes, it hit Amityville. It uprooted some trees that I remember in our neighborhood. It flooded our basement. My mother and I were scared to death. We were there alone. My father was stuck in the city -- he commuted at that time. There was no electricity. It was quite a harrowing experience. But that's just one of the things I remember at five years old.

Then he started to commute all the time. The Amityville residence was temporary until we built a house in Port Washington , Long Island . Actually, Raymond Loewy lived right near there himself. The folks built a house in a new subdivision -- very nice. It was actually the first house that they had built themselves.

Q:      Did you have siblings at this time?

A:      No, not until 1940 [when] my brother was born. During that period of time my father commuted back and forth to Studebaker, and it got to be kind of a treadmill situation, but we held out until 1941. And my brother was born in 1940 in Port Washington . We only lived there for a short period of time after that, and Studebaker was beginning to demand that they needed to have an in-house design section, and there needed to be a

-28­-

resident designer there [so] that they could work together much better that way.

Q:      Did your father have any direct influence on the first '39 Studebaker?

A:      Yes, of course. He got in on the tail end of the 1939 Champion, of which he was quite proud to have been associated with because he had deve­ loped a philosophy of liking smaller European cars.

Q:      Can you reconstruct from your knowledge of those events how that was put together? You say he got in on the tail end of the designing?

A:      He got in on the tail end of the overall design. I think he managed to do a little bit of cleaning up and just a little bit of detailing. But the basic formula had already happened, really.

Q:      Was set by then?

A:      Yes. I think Clare Hodgeman had most to do with it, and probably Studebaker themselves had put forth that type of a package. The 109 inch wheelbase was considerably smaller than full-size cars. The standard full-size wheelbase in those days was 115 inches with 56 inch tread. But the Studebaker was unique [in] that it had the short wheelbase. A smaller car. A very nice little six cylinder engine. A very efficient automo­ bile.

Q:      I can remember it very well as a sub-teenager. I thought it was smashing.

A:      They were neat. We finally got one ourselves. During that period of time, my father managed to get a little discount from Studebaker, so we had a Commander at one time, then a Champion, then a President -- 1941 President. That was nice.

-29-

Q:      Looking back on this, you, obviously, have given it a lot of thought and [have] absorbed a lot of it from your experiences with your father and elsewhere. How the Loewy setup worked there? Loewy was the New York [fashion/design] guru, and he had talented people...?

A:      He owned it, of course, overall.

Q:      And negotiated the contracts?

A:      Negotiated the contracts.

Q:      [He employed] very talented people like your father, Mr. Hodgeman, and Mr. Zimmerman. Did he give them their head? Did he allow them to...?

A:      Pretty much, yes. He demanded that they not work for anybody else and that he [made] the final decisions about things when he was available.

Q:      That was a problem?

A:      Yes, it was a great problem. He sat back and raked in the dough.

Q:      And took all the credit?

A:      Paid them quite well, but fudged on expense accounts. I remember my father telling me about this. I can relate this as being true. My dad knew that he'd submitted his expense accounts, and he tried to be very honest about the whole thing. Loewy would take a cut on them. Studebaker told my dad that Loewy was taking a cut off of this. "You should have more coming to you. We're paying him more than what he's giving you."

Q:      The combination of ego, his European background, and his need for a success in the automobile industry lead him to a somewhat autocratic...?

A:      Quite autocratic. Actually, though, he liked cars. He really didn't know that much about them, and he was more of a business entrepre­ neur -- it was of a type that did a great thing overall.

-30-

Q:      He put together a package?

A:      Yes. Put together a package, promoted the idea of industrial design, and provided a service, and did the overall managing of the services.

Q:      He did have a talented cadre of...?

A:      Oh, yes, very much so. Built up a great section of designers for these other accounts. My father, himself, hired a great number of talented people when he was sent down to Studebaker to finally [set up] the in-house Loewy account there for Studebaker and build up a staff of very good designers.

Q:      Even though Loewy did not [delegate] much authority, it early became apparent that your father would be the leader of the...?

A:      Of the Studebaker account. That was intimated at the time he was hired that he would. Studebaker demanded that he come down there -- that Loewy put somebody in [charge] and build up a styling section to service the account. So, that's what happened.

Q:      It was a very great success in the early...?

A:      Yes, it was. In mid-1941 we moved back down to South Bend , and the war was imminent, and there was a tremendous housing shortage in South Bend . We wound up renting a little guest house on the Paul G. Hoffman estate. He was the president of Studebaker at that time. It was a cute little house -- very cold -- it was in the middle of alfalfa fields on Donmoyer St. in South Bend . It was on the South side of South Bend . We lived there in 1941 and early 1942.

When my father was sent back down to South Bend , it was with the idea that he would build up a much larger staff to more fully take care of

-31-

all their [design] needs and to develop future models. Studebaker thought it would be far more beneficial to them [because] they were complaining about the kind of service that they were getting. It wasn't as thorough from a styling/engineering relationship that it needed to be.

Q:      Even though Loewy had him on the account full time?

A:      He had him working on the account full time, but the distance was hurting, and the need for people to work right with engineers and with the drawings and the surface development details of models was a great deal more than could be handled on a commuting basis. And even though [the] Loewy studios in New York had this staff of model builders available to them right there in New York to do detail work, there was a lot more to it in creating new President, and Commander, and the Champion series -- their three major car lines. And all of them needed to be redesigned in order to keep up with General Motors and Detroit .

Initially, when he came back to South Bend and we moved back down there, he needed to concentrate on the design of the next models to be done past 1942 models, especially, and preparing for '43, '44, '45. Even though the war had not started yet, he needed a larger staff to do that. And, besides, there were some government contracts that were starting to come along at that time, with the recognition that there was probably a conflict on the horizon. And, of course, Studebaker had a truck building facility, and there needed to be some facelift work, at least, done with the Studebaker truck line.

So he started to hire quite a few people, and among that group of people were Jack Aldrich.

Q:      Was he ever known as Jake?

-32­-

A:      Jake, yes, of course. Jake was his nickname, and Jack was his real name. There was Jake Aldrich, and, of course, there was Bob Bingman, Tom Dingman, as well as John Reinhart, and the modeler Frank Alroth.

Q:      Was Bob Bourke among those?

