AUTOMOTIVE DESIGN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

The Reminiscences of Eugene T. Gregorie

Reminiscence from the 1985 Interview with Eugene T. Gregorie. Automotive Design Oral History, Accession 1673. Benson Ford Research Center. The Henry Ford.

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This is Dave Crippen of the Archives & Records Center of the Henry Ford Museum , and today we're in St. Augustine Beach, Florida, and this is February 4, 1985, on one of our design history interviews for the Edsel B. Ford Design History Center . Today we're speaking to the well-known designer, Eugene T. Gregorie. Mr. Gregorie is known to his legion of friends as Bob, and we're going to ask Mr. Gregorie to tell his own narrative in a chronological fashion.

A:      Speaking of the spelling of the name Gregorie, that comes from my Scotch heritage, and one of my ancestors James Gregorie, who was a pro­fessor at the University of Glasgow, and he is credited with being the inventor of the reflective telescope, so I have always had mechanical leanings--interested in things mechanical and whatnot, so that it naturally followed. My mother was quite an accomplished artist, very capable, imaginative woman, and my father, he was always interested in steam engines, and you might say pretty much like old Mr. Ford, he could name a steam engine, he could tell what steam engine it was by the sound of it. He was always interested in locomotives and things of that sort. I've always been interested--my brother and I were born and raised on the [East] Coast, and at a very early age took to boats before we could even swim. Down on the south shore of Long Island, we spent all our spare time when we could, and even some time when we should have been in school, fooling around with boats. In other words, you might refer to it as they do on the Chesapeake Bay as water boys. They refer to the men there as watermen. I guess we might have referred to us as water boys. So, when I had an opportunity--I've always been around yachts and boats

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and sailing and whatnot, so even before I went to several private schools, in the course of that I never really completed a formal educa­ tion. I [was] somewhere about the equivalent of ready for college--why, I decided to go to work, and I went to work for the Elco Works in Bayonne , New Jersey , which is part of the Electrodynamic Company, which in turn was the submarine boat corporation, as a marine draftsman. So, I took up yacht design.

Q:      Had you any training for this in high school?

A:      No, no, I just went to work for Elco under a very capable man, the head designer there, Bill Fleming, and I had always been interested in yachts, so it was a natural for me. I just fell right into it. I just moved right along. Following that, I went to work--the distance where I had to go from where I lived on Long Island over to New Jersey was too much every day, so after a year, year and a half, why, I couldn't do it any longer. I was able to make connections in New York with Cox & Stevens (one of the top naval architectural concerns in New York ), which ultimately became Gibbs & Cox--same. corporation. There, I was able to work with some very renowned marine designers, like Phil Rhodes and Dan Cox. It was very excellent training. It [provided a] very fine foun­dation in marine design, naval architecture, particularly as far as yachts are concerned. After several years of that work, my father had always been interested in unusual cars. Now, we can knit this thing together. We had at home, at various times, an old 1910 chain-drive Mercedes, and my dad was what you might refer to as early car nut. He loved foreign cars, and we had a French DeLage, and we had a French "Amilcar," a "Simplex" and others, and that led into my interest in auto-

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motive activities. And, as much as I loved the naval architecture acti­ vity, I could see a much wider scope for my interest in cars, and my dad was quite an engineer. He understood engines and the structure of them, so I had a very fine foundation and appreciation for fine automobiles. So, the next step that I took was to give up the--quit the job at Cox & Stevens designing yachts. In the meantime, I'd sketched up some very interesting body designs and went over to see Rolls Royce--Brewster in Long Island City . Brewster at that time built the American Rolls Royce bodies. They were affiliated--building the chassis in Springfield , Massachusetts , and this would have been in 1929. I was there about a year, so that sent the message to me that [this] was the field I wanted to follow. In the Fall of 1929, 1 took off for Detroit .

Q:      What did you do for Brewster? What sort of work did you do?

A:      Automobile body sketches, and drawings.

Q:      They were a custom body house?

A:      Custom body--Brewster built custom bodies for most of the high­ priced chassis, and they, at one time, built a car, a Brewster car, a little four-cylinder vehicle, very beautiful, [which] as I recall, had a sleeve valve engine.

Q:      You did want to team up [with Brewster] a little bit later at Ford­ -did you not? Briefly.

A:      Well, in a way, in a way, a very interesting connection.

Q:      But, let's get to that [later].

A:      Yeah, I took off for Detroit in the Fall of 1929 about two/three weeks before the Crash came. When I arrived in Detroit --well, of course, on the way to Detroit , I stopped to see several of the automobile manu-

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facturers along the route. With the family having owned Franklin cars, I stopped in Syracuse and talked with the managing director there and what­ not. Of course, they were in a bad way, and they were about throw in the sponge, as they say. While I was in Syracuse --this is an interesting side bit--the chief engineer--Ken Haven--mentioned to me that Ray Dietrich had just been there. He was on his way back to Detroit , and he said, "When you get to Detroit , why, you look up Ray, and maybe we can work out something with him."

Q:      Now, what was Ray Dietrich doing at this time?

A:      Ray Dietrich was building some special bodies--custom bodies for Franklin . He'd come from Detroit and spent a day or so at Franklin, and he said, "Ray was just here." It was about 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning. So, I went over to the New York Central Depot to get a ticket to Buffalo . The family had also had Pierce-Arrow cars, and I thought, well, I'll go there and tell my story, you know. When I got to the sta­ tion, I was at the ticket window, and this man was standing in front of me with a portmanteau of art you know, and he said, "Do you have a reser­vation for Raymond Dietrich."

Q:      Incredible coincidence.

A:      I tapped him on the shoulder, and I said that I'd been over at

the Franklin plant, and I said, "I'm on my way to Detroit , I've been in body design, you know, Brewster..." Incidentally, he worked for Brewster as a boy, you see. So, we sat together in the parlor car as far as Buffalo , and he was going on to Detroit . He welcomed me, and [I] had a very nice discussion on the train going up with Ray Dietrich. He pulled out his gin flask from his hip and ordered orange juice and pro-

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ceeded to get feeling quite nice and friendly.

Q:      This is still Prohibition, of course?

A:      Oh yes, he offered me one, but I wasn't old enough to consider the value of it.

Q:      How old were you at that time?

A:      Twenty-one. So, I got off at Buffalo and spent the night there, and the next morning I went over to the Pierce Arrow plant.

Q:      Was it the main plant?

A:      Main plant, of course. That was the only one they had there, and met the man in charge. It was fifty some years ago. So, of course, there was nothing there. They were about to fold up, too. So, I took the night boat, the old D & C boat, to Detroit arriving the next morning. The last one for the Fall--I mean it was getting toward Winter.

Q:      Detroit and Cleveland line?

A:      No, this is the old D & C line. Anyway, I arrived at Detroit 7 a.m. Saturday morning, my twenty-first birthday--1929. Ray Dietrich had asked me where I was going to stay in Detroit . I said, "Well, would you know where an Horatio Alger boy arriving would find lodgings with his 'straw' suitcases?" So, he mentioned the Lewis Hotel up on Woodward Avenue . It was up close to the General Motors Building , just below Grand Boulevard . It was a four/five story, commercial-type hotel. So, I took the streetcar--the Woodward Avenue streetcar--I couldn't understand what the conductor was talking about when he went "wurrerr," with the Mid­western growl he had.

Q:      Very flat.

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A:      So, I took a room there, and Monday morning, I went over to General Motors and presented my credentials to them, and talked with a chap called Howard O'Leary. Howard O'Leary was Harley Earl's front office man, you know. Weed 'em out or take 'em in, see. So, Howard O'Leary hired me. As it was then, it was kind of a screening process, they'd hire anybody who could draw an automobile, I guess, in those days. So, anyway, I went to work at General Motors.

Q:      Was it the Earl trim and color department or the...?

A:      Yes, the Art and Colour they called it then. I worked there I guess three or four weeks--something like that.

Q:      Now, what did they have you do?

A:      Well, sketching cars, you know, they give you....

Q:      Sort of an internship?

A:      Yes, I suppose, yes. I'd had some experience at Brewster, you know, and I knew what it was all about. Anyway, the market crash came, and last in last out--[or] first out, as they say. Anyway, a funny little twist with Ray Dietrich in connection with the Lewis Hotel . I'll inject it. After I'd been there a week or so, the colored boy that ran the elevator, I asked him if he knew who Mr. Dietrich [was], [who] referred the hotel to me and so on. He say, "Oh yes, I know Mr. Dietrich. He come here, he come here about every so often, but he keep a nice place 'way up on the top of the hotel there. Yes, he go there and have a party every now and then." As it developed, that was his little playhouse up there. The colored [elevator] boy, he let the cat out of the bag.

Q:      Ray was leading a double life, perhaps.

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A:      I told Ray some years after that, you know, and he said, "That so and so, what did he mean telling you..." It being ten/fifteen/twenty years after that.

Q:      That's marvelous.

A:      Well, anyway, things were tough in Detroit then. In the meantime...

Q:      Forgive me, did you get to meet Mr. Earl at all [while] you were there?

A:      Oh yes, yes.

Q:      Can you give us an impression of Mr. Earl?

A:      He was a pompous man. He was a big man, 6' 6" or something, and that was part of his style. He was a sporty dresser, you know, from California , and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Of course, he was asso­ ciated with the Fisher brothers, and they were all pretty sporty. In later years I got to know them at the automobile shows here and there.

Q:      Anyway, was Bill Mitchell there, by the way?

A:      No, no, he came there later on.

Q:      Okay, good. But, Howard O'Leary and...?

A:      Yes, and then Frank Hershey.

Q:      Oh, was Frank there?

A:      Frank Hershey. You know about him? Well, anyway, he was at G eneral Motors when I worked there. Frank had given up a nice room in one of the big, old mansions out on West Grand Boulevard they'd had been turned into rooming houses. A nice, old lady-like gal and her daughter had this big place, and Frank was giving up the room there and taking an apartment with some other chap, so I moved up there. In the meantime, I

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went back to New York , to Long Island , to get my little French Citroen car--five horsepower Citroen. This was in early December, very cold, mean, so I went back one weekend and I started back with it for Detroit in the little convertible. No heater, cold, mean, and I got up into Pennsylvania in a little town called Hawley, broke a valve spring, went to a country garage. Talk about nerve driving a thing like that out there in those days! You couldn't have gotten a part for that thing this side of Paris .

Q:      What company was it? You said Citroen.

