Automotive Oral Histories

A History of Scholarship on American Design

Tough Guys and Pretty Boys

AUTOMOTIVE DESIGN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

The Reminiscences of John Najjar

This is Dave Crippen of The Edison Institute's Design History Center , and it's May 16, 1984 --the fourth session with John Najjar. He will resume his narrative of adventures in Ford design history in the early 1960's.

A:      The thing we were discussing on the last tape was the creation of the Mustang I which was a midship engine sports car. It was designed in the Design Center under the command of Eugene Bordinat who joined forces with Herbert Misch, who was Vice President of Engineering. The objective that the two had agreed to was to take our Mustang I clay model concept and make it into an operable vehicle. They needed this operable vehicle for the Fall press conference to [highlight] the introduction of the 1962 Ford Motor Company products. What they wanted to do was add a little spice to it and to invite a few of the press people in to look at this new little vehicle. To bring the vehicle to life, a man by the name of Roy Lunn, in engineering, was assigned to doing that task. He elected to use Troutman-Barnes, a racing car fabricator out in California . The Design Center finished a fiberglass cast of the surface contours of the vehicle and shipped it out to Troutman-Barnes. Roy Lunn's engineering staff, with Hans Gretzel, worked feverishly to take the Cardinal ponypack engine, [and] redesign the wheel components. They designed the tube work for the frame, front wheel suspension, steering mechanism, all the component operating parts and shipped those parts and drawings out to Troutman-Barnes. Troutman-Barnes put that vehicle together and returned it to the Design Center by late August/early September, and it was driven around the test track by a race car driver named Dan Jones, who applauded its handling. It had no test time on it. It was shown to the press people. Certain press people were allowed to ride in it, and it became the topic for the day, giving our 1962 program a much needed lift. Needless to say, the fellows in the Design Center were all agog at this hot little car. Later on, just to trace the history of what the Mustang I did for the company, a movie was made of Mustang I, along with a 1/10 scale model of the Mustang I which was carried around in a nice mahogany wood case with mirrors. The model was built by the Design Center metal shop. The movie and the model would go to different college campuses, and talks would be given about Ford being the wave of the future, having youth in mind. Wherever possible the drivable Mustang I was driven onto the campus and shown there. It did give the marketing people a chance to get the feelings of the marketplace. Indeed, the Mustang I was a viable marketable car, but Mr. Iacocca had a higher volume goal for it and decided it should be a two plus two. Mustang I just had two people in the front, and the two plus two concept provided for little children space in the aft seating compartment. It did kick off Iacocca's dream of a sporty, youthful car that could be produced in huge volume.

Following the Mustang I introduction, I was then chosen to go work in the interior studio, as was typical in those days. Mr. Bordinat and, indeed, Mr. Walker before him, had embarked upon the thought that since designers were sort of incestual, from the point of view of inbreeding, 'till they could only look to themselves for design, they should be rotated around to different tasks. For six months to a year they'd be in charge of interior, another six months to a year they'd have color and trim or be in advanced or be in pre-production or be in the Ford studio or a Mercury studio. And this merry-go-round, this changing of seats all the time, kept us on our toes. After the Mustang I, it was time for John Najjar to move to the interior studio. In there, I inherited the '64 Thunderbird interior which was originally done by Arthur Querfeld who had done a magnificent job of doing advanced design of the instrument panel and new concepts in seat contours that became part of my program. The ongoing part of it was to develop the new interior for the new production Mustang and to develop new interior concepts for what was to be the high range, the Ford LTD series that higher level Ford--that Iacocca had started to bring to mind. It was a real challenging studio and offered a wide range of new work. Continuing on the Mustang, the product planners there thought of great numbers of accessories for the vehicle: "They should be able to buy tachometers, they should be able to buy clocks, they should be able to buy floor shifts, different type of gear shift knobs, levers, anything the person could think of they should be able to buy it as an accessory because this was a part of getting the extra money." In designing the interior, one of the ways of getting an economy car on the interior door trim panel was to stamp the panel, the inner door panel, out of metal. Normally, car doors are constructed of an outer door panel, an inner door panel, then the door trim panel which is mounted on the inner door panel. On this concept, we were to use the inner door panel as a finished surface and only insert a piece of cloth to indicate it was soft. Looking at the smooth metal, I had an idea, and I was able to get from a vendor, textured metal, metal that had been rolled in the form of a vinyl texture. Upon my insistence, I contacted a Buffalo stamping plant which had early tools and shipped the steel to them and got a budget out of our Design Center and had them stamp out inner door panels. The door panels were shipped back to the Design Center , and the inner door panels, instead of being smooth painted steel now had the look of textured vinyl. We mounted those on panels and showed them to the product planner, showed them to the engineers, and, yes, they thought they could make it work. The product planners were all for it because it gave them a greater visible thing. Engineers weren't so sure because the spot welds would show and damage the vinyl appearance. There was one engineer in charge of the program, I didn't know this would come up--I can't think of his name, but I will think of it, but he was one of those people who you meet in your career who has a can-do attitude like Roy Lunn, like Will Scott and other people who instead of saying, "How did you plan to make it?" say, "Yeah, I think I can do that." Gordon Laughton, he looked at that and said, "Yes, we can do it." About that same time, for the two plus two seat of the Mustang, we had it flip down. In order to get a good look to that rear seat, I wanted to make the seat curve from the cushion into the back and not give it the standard seat back, seat cushion look. I kept getting no's on making this look like it was one integrated seat. Gordon Laughton came over and said, "Yes, I think we can make that." It was that kind of thinking that made that whole car a pleasure to work on.

The LTD program, the Galaxie programs, I worked with Tom Feheney, who later rose in the company. He was a bit hard to work for but he had good ideas, and one of his product planners took on the assignment of changing the coat hook on the interior. The coat hooks at that time were always coming [loose and] didn't seem to do the job right. And it became a main important function of the interior design studio to design a proper coat hook. We went through about ten different designs before we got one. It was a real challenge. The history of the LTD, that luxury vehicle speaks for itself. It was a new upgrading for the Ford product.

Q:      The LTD came from the old British Limited?

A I'm not sure, the LTD, I don't know if it came from the limited or the luxury touring something....

The '64 Thunderbird was a real challenge. Art Querfeld had great concepts on it, but there were some things that had to be worked out on the instrument panel. It was a real challenge during my career in interiors to maintain Art's design and bring it through in to production. It's still a terrific design.

Q:      What distinguished the '64 design from its predecessor?

A:      Well, the '64 Thunderbird was all new, and the interior of it was like an airplane, it put the controls all around the driver. He had the controls on the instrument panel right in front of him, within vision. At one time, all controls for night illumination were to be illuminated with red. Red lights, because it was found that with airline pilots, their eyes could go from darkness to lightness if they used red lights instead of green. The console, emanating from the instrument panel came down between the two front seats, and it made the driver feel as though he was in a cockpit for himself or herself and to completely have all control of that vehicle. They were just upbeat, smart designs. Had a fellow working for me by the name of Irving "Bud" Kaufman who had worked for me previously on other programs. I had given Bud the charge on the hardtop convertible to come up with a tonneau cover that when the conver­tible top was down, the tonneau cover would cover from the back of the rear seat over the front seat. And he designed a beautiful tonneau cover, and it was marketed.

Q:      Really a delightful innovation, much loved by collectors today--that '64 T-Bird.

A:      Yeah, it really looked sharp. And the car was nice and long. Of course, it was a pleasure for me later on to be able to lease that vehicle and drive it home and know I was a part of it.

Q:      Could I stop you for a moment John? I hate to move you back again to the Mustang, but in terms of its eventual development, you worked very closely on the Mustang I and the Mustang II. Did you have input into the production Mustangs after that?

A:      Yes. It was when I was moved to the interior studio, I had charge of the first production Mustang as well as the other Ford products. So I was able to continue the feeling into the Mustang, and that's where the "vinyl" steel door came from. That was a part of that program.

Q:      The Mustang had a tremendous impact on the industry, as I recall.

A:      Yes, its introduction-it was the first vehicle that hit 500,000 units in its first year. And people were standing in line to buy it. Going back to that vehicle, a couple things, was the name ... Ford Division started a search and hired J. Walter Thompson [Ford advertising agency] and others to come up with a name for this new vehicle, Torino and Thor, etc. All of these came up, and one J. Walter Thompson man claims he picked the name, and he picked the name Mustang. What he means by that is that he took the name Mustang from Mustang I. It became part of the proposal, so basically he selected it.

Q:      There was quite a discussion and finally Mustang kept rising to the top.

A:      Yes, being a popular name.

Q:      ... a popular, all-American, wide open spaces kind of name.

A:      It fit with that. It fit that one where the gal out in Laramie throws a scarf around her neck, and the car goes to the wide open spaces. I guess it was the ad for the Jordan ....

Q:      "Somewhere west of Laramie ...."

A:      Somewhere west of Laramie , that was it, that was the famous line. That was the Jordan .

Q:      Let me go out of styling into merchandising and marketing a bit.

Iacocca's been called the father of the Mustang. How would you answer a statement like that?

A:      I would say it's absolutely true. I was in several meetings, early meetings, when, being in the interior studio, I'd go to the product planning meetings. Iacocca would call a meeting, start if off, Don Frey would take it over, and in that meeting was Harold Sperlich, if I remember right. And all the engineers, designers that were vehicle pro­duction people, were at these weekly meetings to find out how it was going, where it was going. The marketing people were in this-­engineering too. So, Iacocca was the one that, from my viewpoint, assigned the people, assigned the money from the Ford Division to budget the building of these early clay vehicles and to get it through. And I understand, from my viewpoint, that Mr. [Henry II] Ford was not all for it.

Q:      He seemed lukewarm, did he, at this point?

A:      Didn't want to go along with it, but Iacocca had built enough arma­ment and was convinced enough to do it, that he convinced Mr. Ford to go ahead with it. If you take it right to the top, Mr. Henry Ford II was the final arbiter, and he was the one that said, "Go." And the man that brought it to him to say "Go" or "No" was Iacocca. And if you go under­neath and finally get to the base of the triangle where people such as myself participated....

Q:      It was basically a fait accompli on Iacocca's part. He had such a good package that Henry, whether he was lukewarm or not, had to say yes.

A:      I'm sure he even had it researched with the dealers. And Mr. Iacocca was no slouch with the dealers. The dealers also carried a lot of weight. I don't know whether Mr. Ford made it at a finance meeting. But the comment was that, "Well, I don't go along with it, but if this is what you want...."

Q:      In terms of industry movement at this time, you'd done very well with the two-seated Thunderbird in the '50's. That had now been upgraded to a four seater by this time.

