Paul Gillan joined General Motors in 1946 in the Oldsmobile studio as a junior designer. In 1947, he transferred to the Pontiac studio and was named assistant chief designer in 1950. and chief designer of the studio in 1953. Gillan moved to head the Advance Design Studios I and II and serve as a design consultant to Bill Mitchell in 1958. In 1959, he was named head of all six Advance Studios, head of Overseas and Canadian Studios, and was later named a GM group designer. He retired from GM in 1981. Gillan begins his oral history discussing his early career at GM in the Oldsmobile studio, discussing the latitude he was given in his design and some of the work he did on post-war vehicles. He discusses his time in the Pontiac studio where he was moved to raise the design profile. He details how prototype vehicles were put together from drawing to full size model to the selection process, and changes to materials and technologies within the design department. Gillan discusses some of the design personalities at the time and his interactions with them, particularly Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell. He talks about the designs he worked on in the Pontiac studio, including the Safari, Catalina (his favorite vehicle), the 1959 dual grille design, and some of the Motorama show cars like the Parisienne, Club deMur, Bonneville, and Strato Star. He discusses his time in the Advance Design studio and Overseas studio talking about the challenge of setting up design studios at Opel and Vauxhall and the difference between European and American audiences. He also briefly touches on his work on the 1965/1965 World’s Fair vehicles, the Stiletto, Shopper Runabout, Turnpike Cruiser, and Firebird IV. He wraps up with his design philosophy and talks about the transitory nature of automotive design.

Collection contains 4 cassettes, 4 WAV files, 4 MP3 files, 1 diskette, 1 bound transcript, a resume, and 1 PDF transcript. Uploaded July 23, 2021.