A:      Citroen, little Citroen. It was their little bread and butter car. A little, tiny five-horsepower, didn't have a...there was no starter, and didn't have a fan, or a water pump, thermo syphon cooling. It was a real adventure to drive that thing to Detroit in the Winter. Well, anyway, I got to Hawley , Pennsylvania , and had a valve spring go out on it. I went to a little, country garage, and this old fellow took the valve spring out. It was all simple you know, it only took a few minutes to get at the valve spring. He said, "Well, this looks like an inner valve spring on a '24 Buick." This is a little, tiny inner spring. So, he got one out of a trash bin he had, and popped it in there, and he said, "By golly," he says, "that'll work." So, he put the valve spring in, and Lord, the whole thing was a half hour, and two bucks, and I was on my way again. I did all right until I got up to a little place called Wayland , New York . It was about 40 miles below Rochester , and it had been snowing all day, and the snow had been laying in the fields but melting on the road. Along about 5 o'clock in the evening, it unknowingly had turned to a glaze of ice, and this little bugger spun

around three or four times in the middle of the road and went over the corn field and laid on its beam ends.

Q:      You didn't have seat belts in those days?

A:      No, and they only had one door--one door on one side. Fortunately, the side with the door was up. So, I had sense enough to reach down and turn the gasoline off. It had a gasoline tank in the cowl like a Model A Ford, and I cut the gas off before it set fire to the thing. So, I got out, crawled around, straightened myself up, and along came two farmers and a Model A Ford Touring Car, and in the back they had a big piece of rope. We hooked the rope on, and tipped it up right. The three of us tipped it up, pulled it up on the road, and he towed me into Wayland, about a mile. We put the car in a little country garage there. An old gal had a little farm house down the road, so I bunked in there for two or three nights. The morning after that the snow was four feet deep up over the windows, so I was holed up there for three or four days with this little car. I went to the country garage, the rear wheel was bent, and we put it in a press and straightened the wheel out. I was really tied up there five days, then I went on, finally, to Detroit . It took me about eight or ten days to get from New York to Detroit . It was so cold going across Canada in the little convertible, I had to take newspaper and caulk the window frames up. There was no heat, and every now and then I would stop at a country store and get a cup of hot tea. They always had hot tea in Canada . I'd stand there and warm my feet, you know. I finally got to Detroit , and things were rough there. There was no work anywhere. As it happened....

Q:      This is the winter of...?

A:      Winter of '29 and '30. I went down to Cadillac Square , and Cox & Stevens (the naval architect concern in New York ) had an office in the Barium Tower on the 30th floor. They used to have the old Barium Hotel too. I went up to see my old acquaintance, Bill Ferman. He was one of the top naval architects. It used to be Hackett & Ferman. They used to build the Hackett speedboats and all that you know. Bill Ferman was so glad to see me. I had met him on some of his visits to the New York office, and at that time they were finishing up some big yachts up in DeFoe Shipyard in Bay City --leftovers from the boom era. [There was] one particular yacht that he wanted me to work on--do some drafting work and layouts and so on. It was a 126 foot yacht called "Rose Will," and it was being built for Bill Rands (W. C. Rands), who was one of the founders of Motor Products Company. He had offices--private offices--over in the National Bank Building. I worked there on the plans for that yacht until mid-summer of 1930, and...

Q:      He hadn't cancelled the order?

A:      No, no. Mr. Rands had sold out his interest in Motor Products, and he was rolling in it. He'd take me out in his big Cadillac with four­ inch carpets in the back, and he'd take his shoes off, and rub his feet in those thick carpets. He was a funny, little roly-poly man with pince-nez glasses. He come up to the office up on the 30th floor, and we were drawing profiles of the yacht. Bill Ferman--we'd want to make a change on it, you know, to improve the profile--change a port light loca­ tion or something of that kind. Old man Rands would lay down his little, fat pot belly on the floor, and had a cushion under his chin, and he'd look at that profile, and he said, "You boys have put something over on

me. You put something over on me. You've changed something. I don't what it is, but tell me now, tell me now, what is it?" Bill would wink at me, and I winked at Bill Ferman. Well, anyway, that kept me going, you know. We finished that work up about mid-June, and I took off for home. In the meantime, I had made contact at the Ford Engineering Laboratory out in Dearborn during that spring....

Q:      Spring of 1930?

A:      That's right. The Lincoln body engineer was Henry Crecelius.

Q:      He was the chief body engineer?

A:      Chief body engineer, and Edsel Ford had brought him from Brewster.

Q:      Had you known him at Brewster?

A:      No, I hadn't known him at Brewster. That was previous to my con­ nection with Brewster which was just a year or so earlier than that. I spoke with Mr. Crecelius, and he was very sympathetic to my plight and so on, and I told him it wasn't a question of eating beans or anything like that. I had a very fine home in Long Island . I could go back any time. I wanted to stretch it out in Detroit as long as I could. I knew I had a future there. So, we had a nice conversation and so on, and he appre­ciated the fact that I had been with Brewster. Well, I went on back to home in Long Island and fooled around with boats that summer and skip­ pered a good-sized yacht for a wealthy friend of mine. So, that was that. Well, that Fall I went South with the family down at a plantation in South Carolina, and the day before New Years I received a telegram from Henry Crecelius to come to work at Ford's in Dearborn.

Q:      At the Lincoln [plant]?

A:      No, at the laboratory [engineering] in Dearborn . I had to catch a

2 a.m. fruit train coming through on the Atlantic Coastline, and it was so cold, I went up in the signal tower at the crossing of the C & W. C R.R. and the Atlantic Coastline. They crossed there, so I went up in the signal tower, and kept warm with a little coal stove the man had up there until the train came through. Then, I arrived in Charleston the next morning and took a Clyde liner. We were able to get steamers in those days, you know for New York . I left at 1 o'clock . New Year's Eve I was out off [ Cape ] Hatteras, rougher than hell, and it got to New York Monday morning amidst ice flows. A gal on the boat was reading tea leaves that night, and she said, she told me, she said, "I can see a small man, dark­ haired man, and I can see a long, low, white building.

Q:      A long, low, white building?

A:      Of course, I didn't give it a thought, you know.

Q:      Had you been out there [in Dearborn ] when you talked to Mr. Crecelius earlier on, or was he at the Lincoln plant [in] downtown [ Detroit ]?

A:      No, he was at the Engineering Laboratory [in Dearborn ]. That's where I saw him. But, I didn't make the connection. It didn't mean a thing to me. Well, the small man was, of course, Edsel Ford, and she said, "He's going to be an important part of your future." It wasn't until years later that that came back to me. Damnedest thing--reading tea leaves, see. Just, you know, passing the time. Anyway, that's a fact. I subsequently arrived in Dearborn to report to work for Mr. Crecelius. It would have been, perhaps, four or five days after New Year's, 1931. My work there involved design sketches for Lincoln cars, Lincoln bodies, custom-type bodies and so on.

Q:      Can you give us sort of a bird's-eye view of how the--what the department was [like]?

A:      It was a very small group. Mr. Crecelius and two or three body draftsmen and several detailers. Everything was on a very small scale.

Q:      In other words, you didn't have a design department like G.M. did?

A:      No, no, no, no way, no.

Q:      Styling department?

A:      No. You see, Lincoln at that time, as I recall, they were just going into production or developing the bodies for a standard line of Lincoln cars--sedan, close couple sedan on two-wheelbases. The produc­ tion cars were on the shorter wheelbase--136". The Lincoln at that time was both 136 and 145 inch wheelbase. The shorter wheelbase was utilized for the standard bodies--the factory made bodies. The longer wheelbase car was fitted with custom-built bodies by ten or twelve custom body builders who were in production at that time--Dietrich, Willoughby , Brunn. There were eight or ten others.

Q:      LeBaron?

A:      No, they didn't get in too much. LeBaron was--LeBaron did build a convertible roadster body for the Lincoln--the big Lincoln .

Q:      Not for the smaller ones?

A:      Waterhouse and Brunn.

Q:      Locke?

A:      Locke. There were some Locke bodies. It was practice then for Mr. Ford to select from design sketches brought to Detroit by the various builders for Mr. Ford's selection.

Q:      This is Mr. Edsel Ford?

A:      Edsel Ford. He would select maybe ten or twelve, perhaps, fifteen bodies from each builder. The bodies were usually finished--what they referred to as "finished body in the white" which meant that they were unfinished. There was no paint, perhaps the prime coat, but no trim. They would come from the various body builders like Judkins in Merrimac , Massachusetts , and Brunn in Buffalo and so on and so forth. Willoughby in Utica . The bodies would come in, and then they would be trimmed and painted and fitted with custom mouldings, trim and so on as per the customer's request. So that actually most of the design work at that time was done by the body builders, and now let me interject this. When the body builders brought the sketches in to present them--a showing for Mr. Ford--he would no doubt make critical comments as to what he liked and if the moulding was too wide, etc. He was an excellent critic. Mr. Ford was in no way a designer, but he was a keen critic. He could control design by being a critic. People have frequently asked me, and people, many people, have written articles on the subject to the effect that Mr. Ford would bring in sketches and things like that. Personally, I've never seen a sketch that Mr. Ford had made. He might have made sketches at home. I've never seen a design that he ever created, but they tell me he did make sketches at home, which no doubt he did. Well, anyway, I'd never seen one, but he was an excellent critic, and he understood what I was talking about, and I understood what he was talking about. So that is why it was a two-man team, and he was not one to be pushed into some else's idea. Going back, way back in history, as far as Ford design is concerned, from the Model T on, the cars, the early Model A's and whatnot, the first Model A's, the '28 and '29 Model A's, were

really a miniature Lincoln . That is what they leaned on--the placement of the headlamps, the fender shapes, the radiator contour, and the whole thing was a scaled-down, large, old, eight-cylinder Lincoln. Joe Galamb, the old Hungarian Model T engineer--they called him Joe "Shitametal," you make it out of the shitametal, see, shitametal. Well, anyway, he started out with Henry Ford pretty much--way back in 1908 or 1910, along in there, you see. Old Joe was a clever put-[to]getherer. He was an arro­ gant little man, you know, very pompous. He looked like foreign diplo­mat. He was perfumed, and he wore fashionable clothes, a very nice looking, little guy. A little gray mustache. I'll never forget aside from the progress of what we're talking about, I'll never forget Mr. Ford came up to me one morning outside of my office at the Engineering Laboratory, and he said, "Have you seen Joe around, seen Joe around?"

Q:      Is this the elder Mr. Ford or Edsel?

A:      Yes, the old gentleman.

Q:      Henry Ford?

A:      Yes. In the meantime, Joe walked up, and he said, "Morning, Mr. Ford, good morning Mr. Ford." He's sort of like a head waiter, you know, in a fashionable restaurant, and he'd always bow to Mr. Ford.

Q:      A maitre d' eh?