A:      Yes.

Q:      Chevrolet had done very well with the Corvette. And there was some

feeling within the styling group that if you go with something like the Mustang I and make it into a Corvette rival....

A:      Oh, absolutely.

Q:      But I think it was Iacocca that said no at this point, and said, we want something of broader appeal."

A:      They could have well approved both vehicles and saw the market to compete directly, but, I guess, Ford Division at that time was in the business of really making money. And you don't make money on a two seater when it just didn't pay for itself. So they figured they'd get enough marketing out of the two plus two.

Q:      And it turned out they were right.

A:      Sure were. On the Mustang, there was a vehicle called the Mustang II which I didn't deal with. In all our programs past and currently they tried to show that ideas evolved in an orderly basis from designers and from the company. So when the work of the production Mustang was fina­lized, Bordinat felt that it was necessary to show a logical development from the show car Mustang I to the production one. So he was going to take "cues" and panel parts from the production Mustang and work them into the show car, Mustang II. So he had several people working on it, and he asked me to do some sketches on it. I had some formal presen­tations made for him off on the side, for him, personally. He thought they were too much advanced, and he thought we should draw something that was a little closer to the production vehicle. So I went home that evening and did about three or four drawings on 18 x 24 white paper* and showed them to Bordinat the next morning. And he said, "Yes, that's it. Give them to me." And he took them to Don DeLaRossa who was in the stu­dio that I had vacated, and Mr. DeLaRossa's team did the vehicle that bridged the gap between Mustang I and the production Mustang, called it Mustang II.

Q:      John, before we leave the 'fifties, could I pull a couple of loose threads together? You mention Gil Spear and the retractable hardtop. Did he follow that through to final production?

* Editor's Note: Drawings are in the Ford Archives, Henry Ford Museum.

A:      No. There were two retractable hardtops. One was done in '55, and the other one was the early sketching he had done in 1948-1949. Gil Spear was a fluid designer, a great illustrator, and had conceived the concept that you could take the roof that we now call the hardtop and just have it slide back and set on top of the deck and look like the deck itself. And he drew up several renderings of these and built 3/8 inch scale models. And that's as far as that program went. And then the Design Center moved to the new building in '53, and George Walker was appointed Vice President in 1955. Engineering felt they could do their own design and had taken Gil Spear away from the Design Center and put in another place in body engineering. And there, Gil Spear further did some development of the retractable hardtop. But once having left the doors of the Design Center , he never really came back in, even though he physically came back in later years. So, unfortunately-he was a terri­fic designer.

Q:      Someone did pick up the second concept of the retractable hardtop.

A:      The second concept was picked up from the, I guess it was on the '55 or '56, I guess they called it the Skyliner. And that was developed mainly by engineering because it had so many working parts.

Q:      This time the top went into the deck.

A:      This time it was swallowed inside the deck.

Q:      It lasted about three years at the most. One other thread. You mentioned McNamara. And, as you very well know, the Falcon was pretty much his baby. It never seemed to go anywhere beyond the economy car. Was it a viable concept?

A:      Yes, its mission in life was to produce the low-cost vehicle and high return on the dollar. And it had to have minimum skin surfaces and cut [manufacturable] in judicious places. So it was a Spartan type of design. It was designed that way. McNamara, himself, as you put it, was a straight character.

Q:      Yes, straight arrow.

A:      Straight arrow but straight in his, I don't mean good in this sense,he was narrow in his concept of design. It was good last year, it's good this year. He was not one to reach out and go out for design's sake, but he could understand making two tools instead of one because volume dic­tated it. He could not understand taking those two tools and making one of them different. For instance, let's take the headlight door. It's the little bezel that goes over a headlight once you put the headlight on a fender. At least it was in circa '55, '56. You could put a standard headlight door on there that looked nice. And that would take so many... cover so many standard vehicles, and your volume was, say, 200,000 on it. Now if you sold another 200,000 units, you had to build another tool, let's say. Our designers would say, as long as you're going to build another tool, let's make it a little fancier and let it cover the upper scale of the volume. Whereas McNamara wanted one design and just build two tools because that would save on engineering. We wanted two unique designs because it cost no more, just engineering design time. So he was straight.

Q:      I'm afraid he carried that concept into the TBX....

A:      Oh God, yes. It's a good thing he didn't leave one wing off. I guess in some cases they did. But I'll tell you that the Falcon was a good car.

Q:      And I suspect the Fairlane was another one of his enthusiasms.

A:      It was sparse. Bring it in, narrow it up. It reminds you a little bit of the old Chrysler days. Bigger on the inside, smaller on the out­side.

So, now I'm up to the end of 1963. We've completed the Ford car interiors, the Ford LTD and the Thunderbird....

Q:      ...and you've completed the '64 Thunderbird.

A:      And the Mustang production interiors, and we developed the concept of the Mustang II showcar.

Q:      In this era, are there different design concepts evolving in terms of how you worked with the different component groups such as marketing and engineering?

A:      I would say yes. We were getting more formal. Of course, that happened in the late '50's, and from about '55 through '60 we got more formal. At least the formality was really to include production management, include body engineering and design. Sometimes marketing was brought in. The product planner's role was firmly established. He was given the task of bringing the thing home, so to speak, to the point of presentation. And in this period going forward on this, it got even more formal because tighter records were being kept, minutes were being more formally kept. And safety started to really come in at that time, and lots and lots of meetings were on it. Could I deviate for a moment on an anecdote, back to the '58 Lincoln ? In the era of presentation, a fellow by the name of Norm Krandall worked for Don Petersen [then a product planner]. And we had come to the point of showing the hood ornament for the 1958 Lincoln Premier, and now the Lincoln Continental. What would it be? Well, the Lincoln Continental had a four pointed star inside of a coffin shape.

The Lincoln Premier had a blazing star with many, many points going in all directions. So, how to go about it? Well, let's make a blend of it. So we worked with Norm Krandall on this, and we came up with a couple of designs, and finally we ended up with this one that Ben Mills thought was pretty good. And it was a combination of the two. And so here was this meeting in the showroom. Mr. [Ernest] Breech was there. Ben Mills [ Lincoln general manager] was there. People sat down in the chairs. There must have been about 20 people at this meeting in the showroom. In the showroom were some of our Lincoln and Lincoln Continental models, with the hood ornament on it. Or no, they didn't have the hood orna­ment. That's right, on a table covered with black cloth were some orna­ments showing the history of the Continental hood ornament and Lincoln hood ornament. And there was an easel with some 30 x 40 boards on there with presentation words. And there was a glass case, which was covered, and inside of the glass case was an ornament mounted on a walnut block. Norm Krandall stood up to make the presentation. "Mr. Breech, Mr. Mills, we're here today to formalize the final [design] on this and take you through it: hood ornaments have a value, hood ornaments should do this, they should not pierce people. We've met all these objectives--and this is the history of this--and we can produce this. And now we would like to show you the hood ornament." Off comes the black cloth, if I remember it right. Off comes the glass case and in Norman Krandall's hand [is the hood ornament]. He moves it over Mr. Mills who shows it, moves his hand over and shows it to Mr. Breech. Mr. Breech looked at this thing of glory; oh, yes--part of Norm's pitch..."We had engineering look at this, and the Design Center under John Najjar designed this." Mr. Breech looked at this thing [the hood ornament] and sat back and said, "I don't like it." And the room went dead. How dare he do this? Ben Mills looked at Mr. Breech, couldn't understand it. He picked it up and said, "Mr. Breech, if you'll come with me." And Ben was all for it. We were all for it. He walked over to the front end of this Lincoln , lifts up the ornament and sets it on there in a hole we had prepared and stood back and said, "There." And Mr. Breech said, "Now, I know I don't like it." It was just so crushing. And he said, "Well, what's the next item on the agenda?" That afternoon we had three Lincolns on which we had to do the side ornamentation. And I stood up. By this time the chairs were spun around, and we're looking at the three models. And I went through my pitch on the body side moldings. And Mr. Breech looked at me and said, "Well, John, I don't like that. Can you do this?" And he said, "You got a pencil?" And I said, "Yes." And I went to one of the guys and brought a pad over. And we sat down on the floor in front of these three models and a photograph of the Lincoln , and I was doing a little sketching with him. And he said, "That's what I want. I like that." So he was in the design mood that day. And after the meeting Ben came over. "Unfortunate that this happened. Should not lose your spirits, fellows. Now, go back and let's adjust this this way and do this way, and, when you have it done, I'll take it to him." So the next time Mr. Mills pre­sented it to Mr. Breech, and they showed it to [Henry II] Ford, per­sonally, as individuals. I don't know, maybe what bugged Mr. Breech was all this long-winded garbage [in the presentation]. Anyway, it was an anecdote about the man. It was a good feeling.

Now July, 1963, to '67, the way I set my chronology is by my playing these musical chairs. And I'll put these dates upon the date that I was moved into a studio or moved out of it. My move at this time was as design executive of the truck studio. And the truck studio was con­sidered to be an outpost. Nobody goes there. But in there was a man who had held control of it for many years. He had been one of the original designers to work with E.T. Gregorie when the Design Center was formed in 1936 [by E.B. Ford]. His name was Willys P. Wagner. Throughout my career, Bill had been a mentor of mine as was Edward Martin, as was John Walters and Bruno Kolt. And Bill was going to retire. He'd been dubbed, "Mr. Truck." And I had been moved in there two to three months before his retirement date in order that I could get a grasp of this very complex organization that dealt with the lowly F-100 trucks all the way up to the big transcontinental trucks and interchangeability like you wouldn't believe and the Econoline [van] type of thing. "Better get in there and start to learn the business, we can't let that slide," Bordinat said. "Get in there and learn it." So I went in there with Bill, and he was very nice, and I sat down and had many talks with him over the space of a week. And a week later, I had drawn my famous 18 x 24 Ford Motor truck ohart. And I had Bordinat down there so I could brief him on truck programs, and Wagner's comment is, "Oh, Joe Oros is in charge of the truck studio ahead of Bordinat." Joe was the one who was afraid of losing Wagner and wanted somebody in there right away. And rightly so, this was an important job. So I had Joe [come] in there. And I went through it, and I said, "Let me show you what I've done." At the finish which Wagner said, "Hell, I can leave now." You know, very bluntly.

Meaning I understood the "series" numbers and had picked up [on] things. That became the master sheet on my office wall. So before any meeting, people wanted to look at it.

Q:      Has that survived?

A:      No, that hasn't survived.

Q:      Could you reproduce it?

