Gene Bordinat started his career as a student in the GM design school. After graduating he moved to the Advanced studio, later working in the Chevrolet studio, and Fisher Body during WWII. In 1947, he hired in at Ford Motor Company as Supervisor of Advanced Styling, moving through Ford, Lincoln-Mercury, and Mercury studios. In 1961, he was promoted to Vice President of Design, retiring from that position in 1980. In his oral history Bordinat discusses briefly his time at GM, first as a trainee and then working in various studios. The main focus of his discussions is on his time at Ford Motor Company. Bordinat served in a supervisory role his entire career at Ford, starting in 1947 in the Advanced Design Studio he moved around, working to build up and expand design at Ford Motor Company during the later 1940s and early 1950s. In 1951, he was promoted to Assistant Styling Department Manager and in 1955 he moved under Jack Reith in the Mercury division to become Head of Design. Later in the 1950s he worked on the 1956 Lincoln with Bill Schmidt and did preliminary administrative work building the Edsel styling team. His last 19 years were spent as Vice President of Design. Much of his oral history discusses the different designer personalities, particularly George Walker, and the politics involved in the upper levels of design at Ford.

Collection contains 1 .25" tape, 15 cassettes, 11 WAV files, 11 MP3 files, 2 diskettes, 1 loose transcript, 2 bound transcripts, 1 Word transcript and 2 PDF transcripts.

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Creator Name: Bordinat, Eugene (Gene), 1920-1987 in Digital Collections
Speech Services Records box 1
William Clay Ford Records box 7