A:      Yes. Mr. Ford turned around and said, "Joe, what the hell is wrong with you. I've had you around here for thirty some years, and you still can't speak English. What the hell's wrong with you?" "Yes, Mr. Ford, yes, Mr. Ford, yes, Mr. Ford." One of the few, I should I say, good­natured incidents that I can refer, can remember Mr. Ford being involved in. I mean he was a very contentious person. He never displayed much

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sense of humor, only where it fitted his particular feelings of the occa­ sion, see? Another incident, we had a Mr. Davis who was the patent attorney. His office was next to mine.

Mr. Davis was quite a lush, and Mr. Ford did tolerate some of those people when they served his purpose. Another of Mr. Ford's "Bottle" Boys [was]-- Newton , Charlie Newton. A great big, red faced guy who was the buyer of antique furniture and stuff for the [Henry Ford] Museum, etc. They'd send men out to sober him up sometimes. Well, anyway, as much as Mr. Ford disliked liquor, he would tolerate certain people. Look at Bill Cameron.

Q:      Of course.

A:      Wow.

Q:      William J. Cameron.

A:      What a lush--he could swim in it. Well, anyway, Mr. Ford came and asked me if I'd seen Davis , you know, next to my office, and I said, "No, Mr. Ford, I haven't seen him so far this morning." He said, "Too much booze," with Mr. Ford simulating drinking from a bottle. Let's see, where am I?

Q:      You're in Dearborn , and it's Spring of 1931.

A:      That's right. Well, anyway, I went along sketching cars and, you know, small, incidental activities.

Q:      I'm interested, Mr. Gregorie, in...

A:      Bob Gregorie.

Q:      Bob, thank you, Bob. I'm interested in establishing the feeling of the fledgling design department in those days. How did it work?

A:      They didn't have any design department.

Q:      It just wasn't there?

A:      No. That's what I was coming to in connection with these outside suppliers. Briggs and Murray were the big suppliers of Ford bodies.

Q:      Right, and they were in Detroit ?

A:      They were in Detroit , and, of course, the Lincoln design was supplied pretty much by the custom body people. In those days, Lincoln chassis engineering designed the grille, the hood, and the fenders as part of the chassis, etc.

When [Henry] Ford bought the Lincoln Motor Company in 1922--I think it was for 8 million dollars--it accomplished several purposes. It gave the "boy" something to do, as Charlie Sorensen and several of his hench­ men, the top, upper echelon of Henry Ford's production group referred to Edsel. It gave the boy something to play with, see, and it fitted in perfectly because he was interested in custom bodies and the possibility of being associated with that sort of thing, and a high-quality automo­ bile. So, they bought the Lincoln Motor Company. It got Edsel Ford off their back to a certain extent because they'd gone about as far as they could from the styling standpoint with the Model T, and that was his par­ticular purpose--Edsel Ford's particular purpose was to expand a better taste in the Ford product--a higher plane taste. You can put it that way, and, as I mentioned to Edsel Ford when I first had an opportunity to know him, one of the detriments in trying to sell the Lincoln car and service was the fact in those days most of the service came from a Ford garage. I said, "Can you imagine a man paying 5 or 6 thousand dollars-­ which was a big, custom price in those days--going into a car, traveling cross country into a Ford garage with an old dump truck or a garbage

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truck parked next to him and say 'This is a service for my Lincoln ?'" And, he got the biggest kick out of that. But, I could see those things. I could sense those things. They clicked with him, they clicked, clicked, clicked. But, I'd bring those things up. Now, Joe Galamb would never think of that, see? Now that I look back, some of my comments might have touched on some sensitive areas and were a bit presumptuous. Edsel Ford seemed to go along with it as time went on, and he appreciated my vision and sincerity.

Q:      Did they finally establish a separate service network for the Lincolns ?

A:      Oh yes, oh sure. Well, they had Lincoln agents in big cities--I mean Los Angeles , Chicago , New York , you know, but in the urban areas, they didn't have them. It didn't lend any prestige to owning a Lincoln , and I felt it was kind of a drag down. I pointed that out, but I had a knack of bringing these things up as tactfully as I could, but I was always fortunate in bringing them up with the right timing. I can men­ tion one or two little incidents where Edsel Ford--one of the few times when we had little, cross words together was right after the Mercury was introduced at the New York automobile show. Prior to that, Mr. Ford had insisted on the car being called the Ford Mercury--hub caps, battery, window glass, stenciled, you know. That didn't read right to me because we were trying to sell the car to an [income] bracket above the Ford. That's why the DeSoto was created, that's why the Pontiac was created.

Q:      You were plugging the gap between the Lincoln and the Ford?

A:      That's right. It was spanning that gap, and I had gotten charts out showing the price of the big spread, with charts that I still have.

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I said, "Mr. Ford, I have second thoughts about having the name Ford-Mercury on the car." "What do you mean? What's wrong with the name Ford? Thirty-nine years we built the name Ford up. Isn't it good enough

for this automobile?"

Q:      Edsel's speaking?

A:      Yes. Oh boy, this was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and I said, "Boy, here I go." Well, anyway I said, "Look, that's my thought on it, and I don't how you feel about it, Mr. Ford." Well, anyway the following week down at the New York automobile show, there's the sales managers, and the branch managers--they climbed all over Mr. Ford. He was down there. In the meantime, I had my boys get together racks of hub caps, you know, without the Ford name on it, see. I told Mr. Ford, I said, "You know, you turn the ignition on in this car, and it sounds like a Ford, the exhaust sounds like it, the whole thing. And, not only that, but the competition says, 'get down and look under the car'. If that isn't a Ford, radius rods, buggy springs, you know, boom, boom, see?" So, I met him getting off the Detroiter [train] that morning about 8 o'clock . We'd come back from the New York automobile show, and he said, "Bob..." I asked him how he liked the show. He said, "Fine, fine. There's some things we have to go over." He said, "I'll be in right after lunch." So, I had the boys get all the racks ready and so on--there was never a word said after that. We just changed it over to the Mercury hub cap, and they got the Ford name off. But, that was the only time I've ever seen him flare up at me.

Q:      The only time?

A:      Yes, yes.

-20-

Q:      A real gentleman, wasn't he?

A:      Oh, terrific. What a man. We had some of the greatest discussions--if I wanted to build a special-built car of some kind, I'd always have to contribute to the possibility of it being a production item, or something would contribute to the development work. He'd kind of wink, and he said, "Well, maybe we can arrange that." He said, "I'll see the powers that be. I'll see you next week." I began to feel a great responsibility because he depended on me to such an extent. I could see that he wanted to pull away from dependence on the outside body people. He didn't care for the flamboyance of John Tjaarda [at Briggs]. John was breezy and a bit of a playboy type, and Edsel Ford didn't go for that. He didn't care to make a decision in large company. He didn't care to discuss anything with a group standing around him. He didn't care for conferences--anything of that kind. He loved to come in and set on the end of a drawing board and have me pick up an old blueprint and sketch something on the back--a hood ornament or some damn thing. He said, "All right, let's do it that way, huh. Does it look good to you, okay?" I really didn't realize what had taken place until after the thing was underway. With his okay, it surely kept things simple.

Q:      This was the Model Y.

A:      The Model Y, yes. The small English Ford.

Q:      1932?

A:      That's right. That was--well, the development was in 1932 for a 1933/1934 series of U.S. Fords scaled up from my small English Ford design.

Q:      What was the background? Why was the model needed?

-21-

A:      Well, I redesigned the small Dagenham English Ford. It was a horrible, boxy looking thing. Very practical, I guess, and it was very popular over there, and when Edsel Ford--this was his decision, I didn't really have anything to do with his desire to take this small English Ford that I designed. I didn't know this was taking place really. I didn't have anything to do with that. He just said, "Look, take this car and step it up for 1933-34." Kramer, the body draftsman--the body engi­ neering department of Ford Company handled the whole process. They stepped it up a certain percentage wherever it was, you know, to produce the smart line for 1933-34.

Q:      What were they stepping it up from?

A:      From the little English Ford. So that supplied--that took care of the design needs of the '33 and '34 [domestic Ford]. The only difference between the '33 and '34, the bottom of the radiator grille on the '33 swept outwards--the '34 was perfectly straight. The '33 had curved louvers on the side of the hood panel--on the '34 they were straight. That's the only difference in the cars. I, incidentally, acquired a '34 Roadster. They were pretty, little cars, especially mine with some spe­cial touches. I had the boys down at the aircraft plant fix up my '34 Roadster. It was really a beautiful thing. I had this special windshield and a special top, and I had some beautiful aluminum disc wheels turned for it. Those are some of the little favors that--or what do call them, perks. Edsel Ford didn't mind my perks. That was one way he could compensate me for the very miniscule salary in those days. It was a very nice arrangement. I mean, I enjoyed it. Earlier, Edsel Ford came to me and wanted a special body built on one of the first '32 V-8

-22-

chassis, and I drew up a little boat tail speedster with cycle fenders. A pretty, little thing. We had it built partically in the Engineering Laboratory and over at the Lincoln plant.

Q:      This is Mr. Ford's personal car?

A:      Edsel Ford's. Yes, yes, that's right. Beautiful gun-metal gray, gray leather upholstery, and so on. He kept that out at his estate, and

I don't know what ever happened to the little car. It was a pretty, little car. Have you seen pictures of it?

Q:      Yes, I have.

A:      Shortly after that Lord Perry came over--one of his frequent visits from Dagenham. Mr. Ford asked me to see what I could do with that car that was being built over there, so I redesigned it and so on and so forth.

Q:      The Dagenham Ford?

A: Dagenham Ford, right. The Y model. A little 8 horsepower, 8 and 10, yes. So, everybody was happy about that, and everything went along smoothly, and that became the '33 and '34 Ford (stepped up in size, of course).

Q:      Can you describe with some detail, although you did just momen­ tarily ago, the actual changes?

A:      Well, it was an engineering change--just an engineering change. They just simply stepped the car up proportionally, so to speak. I forget what the percentage was, but they stepped it up, and I think it was on a 112" wheelbase. I didn't realize it till after the thing had gotten going that that was the order that Edsel Ford had given to engi­ neering to do this. He didn't talk to me about it, particularly. He was

-23-

very pleased with the car, and he came to me one day, he said, "How you like it?" I said, "Fine." He said, "You recognize it?" I said, "Yes."

Q:      Who do think might have given him that order?

A:      Given who?

Q:      Edsel.

A:      Oh, well that was his order.

Q:      His own order?