A:      Oh yes. I could reproduce that, it's in my brain.

Q:      You might do that sometime.

A:      Could try it as a task. Anyhow, that taught me another thing in that musical chair bit. And I learned or employed it subconsciously. Go into a place, study, read back records, assimilate as much as you can before you open your mouth. In my case, if I put it down on paper, whether I write or whether I draw it, I as able to, "get it." And to my surprise I found that other people were not clear on many things, and putting it up on the wall soon found out whether you were right and had to move things in your brain to get it right. In this truck period, which was very challenging, we were doing the 1966 trucks which were a facelift, which was a front-end change of the grille. And my tenure in the truck studio went from 1963 to 1967, and during that period we did the facelift on the '66 trucks, started the work, completed it in the 1967 all new light truck, did an all new 1968 Econoline where we moved the front wheels from aft of the front end to almost ahead of the front end. We did a new 1968, "W" series truck, all new, and began creating the early work on what is now known as the Louisville series. And that was when I developed what is currently known as a diamond grille theme. Of course, Ford did not have a look of its own in trucks. Doing the '66 facelift, vehicles were a good challenge. Incidentally, during this period--I was there from '63 to '67--they had a couple product planners, new people to the programs, come in. And their management were as con­cerned about their knowledge of trucks as my management was. I would end up in the mornings with a fellow by the name of John McLain who was one of these guys who had come out of the sales force, I believe. Knew little or nothing about engineering. After meeting with him a couple of times, I said, "John," [I could see he was uncomfortable in the engi­neering discussions] "why don't you come to the Design Center [at] 7:30 each morning, and I will meet you here and let me show you some of the things that I use as a guidebook in my design." What we had, and still have, is called a section book. The section book deals with cross sec­tions through important parts of the vehicle, which like an architect will draw an outline of your home, but your home is built by the section part. That's a cross section through how the door jamb will look through a door, how the roof fits in relationship to the vertical brick wall, how a window looks when it fits the cross section. So, a car and truck are built through these cross sections. So I took John McLain through all of these cross sections and filled him in on the glossary of terms. And John would come over on the morning of the meeting. Our meetings would usually start about 10 A.M. in the morning, 9:30 with body engineering, chassis engineering, product planning, and the Design Center to discuss a number of items on the agenda for that day, and we would now meet every week.

Q:      And this. process had solidifed by the mid-'60's?

A:      By the mid-'60's it had, really. This was a way of life.

Q:      How did the designers take that?

A:      They took it all right because they knew they couldn't get their designs through unless they had feasibility. And a lot of the gripes they would have before, that of some guy changing their designs on the board without them knowing about it. And so, by effecting these tighter controls, what was approved on that day by a committee that was a total working committee, would have the benefit of being costed, finely drawn, clay modeled so it looked right, it would show the management that we were very sure that, except for minor things at the end where engineers or somebody decided they couldn't mold it, stamp it or cast it, they'd have to ask for changes. But they couldn't change that, so that formal business helped. It also helped to speed the transition from approval of an item to getting into production. Up until the middle '50's, we could have something approved in clay, but it took a long time to [make it feasible and] transported [to engineering].

Q:      So it wasn't really a process of "Here's my design, run with it." Your input was from the beginning to the end.

A:      And it was interchangeable. Many times, the concept design started from pure concept of design. And many times, it had to be a shape put around the function. Or, indeed, reflect the function itself, be the function. And just ask the engineer, okay, this handle's got to turn this level. Could this handle be a half inch longer to get the leverage, could it be this? And don't put that screw on the front piece. So, in the truck studio, the designs there were very tight because they were closer to the bill. By closer to the bill, I mean the cost-to-profit picture. What profit could be made off of trucks. You will design a vehicle that will probably turn out a million copies in sales. I'd say, by the time its life cycle ended, it ran for four or five years, and it would have 5, 6 million copies of it on the road with minor changes. If they're ugly, they're not going to sell, but if they're good, they're really good, and Ford has had number one position [in truck sales] for years on end. So the real challenge for the truck designer, as far as I was concerned, it wasn't an outpost, it was on the leading edge of design.

Q:      And what had [early on] been regarded as Siberia , was, perhaps, a bit strong. In your opinion, they developed into a leading product for the company.

A:      Bill Wagner left and was very happy that he was leaving trucks in good hands. I took the studio over, and one thing I did, for one program we had in the development of a new Econoline, in the 1967 Ford truck, was a survey of all the magazines that I could find, tearing out pictures left and right, of newly-designed products. I took out pictures of motorcycles, toasters, washers, airplanes, women's clothes, houses, and I took one of the 8'x24' blackboards, and I stapled the [reproductions] on that wall. And I sat down with my designers. They were really excited because instead of having Bill with them--Bill was a production engineer, architect, designer, and a good guy, but he didn't challenge the designer. If a thing could be solved mechanically, he'd solve it mechanically. I started out with this board to pick out of there [a design theme] that is common in all these elements. And this is going back to my Maguire training. "Now, what is the basis of element, John?" And so I pulled out of these elements a new shape. The new shape coming up was the diamond. I called it a diamond, but it was a hexagon--six sided with the top and bottom being longer lines, the two side elements maintaining their normal dimensions. It meant that above a certain line everything tumbled in, and below a certain line everything tucked in. And this angular flowing shape was the look of the future. So I picked out several presentations of this and put them on the blackboard and then started to draw full-size sections--again the section book--of what the new Econoline could look like in the sections. The Econoline is as high as a seven foot door, that's a lot of area to cover. In the new truck, how its shape would generally look, and I showed that to Bordinat and to Oros, and they liked the concept--the thought of it. And from that we started to use those sections to develop the concept of the new Econoline and truck. So it was a challenge right along. One thing I remember was the proposal for the '68 Econoline. John McLain, myself--I am trying to think back to the product planner. Will Scott's name appeared in there someplace. He was a part of it. I think Don Petersen was on it too.

Anyhow, we had gotten this vehicle to the point of going into the approval committee for money for this revolutionary Econoline. "What, you're going to take the wheels from under the seat and shove 'em for­ward? Why?" "Packing improvement, things of this nature, safety for the driver. Get that engine up there." But that's the point. It's a real gamble. We had all these vehicles on the road, what is G.M. doing? There was a change in top management. Phil Caldwell came in here [trucks] as we were just ready to go up for a budget proposal.

Q:      Had he come up through the truck route?

A:      He'd come up through--I'm trying to think how he came back in. He was returned to the truck--he'd been in trucks, and then, I think, he'd come back to it. Anyhow, he came to work to see his programs. "Let's see your papers, fellas. And let's go in and get the papers," and then McLain would come back to our meeting. He said, "We gotta go. If we're going to get this for this year, we've gotta get the approval." And talk about vacillation...I didn't see Phil vacillate in any of these meeting, but I saw the repercussions. He had to cross every "t", dot every "i" and worried about this, worried about that. There was none of this gut feel of the car. I guess this permeates throughout Phil's career. Anyhow, it was approved and became a winner. It shook up the industry, and everybody started to copy it. On the '67 Ford truck, which was all new, we had a lot of product planning influence. Shape should be round, we've got to do this, and look at the Chevy, they have a visor top back of the roof. They had this, they had that. And there was a lot of input. And we showed the clay model to Iacocca, and I had a gut feeling about this program. We had taken this clay model up the showroom, Iacocca looked at it and said, "I wouldn't give you one cent for that [vehicle]. It's awful. Go back to the studio and do something else. You know we're running out of time. We've already screwed around two years in development on this thing." So, that's when I said to McLain, "We're already designing a new concept," and we did this blackboard drawing, cut it out in profile, mounted it up, put sandbags behind it so it wouldn't flip over, rolled real tires up to it. I have a photograph of it someplace. Bordinat was all for it. McLain was all for it. We rolled it into the showroom, pulled apart the curtain and said, "There's the clay model you didn't like. We have another version here. It's only a drawing. And Iacocca looked at the full-size drawing, he said, "Sheez, I'll take that one. How soon can you do it?" And McLain, to his credit, had gotten oral commitments out of people saying, "Yeah," and we had it committed that within two weeks we could have a full-sized clay. And we did it. We did the full-size clay, got it done, engineers gave their blessing, rolled it back in the showroom, [Iacocca] said, "That's it." You know, it's that type of thing from absolute zero to a winner, and he wondered what we did for two years developing it. We went through com­mittees. And you asked about these committees. In one case, we were keeping good records, but what we had lost, I guess I had lost it, was this powerful input of the look of the vehicle. I had the cross sections there, but the front ends and rear ends just didn't jell. But this ren­dering did, and it became the '67 Ford truck.

Q:      It was a real breakthrough in truck design.

A:      It was a good job, and it established the look of that truck.

Q:      Ford kept to this truck almost to this year.

A:      The Louisville series was Ford's dream of getting into the medium and heavy truck business in a big scale. There was money to be made in that because they had all the running gear, and all they had to do was drop on a new chassis and new shell. And so they started on this Louisville series. Well, the Louisville had to run from just above the medium truck--F-100 truck was the light truck, and it went up to F-250. From 250 on up to 500, was the medium truck. And then from that point on up, it got into the heavy trucks. Being this type of thing, Mack had just come out with their beautiful fiberglass front end, and International Harvester was out there. And we were sitting there with an "old hat" thing. And so I picked up this diamond theme again, wanting to run it through all the trucks, through the concept, logic, Ford family. I developed that theme onto the truck and was just getting it to the point--the front end was approved--and we were developing the other fen­ders, the other things, and I was transferred out of that studio. That was in June of '67.

Q:      What was the reason for the transfer?

A:      Oh, I know what it was. In the Design Center because of the--well, throughout Ford Motor Company--they had employee evaluation, and each year every employee was evaluated. And from the year '63 through '66 I'd been getting [mine] from Mr. Oros who gave me my performance review. You gotta know, I was formerly a chief, and I'd been living under this demo­tion. I knew I was a good second man, and I wanted to show, you know, keep on going, I was still driving. And Joe's evaluation of John Najjar was "John, you're a good guy, you're great on trucks, you're terrific, but..." I had a hell of time getting that "but" out of him..."you're not a real designer. You can't do anything else." And I said, "Joe, I want a transfer." I said, "I've done trucks, and I've done them well, and I just want a chance to prove I can do the same kind of things on cars or other stuff." And so Joe took it back to the meeting. Bordinat had a meeting of all his managers and all his head people to evaluate their employees. And they'd go through each guy. And Joe would have to sit up and say, "This is John Najjar, his performance is excellent," or, "out­standing." He did this and this and this, and as a truck designer, he's great." And that would go down. And Bordinat says, "Well, what's the but?" and Bordinat had his reservations, I'm sure, about me. "Well, John isn't happy, and he wants to... Well, we've got something else. We've got Philco-Ford. We've got to deal with them. Maybe we should move him here and move..." I think it was Boyer, no, it wasn't Boyer-­it was another guy (Keith Teter)--out of there and play musical chairs again. So I ended up as Design Executive in charge of Advanced Products and Graphics. And I worked in there from June '67 to February of '69.