A:      Bob Bourke was hired later, and that was even after Gordon Buehrig. Later on, Gordon was not hired by my father. He was made sort of an equal manager to my father at one time. At one time my father worked for him, and then he also worked for my father. They were very close friends. It was amazing to be able to carry on being good friends throughout all that, but they did.

Q:      I understand they had a mutual respect for each other?

A:      Yes, right. And besides they all hung around together. I'm sure there's a number of people that I'm leaving out there.

Q:      Was there a woman involved at that time?

A:      No, not as a designer.

Q:      Came in a little bit later?

A:      One, perhaps, a little bit later but not under my father. Then later on, there was Ed Hermann. And there was, at that time, some engi­ neering people that were assigned, at least, to my father's activity, just like there are design engineers today that are assigned with design staff at Ford Motor Company. And one of those individuals was Dale Cosper who had been a design engineer for Duesenberg who was a good friend of Gordon Buehrig when Gordon was working with Auburn , Cord and Duesenberg. There were a group of ten/eleven/twelve designers. Bob Koto was another one.

Q:      He'd come on from Briggs?

A:      Yes. And this group of designers was a pretty elite group when you

-33-

got right down to it. Later on, many became very well known in their own right going to other places.

Q:      All attracted by your father's, let's say, charisma?

A:      Well, he had a great deal of that and enthusiasm, especially, and he was a regular guy type of a person. They had a lot of fun. They were known as the "Loewy Gang." That's what they were known as -- throughout the industry at that time. They were doing things. Especially after they did the post-war Studebaker, they got quite a bit of recognition from their counterparts in Detroit .

Q:      Although it was Loewy's unit, and they weren't necessarily autono­ mous, they were set apart from the rest. Who did Loewy and your father report to within the Studebaker hierarchy?

A:      My father reported, primarily, to Roy Cole who was the chief engineer during this period.

Q:      Still fairly traditional?

A:      Yes, it was quite traditional. Paul G. Hoffman was the president at that time in the early days. Was it Harold Vance who was vice-president at that time? Then under him was Roy Cole.

Q:      Who was a rather dynamic fellow?

A:      Yes. The gang got going there, and they were turning out models. Then, of course, the big deal was that the war came along, and things were not exactly postponed, but there was other types of work to be done, and they did a great deal of work between 1941 and 1944 on military projects, among them was the Studebaker Weasel, which my father helped to develop along with his group of people. And the Duck.

Q:      Was that an amphibian?

-34-

A:      Yes, the Weasel was an amphibian. It always left him, after that time, a kind feeling for an amphibian because it keeps popping up every once in awhile in his work later on when we were in business [together] and later on -- this idea of a car running on water. If he could make it good looking, and racy, and sporty, that would be great. I've run across some things like that [in his papers].

Q:      Did Loewy stay on with the wartime unit? Was he involved with...?

A:      Loewy was strictly in New York , and my father was put in place in South Bend , and Loewy would come down very rarely and visit the group.

Q:      But did he maintain his contract with Studebaker so he [would be] involved with, let's say, the design of the Weasel?

A:      His contract was [that] he got paid for whatever his group did, in effect, and so his contract was broad. I'm sure he was given the respon­ sibility and contracted for all things to do with design.

Q:      That's a remarkable pioneering contract for that time?

A:      He had his Wall Street friends that were involved with. Studebaker financing according to my father, and according to Roy Cole, and Loewy had quite a hold over them from that standpoint. By the early 'Forties or mid-'Forties, at least, they really would have liked to not had his hold over them and would not like to have dealt with him according to Roy Cole. He wanted to get Loewy out of there.

Q:      He was tenacious?

A:      He was tenacious. Other companies did manage that, and yet [with] others it became a very good relationship to have Raymond Loewy working for them, but he didn't mix from an automotive standpoint. During the war they were committed to doing truck work, in the nature of camouflage sche­mes and blackout type devices for head-lights as well as the actual shapes

-35­-

of hood stampings for their trucks and detail for new army truck designs. They were asked to contribute to that type of [war] effort. And [also] along lines of shaping things, modeling things, and creative design work for things like the Weasel and the Duck.

Q:      Did your father ever say that he regarded it as an interesting period?

A:      Oh, it was very interesting. He thought it was, really. He was patriotic. He was offered a commission in the Navy and almost went into the service. A good friend of his did and became a tin can [destroyer] commander. [But] because he was [classified as] a chief design engineer for Studebaker, he was able to get a deferment from going into the ser­ vice. Several of the people that he had hired and worked under him went off to war, and most came back -- some of the modelers like Dick Clark, Fred Hornung and Frank Alroth, and some of the designers, I believe. Bob Bourke, for one, came out of the service, and, later on, Bud Kaufman, who my father hired after he'd separated from Loewy.

This group of people were still designing cars on the side with their predominantly Army work during the war. But they were preparing car designs for whatever the post-war period would bring.

Q:      Was there a bit of secrecy involved in these projects?

A:      A lot.

Q:      It was generally prohibited?

A:      Yes, it was generally prohibited, so a great deal of it was done as overtime work.

Q:      The beginning of moonlighting?

A:      Oh, yes, on a big, open scale. But this was encouraged by

-36-

Studebaker and, especially, on Saturdays, they would all be down there in the studio working like crazy on car designs. Then it was in the even­ings, also. Then the formula was more or less established by Roy Cole for the post-war designs. Incidentally, before they launched [what] came to be called the post-war designs, among my father's most favorite designs that he was responsible for -- and that was before he really set up this in-house project down there -- was the 1941 Studebaker President. He always felt that was one of his cleanest, nicest-proportioned and nicest­- looking cars. We owned one ourselves. He even did a special color scheme for Loewy's own personal version of it, as well as our's, which became a production color -- tulip cream body with a very ultra dark green top and green stripe running along the side.

A good many of the 1940 and '41 U.S. cars were very clean, very good looking overall, uncluttered, honest, purposeful designs. The '41's, I would say, and my father always said, that of all Detroit cars, mastered the 'interim' automobile style at that time. Fenders were still separate, but, nevertheless, blended into the body with generous filleting areas. They were able to handle surfaces and masses by that time in an unheavy looking way. Quite a light look, as ponderous as they really were. [One] of the most excellent examples, in his mind and my own, too, was the Lincoln Continental [which] was an example of a very, very well-designed, balanced car at that time. Some of the General Motors products were very nice. The Oldsmobile and Buick, while they were a bit on the ponderous side, were still beautifully integrated, beautifully detailed, and he always thought that the '41 Studebaker President was among that group of cars, especially with its front end design that was real clean with the

-37-

twin grilles and very fine detailing. Ford cars, at that time, were also quite nice. '41's, while there were some similarities, were all charac­ terized by this very fine grille work usually outlined, as opposed to the previous year that was unoutlined, by a fine frame running around various grille work.