A:      Oh sure, oh yes. He handled all body work decisions. The funny thing was, occasionally, Mr. [Henry] Ford, the old gentleman I referred to. I think that's a nice, reverent term. I'll say that with a wink. He came in to my design department, and he'd look around, and I'd just start to describe something to him, you know, this and that, what's going on and so on. He'd throw up his hands, and he'd say, "That's between you and Edsel. That's between you and Edsel." See, that's all he'd say. Then, he'd walk out. But you know, he was frustrated by styling and design. He had no interest in that at all, and that's the reason Edsel Ford must have been awfully frustrated that his father would not take any interest in that phase of the automobile. Mr. Ford had established him­ self as a mechanical genius, so to speak. He didn't have any room for anything but the mechanics--the nuts and bolts. Edsel Ford, on the other hand, I think the old gentleman had a feeling that Edsel Ford was too artistic for the automobile business, if I can put it that way. Do you follow me?

Q:      Yes.

A:      He wasn't hard boiled enough in the mechanical end of it. God knows he tried to get hydraulic brakes put on the car and a suitable -24-

suspension system and other improvements which were far past incor­ porating in the product. And, those are some of the things that I sensed. I was right there when a lot of these things took place--just a pantomime. I observed the pantomime between the two of them, and little side remarks between Edsel Ford and myself. He would clue me with a few comments. He knew that I sensed his problems. So, getting back to the Lincoln --the acquisition of the Lincoln . It sort of got Edsel Ford off the old man's back as far as something to do or to express himself from a design standpoint. He had the wonderful platform with the Lincoln . I mean, he could build for the types of friends he had. He had a feeling for that type of thing. He wanted to elevate himself taste-wise, and with the Lincoln in the picture, it was a perfect thing for him. Also, I think that he had the feeling that a certain amount of that would dribble down into the Ford product and be acceptable to his father, see. It was--I'd never heard a discussion--a style discussion or a peers discussion between his father and himself. That I absolutely stayed clear of, but I'm sure there [were] many very interesting conversations [that] took place. I never did get in on them, and, as a matter of fact, whenever he and his father had a discussion, usually, frequently, it took place in my quarters, and I'd always instruct the boys to stay well clear and give them all the privacy they wanted. But, they would spend, perhaps, an hour or hour and a half in the corner of our place sitting on the edge of a drawing board and talking. That's where a lot of the important company decisions were made, I presume.

Q:      Basically, the relationship was affectionate but possibly antago­nistic?

-25-

A:      A mix of each, I presume.

Q:      Adversarial?

A:      Yes. In other words, obviously, old Henry Ford had absolutely no interest in the design and appearance of the car. A lot of the niceties that Edsel Ford wanted to build into the product--he felt was superfluous. He had a mania for simplicity, I mean, plain simplicity. You can put it that way. I remember talking to him one day, we were standing in the Engineering Laboratory. He had his foot up on the side rail of a Model T chassis, and he pointed down to a cross shaft that ran across between the two side rails, and it had a U indent in it that when you pull the emergency brake handle, it threw the car out of gear (disengaged the clutch.) I other words, it was sort of a cam effect. He spoke to me, he pointed to it, and he said, "That's one of the cleverest things that's ever been put in an automobile." And I agreed, I said, tongue in cheek, "Mr. Ford, that is a very, very unique development." But, you know, another time he came into my office one morning about 9:30, and, I'm trying to think, this must have been after Edsel Ford's death, between--yes, it must have been a year or so after that, and he came up to me and said, "Let's take a ride." I don't know why the hell he wants to go for a ride, but we went out in the service garage in the back and got into one of the service cars, and I said, "Where would you like to go, Mr. Ford?" Went down to the test track, down to the [Ford] airport, you know, where they have the test track, and he said, "Come on, let's go in." So, we drove in the gate, and I told Mr. Ford that, inasmuch as they're running high-speed tests around that track, brakes and skidding and various other things, it was a requirement to check in

-26-

so that they could flash the signal lights that someone else is coming on the track. He made a signal to me, and he took his two hands and put them as though he was going to sleep, you know, "that's all they do." "Come on," he said, "let's go on around there." So, we were going in the wrong direction, see. He said, "That's all right, that's all right, let's go." So here we go down the test track, these cars are swerving this way and that way, and, fortunately, there was a grass strip off of the side, and someone had seen him in the car with me, and they passed the word very quickly, and they flashed on the danger lights, and all the traffic came to a standstill. In the meantime, these cars were running various high-speed tests and whatnot. All we did was made the circuit around, and I didn't speak any more about it, and I didn't know what his thought was on it. We went on back up to the lab, and that's all there was to it. I mean he just wanted to take a ride around the test track, and we could have been the victim of a horrible thing. It would have been the two of us in that [crash]. Yes, it came that close. The cars were skidding all over the place around us. That was just one of the weird little incidents that take place when you're around the Ford situation.

Q:      Well, we are back in 1932, and you've just about...

A:      Yeah, we finished up that little two-seater for Edsel Ford at the Lincoln plant.

Q:      Right. Was this the boat tail?

A:      The little boat tail speedster. That was in the Summer of '32 we built that and ready for him in the Fall.

Q:      And the boat tail resulted from both your's and Edsel Ford's love of boats...?

-27-

A:      He was amused by the fact that I drew up the sections of it like you draw the hull of a boat and developed the paneling for it and so on. When the car was finished, it wasn't finished until around the Fall, I know the weather was cold. I drove it back from the Lincoln plant. There was snow. I never saw the car after that. He took it out to his house, and he used to use it out there. But, he made a cute remark at that time. During the Summer of 1932, the Lincoln plant was shut down-­ period! Just the maintenance crew there, and...

Q:      Sales were way down?

A:      Robinson--Robbie, we used to call him--he was the manager of the plant. Robbie and I and two or three of the maintenance men there did most of the work on the car. When the car was finished, Mr. Ford made the comment that it cost $25 to drive a nail there in the plant at that time. He said, "You should see the bill I got for this car." He said, "You wouldn't believe it." Of course, it was all Ford money. It didn't make any difference, you know, they had the people there. It came out as part of the overhead of the plant, see. Some of those things were interesting when you stop to think of the amount of money that was available to spend, and the way it was spent. I think he felt good about keeping a few people busy, really.

Q:      He was always very solicitous of his employees.

A:      Yes, yes. I never heard Edsel Ford make a derogatory statement about an employee or a mean comment about anyone in any form. He could be annoyed, he could be aggravated, but he always handled it in a very gentlemanly fashion. He came in one day to talk with me, and he pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket. He said, "What do you think of this?"

 

-28-

It was a production curve, and it happened to be the beginning of pheasant season up there in Michigan , and that's like a religious holi­ day. Everybody from the factory goes pheasant hunting. There must have been thousands, and he said, "Look what has happened to our production this last week because of the pheasant season." So, he shoves it back in his pocket, and he says, "Well, that's the way it is, see?" But, those are some of the little personal things that he used to talk to me about in a casual way. It seemed to be a sort of relief to him. He'd like to transfer that information to me. I don't know if he did it with other employees or not, but I always felt very satisfied that he would take me into his confidence about those little incidents that took place in the Company. Not particularly related to my activity.

Q:      So the 1933-34 Ford is a success, and you've established your rap­ port with Mr. Edsel Ford by not only that, but by working on a personal boat tail speedster that he liked.

A:      Yes. Then, in 1934, the Summer of 1934, he had given me the use of the Ford aircraft plant for any experimental work that we wanted to do.

Q:      Which was now vacant?

A:      Yes. They had a skeleton crew there of sheet metal workers and eight or ten top mechanics and whatnot. The reason they were kept on there was to provide service parts for the old Ford Tri-Motor planes of which there quite a number still in service--manifolds and landing gear parts, and things of that nature. It provided a place for me to do some experimental work without interfering with regular Ford activities. That summer discussions about a Ford sports car came up again. Some sort

-29-

of--this incidentally is really the beginning of the Continental. For all intents and purposes it could be classified that way. I developed a sports car chassis based on the 1934 Ford.

Q:      Which was one of your more beautiful designs, as I recall?

A:      Yes, but it--all that we used from the '34 Ford was the chassis-­ the chassis frame and the power unit and so on. I developed a special front-end suspension which enabled us to lower the car down five or six inches and also extend the wheelbase about 10 inches. It involved an entirely different front-end suspension, and also we lowered the rear end of it by cutting the rear end of the standard Ford frame off just ahead of the kickup and turning it upside down, welding it together which allowed the frame to go under the axle. It was underslung rear suspen­sion. I built up a chassis based on that concept which I road tested for a couple of months in the surrounding area--with no body work on it. But later, the two front fenders were made from Ford Tri-Motor fenders. The aluminum stampings, which covered the wheels on the Ford Tri-Motor landing gear, we cut them off and pieced them out and made some very nice, extended fenders for the car. So, we finished the car up with some improvisations, and I sent it over to the Lincoln plant, had some nice trim put on it, and had it painted--Mr. Ford's favorite gun metal gray. Along in January and February, I guess it was, it had to be February, 1935, we talked about the possibility of putting it into production through one of the custom body builders. Well, we'd furnish the chassis, and the custom body builder would provide the body work and finish it up, and it would be sponsored by Ford. I suggested to Mr. Ford that we drive it down to New York and show it to Johnny Inskip.

-30-

Q:      Now, who was he?

A:      Inskip was manager of the Brewster body plant and also the Rolls Royce agent in New York . He was an old friend of Mr. Ford's.

Q:      And, you knew him also.

A:      That's right, that's right. Brewster had built some custom-built Ford town cars, extended frame, Ford town cars under the name Brewster. I don't know whether Mr. Ford had had a financial interest in that pro­ject or not, but they built them for a couple of years, and they were quite attractive.

Q:      '33/'34?

A:      Yes, that's right. It looked like a New York taxi cab with their flaired front fenders, you know. I don't know where they came from. The workmanship was fine, and the cars were, I think, sold for about $5,000, something like that.

Q:      Very limited edition.

A:      About half what you pay for a pickup truck today. Well anyway, I took the car down there, and drove it down in the dead of Winter with one of my buddies. We didn't have any heat in the thing, and we just had side curtains on it, and gee, the snow was flying around, and it was a rough trip. If we hadn't had plenty of applejack with us, I would have never made it. Anyway, we got down there, and I discussed it with Inskip, and Inskip's apparent idea was that Mr. Ford was interested in financing a factory arrangement down there, you know, set him up in a big way with a new factory. He already had the old Brewster five-story plant over in Bridge Plaza in Long Island City , but when I came back and told Mr. Ford the story, he wasn't interested in setting a factory up

-31-

or anything of that kind. Well, anyway, Mr. Ford gave me the car which I enjoyed very much having.

Q:      What happened to it?