Q:      Was this a promotion?

A:      No, lateral. All lateral. Musical chairs. And, in this studio, during this period we worked on Philco-Ford electronic and appliance pro­ducts. We worked with the Vinyl Division in designing vinyl. We had a small design, weaves and patterns, we had a small account from them. Also, designed the Ford Division show cars for 1968 and '69 which included the Saturn, the Torino , De Italia, Ford Fiero, Mach I, Torino Machete, and a series of them might have been there. I have color slides of them which I've gotta toss out.

Q:      Don't do that.

A:      I have photographs of some of them. If you want that kind of stuff, if I ever decide to put it together and just leave it in boxes. You know, and how I've got it organized I can show you. Now, in advanced products and graphics there is a title--Philco-Ford Electronic. Well, we were providing help to the design staff at Philco-Ford. And they wanted this help like they wanted a hole in the head--another hole in the head.

Q:      Ford had picked up this company and made it into a division and had kept the staff largely intact.

A:      That was right.

Q:      In Philadelphia ?

A:      In Philadelphia . Bordinat, being the Vice President of Design--was he the Vice President of Design of Ford Motor Company or was he Vice President of Design of Automotive Products? Well, Bordinat was eager and moving on the success of the Mustang and stuff. We could do this, sure enough. And so began my education in the Philco-Ford stuff. First working on it with Philco-Ford was to help them do their label. The com­bination of Philco-Ford and Blue on Gold. And that was done before I got there. I'd like to say Bill Boyer, but it was another fellow in there. [K. Teter] And so I had to follow that through and do some sketches of advanced products, just mail them on down. There was little or no actual physical work going on.

Q:      Were they still the consumer division at that time, the consumer electronics appliance division?

A:      Yes, they had refrigerators and dishwashers and things. The vinyl product consisted of developing weaves and pattern for the Ford vinyl people. Understand this, the vinyl people were competing with outside vinyl concerns such as Goodyear and other people that were into the vinyl fabrication--Firestone. And as a company, it could not show favoritism to its own vinyl staff. So what I mean by that is the Design Center went out and asked a vendor for some vinyl samples and brought them in . No way could the Design Center say, "We're going to show these to Mount Clemens [Ford plastics] and see if they can copy them. Mount Clemens at the same time was treated by the Design Center as an outside vendor. And when they came knocking at the front door, [Art] Querfeld would say to them, who headed interior design, "You guys just don't have the staff. Here, your stuff is no good. I can get it better from this guy," and, you know, Art knew his material, he knew it well. So the vinyl people came to us as industrial designers, as advanced products and graphics. They weren't industrial at that time, and said, "Would you be willing to do some designs for us?" And I said, Well, sure we'd be glad to. But we'll take a small part of the budget, and we'll play it by the book. We'll not show it to any interiors staff at all. We'll do it with your staff, and then you bring it into the front door." "Yeah, but you guys work here, can't you...?" "We can't accept it on that basis. You know, it wouldn't be fair." And that really worked that way. So we designed--I'm trying to think of the two fellows' names out at vinyl. I'll think of them in a moment (Peter Burnett and [Cal Jensen]). Both good people. One guy was the one in charge of their designs.

Q:      This was based in Mount Clemens ?

A:      Mount Clemens . One man out there, a good development engineer, was a WW II fighter pilot. We developed into good friends. I've got his name someplace (Beno Weber). And we'd go out there once a week with our sketches and our little wares, and we'd show them to the vinyl people, try to convince the vinyl people to invest money in a roll. And when they made this roll, which is a cylinder about 12 inches long and about 14 inches in diameter, they'd have to engrave on this roll the design. So it would cost them anywhere between $1,000 and $10,000 to design the roll plus rolling it out as the sample, and they had stringent budgets. And, like a vendor, they didn't have the wherewithal of the outside vendor. So, anyhow, we would design these things, and we would have an internal meeting to pick out the designs, they'd be brought in and shown. So that was our participation on that. And several of our weaves and patterns were innovative, and Mount Clemens got a lot of business from it. In fact, so much business that they got mad when part of their designs were given to the outside vendors to meet the volume. As you know, Ford vinyl was selling to Chrysler and other people, and had to keep those designs separate from that.

Q:      Interesting that the vinyl production grew out of the tire com­panies.

A:      I think it must have. But they were sort of advanced in the open weave vinyl which was the greatest boon for station wagons. I personally sweat when I sit on vinyl, but this breathable vinyl was fantastic. That established a relationship with the vinyl people that was to continue for many years.

The show car part of it consisted of taking our production models and using those. At this time, showcars were not done in the Design Center . We found that it was kind of expensive to go that route. Our advanced studios could do more truly advanced vehicles for production. But now our showcars became vehicles that were hottened up versions of the then production car to come out. So it would either be early produc­tion runs of the body, hottened up in certain places, and then show it at the same time as the production vehicle--show it a month before. So I picked up this task, and our vendors were located around the country in California , Arizona , Boston , Detroit , and so the guy that had that job had to come through. We'd do our renderings. Here's a production Ford, let's say. We're going to do a model off of this called the Fiero. Maybe not. This is the way it can look. This is the front end, this is the rear end. We estimate that for $26,000, if you give us the production vehicle, we can convert it and have it ready for show on this date. So we would go through each of the vehicles and set up a budget. Then came the task of meeting with the vendors, getting their bids on it, giving the bids out, and then my task was to follow [up and direct] each vendor. So I was on a route about once every two weeks--from about mid-Summer until Fall introduction--to all these places, and I learned a lot about car building from these alley garages. All night flights, can­celled flights, taking busses, renting cars. Helping a guy--a lot of them were just alley workers that had no concept of how to bend the grille to make it look right. They looked like they were pasted on. So I would go out and rent hydraulic jacks to bend things back in place. It required good experience. Then we'd bring 'em back and have them shipped into the Design Center . Bordinat would come down, the studio guys would come down, and they'd urinate on many of the designs. "John, that's awful. How'd you get this headlight?" So, we'd have to get a local guy, local fabricator guys that we knew and take them in there and do some correction. In 1969, February, 1969, Mr. [Semon "Bunky] Knudsen's [arrival] began to affect my career. He had come in....

Q:      Let's set the scene for that. As I recall, Iacocca, very ambitious at this point, in the late '60's, was angling for the top spot. The pre­sidency.

A:      That's correct. He probably deserved it.

Q:      Henry Ford II, even at this early point, was a little restive about giving it to him, and Knudsen had just, at this point, left General Motors because they had not made him president, I believe. Is that it?

A:      I think that was the story.

Q:      And Henry had a sudden impulse. Why don't we hire Bunky Knudsen?

A:      This was in '68, I think. Mr. Knudsen had a love for race cars.

And one man on his design staff at General Motors, was a young man by the name of Larry Shinoda. Very ambitious, very driving individual, had worked on Indianapolis race cars. Knew a lot, had a lot of moxie about what was going on, and had the complete trust of Mr. Knudsen. In fact, Larry had indicated that Mr. Knudsen had looked upon him as a son, as if he had an Oriental son. And Larry rode on this quite a bit and was moved into the design center as were a couple of other people from G.M. Larry Shinoda, Dave Wheeler, Bob--what was his last name? Anyhow, he's still there. We were sore. There was another individual and, by God, we're going to see another invasion from General Motors. We did it before, we'll do it again. And Bordinat, of course, had to accept this. Well, Larry turned out to be everything that people said he was.

Q:      What was his title, by the way?

A:      He came in as an executive stylist, like I was, design executive.

And Larry's base of operations happened to be where my office was. In fact, I had to give up half of my office for Larry. So Larry had come in, and when he came in, he took over half of my responsibilities, took over the showcars. And so I could now start to work on the other things with Philco and graphics. Larry'd come up to me and talk to me and say, "Geez, that bastard Bordinat. He wouldn't let me do this. You know, I had to go directly to Knudsen to get this idea [approved]. You know, do it." And he was really ticked off about having to work with Gene. He wanted to be directly responsible to Knudsen, and Gene wasn't about to let that happen. Larry trusted me, and I cooled him off many times. And I said, "Well, Larry, you know you're in a big organization. It's not like you--how you worked at G.M." One of the things that shows Larry's thinking: as a diversion, Larry got assigned a car, and, I think, he took one of either our show vehicles, operable show vehicles, or one of our hot new vehicles just introduced, and drove it back over to G.M. right into the G.M. garage. They were ticked off about it, that he got past the guards and everything, but it was this type of thing: "I'll show 'em." So he had that "gung ho" drive, and he knew that Knudsen was behind him. My relationship with him, he would say he was unhappy with his work. I said, "Well, you know Gene's got directors working for him, and if your position is going to grow or anything when you came over here...." This was the one negative thing I did in my lifetime, and it was a point in my career when I was a little sick and tired of being passed over for a directorship. I thought I had proven myself. And I says, "Larry, I'm ticked off too, but if you want to really get somewhere in this place, you should have Knudsen appoint you a director, and that's just one step below V.P., and then you'll have more control." I think he was working for [Don] DeLaRossa. Anyhow, next thing I know, Gene is upstairs, and, by this time, Industrial Design had begun to do more things.

Q:      When did the concept of Industrial Design come into being?

A:      It was formalized when Mr. Knudsen came in. It had to have been in 1969 that it formalized, with a director. I'll talk about what came up to it. We had started to go out, and Bordinat said, "Well, designers are again incestual. All they're doing is talking to other car designers, so we need to get out and do more products. John, if your going to do this, you've got to get with Philco, you've got to look throughout the company for business. Then we'll rotate designers up here." And that was a great idea. No question on it. "And you'll still have this." Bordinat came up, and I said, ""You know Larry is unhappy, and he's going to be a director. I had heard that was coming, and Gene says, "Yeah." I said, "Here I am up here, Gene, doing the same kind of damn thing, and I just want you to know I'm unhappy, and I'd like to be a director sometime.