It's amazing how much similar thinking there was throughout the industry. But one can immediately distinguish between '40 and '41 pro­ ducts, of which most of the bodies were the same body from those two years with the particular detailing that they have, whether it's a Lincoln Continental or whether it's a Studebaker President. It's very different, and yet similar, in the concept for the year.

The Commanders were a bit dumpier because they're a shorter wheelbase and not quite as well proportioned to work with, but he did like the cars. He liked the products that he represented. He liked Studebaker products. He always believed in them because he'd heard about them, prob­ ably, from the time he was a little kid and was influenced by that more than any other car. But he really did think, in a lot of respects, that Studebakers were a superior car to some of the Detroit offerings at that time. He believed in that.

He would bring home the competitive cars. Even in 1940/'41, there would be a competitor's car sitting in the driveway once in awhile, because Studebaker would purchase their cars. He brought home Chrysler products, and they had a very distinctive smell to me as a kid compared to Studebakers and as opposed to Ford products, because of the fabrics and materials that they used and the smell of the factory that they came out of. Chryslers, in particular, when he would bring home a Chrysler pro-

-38-

duct, were just the most vile things that ever existed from an odor stand­ point. It was the odor of their plastics, to a great extent. They were getting quite heavily into plastics in the early 'Forties, and they were kind of baroque in the way that they were designed -- awfully heavy. My father said, "There's some really good things going on here. Isn't it nice the way they can do this, they can do that, and there's some good things there? But, yes, I agree, Virgil, the car's awfully clunky and heavy-looking compared to..." and Chryslers were heavy at that time com­ pared to a lot of other Detroit products.

Q:      They had no styling sense?

A:      No, they really didn't. And they were run by the engineering com­munity, of course, at that time, and they had....

Q:      The Zeders and...?

A:      Yes, Zeder, Skelton, and Breer. They had, unfortunately, gone through the failure of the Airflow that further....

Q:      Drove them into conservatism?

A:      Yes, exactly! My father, when he started with Chrysler, had to go through that whole situation.

Q:      The K.T. Keller syndrome?

A:      K.T. Keller was a super guy, and he wound up giving my father a true backing and giving him the green light over the Zeders and people like that.

Q:      That's good to hear, because he didn't have that reputation.

A:      He didn't, but they got along very, very well. Meanwhile, the Loewy gang proceeded to launch into the post-war car designs, and....

Q:      Now, that workshop -- that woodshedding they'd done on the

-39­-

[post-war] products, obviously, gave them a real jump ahead of their com­petitors?

A:      It did, but it was done here in Detroit , too, I'm sure. It was that Studebaker was in a position to be able to move faster than Detroit was right after the war. I think that their being a smaller company and being that the war effort grew up there overnight that they weren't quite as affected with the unions as Detroit was. South Bend grew up quickly. During the war Bendix, Oliver's, Singer, Studebaker and others that were there built up Studebaker's availability of non-union factory workers and skilled people. They were able to put out the product more rapidly than Detroit .

Q:      A wonderful flexibility?

A:      Yes. There was tremendous talent around South Bend . They had a lot of old Belgian woodcarving, model-maker people that worked and were known for [that] in South Bend even before the war. They had die shops and model shops and quality craftsmen and workers. Although, the Budd Company in Philadelphia did a great deal of their tooling work and tool develop­ ment.

Q:      Had that been traditional from early on?

A:      Yes. Also, the green light was given to the Loewy group to go ahead and develop the post-war car, especially by 19421'43, and there were a lot of proposals made. My father was encouraged by Roy Cole to even take a team of a couple of modelers and work on it at home in our basement. Meanwhile, the other guys were developing the car up right in the studio, so they had their own designs.

Q:      Now this has been [described] as one of Cole and Vance's ploys to drive a wedge between your father and [Loewy].

-40-

A:      I would say that there was a wedge developing there, anyway. However, it was promoted by Roy Cole because even my father had trouble getting Loewy out from New York to take a look and make any kind of com­mitment to the post-war car development. He would show up and make rambling non-decision decisions and take off and soak Studebaker with an expense account. But, literally, he just was going to milk them for everything he could for years. That's what it amounted to, as far as contracts are concerned, so he didn't care how fast or how slow things developed. And he put my father in a position of being in the middle bet­ ween a faction of just letting things go as long as possible before we do anything, and Studebaker management wanting to, "Hey, let's get going so we are able to get a car out here just as fast as we can for right after the war."

So they commissioned him, in effect. Roy Cole said, "Let's not put up with your doing this through your styling section. You go ahead and start to work on this at home."

Q:      From that standpoint, it's a natural development.

A:      Yes.

Q:      They were hobbled and trapped by the Loewy commitment, and they

wanted to try to get out of it?

A:      That's right.

Q:      This episode that you've begun to describe has been variously characterized as a split, a subterfuge, an attempt to undermine the Loewy influence in South Bend , but the way you've described it really was an attempt to....

A:      Get back to work!

-41-

Q:      Get back to work and make a post-war car. Loewy was dragging his feet, was inattentive, was involved with other projects, and, if it wasn't for Roy Cole and your father, God knows what would have happened to the post-war Studebaker.