A:      I used it for a couple of years. I kept the car, and, oh yes, I drove it around. I made several trips down East with it--beautiful car.

Q:      Did you sell it?

A:      I finally sold it--$500! A friend of mine on the Island , he couldn't wait to get that car. I could get $50,000 for it today!

Q:      Do you think--have you traced it? Is it still in existence?

A:      Yes. An interesting little story about it.

Q:      I'd love to hear it.

A:      I picked up an Old Cars magazine--the paper that's printed up in Osceola , Wisconsin . Here's a picture of the car on the front page--a "mystery car" it said. They didn't know whether it was an English Jensen or this or that. It was some sort of a Ford experimental car and this and that. I never did get around to write and tell them what it was. Somebody put a crazy top on it, and they all wind up in California it seems--those special-built cars. Two or three of them that I built.

Q:      Do they still not know what it is?

A:      No, they don't know. I don't know what happened to it. Well, anyway, the following Summer, Mr. Ford went to England .

Q:      Edsel Ford?

A:      Edsel Ford.

Q:      That was in the Summer of '35?

A:      '35, yes, Summer of '35. While he was over there, he made some arrangements with the Jensen--English Jensen company over there who built

-32-

sports cars.

Q:      Custom sports cars.

A:      That's right. They used certain Ford components--Ford engines and whatnot. So, he made an arrangement with them to use the chassis--this particular chassis design that I'd developed. We built two more hand­built chassis, crated them up, shipped them from the Lincoln plant to England . He sold them on the idea, and the conversion parts were made in the Dagenham Ford plant.

Q:      Where was the Jensen plant, do you know?

A:      West Bromwich , England . He sent me a photo and the catalog of the car showing the chassis that I designed and whatnot, you know, signed by him. They used that chassis up until the War, up until production stopped in '39. So, that was as far as that went.

Q:      Tell me about the Jensen Fords. They were quite popular, espe­cially among movie stars--Clark Gable and others.

A:      Yes, that's right, that's right. You've seen pictures of them.

Q:      They were gorgeous.

A:      Very nice.

A:      Well, from 1935 until, I guess, '39. When the War started, they stopped production entirely, of course.

Q:      That was a limited edition?

A:      Oh yes, yes. I don't know, they probably built a few hundred a year--something like that.

Q:      On special order?

A:      Yes. At least the car wound up fruitfully.

Q:      They used your special chassis?

-33-

A:      Yes, that's right.

Q:      What motor did they use in it?

A:      They used a regular Ford for it. The wheel base was extended about 10 inches, and it lowered the chassis down. Finally, there was no basic frame changes needed. By the time '35 rolled around, Ford had a lower chassis level due to a higher rear kickup, so we didn't have to change the rear end of the chassis. But, they used the special front-end suspension which involved extending the radius rod--leaving the standard transverse front spring where it was--not disturbing it. There was a bridge built into the extended radius rod which carried the spring shackles so that it didn't disturb the spring location--the steering box was not disturbed, just lengthened the drag link. Nothing mechanically was changed at all except that it lowered the car down--lengthened the wheelbase ten inches. Gave you a better ride, nicer handling, beautiful suspension for a sports car.

Q:      Was this in 1935?

A:      That was in '35. I'll show you a catalog of the car showing you the note Edsel B. Ford wrote to me about it. By the time--let's see, it was in October/November of '39, about four years later, that the thought came to me. We began discussing a special-built car again, and, of course, Mr. Ford's initial thought on this special-built car was to be a Ford to glorify the Ford line. Whenever the suggestion of building that car at a Ford branch plant or interrupting Ford production in any way which it would have done, the Rouge plant fought us on it. It was just a nuisance value--anything that would interrupt production.

Q:      You had a quite a bit of problem with people like...

-34-

A:      Oh, [C.E.] Sorensen and Pete Martin--the production people.

Q:      Especially since you were working for Edsel Ford.

A:      Yes. They considered it a fruitless gesture on Mr. Ford's part. I

refer to as being frivolous. I think they did too. Yeah, that's the term they use today--frivolous. Gives the "boy" something to play with, see?

So, with Edsel Ford we might talk the thing over every few days, or every week or so, and he finally got up to the Mercury--would it be feasible to do it with the Mercury? Well, there again, we're up against the same problem with the production plants. There's no place in a production plant for that, without creating dissension and problems, see. No one could see a profit in it. So, at this point, an idea struck me. The old K Model Lincoln was being phased out--had been phased out, and we had one whole bay along Livernois Avenue--the Lincoln plant--where a certain amount of custom work had been done on the custom bodies that had come in the past. We had a nucleus of custom body workers at the Lincoln plant--maybe a couple hundred of them that did custom trim work-­ custom paint work on the custom bodies after they arrived and mounted on the old K Model chassis. So, the idea struck me, I said, "Gee, here we've got the Zephyr over there. We've got our engine components. It's all under one roof, and we have one whole bay of this plant that's not being used, and, at that point, without going into that phase of it with Mr. Ford--maybe I discussed it briefly, but I sketched up--I took a tenth size blueprint--a catalog sheet--what they refer to as a salesman's handbook print, reduced down, showing the overall dimensions--head room and all that, you know. I took just a yellow pencil, a yellow crayon pencil, and I sketched in a lower hood.

-35-

Q:      You'd taken a Zephyr?

A:      Just to sample it--Zephyr sedan, see and moved the windshield back, lowered the steering column. Like you do if you were trying to draw a fancy version of a sporty car--what you do to change it. Well, the things that came to mind at that point were that the chassis didn't need lowering. You see, the Zephyr was designed with the concept of a chair­ high seat.

Q:      Which at one point they had.

A:      They had a chair-high seat--about an 18 inch seat in the thing, and the floor pan was very low--very shallow--the car didn't have much of a side rail because of unit construction. It had a very shallow, maybe 3 inch side rail, something like that. It was silly, you know. I thought, well, we've already got a car that's down fairly low--the foundation of it, the floor pan, see? So, I drew this thing up and sketched in the roof line, and the trunk on the back and whatnot. That afternoon Edsel Ford came by on his usual visit, and I said, "How do you like this?" He said, "Oh boy, that looks great, looks good." So, I said, "How about making a little model. We'll make a little tenth-size model, 17/18 inches long." So, I had Gene Adams, a trade school boy there, I said, "Let's make a profile template of this for modeling," see? So, I had him glue it on a piece of masonite, you know, pressed wood, 1/8" masonite-­ glued it on there with some rubber cement, and then he punched the pro­ file and put it in a jigsaw and sawed it out, see? That was the only drawing that was ever made of the car. As people think ... when I tell them it was designed or sketched in 35 minutes or so, why--well, that's God's honest truth. The profile [was] pleasing. That's what sold it. He

-36-

said, "That's it," That was all that was ever made. It was a crude, little sketch. Edsel Ford loved those simple sketches.

Q:      Was this '38?

A:      This was in '39.

Q:      Early '39?

A:      No, this was in probably November of '39. Along in November, I'd say. [Mr. Gregorie amended this to 1938.]

Q:      So, he liked it immediately.

A:      Yes, we had this little 10th size scaling bridge, the model wheelbase was only 10/ inches, and we modeled it right in my office on a table, and Gene Adams and I modeled it right up with our hands. It wasn't a whole car design. We had the front end and fenders.

Q:      From the Zephyr?

A:      Of the Zephyr. That was the new '38 front end, which was real slick. It had a slick front end, and the fenders were reasonably decent, so we just pieced the front fenders out. I think we used the standard rear fender and did the little tire on the back, you know, and made this pretty little clay model.

Q:      Tell us more about the tire on the back because that has become the hallmark of the Continental.

A:      Yes, well that was part of the package, I mean, it was a necessity.

Q:      But, was this your idea or did Mr. Ford like the idea from a Continental he had seen earlier?

A:      I can't say. I just can't pinpoint that. Well, anyway, it appeared on there. I don't know whether it was his idea or mine--I just

-37-

can't say at this point. Well, anyway, it was immediately acceptable to him, and, in fact, the trunk was too small for a spare, so it was the only place available we felt that it would be acceptable. As we all know, rear mounted spares went "back to the year one." It surely was not for a styling "twist," though it apparently had that effect.

Q:      It was a collaboration.

A:      That's right, okay. Let's make it that way. That was part of the package. So, we did this little model up and painted it his favorite gray with white sidewalls and nice little chrome bumpers and all, you

know. This all took maybe a week. He said, "Well, how long will it take you to get one ready? I'd like to see if we can have one ready for my vacation when I go to Hobe Sound, [ Fla. ]."

Q:      That's incredible.

A:      That's right. Took the offsets off with tenth size scaling bridge, turned the figures over to Martin Rigitko, and he made a paper draft-­just a rough paper draft of it--full size and sent it over to the Lincoln plant and went ahead and built one just as quick as we could.

Q:      This is about December?

A:      By that time it would have been December. Well, anyway, by March or late February we had the car finished ready to ship down there by truck. [1939]

Q:      You shipped it down by truck.

A:      Yes. Have you seen pictures of the car and all?

Q:      Yes. Gorgeous.

A:      It was a pretty thing, but, man, it was all full of solder to smooth it up, and heavy, you know. It was beautiful to look at, but, I

-38-

mean, it was strictly a hand-made mockup sort of thing. Well, Edsel Ford had the car down there for a couple weeks, and he called me on the phone one day, and he said, "Gosh, I've driven this car around Palm Beach ," and he said, "I could sell a thousand of them down here right away, quick." He said, "They couldn't get enough of them." So, he said, "You'd better get over to the Lincoln Plant and talk with Robbie over there [he was the Lincoln plant superintendent over there] and see what you can do to set up an arrangement for limited production." You know, some arch presses and whatnot, so we could build a few hundred of these to start off with. So, he said, "In the meantime, you'd better start a second one going right away," a second hand-built one to work out mechanical details like the steering column shift which was coming in for production at that time. I went over, and Robbie and I set down. We got going right away quick. I said, "The boss man said we should build a second one of these." He said, "Oh God, not that again!" I said, "I think it's going to jell this time. I think we have something here." At that point I told Mr. Ford about the advantages of building it as a Lincoln . I said, "In the first place, we can get more money for this car." This is after he decided for just a one off. This is prior to his calling me back to build more. I sent him away with that germ in his mind. I said, "Gee, we've got the chassis, frame, we've got the suspension system, we've got the engine, we've got the steering gear and all mechanical parts. We're not interfering with any Ford production. We've got all components in house, right there at the Lincoln plant, and we have the people to do the nice trim work and so on." So, it was a natural. It just fell together that way. So, of course, the rest is history. I mean, it went into pro-

-39-

duction, and Mickey Rooney got the first production one. At that time he was out there getting thrown off the train playing Tom Edison, or some damn thing, you know, that movie man was out there. The director I got to know pretty well--Clarence Brown. [MGM filmed exterior scenes at Greenfield Village for Young Tom Edison]

Q:      We have a marvelous account written by Jack Davis of the day that they drove the car up to the MGM lot and gave it to Mickey Rooney.