I'm sure I'd do well, and I am doing it, you know." And, coincidentally, next thing I know, the following announcement came out: "Larry Shinoda, Director of..., John Najjar, Director of the newly-formed Industrial Design office." So that's how I got it. It wasn't by being modest. Gene figured, I guess, if they're going to appoint one of his guys, I'm going to appoint one of mine. I never did tell Gene that I was the one who put the bug in Larry's [ear], and he'll probably shoot me if he ever hears this. He'd have done the same damn thing.

Q:      What was Larry Shinoda the director of? What was his position?

A:      I don't know if that was advanced products and showcars, advanced body design, advanced products. What he was doing in there was leading production vehicle.

Q:      Shinoda was somewhat of a divisive influence within the design staff, was he not, because of his [presumed] arrogance and his closeness was Bunky Knudsen?

A:      Oh, sure. That's where I had to run not one thing. I stepped over and joined his group. By making the statement to him. He did, he tried to get teams around him, people that worked for him willingly. Worked night and day and promise them certain things and have to go fight with Gene and get them raises.

Q:      His chief antagonist was Bordinat?

A:      Yes. Absolutely.

Q:      Bordinat didn't care for him at all?

A:      He figured he was.... Anyone that went behind Bordinat's back and talked to Knudsen about something. I guess in some instances that he and Shinoda didn't agree on something--Shinoda could turn 180 degrees. And Larry said, "I hope some day to be the next Vice President of Design," which didn't directly endear him to Gene. Gene wasn't about to let com­petition come up, and he knew he was damn well better... period. During this period of 1969, when I first became Director of Industrial Design, to November of 1974, a period of five years, has been, to me, the most adventurous, the most mind-boggling, brain-growing, challenging experience I had in my lifetime. If I were to say, "What would you like to do over," I guess it would have been those five years.

Q:      Can you take us through some of those five years?

A:      You'll have to shut me up.

1969-1970: provided design support for automobile shows. What this consisted of was Ford Division or Lincoln-Mercury would hire their own-­their staff people--who would go out and hire design exhibits and other competitive exhibit companies to design their automobile shows. We reasoned, what the heck, we know the cars, let's go after some of that business, let's see if we can't get our order in, get our stipend. We're not going to build it, but we certainly can following the building of an automobile show exhibit piece better than some of the guys that are doing it. Well, of course, the guys in charge didn't agree with it, and I forget the two names of the guys, but they accepted the fact that we were coming on board with it. A light turned on because Iacocca said to the Ford Division that you'll work with John Najjar and his group for Bordinat. Of course, you had to go back, and Clint Mahlke is one guy. These guys picked the show girls, they picked the speeches, they picked the writers, they were major domos. They had to get the delivery trucks through, they had to get the production vehicle in, and all they had to get from the Design Center were the showcars. That was a hell of a job anyhow. Now they're going to come in and do this. I pride myself on understanding these guys' feelings and not stepping on them because I had the authority. I wasn't about to pull a Larry Shinoda, if I can say it that way. But to use them and to make a damn show and to meet their budget, and so in every meeting we had--before the meetings, I'd call each of these guys in. I forget the guy from Lincoln-Mercury (Ray...)--call them over and say, "This is our thought, this is what we're planning." We'd do it in writing, no sketches. I made up concepts for the automobile shows, what the theme would be.

About this time I had a gentleman working for me, a man by the name of Steve Sherer who, I think, through some connection, was related to the Ford family. His mother was the daughter of...I'm not sure. His father was either in the early automobiles, REO's or had an invention, a medical capsule, independently wealthy.

Q:      The Sherer Company?

A:      Now, I'm not sure how his father had gotten it, but they had three sons and a daughter. Two of his sons--one's a banker, or was a banker downtown--the other son was successful at something--a daughter had married. But Steve was a black sheep. He wanted to draw, and that guy was talented. He came from the Los Angeles Art Center , and he worked for me in one of my studios. He came into my studio and introduced himself. He was about six feet tall. I didn't know any of his background. I said, "Welcome aboard, and I hope to challenge your imagination, and would you do me one favor?" He said, "What's that?" I said, "Before you do anything or talk to me, where's your portfolio?" His jaw dropped. He said, "It's home." I said, "Well, you take the rest of the afternoon off, you go back home and get that portfolio lined up, and you bring it back in, and we'll have four hours tomorrow morning." I sat down with Steve Sherer, and he told me later that nobody had done that. Neither had the employment office. I wanted to know how he thought, I wanted to know his drawing because he had done a little bit of the same thing with Syd Mead, who turned out to be one of the top illustrators in the com­pany and went out on his own and did all the sights and scenes for one movie and then worked for Walt Disney on some of their future plans--real avant-garde type of guy. Anyhow, Steve had credit card cancelling things, TV sets that were mounted in eye glasses. I said, "You're just boggling my mind, Steve." Then Steve went on to other things and worked in "cars." When Larry Shinoda was appointed Director and also had showcars, Steve worked for him and did some of the showcars' sixty­second introductions. Steve's mind was not small--he hired a chauffeur, klieg lights, got the four-door phaeton convertible Lincoln downtown in front of the Art Institute with movies going on, glamour people getting in and did a sixty-second bit on that vehicle. Steve was no piker, had imagination. He could draw, and he's the type of guy a good, sharp guy like myself would like to have working for him so I could ride on his coattails. Needed a good tool. I'm trying to think in here whether Knudsen had left by '70.

Q:      You have him leaving....

A:      Yeah, '69, late '69. Somewhere in there he'd left, and there was a change in the power of Larry, and we're still playing musical chairs, so Steve came to me. We were working on automobile shows. We started to do holography. Make up proposals for holography, invite people in, make up bid proposals to the Ford Division, Lincoln Mercury Division. This is [the] way we show off the car. The wave of the future. We did a whole series of shows. We got the contract to work with people on a couple of them. One of the shows just went so far overboard, and, I think, that was one of Knudsen's ones where we had... no, that wasn't it. The Knudsen show was where Knudsen was making a presentation to the Board of Directors of our new cars, and Steve Sherer ran it for Larry Shinoda. Steve rehearsed for three days and three nights on how to get these vehicles onto the showroom turntable. Guys wearing white gloves were pushing cars and did a great job. Anyhow, one last thing, the budget was starting to be overrun. Knudsen was spending money. I think about this time Mr. Iacocca started to build a story about how Mr. Knudsen did not have control of expenditures. This was a part of it. Anyhow, somewhere along that line, for one reason or another, Steve was transferred to me, and I capitalized on his coming, and I told him so when he came. I said, "I just want you to know that the only limit to your ability is going to be yourself, because I still am your boss, and I don't want any end runs, no Shinoda-isms, and I will back you to the hilt, and you'll get the best I have to offer, and I expect the same from you."

Q:      Shinoda -ism had become a cliche by this time?

A:      Well, between Steve Sherer and I. So we worked on the 1970 Philco Ford product show, which was shown in Hawaii . That was a big project.

Q:      What year was that...1970?

A:      1970. Wayne Doran appeared on the scene, and we worked on the 1971 Fairlane Land Development projects.

Q:      Doran had just assumed that, had he not, about that time?

A:      Yes, late '70, I think. There was a Greenbrier [N.C.] meeting, and Mr. Ford introduced Wayne as being in charge of the new Ford Land Company. The first thing of that nature I'd ever been to at all. That was great.

Q:      The Greenbrier?

A:      Greenbrier. Unaccustomed as I'd been to that kind of luxury. And that's where Jack Passenau, who was in the Ford racing business, was able to have his automobile support people fly in their company jets and fly him in and out of Greenbrier which didn't set well with the Ford family. You can see all this stuff going on. Anyhow, Bordinat said, "What about that?" And I said, "Yeah, it sounds like there might be something, you know. Let's compose a letter to Wayne Doran." "Better still, why don't I pick up the phone and call him," Bordinat says. So, we picked up the phone, or Bordinat picked up the phone, and called Wayne and said, "We'd like to offer you some help." And Wayne said, "Okay." Wayne 's not one to turn down an offer of help from somebody else' budget. So he came over, and Wayne chatted with us for awhile over coffee. And then Wayne and I sat down, and, by this time, I really knew no doubts, I started to feel my oats. I was sailing. I had Bordinat's backing, and he said, "John, go get it." So I talked to Wayne , and Wayne said, "Well, this is what we plan to do." And I said, "Well, what do you have?" Well, the company had contracted with a famous architect out on the Coast who had done a book about an inch and a half thick, [William L. Pereira Associates] and it told about what Ford should do in this land to be developed called Fairlane. And this would take two hours in itself. I'll just gloss over it right now, but that project alone with Wayne Doran ended up with us taking over everything that Wayne was going to do, building a scale model of the whole Fairlane property, the 2,760 acres of Ford land. And pinpointing what is going to [be done] on that land in the long range, showing it to Mr. Ford, being the area where we put together, and Steve Sherer sure did this, a hundred eighty degree movie screen in which Steve and a couple of my other guys that I had. assigned to him, [created].

Remember, I had a budget, and I was holding my left testicle on the fact that Bordinat wasn't going to cut me off. And I said, "Steve, go." "Well, John, I need some projectors." I said, "Just get the things, and I'll...." And Tom Burns, our administrative man, said, "What in the hell are you spending this money for? Those cameras, those photographers, you can't bring them inside the Design Center ." I said, "I'll come in through the side door." And I tried not to put my foot down, but I was getting it. I got a side door entrance to that area. Tom wanted the projectors to be under the control of Design Center photography. And I says, "No way. We're going to be off on our own." And Bordinat backed me. I made a short budget presentation to Ed Lundy and Wayne Doran, showing the Design Center costs.

Q:      Lundy at this time was assisting Henry Ford II and Wayne Doran in the Ford Land Company?

A:      Yes. That is right. Mr. Lundy was in charge of it. Wayne Doran answered to Lundy. I said, "Any big company making land development, and Wayne knows this, has up front a million dollar showcase. A place that they bring their customers to, to show 'em what they're going to do. They don't sit in front of an office." And here I am saying this to Ed Lundy. And I give credit to the man. He didn't consider me a smart ass so and so. And he said, "Well, what's the budget?"

Q:      V.P. of Finance?

A:      Finance, yes. I said, "We would like to have, and Wayne has looked these figures over and said we're high. And he's not asking for it, we are--the Design Center . We think we can do this kind of job for you, Mr. Lundy. We will provide design support, we will provide early sketches in order that you may take, to Mr. Ford and the Board of Directors, plans without revealing them to plant engineering or architectural firms. We can do that here. And Wayne is knowledgeable, and...." "How much do you want?" And, I think, I had a "million-two" down. And he says, "You've got it." And, boy, from that time on, we had our projectors.