A:      I can remember my father, again, telling me about one particular episode where he had models going in the studio, and this was, I believe, sometime in 1943. They always developed models with quarter-scale clay models. That was the main method of design, of course, sketches and then get right into quarter-scale clay. And there were several models during that period of time that had been developed that they were working on. Again, a great deal on a spare-time basis because their war effort was the most important thing. They implored Loewy to come to South Bend -- get him down there to make some decisions about which way to go as far as the style was concerned. And, so, a day came when, yes, he was going to come down there from New York . He brought his main man with him who was Breen or Barnhardt. Both Breen and Barnhardt worked for Raymond Loewy, but it was Barnhardt. So they showed up and came in to make their assessment on the models, and I believe that Cole was involved in the meeting as well as other engineers. They finally got down to going through the models, and Mr. Loewy was very dissatisfied with everything. He could turn his French accent on and off anytime he wanted to. I had known him myself when I was a little kid. At any rate, my father said, "Okay, Mr. Loewy, if you object to this, I will have a modeler personally assigned to you for this afternoon, and you can work out some of the things with the modeler that you want to change and work into the design." At noontime [Loewy] got a very convenient telephone call from New York recalling him immediately to

-42-

New York . His henchman, Barnhardt, had called up New York and told them, "Call us." And that's the way he operated, to hear my father tell it.

Q:      That was quite a dilemma. What was your father's solution?

A:      He was able to tell Studebaker, "You see what I'm up against." So then, I think, is when he was able to convince them. The other people knew this at the same time that were working with my father, and they lamented the situation. The guys hung together. They were more helpless than my father. And, of course, my father had to do something about it, or, at least, he felt that he did, but he really felt committed to Studebaker, and this wasn't doing anything behind Loewy's back. This was simply honoring the commitment that he always felt that a designer should [have] to the client -- to the employer. So, yes, he did work for Loewy first, but, on the other hand, he couldn't let the client down. Loewy never told him he was doing anything wrong at all. It was just that Loewy was going to put this business off.

Then Cole got rather anxious about the whole thing, and that's when he said, "Okay, you better start working out of your house." Or my father suggested, "I've always got things going on at home, anyway," which my father did. He liked to work at home in his own studio, and, if he wasn't drawing race cars or dreaming up projects like that, he was working on fine art. (He, along with Gordon Buehrig and Bob Bourke and Dale Cosper, went in together on a "home" project later on as they were always good friends. It was even after the big rift between my father and Loewy that the four of them went together and bought a '48 Mercury chassis and started to build a sports car. It became the Tasco that Gordon Buehrig finished later, and it was done in our garage at home.)

-43­-

During this period there was quite a large family trauma because my brother died at two years in 1942 as a result of a home accident. By 1942 we had rented a big farmhouse -- again from the Haufmans -- and, unfortunately, that's where the accident to my brother happened. Then my folks finally found a house to buy up on Eckman Street , still on the South side of South Bend . We had a nice garage there. It was just a regular three bedroom house -- smallish, but a nice little house. My folks enjoyed it.

Q:      You remember it pleasantly?

A:      Yes. My most active memories are from there because I was about ten years old when we moved up there in '43, and we lived there until 1949.

Q:      The formative years?

A:      Yes. And my most fond memories were there. Fortunately, my mother went through the trauma with my little brother all right, and my oldest sister was born in 1943, and she was happy to have a daughter. And the family was always active. Their great friends, the Shaffers, were there in town, and there were my grandparents nearby, and my other grandmother nearby, and the relatives. Not a huge family, especially, not on my father's side, but, at least, on my mother's side there was a pretty good size family. On my father's side they weren't directly his own relations, of course, but they were his foster cousins, and they were farm people from -up around the Belding, Michigan area on the West side of the state.

During the war there was hardly any racing, but, nevertheless, in '43/'44 there started to be a bit of it. The third floor of the Studebaker engineering building was my father's styling section. During that period -- '43 -- he discovered an Indianapolis racing car that was up

-44-

on the fourth floor of the engineering building. It was being stored there. Studebaker had built a team of five cars for the 1932 Indianapolis race that was based on a semi-stock racing formula for that period of time. They were very successful. They didn't win the race, but they placed as high as third in 1932, and they placed as high as fifth, I believe, in 1933, and they placed all five cars in the first twelve in 1933. This particular car was one of those team cars that had been built and sponsored by Studebaker, and the chassis and body had been built by Herman Ringling who was an Indianapolis race car builder in Indianapolis . Studebaker lent their time, and effort, and their machinery, and engine and chassis components to the team being built up, and they used it for tremendous publicity. Ironically, my father had illustrated some of these efforts when he had worked for Advertising Artist when he was very young. He had actually illustrated this particular race car racing at Indianapolis .

He wound up buying it from the private owner. After their racing career, they had been sold out to private individuals after 1933, and this particular car wound up in the hands of a person right there in South Bend who managed to acquire it and all of the parts from the whole team of the five cars -- all of the spare parts. And, so, my father inquired -- this was during 1943 -- as to who owned it. He was told who -- he was a plastic supplier to Studebaker in South Bend and owned Sobenite Plastics. It was raced as the Sobenite Plastics [special] when he purchased it. It was after they sold all of them in 1933. He last raced it in 1937 at Indianapolis . Louis Tomei, the Hollywood stunt driver at that time who also raced in Indianapolis , drove it to tenth place in 1937. This par­ ticular car had been driven to third place in 1932 by Cliff Bergere. In

-45-

1933, it was driven to ninth place by Zeke Meyer. It was stored for Sobenite in 1938 and forgotten about.

So, Father came across it about 1943 and asked about it. At that time, starting really in 1944 with the G.I.'s coming back from Europe , there was a bit of what became the [post-war] sports car movement starting to happen. People talked about a "sports car" as opposed to even a hot rod or a convertible. But my father always loved a race car, so he looked upon this car as something that could be streetable.

He managed to buy the car from Phil Sanders, the owner who had last raced it at Indianapolis , for five hundred dollars, which was a pretty good amount of money in 1943. And he got all the spare parts from the whole team with it.

My father was given the go-ahead by Cole to develop a car that started out in the basement. I remember the package drawings being pretty well finished up when we first moved there....

Q:      When you say "finished up," do you mean a model?

A:      A quarter-scale layout. He was assigned a draftsman to help work on the quarter-scale model as well as a couple of clay modelers who would come in during the afternoon and evening, and then my father would work in the evening on the model itself, and I even helped put clay on it once in awhile.

Q:      It must have been exciting?

A:      It was. It didn't go on for very long. It doesn't take very long to do a clay model -- a quarter-scale model -- although it took longer in those days than it does now to work out different developments and themes on it until you get it just right....

-46­-

Q:      In terms of design, did Roy Cole give your father carte blanche to deviate from the one he'd done for Loewy?