A:      Oh, is that right?

Q:      And, we've got pictures of him. He had just come from an Andy Hardy segment. He had a little tuxedo on. He couldn't believe his eyes. He said, "Gosh, Mr. Davis, this is fabulous. Gee, wait'll the guys see me driving around in this!" I believe there'll be a story on that in an upcoming Lincoln Continental Comments.

A:      Well, that's the story of the Lincoln Continental, and it was as simple as that. Though no drawings were made, other than one little marked up blueprint. When I tell people--we went to a Lincoln Continental [meet]--they have these gettogethers all over the country, you know. A couple of years ago they were here in St. Augustine , at the Ponce Lodge, and they asked me up there to talk to them about the car and all that kind of thing. I told them, I said, "You know this is the quickest-designed car on record," and they couldn't believe it. I said, "Gee, it couldn't have been over a half hour or an hour at the most to make that little profile sketch of it. That's all the design work there was." I said, "We had the parts, and we just put them together with no idea that the car would create the sensation that it did." One of the reasons it was a sensation was, it was bereft [of] trim. We had no tooling

-40-

for trim, there was no trim we could put on it. We kept it clean and neat--just fine surface lines.

Q:      But you did have some problems with mechanics. You talked about the lead solder...

A:      Oh well, no, that was all in that hand-made car. It was, you know, there was a lot of solder on it and a lot of rush work to finish it up. Edsel told me, he said, "Boy it leaks like a sieve in the waist." Oh God, it must have had 500 pounds of lead on it. The engine, you know, it was under powered. It was a mush--it was just mush. Well, you know, there's another interesting story in connection with that front end. Who was it who was talking to me--it was one of automobile people here awhile back--he said that Harley Earl was over at the automobile show in Paris at the time the announcement of that car came out, and they showed him a picture of that front end on that '38 Zephyr, and he said, "My God," he said, "how did we miss on that one. That's going to ruin us." Well, let me tell you the curious thing about that front end. It wasn't designed to style a car, not at all. Old Frank Johnson, the old Lincoln engineer, you know, he came with the Lincoln from Leland. He was, oh God, he was an old grandpappy. He started out with [Henry] Leland. Oh, yes, way back in 1910 and 1912, perhaps.

Q:      Oh, back in the old Cadillac days.

A:      Old Cadillac. He designed the old four-cylinder Cadillac. Fine old gentleman, gee. Always in a blue serge suit, and always went around in vests and his little pince-nez glasses, and, as he talked, he'd say, "See, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see." Kind of a nervous habit, you know. The first '36 and first '37 front end I had designed... (at the

-42-

Briggs plant). Johnson asked me if I could help with a cooling problem they had with the '36-'37 cars [see pages 41 & 42].

Q:      Which I want to talk about.

A:      Yes.

Q:      Gorgeous car.

A:      Well, yes and no. I don't think it was one of our best design efforts, but anyway it sold the car to Edsel Ford. They were at a standstill at Briggs. Shall I keep on from there?

Q:      Please, yes.

A:      When Briggs had sold Edsel Ford on the idea of building this truss frame unit construction--streamlined, Zephyr-type car, as a follow-up to Chrysler's Airflow--a modernized version of it. They got as far as the front end of the car, and while Edsel Ford was sold on the body and the concept of the car, except for the rear engine. John Tjaarda had laid the car out. He was a rear engine fan and had laid it out with a rear engine. That didn't sell with Mr. Ford.

Q:      He'd done a prototype for the '34 World's Fair. [ Chicago ]

A:      That's right, that's right. But, that didn't go over with Mr. Ford at all, so they used the conventional Ford type drive line, and other production Ford parts, and cross springs and all that. So, they got as far as the rear windshield, and Tjaarda had designed--I'd say a more appropriate front end for that type of car. You know, more like a VW with a sheep's nose sloping thing, you know--with typical rear engine layout.

Q:      That's Tjaarda?

A:      That's right. John Tjaarda. John was sort of a designer/salesman

-42-

for Briggs, and I knew him very well. Edsel Ford asked me to go over there one morning. They were right at the crossroads. They'd held up production and the tooling on this project, and they couldn't satisfy him with the front of the car. I didn't have anything to do with it up to that point, so Edsel Ford asked me to go over there--to see if I could work out a front end that would appeal to him. So, I sat there one morning, and on a back of a blueprint I sketched up a front end in perspective. He wanted a sharp front end--he wanted a grille. He didn't want the plow nose arrangement that Briggs had proposed.

Q:      This is Edsel Ford?

A:      Yes. He wanted a pointy grille. He loved pointy shapes. No matter how you talked to him, the more they tried to sell him on their design, the more critical he got. He was obstinate on the subject. So I sketched up this pointed front end, you know, with a kind of an inverted boat hood. He liked those shapes. I knew he liked those shapes. Well, we got along that far, fine, so the front end was changed accordingly for a quick okay. Well, anyway, the front end was quite wide in the top, see. Right under the lid, it was quite wide, then it tapered down quite narrow--maybe 8, 10 inches at the bottom--bumper level. Well, it so hap­ pend, at that time all the Ford cars had the fan on the end of the crankshaft. The fan was mounted right on the crankshaft instead of higher at that time up on the water pump with a belt driving it. The net result was that they weren't getting very efficient cooling with the fan down that low instead of being up at the hot part of the radiator core. And, out in Arizona and Texas they were getting overheating complaints, and old Frank Johnson would come to me about twice a week and say, "Bob,

-43-

can't we do something about--get some more air to this car? We're having trouble pulling trailers and all that kind of stuff." So, I was coming back from lunch one day, and there was a Zephyr chassis sitting out there with the skinny, tall radiator core, a header tank on the top, and I took my scale out, and I measured it, and I said, "Should fit crossways bet­ ween the side rails." I went back in the drafting office there, and I had one of my boys, I said, "Gee, get a big old hunk of vellum out, and let's sketch up a relocated radiator core, see. Maybe we'll be able to cool this thing. Let's put the radiator core down in front of the fan, in other words." So, Edsel Ford came in that afternoon, and I told him what we were doing there, and he took a quick look at it, and he said, "Well, maybe we can help Frank Johnson along that way. Maybe we can cool this thing." So, I had the boys whip together some rough sheet metal work and just piece it together with little pop rivets and all. We put it in the wind tunnel, and we ran it, standard air to boil[ing] tem­ perature under full load, and gee, it cooled fine. It was just a rough bunch of sheet tin, you know. But, the opening was down crossways in front of the core. So, Edsel Ford said, "Well, let's go ahead and see what we can do with it." So, we went ahead, and I had a front end clayed up by Dick Beneicke and some the boys with the two grilles, quite low, and, gee, it turned out to be a right nice looking grille. Of course, Edsel Ford okayed it right away for the '38 Zephyr. In the meantime, it became a styling sensation. Packard copied it, you know, and Buick copied it. In the meantime, they still had the great, big, tall core with the fan up high, and they went to all kinds of shrouding and sheet metal work to get the air from a low grille up to their high fan in down below-

-44-

-to create the same cooling effect. They all thought it was a styling deal. They didn't know why I did it. It was to correct this damn cooling problem, see? Well, that's another one of those little things you run into.

Q:      You had a marvelous front end on the '37 Ford. Was that your inspiration?

A:      The '37--no, but that was taken from the first Zephyr.

Q:      Right.

A:      Yes. Briggs did that. Mr. Ford insisted they get something close to the first Zephyr. That's where that came from. That's the last Ford that Briggs had anything to do with. In other words, they did the '35 and '36 and '37, then that was the last of them. After that all that stuff was pulled out of Briggs and all handled in our department at Dearborn .

Q:      In 1935, you had effectively started the Ford styling studio, had you not?

A:      Yes.

Q:      With [Edsel] Ford's direction?

A:      That's right. All that work was underway at Briggs at that time.

Q:      I see. So, they simply transferred it over to the Engineering Laboratory.

A:      That's right. Briggs had done the body, and they were building the body, and they did the front end and so on.

Q:      But, from now on ...

A:      From there on we did the '38, '39, all the rest of them from there on. The body was the same. You see, that old body shell went back, I

-45-

guess, to '35--the whole basic body--the floor pan and roof line and all. So, it was just a front end change. It was a face-lift deal.

Q:      I want to hear more about the Continental, but would this be a good point, chronologically, to insert the story of the Mercury--the develop­ ment of the Mercury? Would you trace that?

A:      Yes, well, the Mercury, there really wasn't much to it. It was

a variation of the Ford. A little more pleasing body lines, and as far as we were concerned, it was just a blown-up Ford in many respects.

Q:      Why was it perceived that you needed a slightly larger...?

A:      Oh, to fill in the pricing gap. See, there was nothing, it was about a $500 spread which was a lot in those days between the Zephyr. The Zephyr was around $1200 then--just a base price for the Zephyr, and the Ford was about $900/$950 somewhere in that bracket, so there was noth­ ing in between there. There was probably a $400 spread, and the Mercury was the answer. In other words, we had to do a Pontiac or a DeSoto deal. As a matter of fact, I've got charts that Ed Martin had drawn up in my department showing the spread in pen and ink. I've got them out there now in a box showing the spread and showing how the competitive cars filled in, you know, in that price range. We used to get that stuff together, you know, and present it. We were doing market research. I used to get the advertising displays--the illustrations would come in for billboards and catalogs, and God, some of that distorted artwork. I mean, the steering wheels were all twisted around. The wheels looked cockeyed, and I'd take a big piece of vellum, and I'd lay it over there, and it got so they were passing all that stuff across my desk, and I'd spend half a day or a day redoing these, but the perspectives were wrong.

-48-

They didn't have an eye for right perspectives. They didn't look right. They were twisted. The cars were a little twisted, and humped up, and all kinds of funny shapes. But, I always loved to draw perspectives. Gosh, I could draw cars up on grease racks, you know, and showing the under side of it, and the whole the damn thing.

Q:      That's great. That's a gift.