And so, Steve came up with this concept of a 180 degree screen with multiple projectors, with a programmed computer. And the administrative guy: "You want to buy a computer?" I said, "Yes, I need it." So, I didn't get it [the computer] the first time. We had to run the thing by hand. So our first presentation, I had to do it with Steve. Steve said, "I want to use Aaron Copeland's music to it." I says, "You want to use who's music?" He says, "Well, listen to this, John." And I heard the blaring sounds and things, and I says, "Yeah." And he says, "Now can you visualize this in a forest where it's undeveloped and things coming up to the thing?"

Q:      "Appalachian Spring," maybe?

A:      And I said, "Yeah, I'm beginning to get it." And I says, "Go." And he says, "Well, I need this and this." I says, "You've got it." "And I need this out of the shop." And I says, "Well, I'll try to get it into the shop," because our shop couldn't build display material. It had to build automotive stuff because of the union law in the wings waiting to get in. So, I got things under the name of a car cross section. And then we would assemble them up there at night. But I was smart. I got a union electrician to do the wiring. I got him on our side anyhow. So, came the day, and we showed it to Gene. And I said, "Gene, you're the first one." Well, Steve Sherer, bless his soul....

Q:      This was the presentation of the Ford Land Development?

A:      Correct. What we wanted to do was to write a story, a sales book, for Wayne to bring in potential clients that would rent our property, Ford Motor Company, as to what we were going to do in Fairlane. He wanted something to be able to show the Board of Directors to have them understand what the [concept] is.

And so we had conceived this thought of a movie presentation. Wayne agreed to a movie presentation, slide presentation, as well as the models. He had no idea what was going to happen. What a surprise! Steve and his guys went out, and they took photographs from a tripod, a special tripod that Steve had conceived, where you could take one shot, second shot, third shot, fourth shot, and swing--"panorama" the picture.

Add to this, program music, and you can understand we had to go out and hire people that could record the music, synchronize it to the taping and put on the screens. We had to build the display, we had to build the screen, and we built the thing to hold the projectors. We showed this to Gene, and the music came on. It said, "This is Fairlane," or "This is the land," la to to to ta..."It is believed to be the largest indivi­dually held land of 2,360 acres. The project, blah, blah, blah. It is situated in the greater metropolitan area of Detroit , a population of 5 million, bustling activity. Located in the heart of Dearborn , which is managed by alert city management." And we showed on the screen scenes of Fairlane, of Dearborn , nearby bustling Metro Airport and a 727 would take off across the screen.

Q:      180 degrees?

A:      And, boy, these are the things. And meantime, I had my Industrial Design studio starting to work on drawings of street lamps, and street furniture and things of this nature. It came all together. And Bordinat said, "Let's get Wayne over here." And so we got Wayne over here. We showed [it] to Wayne in the afternoon, and he said, "I want my wife to see this." And she came over. I then called my wife. Steve Sherer didn't have a girlfriend at that time ... some of the guys in the studio... and we sat there and ran it in the evening, and showed the American flag flying at the end of it. They went like this [applause], and Mrs. Doran--tears were running down her eyes. You know... it was there...it did it, and this was behind the scenes. So, Wayne immediately started to open up the door for visitors and clients. And our security person said, "You can't bring in the Chamber, of Commerce." He [Wayne Doran] was to sell the Chamber of Commerce, sell the Board of Directors. Board of Directors, no problem. "You can't bring in outside people." And I said, "Gene, I don't know what to do. I can't lift this equipment up and take it out." Gene said, "No, they'll come in through the showroom entrance. We'll put on a private guard at that time. They'll come up the showroom staircase. We'll have our display staff around there as they come up the showroom staircase, and we'll lead them through this back door." And security was only doing their job. Wayne Doran brought over the Chamber of Commerce. Now the mayor was there. And everything. And based upon that....

Q:      [Orville] Hubbard was still in office?

A:      Hubbard was still in office and all his entourage, W. Martin and John Nagy, developer, and all these guys sat there. And they were dumb­founded. Here was Ford Motor Company, and they were going to do this. And they were inviting them in, first of all, to get their feeling of it and their comments. And they were all 100% for it. They walked through the models, made presentations, and showed them, invited their criticism. And the mayor was just in his glory. Then Wayne set up a plan with the mayor to fly him and a couple of his top people around the country to show them different developments by Taubman, by Columbia, up in Washington, not Washington ... maybe it was. No, Washington , D.C. area. Down into Florida , into Texas , and we would take these trips about once every week and a half. I say "we" because Wayne went to Gene and said, "Either you come along with me or appoint somebody." Gene said, "You're it, John." So, we'd get on [a] Ford Motor Company private jet with the blessing of Mr. Lundy who was financing the thing, and we would fly to California .

I remember the mayor on one take off. He was heavy, and the aircraft seated eleven. It was a Grumman Gulf Stream II. And it had this sofa that ran along the side of the fuselage. And he took the sofa area and took up two seats. We'd be strapped in. And he took Maureen Keane on a couple of these trips with us, and she was very attentive to him. And there was no hanky panky. On takeoff on one of these flights, I remember him clearly. We got to discussing stuff, and had this exten­sion on the seat belt so it'd get around his girth. And I was sitting next to him, wishing I was at the front end of the airplane. And he was propounding about Dearborn and talking about the ethnic area in Dearborn , referring to Arabs, and how that had to come up. And he got into one part of the conversation, and I says, "Careful, Mayor, I'm a camel jockey too." And he looked at me, and he said, "John, if they were all like you, there'd be no problem." It just rolled off of one shoulder and another. You never realize ... just bang-o, he put me in my place and recognized me for what I was. I've never forgotten that. Of course, Leo Ogozali, who was Director of Air Transportation at that time, had occa­sion to go out to the Coast, because in that period we were starting to do the 727 aircraft for the Ford Motor Company. When we took off, Leo Ogozali was on the other side me. As we took off he went, like (making the sign of the cross), and I says, "What are you doing, Leo?" And he says, "I always do that when one of my pilots are up there on takeoff." And here was a guy who was in SAC, flew the bombers, strategic bombers, and refueling. things. And he had come to Ford as a 727 specialist, had taken over from R. Hixon who had retired.

So those hops around the country and being met by the Taubman group and being escorted through their development. And Wayne showing that this is the type of thing Fairlane would be, and showing him the level, the Portman buildings and that type of thing. So that was an experience for me as an ongoing part of it. That was just one activity. And, of course, I'd come back and report to Gene, and I'd report to our staff as to what we were doing.

Q:      You were sort of on loan, then, for a period of time?

A:      Yes, special assignment.

Q:      Henry Ford II was pretty much the spark plug behind that Fairlane project, was he not?

A:      Yes, well, the taxes on the property were behind it, and Mr. Lundy, being the finance man, was alert and I'm sure told Mr. Ford, in effect, that this instead of [being] a liability, this is what paid most of the taxes, let's have it produce now. And, of course, Mr. Ford was ever mindful of it being Ford property and wanted to be sure it was up at a level. And he paid us many visits. And, in fact, Mrs. Henry Ford II, at that time, led the group of the Board of Directors' wives through. And, at one point in my presentation to her, and I have photographs of her and the group coming through, she said, "Mr. Najjar, why are we doing this?" And I said, "Well, I believe, it's to make money." "But why do we need the money?" And I said, "Well, I don't know, but we're doing this to, etc." Oh, and most of the Board of Directors wives were just as gra­cious as each could be, and accepted and listened to me as I made my pitch at each display table. And they allowed us to show what Industrial Design was also doing beside this project. So they were exciting.

Q:      If I may interrupt you at this point, was this a new concept in automotive companies having a separate industrial design section or department?

A:      I would say yes, as being a direct part of the automotive function. General Motors long had had its own appliance section. And, I think, they were more separated from the automotive design, the industrial design portion was more separated from the automotive design than we were. It was Frigidaire, mainly, and they also had their locomotives, and they had buses. And they all came under Harley Earl's domain though. Absolutely.

Q:      Oh, really?

A:      Absolutely, and I never had a handle on how directly they were a part of it. I knew we were "family" and would call downstairs and say I needed ten modelers for two days and have to pay the studio for using them. When musical chairs came on, I had to rotate some of my guys around. I began to say to Gene, "Look, Gene, you move a guy out of here that's trained in this kind of stuff and put him down in cars, they're going to trade a designer who has no industrial experience." And Gene would remind me, "John, that's the whole purpose." And it was hard to do. I "cried" quite a bit.

Q:      I remember also that Chrysler right about this time had Airtemp as well. Were there any other similarities...?

A:      I don't know if Chrysler studios did that though. I don't think they did. I don't think that was a part of their design. I think that was independent.

Q:      So, in effect, you had a unique situation here, in house...?

A:      ...design. For Ford certainly. Absolutely, it was. And it was to the designer. All the schools wanted to send designers to G.M. because that was the mecca according to them. Why should I come to Ford? Well, because at Ford we ensure you don't go into a spot and stay there. We move you into industrial. You have industrial design. Yes, you'll be working on TV sets, you'll be working on transportation, people movers, you'll be working on high-rise buildings, you'll be working on auto­mobiles, race cars. Bingo! We got some of the best guys. That's why Steve Sherer came in early on. During that period, in addition to the Philco-Ford product show in Hawaii and supporting Philco products, we worked on the Fairlane Land Development, and we had the opportunity of fully supporting Mr. Ford in the Renaissance Detroit project. We did the ACT, the people movers system, working with Foster Weldon in the develop­ment of that vehicle, the sale of it to the Ford Motor Company.

Q:      Still going strong.*

* Editor's Note: The Fairlane development people mover was, by mid-1987, to be dismantled. The Detroit people mover, on a larger scale, began operation in August, 1987.

A:      Still going. They did a great job. The fellow, an engineer, John Logan, was the mainstay of that thing. We participated in the exhibit and design for the "Transpo '72" in Washington , D.C. [in which] all the major companies participated. Did the exhibit design for the Spokane World's Fair, Expo '74, that first one. Did the Ford Guest Center building and exhibit design. We did the Henry Ford Museum updating within the museum. All those focal points, all the railings, all the....

Q:      Did you work with Jim Quinlan on that?

A:      Yeah, he worked for me. He was my project manager. I made sure that he had the time and the people.

Q:      Your department did a good job on that.

A:      Yeah, he did a good job. I had many fights with him and had a good thing going with him. But I told Jim to do it, and he did it. In the meantime, I had other people. We did the restaurant.

Q:      Just as a matter of parochial interest, how did that come about? Was William Clay Ford involved in that.

A:      No.

Q:      In having it done, the impetus for the....

