Buehrig started his career at age 20 at Gotfredsen Body Plant as an apprentice working on body drafting and modeling. He worked at a variety of automotive companies and body builders, but his major work was done at Duesenberg from 1929-1933, Auburn from 1933-1936, and Ford Motor Company from 1949-1965. He retired early in 1965 and worked as an instructor at Art Center in Los Angeles until 1970, after which he did consulting work. In his oral history, Buehrig discusses his beginnings as a designer and how body styling and engineering evolved in the 1920s and 1930s. From his beginnings at Gotfredsen, he discusses his short time at Dietrich Body Co. and Packard before moving to the newly formed General Motors design department in 1928. In 1929, he moved to Stutz as the head of design and worked on bodies for LeMans race cars. He then moved on to Duesenberg as a body designer improving their custom bodies and the Model J. Buehrig discusses his move to Auburn, working on the Boattail Speedster and the Model 810/812. He discusses how the Duesenberg/Auburn/Cord corporation worked and his work with Fred and Augie Duesenberg. He next talks about the war period where he worked for several companies including Budd, Consolidated Aircraft. He was then hired by Raymond Lowey in the Studebaker studio and discusses the volatile nature of the company and the design department. In 1949, he was hired at Ford Motor Company and placed in charge of the Body Development Studio working on reworking and designing new station wagons. He then discusses his time in Lincoln-Mercury product planning, his work on the Mark II as the chief body engineer and his time working in research on plastics and traveling the U.S. performing various tests on plastic car components. He ends the oral history talking about his early retirement in 1965, his work teaching at Art Center focusing on plastics, and his consulting work, particularly with Franklin Mint.
Collection contains 1 .25" tape, 5 cassettes, 16 compact discs, 5 WAV files, 5 MP3 files, 1 diskette, 1 loose transcript, 1 bound transcript, 1 Word transcript, a DVD-R, and 1 PDF transcript. Uploaded July 22, 2021 and December 4, 2024.
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Copyright has been transferred to The Henry Ford by the donor. Copyright for some items in the collection may still be held by their respective creator(s).