A:      Yes. And, it didn't sit too well. Some of my boys in the office didn't like me to do that. It's a funny thing. Some of their pro­ fessional jealousy was--I had one boy I hired there, Ross Cousins. Ross Cousins' father had been quite a prominent illustrator--advertising illustrator. What I wanted--I came up with this concept. A lot of designers have good talent but can't draw well. They couldn't make a presentation drawing, and the idea occurred to me one day, gee, I'm going hire an illustrator--a man that does these professional-looking jobs, and we'll give him a drawing and let him do it up as an illustration. As old Charlie Sorensen used to say, "Let's 'deluxy' the hell out of it.

So, I got Ross Cousins, and he was good. He could make nice drawings and show the car in front of a butcher shop, and a gal stepping out there and the guy putting the groceries in the back and all that kind of stuff. Designers--some of the best cannot present their ideas to best advantage, compared to an illustrator.

Q:      In 1935/1936 the Briggs era ended in terms of Ford design, and it all came under your aegis, and you established yourself as you had been at the engineering laboratory, did you enlarge the design department?

A:      Oh yes, yes. We started out--right away as soon as Edsel Ford called from Hobe Sound. He called Charlie Sorensen and told him to get

-47-

together with me and provide any alterations in the building that were necessary just to enlarge the quarters, and Sorensen came up and, oh, he was sweet as honey, you know. He's usually hard-boiled and then some, and boy, syrup couldn't have poured out of his mouth any sweeter than that was.

Q:      He'd gotten the word, huh?

A:      He said, "Yes, anything the boy wants, anything the boy wants [meaning Edsel B. Ford], why, you just tell me, and I'll fix it up for you." So, I always got along with Charlie Sorensen. He was a boatman, you know, he loved boats, and he had a nice, big yacht called Helene.

Q:      Down on off Miami Beach ?

A:      No, he used to keep it up at Algonac. He lived on it in the summer, and he lived in an apartment there at the Whittier in the winter time. But, he lived on this big, 146-foot yacht in the summer. He had it built up at Bath Iron Works in Bath , Maine , about 1931. I always got along all right with Charlie. Well, you know, once these henchmen knew that I worked for Edsel Ford and was able to please him and get things done, why they didn't give me any trouble. They'd growl a little bit, you know, but I usually would maneuver my way around them. It was kind of a change for them, you know. It was a new experience for them, and they finally had to realize that the design of the car--the so-called styling of the car, was just about as important. As I pointed out, a hell of lot more important than selling the customer as to whether the car had a straddle-mounted axle pinion and whether they had roller bearings or ball bearings in the wheels or what have you. They bought the car on appearance!

-48-

Q:      Did you have a problem with Henry's edict against certain modern mechanical devices like the hydraulic brakes--but you had them on the Lincoln though?

A:      Oh, they had mechanical brakes. As a matter of fact, I guess--I'm trying to think of when the--I think it was about '37 or '38 when we had the hydraulic brakes come in.

Q:      On the Lincoln ?

A:      Yes, on the Mercury.

Q:      On the Mercury?

A:      Yes.

Q:      It didn't come on the Ford until 1939 or 1940.

A:      '40, yes. I had nothing to do with that. That was all chassis--Larry Sheldrick--I didn't get into that phase of it at all. I used to listen to the stories.

I frequently would have a lot of the mechanical people from engineering--Sheldrick and everyone come to me to prompt me to sell Mr. Ford on some of these things, see? They knew that Mr. Ford and I some­times discussed these things, and they would take me out and give me a sales pitch on some of these things. I'd drive the cars home, you know, weekends with a special suspension and all that kind of stuff. They liked my opinions because I knew what the hell it was all about. Another thing is, it always amused me, and didn't amuse some of the engineers too much, but finally along there after Breech came in, we had these big engineering meetings, these engineering committees and whatnot. I was just as well acquainted with engine performance and talked cars [and trucks],

-49-

and I'd frequently point out things that the engineers didn't know a damn thing about. About the the capabilities of the White truck and G.M. trucks, and I followed that sort of thing, religiously understood it. And, oh man, that would confound them. I mean, they couldn't understand how the hell I'd understood all this damn thing, see? Torque curves, and what engine would lug, and what engine wouldn't lug--'cause I got into all that in marine engineering, you know, I had to understand engines and engine performance and things of that kind.

Q:      I'm interested that your love of boats and your working with boats and ships was a natural for the kind of atmosphere that you had at Ford. Tell me about some of the styling innovations that you came up with. Specifically, about the styling bridge. Tell us a bit about that.

A:      Well, previously they had taken templates off the clay models.

Q:      How would that work?

A:      Well, they'd take the templates off--full-size templates--and put them on the drawing board and trace them out, you know, to get the shapes and forms.

Q:      Now, a template is?

A:      Well, it's a cutaway form--pattern--it's a pattern, a surface pat­ tern. In my work in naval architecture, all hull forms you set up what is known as a table of offsets--from center line to water lines, and you can draw a graph of that. In other words, what I was able to do was to set up a system whereby you could scale a full-size automobile--a model-­and put all of the table of surface offsets in a book, and that could be sent to body drafting, the pattern shop, or the model shop--body die model shop--and the people working on that wouldn't have any concept of

-50-

what the car looked like. All the dimensions were in there in this book. We could send that to the Lincoln plant or to what have you. All taken off, every inch, with this modeling bridge on the track straddling the car.

Q:      Did you build the first bridge for the automobile industry, do you think?

A:      As far as I know, yes.

Q:      Now, did you have that made special for you?

A:      They built them right in the Rouge shop.

Q:      To your specifications?

A:      Yes.

Q:      What did Mr. Ford think about the bridge?

A:      Oh, it was fine.

Q:      Of course, he knew a little about it from his experience with boats.

A:      I suppose, I don't know, it never became an issue. They just sort of--we first made one, and then we built two and three and four, and they had various adjustments on them. We could run a car in there and take the offsets, and it was a natural development. Now, of course, that's all done, I guess, with computers and all that kind of stuff.

Q:      Well, they're still using...

A:      Yes, they were still using the bridges when I was there in 1975. I noticed when Evie and I were up there, they took us through there, and they pieced them out, you know, for the longer cars. I guess we had 10 or 12 of those bridges. They were all precision made, and little fine

-51-

roller bearing wheels on them.

Q:      Do you remember who used to make those?

A:      Oh, they built them right in the Rouge Plant. Tool and die shops. They build all that right there.

Q:      What other innovations did you pioneer there at Ford in the design department?

A:      Well, the two-spoke steering wheel. Up until that time, it was about 1936/1937, they had these bicycle spokes, steering wheels, you know, banjo wheels they called them with all that damn spoke work. And, just one day, I thought, let's make a steering wheel that you can look right straight through and it's simple. You can put your hand on the spokes, you know, and all that. So, I had Jim Lynch (my head machinist in the design model shop there), I said, "Turn up a damn ball about this big, see, with the guts of the hub in it," and I said, "and let's put a couple of tapered spokes on it." We made up one--a hand-made one, and I was gonna take a vacation down the Eastern shore of Maryland--first wife and myself--and I got a company Ford touring car--'37 I guess it was, '37 or '38 touring car. We put one of those steering wheels on there. I stopped at a couple of dealer friends of mine that I was acquainted with. Criss-crossing the country, I'd frequently stop and talk with dealers and get their opinion on this and that. "Oh boy, that's nice and smooth, and you can see through it." Anyway, Mr. Ford bought the idea, and we came out with that' two-spoke steering wheel which, for all intents and pur­poses, is current today except they usually have a great big, funny ­ looking padded thing in the middle of the steering wheel. But, that was

-52-

simple, you know, it was just a hub about this big and two nice tapered spokes. You could rest your hand on that. And, cheap too. Sheller made them, I guess. Sheller down in Indiana .

Q:      Sheller-Globe?

A:      Yeah, I guess that's what it is now.

Q:      It is now, yes. That's right.

A:      But, there are all kind of things we got into, gee whiz. As a matter of fact, the idea of using aluminum foil on the models, you know when they first made these clay models. They'd use aluminum paint to simulate chrome. I had a Hershey bar one day, and I said, "God, isn't that a nice, chrome-plated Hershey bar with aluminum foil on there." I told my boy, I said, "Look, give me a big roll of aluminum foil." He got it from some place in Detroit . They packaged candy or something, so we fussed around with that, and found out that you could just take a brush, you know, and that thin aluminum foil and tack it on there and brush it, and damn, it looked just like chrome. Then, when you were all through you wouldn't waste the clay, you'd just rip that stuff off and threw it away.

Q:      They're still using it.

A:      Maybe they are. I guess they would. The time we were up there, there was all kinds of stuff like that, you know, available. The way those ideas come to you just in the course of events--no great big earthshaking thing, but it all adds up. There were always fresh ideas from our design group.

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Q:      Well, the Mercury then, as far as you were concerned, was just a...

A:      It was nothing spectacular as a product.

Q:      It was really a merchandising effort more than anything else?

A:      Yes, that's right. The body shape was a little wider and a little easier shape, and the front end was quite Fordish as Mr. Ford wanted it to be. Someone asked me awhile back why they didn't make the front end completely different--a complete breakaway from traditional Ford-type design. Well, they have to understand when Edsel Ford made up his mind, he wanted something, he wanted it to look like he wanted it to look. He was obstinate as hell.

Q:      Do you think that he felt that if he'd gone too far overboard in terms of design that his father might have axed the whole thing?

A:      That could be. I can't answer that. I've thought of that, but I think the old gentleman left it pretty much up to Edsel. He had great confidence in Edsel's ability in this activity. Edsel would never deviate toward anything radical. I guess the concept of the Lincoln Zephyr was probably the most radical thing that Ford had attempted. Inasmuch as it came from an outside source, well, that kind of relieved him, I suppose, from a conscience problem.

Q:      He never used Tjaarda again, did he?

A:      No, no.

Q:      Or did you ever?

A:      No, no, John kind of phased out of the picture then. He didn't last long--well, the war was coming along there, and he got into other kinds of work. This book that Lee [Kollins] brought up when he was here. He left a book with me about Tjaarda's son.

-54-

Q:      I haven't seen it.

A:      About Tom Tjaarda and about his experiences working for those Italian body builders over there and all that kind of thing.

Q:      Ghia and others?

A:      Yes. God, I mean, he sounded like a wild man--he sounded like he was on pot or something. It rambles along and rambles along, and they set him up to stealing some design from another outfit or some damn thing. It was like a comic strip. I never knew Tjaarda's son, I mean--I imagine he's a man in his fifties now--he must be. Old John he was a playboy. He was a rounder. He was a womanizer. Edsel Ford never cared for him. Ralph Roberts, on the other hand, Ralph was a little more of a tactful, gentlemanly type.

Q:      He was where?

A:      He was with Briggs.

Q:      Oh yes.