A:      I'm trying to go back. What had happened was.... Okay, here's the way it started. Ford Motor Company decided that it was going to have a Guest Center across the street, on its property, to launch off this thing. They didn't have the Rotunda anymore. And so, as I mentioned at lunch today, they talked about plant engineering, which is an arm of Ford Motor, hiring architects to come in and design the thing. So it's a long way telling the story. They hired a fellow by the name of Gunnar Burkharts, who was known for good design and "way out" design. He brought in his concept. We were chomping at the bit, and they wanted a place to show it. They decided to show it at the Ford Design Center because Mr. Ford would be over here, and Mr. Iacocca would be over here.

So, Gunnar Burkharts and his staff brought up their models, and we moved our projectors out and cleared out a place for them and stayed off to one side. And they showed their concept to Mr. Henry Ford II. Before the meeting, Mr. Ford wanted to know what Henry Ford Museum would think of it, what their comments were. [Frank] Caddy, [Robert G.] Wheeler, and [Dr. Donald A.] Shelley were invited over. And we stood in the background, and Gunnar Burkharts and plant engineering took them through the proposal. And they were very polite. They were having their own problems because Mr. Ford or somebody else had recommended they wanted activity in Greenfield Village , something going on. And Dr. Shelley's concept of activity was to have chess players. And this was relayed to me by George Haviland who was right-hand man to Bill Ford. Oh geez, boy, that Village sure needs help. "Someday I'd like to work on the project," I said to George Haviland. Anyhow, after they left, evidently Shelley reported back to Bill Ford and Mr. Ford that it was awful. The presen­tation on that building was....

Q:      By the outside firm?

A:      By the outside firm. So, Mr. Ford came over and Mr. Iacocca, and the outside firm and plant engineering made the presentation. We stayed out of it. We weren't in the room. Bordinat was there. But, I was out­side, standing, to make sure they got up and down the steps right. Half hour presentation, doorway opens, stairway downstairs to the showroom... going down the steps. Bordinat had a show to put on for Iacocca and Ford. Henry Ford is going down the steps first, Iacocca is trailing him, Bordinat is trailing him. The door shuts, Mr. Ford turns to Iacocca and, in an off-stage voice, says to him, "Lee, why don't you have Gene and his boys take a look at it," and Lee said, "Yes, sir." Gene looked back at me with that smile of "We've got it!" Before Gene got back upstairs, I was doodling, and he came back up and sat down, and I said, "Great news, great news." I said, "Boy, I hope that man's stuff is still in the showroom, and he's packing up to go." He says, "Well, we'll fly." And I Says, "How are we going to work it?" He says, "You don't mind what they say, you get started on the design job."

Q:      Now you're talking about the Guest Center ?

A:      The Guest Center . Two architectural people, Nordstrom & Samson, Inc. had built the Safety Center , had designed the Safety Center across the street with a lovely serpentine wall. I envisioned that it should echo that kind of concept, and, after all, it was Ford Motor Company on one side the road of that wall, and it was largely Ford's and America's past on the other side. And it shouldn't have looked like a World's Fair concept which Gunnar Burkharts had proposed. Which is a stainless steel wavy surface with holes in the stainless steel and flags and pennants flying over it heralding the future is here. I said, "Our best bet, and really from the heart, it should be something that will serve the needs of the future of Fairlane." At that time, the people mover was a viable concept. I can even envision the people mover would come down Southfield over part of Greenfield Village , cut down Village Road , and make a turn right around the Guest Center unloading people and then back up to Fairlane. Therefore, our main thrust would be the second floor, like the Safety Building . I made a rough sketch of it. Steve Sherer was with me, and I called up Wayne Doran, and I said, " Wayne , I need some help." He says, "What's that?" I says, "I can't go to Plant Engineering for feasibility. I can't go to any contractor outside and ask them for help because they may be included for the bid later on, and this might scotch them. So, would you come over and look at something? So Wayne came over, and I sand, "What are some of the rules of thumb?" "Well, what's the concept?" So I showed him, and he says, "Well, John, if you put pillars, thirty or forty feet on the center, put the columns up this way, and you use this kind of thing and this kind of thing, it should net out." I said, "If I do more sketches, would you be willing to take a gander on a square footage cost?" "Sure, I'll help you any way I can, John."

So we went to work, designed the model, and as the layouts went on, Wayne came back, and he helped estimate. Came the day. In the meantime, plant engineering had gotten wind, somehow, that we were doing something, and they wanted to see ... Part of the pitch was where it was going to be. Whether it would be here or down at the end of Southfield or on the pro­perty that they had previously exchanged to the Museum on Southfield on the other side of Southfield , North, or whether it would be better served on other Ford property. We had decided that it could go no other place than right here, and if the test track had to be changed to make room for it, [it] should fit there. We wouldn't consider anything else. Plant engineering had gotten together a pitch [as to] why this area was no good--parking and everything else--and were presenting it and were talking to the architect about other proposals. They had been told. Ted Mecke had charge of this program, incidentally. Ted knew: in fact, he had called me to come over to his office and chat with him. He says, "Now, I know you're doing this. I want to know what's going on." I said, "We will keep you apprised." So I went back and told Bordinat, and Bordinat says okay. We finished this model. Wayne had given me some ideas. I put together a booklet--made several copies of them--just for Mecke and Mr. Ford, if he wanted to show it to him. In there I had put down the objective, the location why, what I thought the building would cost. I think it came out to a million and a half dollars. It ended up at a million seventy-five, with luck--and how it should look, and this is the way it would be. We had little models going to it. I called Ted up, he came over [and] looked at it. I told him that that area opposite to the entrance to the Henry Ford Museum should never be considered as a parking place which engineering was putting in because they want the parking. I had the parking place underneath the model, and on top of it I had put a green sward with the continuation of a circle drive. In the center of that area, I put an American flag going up and a sundial of circular columns cut off. And at the top of each of these cut-off columns was a plaque, all done in little scale with description. Henry Ford's bust, Henry Ford II, Edsel Ford, and any other people to come and that this area should be Ford, looking at the past, and this was its future. The circle around here would be an entry.

Ted says, "Let's get Mr. Ford over here." Mr. Ford came over with Wayne Doran, and Plant Engineering came over, a man named Tom Dunlop, but if looks could kill! Oh God. I don't blame the man, but my point to his next lieutenant was, "Go to your boss, tell him you want to design it. You don't want to farm it out to anybody. Stand up and do it." "No, it's got to be farmed. That's our procedure, to farm it out." I said, "Well, give him better direction." So Mr. Ford came over and said, "That's it." Incidentally, he turned to Ted and said, "Whoever Plant Engineering has on it, that Gunnar Burkharts, offer him the job if he wants it. If he builds it like this, fine, give him the job."

Well, I had made a pitch to Bordinat before. I said, "Gene, you accused me one time of not having brass balls. It was when Wayne Doran was talking about the lobby of the Renaissance Center , and I said to Wayne I was doubtful whether our staff could handle that size of thing." He says, "You don't ever turn down a contract, you take it. I will tell you." So when this thing came up, I said, "Gene, I want to build this building. I can get Nordstrom and Sampson. I can have them answering to me. I can control a budget. I've proved it. I'm handling a million plus budget right here." "Well, John, there are times that are not right to propose." I don't know if Gene ever proposed it to Ted Mecke or not, whatever it was. And Mr. Ford made the comment, and, yes, Plant Engineering wanted the job, yes, they would built it like the model, and, yes, they would offer it to this guy. So they left.

Gene and I and Steve did a war dance around the model and said, "Oh, what a wonderful thing." As it turned out, the presentation up in Gunnar Burkhart's office up in Birmingham was made to Mecke to show him how they were going to build the building. I was not invited to any of these things.

Q:      This is the outside architect?

A:      Outside architect, to the development. Gene kept saying, "What's hap­pening, what's happening?" I talked to Plant Engineering, "Well, he's (the architect) making some changes, some little angle thing in here." I said, "I'd like to see it." He said, "You'll see it when Mr. Mecke sees it." So I picked up the phone, and I called Ted Mecke, and I said, "Mr. Mecke, would it be too bad if I saw it before you did?" "No, I'll arrange it." I went out there and looked at it and heard the pitch. They kept part of the building--part of the rudiments of it--and they were changing certain things. I said, "How come you dropped this?" "Well, this is it." I said, "Well, that doesn't look like the approved model."

So I went back, and I told Gene, and he said, "Well, pick up the God damn phone and call Mecke." I called Mecke. I said, "Mr. Mecke," and he said, "Call me Ted," and he said, "Bring your pictures over, John. Come over, let's sit down in the office." So I said, "Look, I've done enough to Plant Engineering, but when we get a car approved by Mr. Ford, it damn well comes out like that car or we tell him why. And whatever you see up in Birmingham , Bordinat and I recommend that you discuss it with Mr. Ford." "But what changes have been made? What did you see up there?" And I said, "Significantly, from the eye, the general view, and that's what Mr. Ford looked at, not necessarily the details and building, this is what's changed: glass panels have changed from this to this, and it looks like an invention in or a test of architectural skills in using guy wires to hold up steel walls. There've been deviations in this." And he said, "Well, what else?" I said, "They've got a part of the building outside now." And I said, "I hate to use and lose floor space that way but....

I was invited to the meeting. I kept by mouth shut during the whole meeting, and Ted looked at the thing. He said, "Yeah, that inside outside is pretty good and the way you slashed the interior at a diagonal rather than the original rectangle looked pretty good. He was letting me know that he was not about to change it. And he said, "But that struc­ture, that wall structure is God-awful. What happened to the keeping of the serpentine wall behind that? I want that changed before you show that to Mr. Ford." And so they changed it.

And as it turned out, Mr. Ford walked into that finished building and took one look at--the building was supposed to incorporate an execu­tive room where guests could be brought in from all over the world and have a meeting and have a luncheon up there, catered, of course. And he looked at that sterile steel wall and the awful look of it, and he said, "I don't like this. Redo it." And I don't know if Will Scott was with Mecke on this or not. One of the two called me and said, "John, we're in trouble." I said, "What do you mean we're in trouble? What are you talking about?" He says, "Well, we've got to do the interior over." And I said, "Well, do I have to work with Plant Engineering?" "No, you don't have to if you don't want to." I says, "Well, if they'll do what we draw, we'll take a crack at it. It's got to be done in a certain time." And I said, "We'll do it. We'll do it, believe me." And so we went over there, and Jimmy Quinlan worked for me on the project. We handled the whole thing. And I forget now who was in charge of the Guest Center . We talked it over with him, and we said, "What do you need? What would you like? What are the level of people that come in here? How would you feel comfortable?" We didn't just lay it on him as a demand, we asked. And so we had a little model built of it. And I had a concept of how we could bring down the ceiling, how we could make it soar out to the sky. And it worked. And we got Philco-Ford to redesign some products to fit in that room. It had a bar in it. It had all the stuff.