A:      There wasn't any particular one that he had done for Loewy. It was still the same basic formula of the full-fendered type, and, again, he had his philosophy of what a car ought to be. He believed other than going to other current philosophies that were happening at that time, such as the full-formed, full-fendered, totally envelope body that would be like the '48 Hudson . Unfortunately, Studebaker had manufacturing problems to work with, therefore, the rear fender still had to be separately attached on the post-war Studebaker. My father would love to have blended it in, but he still wanted a semblance of a classic automotive form as opposed to what he believed were characterless cars at that time. They were "upside bathtubs," like he characterized the '48 Hudson as being. He still wanted cars to have a little lightness in them in their looks and to have, what he always thought was, automotive character.

He had carte blanche as long as he didn't deviate from a cost stand­ point. He learned quickly on to be able to handle [that] quite well. Cole was a very understanding engineer and a good production engineer. They got along very, very well and Cosper was a super guy as far as working on anything. A very creative design engineer.

Q:      But the shadow of Raymond Loewy's contract was constantly looming?

A:      Constantly. So my father hired Bourke to be his chief assistant, and then Loewy brought in Gordon Buehrig about that time.

Q:      Deliberately to...?

A:      I think Gordon went to Loewy and asked him for a job, more than anything else.

-47-

Q:      He knew what was going on?

A:      He didn't exactly know what was going on, but he soon found out and decided that, maybe, he could do something about it, so he buttered up Loewy. There was all kinds of subterfuge, but they were all just great friends. And that was what was funny because, literally, Gordon's wife, Betty, and my mother were very best friends in South Bend . That was Gordon's first wife. It was a strange situation.

At one time, my father didn't know if he was running the styling section or if Gordon was. Gordon didn't know either. And it was because of Loewy keeping things up in the air more than anything else.

Q:      But this unbelievable contract, what...?

A:      There was nothing they could do about that.

Q:      Nothing?

A:      No.

Q:      Why?

A:      Because of these connections with the financiers of Studebaker.

Q:      And he had conned them into thinking that he was the savior of the Studebaker?

A:      Oh, exactly. That's the whole idea. Meanwhile, in the styling sec­ tion, other designers working with modelers and building up a bank of models were going ahead and starting to get down to a genuine selection. Studebaker said, "Hey, we're going to have this design set by Mr. Loewy. He's going to have to be here. We're going to select a model." Mean­ while, my father was working on his model at home, not in different dimen­ sions, as has been reported. They were all working under the same dimensions to begin with. I don't know where the different dimensions

-48­-

business set in, because I have a letter from my father to whoever wrote about that that it absolutely was not true. There was never a different set of dimensions, and my father never gave a different set of dimensions to his own people that were working on these other models.

How it came about that one or two of the other models were wider than they should have been, was strictly their own doing. My father's own model, which he'd done in the basement, was the same dimension as were many of the other models. But I don't know who claimed that there was a difference in dimensions.

Q:      How did Loewy take this?

A:      Terribly.

Q:      I can imagine he was pretty upset.

A:      He fired my father the next day after the models were shown to Studebaker, and Studebaker selected my father's design.

Q:      It was a competition?

A:      Oh, yes, it was. My father said, "Well, I tried to tell you." So they kept on with Loewy, and then is when Bob Bourke took over Loewy's styling section.

Q:      Cole must have known that there would be a collision?

A:      Probably, yes.

Q:      And that probably Loewy would.... Couldn't he hold on to your father?

A:      Yes. Cole hired my father back the next day.

Q:      Tell us how that happened.

A:      Well, naturally, my father was [upset], but Cole said, "Don't worry about it. You'll be hired back tomorrow under our own styling section."

-49-

Q:      And that's what happened?

A:      And that's what happened, yes.

Q:      What happened to the old [Loewy] cadre?

A:      Then Bourke took that over, because Bourke was my father's second man in charge.

Q:      Loewy was, in effect, aced out?

A:      No. It was still Raymond Loewy Associates in South Bend with Bob Bourke -- still honoring the contract.

Q:      Virgil Exner, Sr. is now...?

A:      He's out. But Studebaker directly hired my father back as director of styling for Studebaker Corporation. Cole says, "You need to hire some people." So my father hired Bud Kaufman, and he had Ed Hermann come work for him in interiors. He hired Randy Farrout after that. They competed from then on from 1945. And they continued to compete from then on bet­ ween the two styling sections. I guess [Cole] thought, "This-is a pretty good deal. Got some work out of both of you."

Q:      That's interesting. He was to do the actual production and develop­ ment of it?

A:      Right. Production development. He was given carte blanche to hire whomever he could hire to begin with. I can't remember if he hired some­ body away from Loewy right then and there, but, of course, he had engi­ neers to work with -- Dale Cosper was assigned by Studebaker -- and he had some other people to actually work with him. He was perfectly capable of doing the whole car by himself, if necessary.

As it turned out, they went on, and he got the car in production. Then in subsequent years with facelifts -- most of them were minor through 1949.

-50-

Q:      He got out the first post-war car of the industry?

A: Yes. It was 1946. They came out in late Autumn.

Q:      The first all-new car?

A:      The first all-new post-war car. You didn't know whether it was coming or going. That was the big advertising gimmick. [It] got a lot of publicity that way. Who was it that said that? [Something] like -- "I "couldn't tell whether it was coming or going?" It was Bob Hope or popu­ lar radio comedian -- Fred Allen -- that made some comments like that. It got quite a bit of publicity, and it was extremely successful. It got them up to as high as, at least, fourth place, and it may have touched third place in the whole industry during 1947. Of course, they beat the industry to the punch, and the industry didn't have their new cars out by that time. They had a bunch of old cars, and the public was [really] waiting, to a great extent, to buy their new offerings [for] which [they] would wait until '48/'49. So it was natural that they were doing as well as they did. They were economical cars, and they were quite good pro­ ducts. The Champion, especially, was a great success. The other factor was that the public needed new cars, because everything was shot during the war. There wasn't any [civilian] production during that time.

Q:      It certainly did shake things up.

A:      Yes, it did. Much competition in the 1950 development, such as, Father really developed the front fenders that shot forward on his models, and then the Loewy gang picked up that. Then they came out with that 1950 Studebaker with the three-pronged look, and my father just thought that was awful, but, at least, he had contributed. He wanted to make the grille horizontal. That was the next phase of design he was going to get

-51­-

into that was greatly influenced by European cars which, by that time, were starting to get into the low hoods with the fenders protruding. That was the influence of the Cisitalia to a great extent and other cars like that.