A:      And, he was a product of Tom Hibbard and Ray Dietrich, and, well, let's see, there was Hibbard and Dietrich and Roberts. They started the so-called "LeBaron" name way back in the early Twenties. They were all a bunch of young body designers in New York --working for custom body people and had worked for them. Then, they set up this LeBaron, it was a name, just a classy name. Well, anyway, Ralph Roberts wound up over there with Briggs, and Tjaarda was there, and Tjaarda handled mostly the production stuff, and Ralph Roberts was more in the end of selling the custom bodies--LeBaron custom bodies which Briggs produced then to various Chrysler and Packard and different ones, including Lincoln . They built some quite nice Lincoln convertible coupes.

-55-

Q:      Did you like the Zephyr design?

A:      I never cared much for it. I'd never design cars like that myself. I hadn't up to that point, and I couldn't develop much enthusiasm for that. No one had ever requested a car like that, and the concept didn't appeal to me too much then. I knew it had its place, and I think the car would have been more appropriate probably with the rear engine at that time as Tjaarda had originally conceived it.

Q:      It would have been.

A:      The car wasn't a good car on the road. It had poor weight distri­ bution. It was too nose heavy, and it was too light in the rear end. I know that, I can recall many a slippery night out there in Dearborn with the ice on the road driving out to Plymouth or something like that. You had to be awfully careful in playing the power to the rear wheels. The thing would just simply spin out, just fishtail, unless there were two/three people in the rear of it. It was a poorly-balanced car. Of course, the car was very poor mechanically. That engine was rough. It was just a scaled down variation of that big, old 12-cylinder Lincoln which was poorly balanced. It had a whip in it at certain speeds-­vibration periods. Beautifully-built engine, and meticulously built, but wasn't a long-life engine. Although it compared to the Cadillac V-12 or the Packard, it was rough--just like the old first V-8 Lincolns were rough. It felt just like a White truck engine. It had a tremor when you held the steering wheel. Good, tough engine, but not a beautiful, silky smooth engine as a 12 should be. And, poor old Frank Johnson, I guess time had passed him by. I'd guess [it was] a 60° engine, and it was just, apparently, out of balance. I don't know if Edsel Ford, I don't know how

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enthused he ever was about it, but I know it wasn't the best piece of engineering in the world. It was beautiful to look it and beautifully finished, but he didn't stint a thing on quality. Q It was all skin deep?

A:      Yes, that's right, and, of course, the Zephyr engine was poor mechanically. I mean, the pitiful thing was that it came out with the Continental, and it looked like a sporty car that should have a little get up and go to it, and it lulled, it was lazy on the road. That engine was all mush. I told them one day, I was talking to one of the boys, I said, "God, if you'd have put a nice, big straight 8 Buick in this car, he'd really have something, you know, or a good lugging engine."

Q:      Back to the Continental, Bob, so you've done these two hand jobs, and you've brought out the...

A:      Well, now there was a demand for a hardtop, you know, after the first was a convertible.

Q:      And very successful.

A:      Yes. Visibility wasn't very good out of the convertible, you know, that big, deep back quarter on it. So, we were asked to develop a hardtop version, and we just simply took the lower shell and clayed up the roof over one of the production convertibles, and there was no big deal there.

Q:      Was that the Cabriolet?

A:      Yes. I think that outsold the convertible two/three to one.

Q:      It was very popular.

A:      Well, the convertible--we were never able to get rid of all the

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shakiness in the cowl because of the lack of a solid frame. In other words, it had a very weak frame. As a matter of fact, it was built out of a unit construction car. Once you took the roof strength out of it, you didn't have anything. You had to beef the chassis frame dis­ proportionally and put a lot of extra weight--hundreds of pounds of extra weight to stabilize it, strengthen it, see, for the loss of the roof rail, so that it had a strike against it, and compared with the fact that it was underpowered. But, people were well pleased with the car. I mean, it was no performer. It looked like a fast car, but it was safe car to drive, let's put it that way. You couldn't break your neck in it too fast. It was no "hot performer," as they say.

Q:      When it first came out--the 1940 model, as I recall, it still had the word Zephyr on the...?

A:      I guess the first advertising was a convertible Zephyr. A special, yes. The Continental name came along... that was Edsel Ford's name that he put on it once we decided on production.

Q:      The story goes that you and he used to talk about European cars, and he would say, "Yes, the Continental, the Continental look," or something like that.

A:      Yes, well, he had a taste for European-type, design styling.

Well, that car, it didn't exhibit a heck of a lot of that, I mean, it was simple like some of the custom bodies were over there, and some were quite gaudy, you know, some of those German bodies and whatnot. But, in my concept and my mind, it wasn't designed to look like a foreign car, particularly. The form was already precast using the components that we had. It just happened, it was a happy combination.

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Q:      Yes, it worked out very well.

A:      Yes, there really wasn't much design to it. It just went smoothly together, and we happened to have a nice looking front end, and the fen­ ders were nice, and by the time you squished it down and raked the windshield a little more, why you had your car, see? It would have pro­ bably, if we had decided to gussie it up and put a lot of icing on it and tutti frutti like General Motors, we'd have probably had more design problems. It was just so simple, it couldn't help look nice. Its pro­ file, I feel, was [just] about perfect and [was] its real identity. Q It had a gorgeous body.

A:      Oh, yes, it had nice body form, and by the time you extended the hood back and stretched the fenders out, why, there wasn't much you could do with it. I mean, the platform, it was the Zephyr sill, and that little chubby trunk on the back there--it wasn't anything you wanted to travel heavy with, you had to stretch your belly and lean down in there to put anything in it much less the spare wheel.

Q:      You're putting the spare tire in the deck lid, so to speak, gave you much more room in the trunk didn't you?

A:      Well, no, that tire was completely outside. That never did get in the body. The spare had to be outside to provide any usable trunk space.

Q:      Right.

A:      Except later on they put that hump in there, you know, in later Continentals. * But, the first Continental was just a bracket that hung between the bumper and body with a cover on it. That was no problem there.

Editor's Note: The spare tire outline was a notable feature of the 1956 Continental Mark II and remained so until the 1988 Con­tinental which eliminated it.

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Q:      So you--the '40 model is very successful, and you've added a...

A:      Is it the Ford you're talking about? Oh, no, the...

Q:      The Continental.

A:      Oh, now, yes, we, let's see, the first one was the '40 and '41, yes. And, just before the war started, we designed the '42, the heavier looking front end.

Q:      Now that was a completely radical front end change?

A:      Well, we had to use the basic Zephyr body. That was the original body design from back in 1936, see, seven years later, but in the mean­ time, our real competition, Cadillac, had gotten a beefier look. All the General Motors cars had beefed up so they looked heavier and a little more important on the road, and, compared to that, the old Zephyr looked like a hungry horse. I mean, gee, that razor-back hood, you know, and those skinny fenders and little, skinny bumpers. Well, that's another thing that people have asked me many times, "Gee, why don't they put heavier bumpers, you know, and all that." Well, Edsel Ford didn't like that effect. He wanted something delicate looking, see? He likes fine mouldings, he liked delicate touches. He didn't want anything heavy and ponderous. Like General Motors, all those jukebox things they put on the Oldsmobiles and Buicks--all those big, old heavy chunks of chrome. Oh my God, he never would go for that. He said, "No." So, he looked at an instrument panel one day or some kind of a grain they showed on the instrumental panel, he said, "Oh, gee, that looks pukey, doesn't it?" He had some funny expressions he'd use, you know. I finally told him that the car in its price range has got to look a little more important on the road, and so that's when we developed that new hood and the new fenders

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and so on which went went quite well with the body. The body began to look skinny, but they went well on the Continental. They looked good on the Continental.

Q:      Was this the '42 front end?

A:      Yes, '42, yes. And, that, of course, carried over into the '46, '47, and '48 post-war cars, yes.

Q:      But, at this point Mr. Ford is getting--Mr. Edsel and Mr. Henry Ford are both getting into war work.

A:      That's right.

Q:      And, so your department is...

A:      Yes, we thinned down. We turned over many of our draftsmen, designers and engineers to war work. They worked on--we worked on plane turrets, interchangeability of turrets, making mockups for the bombing turrets and things like that. We did some camouflage work, and as well as carrying on a certain amount of design work on a small scale.

Q:      Did you bring your crew with you into war work pretty much?

A:      Yes, yes. We turned over some. Some went to Willow Run, you know, to do drafting work, and several of our modelers went out there to do clay modeling on fuselage conversion pieces and all that kind of thing. But, we kept a small staff going there.

Q:      While you were working on war components or military procurement, you were attempting to keep the design spirit alive by doing some mar­velous mockups in clay?

A:      That's right, that's right. We did some clay work and small scale model work and a lot of pictures and stuff like that--enough to keep Mr. [Edsel] Ford's interest going. As a matter of fact, when he died we were

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just getting well into post-war concepts.

Q:      Right. He had some very ambitious plans for, along with yourself, in being prepared for the end of the war?

A:      Yes, yes. He stressed the necessity for production follow-up

after the war. He could see the necessity for that, so they allowed us a reasonable scope there to keep things moving so we wouldn't be caught completely unprepared. He died in the spring of '43, and I had quite a lot of stuff ready. I went a couple of months trying to contact him, you know, to find out whether he was going to be back with us or not. I called up and spoke with Mr. [A. J.] Lepine, his private secretary, and he said Mr. Ford had gone down to Hobe Sound on his vacation, and he came back along toward the end of March, and he came in my back door unan­ nounced, and I could see he appeared very ill. He was tanned, but he had lost a lot of weight. He used to show me bottles of pills he used to carry. I said, "Why don't you go over to the eastern shore of Maryland and buy a nice, big farm over there, and just go away and spend all the damn time you want." I said, "This thing will hold together." He said, "I wish I could, I wish I could." But, I mean he'd come up to you with those little things--and I'd talk back and forth with him about that. Not that I'd ever influence him.

Q:      Well, I think you were a good influence--you complemented his taste in design.

A:      That's right, that's right. We had a good, balanced way of working things out. I understood his preferences, and he had a lot of definite preferences. When he liked something, he'd say so, and when he didn't like it, he'd say he didn't like it--that was it! He could tell very

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quickly, and I could tell very quickly, whether you could sell him on it or not. I got to know certain things that were acceptable to him, and he didn't like anything that was heavy and bulldozish looking or anything like that. I mean, that was very clear.

Q:      Keep it simple?

A:      Keep is simple, keep it light, keep it delicate. Ford styling has aged better. That has much more attraction today. In other words, it's grown old gracefully--put it that way, see?

Q:      Exactly.

A:      Some of these old Packards and some of these old General Motors cars, gee, they look ridiculous. I mean,