John Foster began his design career at General Motors in 1936 in the Oldsmobile and Buick studios, and after serving in the war, he worked on the 1949, 1950, and 1951 postwar models. In 1952, he moved to Sundberg-Ferar working on the Packard account and branched out to other industrial design work. He joined Ford in 1954 as the head stylist of Ford interiors, later moving to the advanced studio, and the Cougar studio. In 1968, he moved to the Ford industrial design team before taking an early retirement from Ford and starting his own design business. In his oral history, Foster discusses his early years at GM, Hudson, and Chrysler doing detail work. He talks about working at Ford, first on interiors for the 1957 facelift, and then on front ends and rears. He compares the atmosphere of GM and Ford design departments and the over-management of design at Ford. He discusses developing the Mustang, the design team for the vehicle, and his role of head of interior. He goes on to talk about some of the design personalities such as John Najaar, who he worked under in both the advanced studio and the industrial design studio. He discusses his frustration with the yearly changeovers in automobiles and the built-in obsolescence in design leading to his preference for industrial design work. He talks about his design philosophy and the influence of industrial design on his style as well as current and future trends in automotive design. He briefly discusses his career after Ford, relocating to California to start his own design business, moving into architecture, and then advertising.

Collection contains 2 cassettes, 2 WAV files, 2 MP3 files, 1 diskette, 1 loose transcript, 1 bound transcript, and 1 PDF transcript. Uploaded July 23, 2021 and December 5, 2024.