But, at any rate, that was the kind of designs they were starting to get into. His biggest contribution on the actual post-war model that became the picked model was the initial development of the wrap-around back light. And even on the 1942 Studebaker, which was the very last car before the war, there was a center pillarless windshield. They had a curved windshield on the 1942 model where they had it curved without the center divider bar on the windshield. And they carried that out on the 1946 models.

The idea of the front end was new and the full bodies, etc. They were really the first car that came out after the war with a modern for­ mula for bodies, even though shortly after that Ford and G.M. came out with more advanced models of that basic [design] philosophy that was picked up after the war, although my father always felt that his cars were lighter looking than they were. And he always believed in a fast-looking car and thought that the [1949] Ford, while it was nicely done and very honest in design, still represented something that was a little bit sla­ vish -- a little slab-sided. G.M. was starting to do things that were a little bit heavy looking in their own way.

Q:      Do you know the story behind the 1949 Ford?

A:      Bob Koto and Bob Bourke, yes. The breakup is, obviously, looming ahead here in the late 'Forties.

A:      Sure. Then Father just couldn't keep up with Loewy's design sec­ tion. He was given his own studio out at the Studebaker proving grounds.

-52­-

Meanwhile, these people were all still good friends with each other, and they were having a lot of fun with my dad's race car going to the only sports car club meets that they ever had at that time. The Sports Car Club of America was beginning to develop on the East Coast, and by 1946, when the war was finally over and, even in 1944, we saved up gasoline rationing coupons, and my dad and I drove all the way out East with the Indianapolis race car and came back. Five times from 1944 to 1948. Those were some very memorable trips.

Continually, my father confided in both my mother and myself about what was going on at all times about this design stuff. I always had a little clay model going at one time or another, and my father would bring home clay, or sometimes when I'd go up to the studio on Saturdays when he was working at Studebakers, I'd have my own little model car -- the mode­ lers got a kick out of giving me tools to work on [it].

Q:      About this time, you were involved in the Fisher Body competition. How did that come about?

A:      This is when I was in the seventh grade -- 1945/'46. It was a social studies class that handed out newsletters on Fridays -- The Social Studies World or something like that -- a little newspaper. All the kids got it at that time. There was an ad in it to design a model car and win a college scholarship. I was twelve at the time. So I brought it home. I had recognized the idea of it because my father had always told me that in 1937, when he worked at General Motors, he had something to do with one of these contests.

I brought the thing home, and I said, "Look at this. I'm going to enter this. This is going to be fun to design a car." Then is when they

-53-

told me, "Did you know your father judged that contest in 1937?" And they were surprised that I'd picked up on it. And I said, "No. I didn't know he judged the contest." They said, "Well, he did, and he was very involved in that." I thought, oh boy, this is going to be neat and a lot of fun to do.

So I started to draw cars. This was in the fall of 1945. (I was always building model airplanes at that time.) So I got some clay and started to model a quarter-scale model. I made up a buck and started to model. It was tenth scale in the contest. I started to work roughing out designs as well as to draw up designs for the contest. Then, in the early spring of 1946, as it came closer to the deadline (mid year), I had to really work on it harder. So I turned out a finished clay model and made the mold and cast the car in plaster. It was closer to the deadline, and I put it in my mother's oven to dry out the plaster, and it cracked. I had to repair it.

Q:      You had to do it all over again?

A:      Not all over, but, I had to patch it up, sand it, finish it. My father helped me quite a bit, but I had to hew every last little piece of detail out of aluminum chunks and file them, and polish them, and assemble it. As it turned out, I won first place in the junior division in 1946. It wasn't really what I considered the beginning of a design career because having gone through it from the time I was born, I was sort of in it. It was a very important thing in my life, naturally, to get a scho­larship. That took care of my education to a great extent.

Q:      Was that through the G.M. Institute?

A:      No. It was just a $4,000 university scholarship to use anywhere.

-54-

It just was the idea they gave you money. If you got into college, then you could spend it on tuition.

Q:      Where did you eventually go?

A:      I went to the University of Notre Dame. Of course, we were living [in South Bend ]. By then, though, my father had started with Chrysler.

Q:      By then, Notre Dame had a better industrial design department than they had when he was there?

A:      Actually, I studied architecture. They still didn't have too much of an arts/design department when it got right down to it. Mostly adver­ tising art. But they were quite well known for architecture, and they were doing very well that way. The thought was that it's best that I get some engineering background as well as art. It didn't work out that way, but, nevertheless, that was thought to be [true].

Q:      There was what used to be called a Mexican standoff at Studebaker?

A:      This kind of rapidly gets us to 1946, and I've touched upon my own Fisher Body career at that time and our affinity with the Indianapolis race car and the beginnings of the Sports Car Club of American which started out as a group of Eastern car enthusiasts that grew out of the pre-war American Race Drivers Club (ARDC) in the East, of which Bill Mitchell, incidentally, was a big supporter of back in the late 'Thirties/early 'Forties. And it was also came out of the Vintage Car Club of America and the Antique Car Club of America, which were largely East Coast-oriented organizations. They would have very large meets for all these cars. Usually these clubs were combined. Out of this grew the Sports Car Club of America, which had such notables as Dave Garroway, Briggs Cunningham, and Peter Helk as members of this organization. In the

-55-

very earliest days of the Sports Car Club of America, you actually had to own a car, and it had to pass judgment as to whether it was a true sports car to be even allowed as a member of this very exclusive club.

They were honored to have my father as the chief designer of Studebaker, especially after he was given credit for having designed the post-war car in 19461'47, and he owned this racing car, which they looked upon, unfortunately, as an Indianapolis racing car and not a sports car. We had just driven 758 hundred miles to go to their sports car club meets, and if that didn't meet the criteria of being a true sports car, nothing did, and they more or less accepted that later on, except there were some incidents that proved a bit otherwise. It was funny.

We made about five or six of those trips annually. During the war we'd save ration coupons to be able to take the cross-country tour. I was the riding mechanic and a little bit too young to drive, although my father let me drive. My mother actually taught me to drive when I was thirteen, and, actually, I learned on the '41 Studebaker President. That's where I truly learned to drive. We had the President until 1946 when we got a post-war car.