Before I got to that point, the day of the presentation came. So Bordinat hears the stuff for the change of the room. And Mr. Ford had requested Bordinat and Mecke [to bring the proposal]. And he (Bordinat) said, "Well, I'm not going to take it over there. You take it." And I said, "All right." So I went over there. Mr. Mecke was in the showroom, and Mr. Ford was there. I didn't take anybody with me. I had the little model. I had swatches of material. Mr. Mecke said, "Bordinat and his people have looked at this, Mr. Ford and John will make a presentation." "John, Mr. Ford." And I said, "What we propose is this. Propose to take the ceiling and let it soar up this way, so you get a feeling.... Drapery to the ceiling ... Paneling on the wall this way, entrance mirror, this

type of material for this." And I was doing it at a good pace. Not ner­vous, for a change. Mr. Ford was great, Mecke was great. And Mr. Ford looked down and says, "It looks pretty nice, can it be done, Ted?" And Ted said, "Yeah, we can find the money for it, it can be done." And then Mr. Ford said, "John, I don't like this material." And he started riffling through the book. We also had the chairs we were going to put in. And I looked at him, and I said, "Mr. Ford, there are three things. [Three things Mr. Ford had done to our designs, and I recounted them to him.] You sold the 747, you rejected our 'world' sculpture, and you don't like the wallpaper." And I said, "This isn't my day." And he looked at me, he was stunned, and, I guess, he didn't know, and a smile broke out on his face. He put his arm around me (and I'll never forget that part), and he said, "John, any day you come in, Ford is ahead." I could have cried.

I said, "Mr. Ford, I will pick out a couple more wall paper samples now that I know what you don't like, and I will give them to Mr. Mecke, and he can show them to you." He said, "Fine, John, thanks" and went out. Mecke was happy. You know, he was on the wire. And he says, "John, okay." So Plant Engineering picked it up and did the drawings to our drawings and built it.

Q:      And it worked out beautifully.

A:      It worked out just great.

Q:      That's a fabulous edifice over there. It's so sad to see it not being used.

A:      Now it's an office of some kind, a training center.

I'd like to recount before the tape ends, something that happened when Knudsen left. Knudsen left, and all the support for showcars, industrial design, everything were up in the air. Mr. Ford wanted to see what Knudsen was doing because Iacocca made an issue of it.

Q:      About '69?

A:      Yes, it was the last of '69. So Bordinat said, "One of the things Mr. Ford wants to look at is the Industrial Design area, and I want you, John, to make the presentation to him." He says, "No way am I going to stand there and have Mr. Ford hit me." So I knew I was going to be the guinea pig. Concurrent to this, I had given up smoking about two years before this time, my beautiful lovely cigars. Mr. Ford was late. He came in through our doors. I had worked my fanny off designing the industrial design area, and the second floor Design Center is a thing of beauty. We had designed it, scrounged out a budget. Mr. Ford came through the two swinging doors and said, "Gene, I've only got fifteen minutes. Take me through this." And Gene said, "I'd like to have John do this. He knows it first hand, Mr. Ford." And I went back and said, "Mr. Ford, you, of course, know the wide screen area. You know what we've done here with Wayne Doran and Mr. Lundy fixing this up. You know of our support on these models. What you aren't aware of is our complete support on the graphics for automotive design. In addition, our purpose up here under Mr. Bordinat is to let automobile designers come up here and get recharged, get the challenge of new vistas, and go back down and get a new feeling. And that way we don't have to go hire other people of this nature. This is the work we're doing for Philco-Ford. This is the clock... and this is...." And I took him through the whole thing. "This is our stereo room, this is the kitchenware for the Fairlane development. And here is what we're doing with the People Mover. And what we're doing with the vinyl group." He left three quarters of an hour later, and he turned around to me and said, "Thank you, John," and he says to Gene, "Thank you, Gene, and this program continues," and walked out with Gene following him. As they waited for the elevator, Gene looked back at me and smiled. Later on, Gene was downstairs mentioning to some people and said, "There was that old pro up there talking to Mr. Ford and taking this walnut block and opening it and saying, 'Look Mr. Ford, there's a....’”

And later on Mr. Ford paid a couple of visits, and Lord Mountbatten was one of his guests. Every time he had an out-of-town guest, he'd come through, and I'd be given the assignment to be escort. One of the things we had created was a stereo wall; it was an idea I'd had where you hook up your stereo set, and then you had a divider wall that went from floor to ceiling and was made out of vinyl materials from our vinyl plant. And inside the divider wall were platin speakers which were flat speakers, not coned. We hooked up the stereo to this, and, evidently, Lord Mountbatten got tired in the walk. I had a lovely chair sitting next to, and he sat down there next to this stereo wall. And Mr. Ford flipped down, that was the one thing he knew how to run in our place, he flipped down this record player which had a tape deck on it from Philco-Ford. It was wall stereo equipment. He pressed the "on" button, and the volume was up high, and Mountbatten jumped about from the blast of noise. Mr. Ford said, "I'm sorry." It was just his idea of showing that these things are workable. And they jested about that and walked on out.

After Mr. Ford left, after that first review and approved our program, I went back in my office. And I said, "Dorothy Calpin," who was my secretary, "go down to Art Querfeld and get a cigar." She came back with a cigar. That was it. And Gene called me later; we went over to Dearborn then, and he had a drink.

Q:      That was a triumph of the Industrial Design Department.

A:      Yeah, that was a milestone.

Q:      So, the Industrial Design Department is nicely established.

A:      Yes, and it's growing. And, as I said, we had worked--I'm trying to say how our relationship with Henry Ford Museum went. So after that visit, we were asked to invite the museum people back to look at the new concept of the Guest Center across the street. And they came over, and they looked at it, and they said, "0h, this is so nice." Because now, by this time, I had built the front of the Henry Ford Museum , scale, and the entrance to the Village and showed how it nestled in here. And that Mr. Ford had said, "No, there won't be a parking place there." They were so happy about it. And as they left, Frank Caddy [President, The Edison Institute], was hoping that we could work together in the future. And George Haviland [aide to William C. Ford], was part of it. I said, "Well, if there is something we can help you with, let George know." So George came back to us and said, "They're talking about doing the inside of the Museum over again, and they've contracted a designer out in California . Would you like to do something for that?" So we made a couple of proposals, called them back and said we could do this for X number of dollars. And I said, "We'll go." They had already contracted with the guy in California to do a part of it. So that began our romance with them [the museum].

Q:      Since we have only a short time, do you want to develop that a little? How did that whole project work out?

A:      Well, before that started, Dr. Shelley and others knew that he had to be a better host to the guests as they came through the Museum, and they wanted to develop the restaurant. They also wanted to develop a sales center outside of the ticket entrance Greenfield Village . Shelley's early concept was a loggia like Mount Vernon . I didn't know what the word loggia meant. He kept referring to it, and I went to a dictionary after he left. It [the loggia] had two arms off the main entrance, curving and one was to be the restaurant, and one was to be the sales center. So I built a small model of that. Also discussed was the restaurant, and it was indicated that Plant Engineering was taking a look at it and wouldn't we? And so we developed it in the spirit of the buildings of the Museum. As time went on, we built the models of it, presented a Plant Engineering proposal of a glass-walled edifice--concrete, glass block--nestled in the corner of the Henry Ford Museum . We had proposed a "Red Lion Inn" which had complemented the structure, and Mr. William C. Ford and Dr. Shelley agreed, in effect, that the complementary one was better, and one arm of the loggia was to be built, not as a loggia, but as a separate building. So, based on that participation, and Dr. Shelley's and Caddy's feelings, especially Wheeler and Caddy, were the mainstay, that Design Center had empathy and understanding as to what they were trying to achieve in the Museum.

Based on that, they asked us to do an overview of how the interior

of the Museum could be rearranged or reworked. And so we said, yes, we'd look at it. We'd spent two or three weeks on coming up with a proposal for them. So Jim and I went back through there, James Quinlan and I, walked back through [the Museum] as guests. And we looked at it and looked at it. We understood there were several centers: an industrial center, a transportation center, and, when we came back, we said, "Let's build on that." What's lacking in the Museum is that you walk in it, and it looks like a garage. And if we had our way, we'd clear out 30 or 40% of the equipment in there and put it out in the backyard so people could get a better look. You can't look at a thousand reapers. It was clut­tered. So we came up with a concept of focal points, placed around the Museum, and, hopefully, each focal point would be able to be seen from one focal point to the other. Therefore, it [the focal point] must be on a raised dais and provide a comfortable place for people to sit. And we would look at color. We ran the gamut of covering up the hangar-like windows up above and how much money we could spend. We worked on an Avenue of Shops, talked about putting cobblestones down. That was thrown out because ladies' shoes could turn on it. The imagery of vinyl wood cobblestones on it was fake, so let's keep the floor in. And based on that, we had a task force of two people working constantly with Jimmy Quinlan, meeting weekly with the Museum people and going through each of their centers, their focal points, making sure that each curator was talked to. And that everybody had a chance to look at the retaining ropes, or the little guide rails. Jimmy Quinlan came up with the idea of putting carpet underneath the things to provide islands of vision. And he and I were on opposite ends on how the retaining ropes should work. His [idea] won out. He won out, he was right. And then he refurbished some of the cases that were kind of old, rather than build all new ones, display cases. And Jimmy himself is of such a nature ... He had worked with Henry Ford in doing offices, and [Philip] Caldwell and ,other people, and he knew how to treat people and get their respect. He couldn't have been a better guy or done a better job. And on that basis, they weeded out about 30% of the automobiles and rearranged things and were comple­tely happy. I was the one that insisted on all display legends having a type size [legible] for fifty year old eyes. "You should try to get your type so that fifty year old eyes could look at it without glasses." So, it was a very happy relationship.

Q:      It's worked out very well.

A:      Yes, we were delighted.

Q:      Well, that's very good. I think we're almost to the end of this tape for this session. I would like to leave us here in....

A:      The last part of '73 and would embark upon industrial design con­tinuing through '74 in which we did the Ford special aircraft 727, the Corvair, the Grummans, and we did a special Mustang II, display room over in the Ford division for Mr. Iacocca, and continue from there.

Q:      Fine. So if we can cover, in our next session, the continuation of the successful Industrial Design concept within the company.

A:      Then, my leaving it.

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