The minor facelifts that were made between the 1946 or '47 post-war Studebaker and 1949 for the period of two and a half years there, were all of my father's with little ornamentation differences. They developed the Land Cruiser at that time, which was the bigger car that replaced the President. The three basic car lines became, by 1949, the Champion, the Commander, and the Land Cruiser, as well as the 1948 Studebaker truck. That was another major breakthrough. My father always felt that the front end design for the pickup truck was one of his nicest design contribu­ tions.

-56­-

Q:      Was it '49/'50?

A:      It was either '46 or '47 when they facelifted that from the pre-war model. It was a very nice, simple front end with slot air intake design -- separate slots that composed the grill.

All of the designers during the war, naturally, were greatly influenced by aircraft design, especially wartime fighter planes. That became the reason for the spinners that you saw in the 1949 Ford and all the bomb-type, bullet-type bumper designs and ornamentation -- especially hood ornaments -- rocket shapes, and machine gun slots and that type of philosophy. It will come out later that there is going to be a rift there between a lot of designers that totally went after that type of [design] philosophy and those who were able to adapt to getting back to the more honestly what is an automobile? where are we really going? and the philo­sophical difference between we're a world of cars as opposed to just United States as cars or Europe as cars, and the appreciation of cars overall, versus American cars are the only cars in the world.

This is all still without any schooling coming into the whole thing. Architects have accredited schools to go to; engineers, accredited schools to go to; doctors; most professional people. The automobile design com­munity -- its styling community -- or industrial design -- had only a bit of that -- Pratt Institute, MIT. But there was virtually, by that time, no formal schooling being built up. There was a little bit of an asso­ ciation of industrial designers, but that didn't amount to very much. My father, for instance, even when he was at Studebakers, was invited to be a vice-chairman of the American Society of Body Engineers and joined the SAE himself and was very engineering conscious oriented himself and gave

-57­-

several speeches on what's the future of cars. [He gave] two notable speeches: "Are Dangerous Curves Ahead," which was before one of the SAE conventions in French Lick, Indiana. He was quite accepted by the engi­neering community. Friends like Roy Cole and Dale Cosper welcomed his integrity as far as being a stylist with real automotive and engineering feeling.

There being no schools available for designers quite yet, but soon America would grow up with the idea of education.

Q:      Your father probably had some very strong ideas on this?

A:      Yes, very much so, because he always talked about [that], even from the time that he was sent down to Studebaker to hire people, and, espe­ cially, [since] it was difficult to hire people during the war. They were usually involved in the war, but as soon as they came back, he was able to get them. He would get some very nice people like Bob Bourke [who] was very well spoken, well-educated, but, literally, had no kind of [formal] design training whatsoever. A lot of people were like that. They were either with the old car companies back in the old days, or they just were young kids coming up. Bud Kaufman was an example of that. Yes, they wanted to draw cars, they wanted to design cars, but they had no more training than my own father had had as far as specifically knowing how to go about it. So, for the most part, they were just self-taught artists. Most of them had a mechanical interest. While most of them did have pretty decent fine art background, they were neither fish nor fowl, and he always lamented the fact that there wasn't some kind of schooling that would give these people some basic [design] training and educate them at the same time. He did not favor a trade school. Dale Cosper was a

-58-

graduate engineer, but among designers, Gordon Buehrig was one of the very few college graduates.

Q:      Did he have an engineering degree?

A:      I don't believe it was an engineering degree. I think it was a liberal arts degree. But he was one of the very few of what the community thought was educated. My father hadn't graduated. He'd gone to college, but he hadn't graduated. My mother always got a kick out of holding her two years business college degree and saying, "I graduated from college" [to my father]. But they knew the importance of that. When I won my scholarship, they [saved] that money [so that] my education was partially assured, at least monetarily. I was sent to Cranbrook School in 1949, a private school, because our next door neighbors -- one of our best friends were Easterners and believed in private education. They told my folks, "Virgil isn't getting too much out of public school." So that's how that came about.

Q:      You were talking [earlier] about the relative dearth, of industrial design....

A:      Schools. Right.

Q:      Pratt Institute was tentatively reaching out about this time?

A:      They were, yes.

Q:      Under the Costellows?

A:      I believe so. That was about the only place mentioned. Art Center hadn't hardly begun until about 1950.

Q:      There was the Cleveland School [of Art].

A:      There was the Cleveland school, but it was very infinitesimal. The University of Michigan had an industrial design [department] at that time.

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Architecture schools were not supplying anyone because they were very spe­ cialized as we came to find out. I mentioned MIT.

Q:      Industrial design?

A:      We called ourselves industrial designers. That was the basis of everything. But, even at that time, there was a rift between people calling themselves industrial designers and car designers. It was felt that if you were a car designer, you weren't an industrial designer.

Q:      You were a stylist?

A:      Yes, a stylist. Car designers felt that, "Hey man, unless you can design a car, forget it!" Anybody can design a toaster. And that was the feeling at that time. Brooks Stevens was an important designer during that period of time.

Q:      He and Teague and Bel Geddes and others had formed the industrial design society?

A:      That's right. They had. As it turned out, Brooks Stevens and my father became very, very good friends, because he was a big member of the Sports Car Club of America, too, during this time. Brooks Stevens was truly crazy about cars and was a good car designer, but his main business was pots and pans, and he made good money on it. In fact, he almost hired me at one time. I almost joined him, but that was before I went to Ford.

At that time, no one was trained. My father always said, "It's like getting people off the street, practically, and you've got to train them. If they have a little bit of talent, my God, get 'em." You couldn't tell. There was no [design] philosophy then. That's what he was complaining about more than anything that there was no conviction. "Yeah, I want to be a car designer, but I don't know how cars should look." Even he had

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had an idea when he was kid about how he thought cars really should look. It wasn't just an idea of making a pretty picture of a car without having a conviction about what a car ought to look like, ultimately. At any time in its history, it ought to look like this. It ought to be this. As far as we can go with our thinking of what it ought to be able to do and its role, as far as primarily providing transportation.

Q:      One more question. You had begun to talk about your father's feeling for the need for car designers and car engineers to have a rapport?

A:      To work together, yes.

Q:      And with his famous SAE speeches that you mentioned?

A:      Yes. "Where is the future of car design going?" -- to honesty, integrity. He presented in those papers -- one, in particular -- what his impression of where the French school of thought was going. One of them was "Are Dangerous Curves Ahead?" and the other one is "What. is the Car of the Future?" They're both SAE papers.

Q:      So he was attempting to publicize in the best possible forum -- the SAE -- the need for a rapprochement between those two disciplines?

A:      Yes. Very much so, and the need for [more creative] engineers whom he felt were getting a bit cast-ironish. His best friend was Dale Cosper who was a tremendously creative engineer, so he knew how good an engineer could be.

Q:      How creative?

A:      That's right. So he was very much preaching the idea that the car designer/stylist needs to be honest, and they can't go too Frenchy -- the French school of thought -- or too flamboyant. By the same token, there's

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room for improvement in the basic overall car. It should be lower, it should be more stable, perhaps [be more] aerodynamic, things like that. He'd already had some experience working with that type of thing in the University of Michigan wind tunnel with the development of the '47 Studebaker.

Q:      That's where he used it?

A:      Yes. And what is the role of the foreign car? What is the role of the public, where they stand, what should they get out of this? A fair shake in both ways. They were excited about materials and fabrics. These were early pushings of philosophy. And it was nice that he was accepted by the engineering community to do this. And he continued to do that while he was at Chrysler.

Q:      The big breakup is imminent. How did it actually occur?

A:      The big breakup was simply that, obviously, there wasn't too much of a future left in South Bend, and Roy Cole was actually getting ready, at that time, for retirement, and Roy was making my father's availability known around Detroit and he said, "I'll see what I can do." As a matter of fact, the first thing that he did was contact Ford and talk to John Oswald.

Q:      I'm not sure I knew this.

A:      I have a letter to this exact effect.

Q:      How did this come about?

A:      It was just a contact that he'd made that Virgil Exner may be available from Studebaker, and would you be interested...?

Q:      Oswald was a reasonably forward-looking person?

A:      Yes. And he said, "I'd be very interested." It was early in 1949. I'd already had to be tutored to get into Cranbrook because my mathematics

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were not very good, and my folks were looking forward to sending me to Cranbrook in the Fall. By early 1949 my father knew that he was going to go to Detroit one way or another and thought very much that he would be going to Ford.

Q:      Oswald had been receptive?

A:      Not only receptive, but virtually said, "Come up and look for a house, and you will become the chief designer of Ford." [He was to] become what George Walker became. They made a verbal agreement to that effect. My folks went up several times. They committed for a house. It was a very large salary and everything. It was just fantastic! There were people up there that my dad already knew [who] were working for Ford. They'd worked for him at Studebaker. There was [Bob] Koto, and [Jake] Aldrich, and [John] Reinhart. There were many people like that, including modelers. They started to build up a large group of people. At that time, it was the interim group, along with George Walker's consultancy.

And then about mid-Summer 1949 -- I have the letter -- Oswald wrote to my father and said, "I'm sorry. We have decided that we cannot proceed with our agreement at this time. The company wants to hire George Walker to bring in his associates and become the in-house design at this time, and that's been decided."

Q:      What a terrible mistake that was.

A:      You never can tell whether it was or not.

Q:      It's wonderful to contemplate what might have happened [if he had gone to Ford]?

A:      As it turned out, it was awfully good the other way. So what can you say? Who knows? You never can tell. It may have gone to his head

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even more than [Chrysler] did. My father was an egotist, too, to a cer­ tain extent.

Q:      But he was on firmer ground than, say, George Walker was?

A:      That depends on how he would have been treated by the Fords. As it turned out at Chrysler, he was treated very, very well by the hierarchy, and he always managed to get along with people from that standpoint. I think that he would have gained the confidence of the Fords, and, I think, they'd have been better off. But you never can tell.

Q:      Isn't that fascinating? What a difference that may have made, because the Walker influence [at Ford] was devastating.

A:      In some ways, it was. I'll have to tell my own stories of my own first impressions of working for Ford and for my twenty-one years there.

Q:      The specter of what might have been is fascinating.

A:      [As for] George Walker, maybe his hands were tied, too. But he lacked conviction as far as what cars ought to look like, in my opinion.

Q:      He wasn't a true designer! He was another manager, a,packager.

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The next major phase of my father's career, and of the family's history, was that he started with Chrysler in the late Summer of 1949, and we moved temporarily into accommodations near Birmingham as they had found a house they wanted to complete the building of. By this time, my youngest sister, Marie, had been adopted into the family. She was actually my cousin. Unfortunately, my aunt died giving birth to her, and my father and mother adopted her. She became my youngest sister, and she was approximately two years old by that time. As a result of [my] having won the Fisher Body Craftsman Guild contest, my folks felt that they could afford to send me to a private school, and I attended, as a boarding stu­dent -- even though it was a short distance away -- Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills , Michigan . My folks, in early 1950, moved into their home on Westwood Drive in Birmingham , which was their permanent home for the rest of their lives.

Q:      Can you tell us the circumstances around your father being offered a job [at Chrysler], who offered it to him and [of] his acceptance?

A:      Yes. After Ford and John Oswald [withdrew] the offer, Roy Cole paved the way for him to see K.T. Keller and the vice-president in charge of engineering at that time, James C. Zeder, at Chrysler.

Q:      Cole was a friend of Jim Zeder?

A:      Yes, they were engineering friends. It had been determined by Chrysler that they needed to get into design in a much larger way. They had a very small styling section headed by Henry King, and they thought that this was an opportunity for them to initiate an advanced design sec­ tion. They had a considerable decline in sales in 1948 and 1949. Their cars were very narrow and stodgy, especially, in the cheaper car lines --

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the Plymough and Dodge. They had determined that they needed to do something rather rapidly. For that reason, with my father's availability, they decided that they would start him as the director of an advanced styling section, and he was given the green light to go ahead and hire some people. The entire staff of design, including modelers and draftsmen at that time, numbered [only] seventeen people, and so they were very hurting to keep up with the times compared to General Motors and Ford.

Q:      You've mentioned this before, but can you elaborate on it? What was the reason for Chrysler lagging so far behind in having a full design staff?

A:      I believe part of the story is that K.T. Keller was prone to insisting that, in Chrysler cars, the customer be able to step in and out of them [and